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Say Hello to Full Employment

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Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#341

Post by ChrisLomont »

monocasa wrote: post #98
ChrisLomont wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars don't tend to grow economies, and QE stopped in 2014.

They do if you win, and don't fight the war on your own soil.

Not even necessarily then. Wars divert resources such as metals, chemicals, food, to be consumed overseas instead of in better economic activity. The US has been in wars for decades, adding trillions to the current debt and trillions more to future liability. Those trillions spent on infrastructure, science, education, etc., would have had a far better effect on the lives of people in the US than spending it on wars.

Think of the amount - trillions already spent on war. And trillions more in debt because of it.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#342

Post by eli_gottlieb »

throawawy3242 wrote: post #166

And here I am. Laid off after 2 months, among hundreds of workers, and unable to find employment. Someone tell me more about these "more jobs than people" again. BTW I have a B.S in Computer Science and living in the USA.

Solidarity! I was unemployed for much of 2017 myself. It's not that you (or I) don't have skills. It's that employers now seem to have such precise preferences that everyone is the "spiky kid" instead of the "broad fit". I've been turned down for jobs because, "While you definitely have the skills and you're smart, you just don't seem to be moving your career in that Ruby on Rails direction." In the same job search, I was told that I didn't have enough Rails experience even though I passed all the interview tasks just fine. These were for junior engineering positions!

Well, self-fulfilling prophecy: now I'm following my more heartfelt interests and doing a PhD in neuroscience. Turns out finding a lab that fit my interests perfectly worked great.

Which is to say: being the "spiky fit" actually sucks, but it seems to be what the labor market is targeting right now.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#343

Post by s73v3r_ »

Veelox wrote: post #232
s73v3r_ wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot disagree more. It's a "minimum wage". What good is it if it's not a living wage? What's the point of having a minimum wage that one cannot survive on?

Honestly I would be fine with no minimum wage. I also tend a little more libertarian than most. I am fine with the minimum wage setting a floor to how much people are paid because it cuts down on explotive practices. That said, putting the minimum wage to an amount that is surviable at 40 hours a week removes people on the margins that would benefit from a job that paid these than a living wage. Note I am taking as a…

"Honestly I would be fine with no minimum wage"

With all due respect, that's probably because you're not someone who's having to survive on it.

"That said, putting the minimum wage to an amount that is surviable at 40 hours a week removes people on the margins that would benefit from a job that paid these than a living wage."

I don't believe that population is significant, or more significant than those that do need it to be a living wage.

"James just got done serving 5 years for felony distribution of crack. Seeing his son only once a month has made James decide to go on the straight and narrow from now on. As an ex-con it is hard for him to find a job. In fact because ex-con tend to be bad employees most business don't bother. If there was no minimum wage a business could hire James at a rate of the average ex-con and he could prove himself a good worker and move to a better paying job. I think such a job should exist for James."

I do not believe that having a non-living wage job would help, because James would still need to survive, and on a non-living wage, he's going to have to supplement that income somewhere. A better thing for James would be "Ban the Box" laws, which prevent potential employers from asking about criminal history if it's not relevant to the job.

"I think these are two examples of productive economic activity that would otherwise be impossible if the minimum wage was set to a living wage."

And I don't. Just about every example for why it shouldn't happen comes down to business wants cheap labor. And that's not an argument that I am sympathetic to.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#344

Post by s73v3r_ »

Veelox wrote: post #233
s73v3r_ wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really agree. There are enough who do need to survive on it that it should be a living wage. And I can't agree that them being priced out is a problem, because back when it was a living wage, students were able to get part-time jobs at minimum wage just fine.

My father went to college in the early 80s, he was able to work as a ditch digger in the sunmers and pay for his school, books, and living off of that. Let's say he worked 80 hr/week 12 weeks a year. Say it now cost 25k a year (that's low) to go to college. To cover that now you would need to net ~$26 hr to do the same thing. The issue isn't that wages have grown to slow, it is that important costs have grown to quic…

"My father went to college in the early 80s, he was able to work as a ditch digger in the sunmers and pay for his school, books, and living off of that."

Your example is completely invalid today.

"The issue isn't that wages have grown to slow, it is that important costs have grown to quickly."

And employers bear the responsibility for that.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#345

Post by Veelox »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #343
Veelox wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I would be fine with no minimum wage. I also tend a little more libertarian than most. I am fine with the minimum wage setting a floor to how much people are paid because it cuts down on explotive practices. That said, putting the minimum wage to an amount that is surviable at 40 hours a week removes people on the margins that would benefit from a job that paid these than a living wage. Note I am taking as a…

"Honestly I would be fine with no minimum wage" With all due respect, that's probably because you're not someone who's having to survive on it. "That said, putting the minimum wage to an amount that is surviable at 40 hours a week removes people on the margins that would benefit from a job that paid these than a living wage." I don't believe that population is significant, or more significant than those that do need…

You have quite a few objections and I will try to address them one at a time.

