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Say Hello to Full Employment

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Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#241

Post by otakucode »

CocaKoala wrote: post #192
mc32 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, there are plenty of people who could be sucked up back into employment. I’m excited to see if after decades of atrophy, the blue collar worker of yesteryear can have another go at it. With enough demand, we may begin to see employers willing to retrain these workers and bring them back into the fold.

Are the employees willing to be retrained? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-effect-coal-retrain...

The alternatives that coal miners have are garbage. They are being asked to leave union jobs with decent pay, decent benefits, protection from unfair treatment, and embrace radically lower pay, radically worse benefits, and active unfair treatment. You can't expect anyone to get excited by those prospects. If computers were outlawed tomorrow, would you sign up to stock shelves at Walmart with a smile on your face and with desire to gather in the mornings and sing the Walmart loyalty chant or whatever it is they sing?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#242

Post by otakucode »

joefranklinsrs wrote: post #97
User23 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the US federal government has been spending an extra $1 trillion in stimulus into the economy since 2009. We've had continuing budget resolutions since the ARRA was passed, and those always continue spending at the prior year's level. This is why the deficit went up $10 trillion. Or, if you're a half full kind of person, it's why private sector and foreign savings have gone up $10 trillion. Unfortunately it does…

If US is the beneficiary of the past few years of emerging markets deleveraging and economic stimulus, middle class is a big recipient of the benefits. For example, any middle class who invested in the stock market would have seen great returns, maybe close to 10X if they invested in amazon, netflix, or apple. also, US middle class income has been increasing, reaching highest level in the last year: https://www.washi…

I am honestly curious... where does that income come from? We know it doesn't come from wages, because median wages of the lower 90% have risen less than 2% since 1980. Since the statistic is based on families, is it due to a larger number of 2-income families out of necessity?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#243

Post by otakucode »

throwawaymath wrote: post #102
User23 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Throwing darts is probably actually a better way to make predictions about a stochastic process than naive chartism.

I'm not going to rehash the finer points of a debate that stubbornly refuses to die among armchair economists online. But for the benefit of everyone else reading this thread: 1. The market, and the macroeconomic system in general, is not a purely stochastic process. This is a meme. 2. If by "naive chartism" you mean technical analysis, then sure, I agree. But if you're attempting to reduce the entirety of academic a…

Since you seem like you might know, I am curious... those who believe that inefficiencies in the market are what creates profit, and that markets will naturally act to reduce inefficiencies... how do they explain skyrocketing increases of profit and decades-long persistence and growth of profit which is supposed to be quickly reduced to zero by the optimizing market? It seems like a really obvious disproof of the concept on its face, but the concept doesn't seem to be losing any traction. Are companies simply better at generating inefficiency than the market is at eliminating it?

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#244

Post by jfoutz »

Veelox wrote: post #124
retbull wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of having someone pay more for what is a scarce resource lets just reverse inflation? I'm not seeing how that is easier.

Rent, medical expenses, and college expenses have all out paced inflation so it is more important to fix the underlying issues in those markets than force employers to pay more.

Sure. That would be an efficient solution. No one wants to take that hit though. So we’re going to do the other thing.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#245

Post by shados »

scarface74 wrote: post #194
shados wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job reqs are a lie, and a lot of jobs (I almost want to say most, but I don't have data to back it up) never even make it as far as the job boards. The ones that do are often not even drafted by the hiring manager, and just written by someone who asked "So, what kind of skills would be nice?". Most companies will absolutely hire outside of what's written. They don't have much choice unless they're looking for entry l…

I don’t do job boards either - I always go through recruiters. But if you are a “senior Dev” that knows Java and they are looking for a Node Developer, you aren’t going to be anywhere on thier list to hire.

to me, recruiters === job boards.

The interesting openings are through direct connections and referrals.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#246

Post by mmt »

azernik wrote: post #197
module0000 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I sit around idle all day long as a 6g certified welder. By "idle" I mean sitting at a desk writing python and trading commodities. Welding is for the birds, and humans that want to lose their sense of smell and eventually degrade their vision. Welding is not fun over any stretch of time.

Same for trucking. Who wants to spend a month at a time away from family? When people talk about higher wages for these jobs as a solution for the labor shortage, I always bring up improvements in working conditions (safety, hours, etc.) as a perhaps more cost-effective way to make these jobs attractive.

> Same for trucking.

That strikes me as an exaggeration. Notwithstanding "sitting is the new smoking", I don't imagine trucking has nearly the permanent health risks of welding, especially considering that maximum-time regulations are now actually getting enforced, thanks to electronic logbooks.

> Who wants to spend a month at a time away from family?

Someone without a family (usually modified by "yet") or who's into making shorter-term sacrifices for the longer term. The latter would apply if the pay were high enough, but it isn't. The latter type seems to exist in the military.

The question makes an assumption that isn't necessarily valid, as there's another kind of person: one who has no kids and brings a spouse along to drive as a team.

None of this, of course, necessarily translates into an attractive long-term career, but it's also not high- or increasing-skill labor.

> improvements in working conditions (safety, hours, etc.) as a perhaps more cost-effective way to make these jobs attractive.

I suspect the reason such measures are particularly unattractive to employers is that many would be practically impossible to roll back once the job market turns. Wages are a "knob" that turns both ways, but once you've spent money on all those safety upgrades at the plant, there's no un-spending it.

