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Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

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Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#421

Post by Wowfunhappy »

grawprog wrote: post #411
zozbot123 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have UBI, you don't need a high minimum wage. By getting rid of high minimum wages and of a host of heavy and intrusive labor regulations that keep marginal workers out of the market, structural unemployment can be expected to fall and earned-incomes at the low end to increase . You might be living in abject poverty if UBI was all you had , but that's not the point. It's a supplement to your existing income. B…

It's not about the minimum wage it's about what's considered poverty. If you make below $41866/year here you are living in poverty. > heavy and intrusive labor regulations I'm curious as to what you consider heavy and intrusive labour regulations? All of the regulations in the industry I work in are focused on worker health and safety. Without those regulations I would be working in dangerous hell hole breathing in t…

> Lets see, for me at least I would need to get $1200 every month just to cover rent and i've lived in the same place for 8 years now. Rent in that time has doubled around me to the point where a one bedroom apartment is $2400/month. My internet bill is just under $100/ month, phone bill is about half that, travelling to and from work is about $200 a month, groceries and expenses and such another $200 or so if not more. Leaving whatever I have left for saving and fun. I'm just really trying to imagine what kind ubi could be given to anyone that would really make a difference.

So, part of the problem here is that UBI means different things to different people. When I wrote the comment that started this thread, I was talking very specifically about UBI as a way to offset advancements in automation, if and only if those advances reach a point where we don't have enough work left for humans to do. This may very well never happen, but it also might!

In a world like this one, most of the stuff you buy would have very little human involvement. You say your groceries cost ~$200 per month right now; imagine if those groceries were planted by robots and harvested by robots and shipped to stores in self-driving cars. Those robots don't need to get paid (even if they cost some money to run), so the food they produce would be much cheaper!

The same mechanism that makes UBI necessary is also what makes UBI feasible.

Now if you live in a city, your rent probably wouldn't go down, because it's driven by scarcity much more so than production costs. Robots can't magically add extra space inside of a city. So I suspect most of the people living in wealthy cities would still need jobs, and the people who opt to live on UBI alone would move to cheaper locations. That could be worth the trade off if it means more time to persue hobbies or raise children, etc.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#422

Post by throwawaymsft »

orthecreedence wrote: post #417
throwawaymsft wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's helpful to separate natural resources (land, woods, oil, etc.) from wealth (valuable possessions). We take natural resources, often plentiful, apply labor + skill, and get a more valuable product. We're wealthier as a result. Yes, natural resources are finite, but not the limiting reagent for most things. There's a zero-sum game in that land used for farming is not available for an entertainment complex. But we…

Fair points in regards to my response. However, I believe part of your argument is still predicated on endless resources. Agreed, there are vast many (ever-shrinking) resources we can use while the population is growing, however at some point we will reach an equilibrium where there is no more vacant land and the creation of new wealth (barring space exploration, at least for this argument) will cease. In regards to…

Thanks for taking the time to clarify, I mostly agree with your updated version. Global wealth can grow but is not necessarily (or often) distributed, and not everyone is in a circumstance to grow it on their own.

You may enjoy the elephant curve: https://www.brookings.edu/research/whats-happening-to-the-wo...

The very rich and moderately poor have seen wealth increase while the top quintile (E.g. many Americans) have seen wealth stagnate. Globally we’re richer on average but not everyone participated. Clearly it’s best if we can lift all boats and not certain subsets.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#423

Post by halbritt »

deboflo wrote: post #370
halbritt wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager for an infrastructure engineering team in a startup in the Silicon Valley, I have some opinion about the value of these certs. I'd likely never hire an engineer with one of these certs and no relevant experience into a full-time position. I might offer an internship, but that's not a six-figure position.

I agree. Work experience always comes first. Anyone obtaining AWS certs without work experience should be a huge red flag.

Maybe not a "red flag" but I wouldn't be desperate to hire anyone with no experience, even in the Silicon Valley where competition for engineers is fierce. A headcount is a headcount as far as investors are concerned, so I'd rather have someone with more experience that also costs more.

Even still, I agree with the parent up above. A degree isn't strictly necessary, and if someone had the motivation, the talent, and the cert, I'd be willing to give them a chance as an intern.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#424

Post by jnbiche »

randomdata wrote: post #225
sudosteph wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A college degree may not be a panacea for class mobility, but lets not forget that class mobility without a degree is pretty much not possible in the slightest. Per a Pew study Brookings cites ( https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2014/02... ): > children born in the lowest income quintile who do not earn a four-year degree are four times as likely to wind up in the bottom (47%) as those who earn a f…

> lets not forget that class mobility without a degree is pretty much not possible in the slightest. While it is true that the school system acts as a filter that removes those who have almost no chance of upward mobility (those with crippling disabilities, for example) from completing higher and higher levels of schooling, we need to be careful to not reverse that observation. Attaining a degree is not going to undo…

> chances are you still have every bit of upward mobility potential as someone who did graduate from Harvard.

Well, minus the Harvard contacts and network, which is a huge part of the success factor of Harvard grads.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#425

Post by wasdfff »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #333
wasdfff wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the dollar come from? A printer in a U.S. mint building. Every single one. No dollar can come into existance without being printed in one of these buildings. This is not like working out or singing a song, you can’t will money into existance and into your pocket, ultimately someone in charge of a larger pile of money wrote you a check. There is a finite amount of money in the world.

Banks will money into existence every time they issue a loan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation When I deposit $1k in the bank and you take a $500 loan, $500 is created out of nowhere. You are using my deposit yet I still have a balance of $1000 on the books.

Banks cant will money into existance. If you withdrew your money the bank has to pay you from other funds. During the great depression banks collapsed this way, the only thing stopping that today is banks have enough funding to buffer people withdrawing from their accounts.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#427

Post by ivalm »

dan-robertson wrote: post #337
ivalm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people? According to this [0] article from 2017 only 33.4% of Americans over the age of 25 have finished their undergraduate education. As such, MOST people are still without undergraduate education, and thus a median American does not have undergrad education. Since middle class should represent a median resident, it would follow that peo…

I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? I don’t think the answer is by having equally large upper and working classes.

If you look here [0] it would suggest that median is well within middle class (only 29% are "lower").

[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american...

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#428

Post by dan-robertson »

ivalm wrote: post #427
dan-robertson wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? I don’t think the answer is by having equally large upper and working classes.

If you look here [0] it would suggest that median is well within middle class (only 29% are "lower"). [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american...

Well sure. The point I contest is that the definition of middle class is “the class of the person/household with median income.”

Currently in developed countries it happens to be the case that the people with median income are middle class. However this was not always the case, ie the group referred to as middle class did not always include people with median income and so the above definition does not coincide with what middle class typically referred to.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#429

Post by ivalm »

dan-robertson wrote: post #428
ivalm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look here [0] it would suggest that median is well within middle class (only 29% are "lower"). [0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-american...

Well sure. The point I contest is that the definition of middle class is “the class of the person/household with median income.” Currently in developed countries it happens to be the case that the people with median income are middle class. However this was not always the case, ie the group referred to as middle class did not always include people with median income and so the above definition does not coincide with…

The entire comment chain was not about some abstract middle class, rather middle class in the US right now.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#430

Post by codinger »

ausjke wrote: post #248
codinger wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding, wait until he finds out Texas was formerly Mexico and many of the brown people are descendant of US citizens when Texas became a part of the US.

that's like you saying most Americans should return to Europe because what they have done here was so evil, unfortunately you can not roll back history

No, it's not like I said that at all. What point are you trying to make?
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