What if jobs are not the solution but the problem? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#11

Post by gambiting » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:38 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #6

jokoon wrote: post #5

There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in. I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thi…

> I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that ca…

What he thinks is irrelevant. The system is in place to allow people without jobs to survive. We either have to have that, or guarantee that everyone has a job - I come from a former communist republic that tried to do the later, it's not pretty. I would much rather live in a country that let's him live off welfare than in a country that tries to shove a job everyone's throat.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#12

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

"These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump – addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding or demeaning it is. "

And, when you experiment with a job guarantee program and turn it into a basic income scheme you can see why:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-gu...

The increasing “feminization” of the program (caused in part by economic recovery that pulled most men out of the program and into the private sector) proved to be a political problem. Government officials adopted the attitude that the program was providing jobs to “economically inactive” women who should be at home instead of working. I won’t go into the details (in part because I am not sufficiently familiar with them) but officials created an alternative scheme by which the remaining men would be moved into an unemployment program and the women would be moved into welfare. These moves were voluntary, but higher pay in either unemployment or welfare was the attraction that helped to gut the Jefes program. One of my PhD students continued to study participants as the program was reduced—and found that women would rationally take the higher pay in welfare but continue to work in their jobs (without pay) because they found substantial benefits in the social networks they had created through work. They also wanted to contribute to their communities.

Somehow I doubt this story has permeated James Livingston's Brooklyn bubble though.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#13

Post by nhaehnle » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy.

No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines.

But full employment may be necessary anyway, because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful via employment.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#14

Post by wildmusings » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #11

wildmusings wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that ca…

What he thinks is irrelevant. The system is in place to allow people without jobs to survive. We either have to have that, or guarantee that everyone has a job - I come from a former communist republic that tried to do the later, it's not pretty. I would much rather live in a country that let's him live off welfare than in a country that tries to shove a job everyone's throat.

I'm not against welfare. I was responding to his assertion that he feels no obligation to work, even if jobs are available.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#15

Post by euyyn » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #5

There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in. I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thi…

You don't think you have any duty to try not to live off welfare, as long as not many people do it?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#16

Post by CalRobert » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #6

jokoon wrote: post #5

There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in. I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thi…

> I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough. Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that ca…

" Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other people's paychecks."

That's true, but I increasingly don't mind. It's also money that came from your own paycheck if you were a high earner in the past.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#17

Post by Practicality » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #7

Practicality wrote: post #4

At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to a…

We'll have "enough" full time labor when everybody it fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money.* Until then, if there's not enough jobs, that's an artificially induced shortage (e.g. austerity). * Excepting natural resources - e.g. "more" beachfront property.

"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money."

That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want.

At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?).

Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#18

Post by z3t4 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:47 PM UTC

There will always be work maybe not paid work, but there's always work to do. A lot of "work" will be automated by robots, and even if we get AI and don't have to "work" ourself, we will still invent work, but we will not work because we need to, we will work because we want to.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#19

Post by lnanek2 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

scandox wrote: post #8

> there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way. This kind of lazy discourse from someone who has authored a whole book on the topic under discussion is remarkable.

The things he lists to justify calling Wall Street that are real, however:

" When I see, for example, that you’re making millions by laundering drug-cartel money (HSBC), or pushing bad paper on mutual fund managers (AIG, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Citibank), or preying on low-income borrowers (Bank of America), or buying votes in Congress (all of the above) – just business as usual on Wall Street – while I’m barely making ends meet "

So I wouldn't call it lazy when he flat out listed what they are doing to get put in that gangster category.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#20

Post by Practicality » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

nhaehnle wrote: post #13

The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy. No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines. But full employment may be necessary anyway , because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful v…

Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs.

Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.