As cynical as that may sound, for low-margin businesses, the fear of being out-competed is always on their mind. Whether the fear is exaggerated compared to reality is another matter.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#247

Post by ZainRiz »

vivekd wrote: post #225
mmt wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the guideline-flouting/flame-attracting wording, I think there's a kernel of a point here: it's important to consider two seperate pay-gap issues (be it for gender, race, or any other class): 1) equal pay for equal work 2) equal represenatation among (higher paying) jobs I routinely see these two issues conflated, and occasionally the purported resolution of #1 for gender being trotted as evidence of no more…

not every post has to be completely on topic, it was topical to the issue of unreliable figures skewing economic data which was what the subtopic was about. I admit he was bringing up an inflammatory topic, but really I expect a place like hacker news to have a user base that can handle that objectively As for equal pay for equal work - I'd be very surprised if women aren't getting that, because that's illegal and yo…

If there is a pay gap, I suspect it's at least partially determined by a person's tendency to negotiate salary. There are many articles about how salary negotiation is crucial when applying for a job, yet many women and men often accept the first offer a company makes to them (which is usually a low ball offer).

Negotiating a higher salary requires a bit more drive/aggressiveness than the average person has. Making up numbers here, if you say that only 20% of the population has that personality trait, men seem more likely to have that trait (perhaps 15% of men have it and 5% of women), which would contribute to the equal pay for equal work gap.

To rephrase my above statement, the current job market rewards certain personality types with higher positions & salaries, and men seem to have a higher chance of having that personality.

A completely separate question is: Is the above an acceptable situation? I would say no.

For example, more men are three times more likely to be psychopaths than women [1], and CEOs have a much higher chance of being psychopaths than the general population [2]. There's a strong chance that certain psychopathic tendencies are rewarded in the current corporate structure.

Similarly, there are other stories you hear of there being a lot of backstabbing in certain companies at the higher levels. Personality types that are disinclined to engage in that will be unlikely to climb the corporate ladder there.

It's probably in the best interest of all companies and society in general that these kind of personality traits are not rewarded unless they are actually beneficial.

By fixing the problem at this level we'll not only be solving the gender/pay gap between men and women but also the gender pay/gap between differing personalities within a given gender as well.

[1](https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/mental-disord...) [2](http://www.businessinsider.com/ceos-often-have-psychopathic-...)

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#248

Post by vivekd »

noelsusman wrote: post #239
vivekd wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this downvoted? Women tend not to be crazy like men and thus are more likely to choose fulfiling careers that have lower pay, and seek more work life balance. When accounting for these factors, the existence of a gender pay gap becomes more questionable.

First, when you control for everything there is still a gap, it's just smaller. 94 cents on the dollar is nothing to sneeze at. Second, when you do that you're sort of controlling the problem away. Women don't seek more work/life balance because they're not as crazy as men. They do it because they're expected to carry more of the burden of raising a child. The literature is clear that the wage gap is relatively small…

Well there are other factors you need to control for too, men are more likely to try and choose higher paying jobs because social status and attractiveness to potential mates is impacted by a man's wealth. This is not the case for women, studies show that men are indifferent to a women's economic status when it comes to mate choice and focus more on physical appearance.

There certainly is sexism in the workplace, although the court ruled different I think Ellen Pao was a victim of this. That said, I don't know if it as prevalent and widespread so as to lead to meaningful and statistically significant wage gaps when all the factors are considered. Certainly the evidence for this sort of widespread institutionalized sexism is lacking in my mind.

Still I think the conversation here is more that the wage gap numbers are not as significant as they are often presented in discourse about gender equality

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#249

Post by codexon »

neffy wrote: post #134
rufusroflpunch wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about the President, at least not directly. Obama doesn't deserve credit any more than Bush Jr. deserved credit for navigating us through the .com bust. Since days of Alan Greenspan, the Fed has been inflating us out of recessions, into longer and more unsustainable booms, which are naturally followed by even worse busts. Our economy is like an over-correcting tightrope walker in slow motion. It's teeterin…

That's not actually the case. If you look at the money supply for the US it has a pretty constant growth rate over the last 8 decades - while the Federal Reserve claims to be messing around with the interest rate to control the economy, the actual evidence that this is the case is quite lacking. (Illusion of Control problem) So yes, it's not about the President, but the nature of control over the financial system is…

"If you look at the money supply for the US it has a pretty constant growth rate over the last 8 decades"

I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion given it is common knowledge and fairly obvious that the Fed has been inflating the economy at absurd amounts to get us out of the 2008 crash.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BASE

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#250

Post by scarface74 »

shados wrote: post #245
scarface74 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t do job boards either - I always go through recruiters. But if you are a “senior Dev” that knows Java and they are looking for a Node Developer, you aren’t going to be anywhere on thier list to hire.

to me, recruiters === job boards. The interesting openings are through direct connections and referrals.

Recruiters are not the same as job boards. I have recruiters that I’ve worked with for years as both a job seeker and hiring employees, I have met them for lunch.

I can sit back, tell recruiters I’m looking for a salary that pays no less than $X and sit back. It’s never taken me more than a month from the time I’ve started looking to having another job.

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