>With all due respect, that's probably because you're not someone who's having to survive on it.

I have a lot of respect and empathy for those working multiple minimum wage jobs to make sure their children have food to eat. With that said, whenever I consider a policy I start with how I think the world ought to be and then I make considerations for how the world really is. Hence why I say it is probably a good thing that we have the minimum wage.

>I don't believe that population is significant, or more significant than those that do need it to be a living wage.

Data would be nice, but I would guess that the long term gain in increased experience from more jobs happening would be better than the marginal increased income for those with the now higher minimum wage.

>I do not believe that having a non-living wage job would help, because James would still need to survive, and on a non-living wage, he's going to have to supplement that income somewhere.

James would need to live somehow, by keeping the min. wage low, we give James the chance to gain a work history at a low paying job (while he is provided supplemental support) so he can transition to a better paying job.

>A better thing for James would be "Ban the Box" laws, which prevent potential employers from asking about criminal history if it's not relevant to the job.

Ban the Box is a bad idea because it hurts young black men[0]. tl;dr when employers cannot know that a person does or doesn't have a criminal record, they don't hire from the populations with high rates of criminal records (young black men).

>And I don't. Just about every example for why it shouldn't happen comes down to business wants cheap labor. And that's not an argument that I am sympathetic to.

I feel like you missed an important assumption I made, business will never hire a person if the value that labor produces is less than the cost of the wage. The min. wage sets a floor on the value a person and this hurts people that cannot produce more value than the floor. This is different from the fact that a business seeks to minimize costs of which labor is a major one. That is capitalism, some business seek to pay people that absolute minimum they can to cut costs. Others (like QuikTrip and In-N-Out) pay a premium for better workers to get better value.

What is your suggested fix for businesses wanting cheap labor?

[0] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ban-the-box-laws-may-be...

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#346

Post by ponzored »

Animats wrote: post #59
wgerard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The openings seem to be largely in trades or nonskilled labor: > Competition for workers has gone crazy, Joe McConville, who co-owns a popular chain of made-from-scratch pizza restaurants, told me. “At almost every restaurant that I’ve worked at, you always had a stack of applications waiting,” he said. “You’d call somebody up and half the time they're still looking for an extra job. That’s not happening anymore.” >…

The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Now that's a good point. The job could be much better if the employers were better organized. Employers want to send someone out on the road for weeks at a time. With better scheduling…

Or buy a semi-autonomous truck that can be used in convoy mode - one driver in the lead, two trucks behind following. Once it gets to a city they all get drivers to navigate to the depot. This is already a feature of the Tesla Semi.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#347

Post by lovich »

scarface74 wrote: post #296
lovich wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt there's people like you who can make it happen and have it better off but there's no way your results are typical. I don't know of a single fortune 10 company that even has a hiring pipeline that could be gotten through in 4 days unless you know someone with some pull, and the entire industry can't be friends with that small group of people. Additionally look at all the work you've put in. "Networking l…

I don't know of a single fortune 10 company that even has a hiring pipeline that could be gotten through in 4 days unless you know someone with some pull, and the entire industry can't be friends with that small group of people. The Fortune 10 company having a fast hiring process was dumb luck. The department I got hired in was originally a small startup that had been acquired by the larger company. The hiring manage…

Your experience is vastly different from every other developer I know. Other than people having a friend who can literally give them a job, ex a startup CEO, it's all multiple days of interviews, round after round of whiteboard coding, engineers being thrown into interviewing you with zero warning so they just middle through the whole thing, and getting ghosted by the companies at any point in the process.

These same companies are ones I see talking about shortages of engineers

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#348

Post by Veelox »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #344
Veelox wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father went to college in the early 80s, he was able to work as a ditch digger in the sunmers and pay for his school, books, and living off of that. Let's say he worked 80 hr/week 12 weeks a year. Say it now cost 25k a year (that's low) to go to college. To cover that now you would need to net ~$26 hr to do the same thing. The issue isn't that wages have grown to slow, it is that important costs have grown to quic…

"My father went to college in the early 80s, he was able to work as a ditch digger in the sunmers and pay for his school, books, and living off of that." Your example is completely invalid today. "The issue isn't that wages have grown to slow, it is that important costs have grown to quickly." And employers bear the responsibility for that.

>>"The issue isn't that wages have grown to slow, it is that important costs have grown to quickly."

>And employers bear the responsibility for that.

Per the article [0] after adjusting for inflation "That makes the current cost [of college] more than two-and-a-half times as much as it was in 1988 — a markup of 163 percent."

How are employers responsible for a 163% increase in the real cost of college?

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has...

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