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Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

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Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#211

Post by bsanr2 »

Frost1x wrote: post #98
_0uto wrote: post #31

I see a lot of protestant mentality here in comments valuing any kind of even inhumane labour which does not allow to meet basic needs over not having a job, but also not suffering from hunger thanks to the social support system. In my opinion, we as a society should aim to work less and less, collectively making use of automation and technological progress. But it will be hard when we label this as being lazy and no…

Another issue is who owns these automation processes. If I used my vast financial resources to develop (i.e. pay people to develop) a new automation process, what rights do you have to my gains? Why should I share it with you? This mentality and ownership really needs to be rethought.

You're making a lot of assumptions about ownership. "Your" vast financial resources are just measures of debt (money is not personal property) secured by the government. We can always collectively decide that what you did to accrue that owed debt was not worth its valuation and take steps (e.g., taxation) to correct. "Your" automation process is built on publicly-funded research and using publicly-funded resources; the public can decide to recoup its investment, and whatever else it needs to secure its mission of providing for the general welfare.

Feudalism is over, dude. You're connected. You're beholden.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#212

Post by endothrowho333 »

bigcohoneypot wrote: post #191
endothrowho333 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your hypothesis does not hold up to the data. Your data is not relevant to the hypothesis. The surveys were conducted in different time-frames (Canada: 2009-2014, USA 2005-2010), which I shouldn't need to tell anyone why that dataset is not useful for rigorous comparison, but I will anyway: one surveys people who were just recently hit by a recession and tracks them throughout the economy's recovery; while the othe…

For those of us familiar with science, and not social science can you explain why we can't conclude anything from data without further experimentation? Or is this a claim about the scientific method as opposed to say how art is criticized.

It's not that you can't conclude anything from data, it's just that the things you can conclude from data are limited to only two "scientifically-sound" conclusions:

>1). There is a relationship in your data

>2). There isn't a relationship in your data

From there, you can then setup further experiments to better understand why there is or isn't a relationship -- and perhaps find the opposite is true!

It's the same reason you don't assume a theory is "true;" you don't conclude "that higher unemployment in Canada vis-a-vis the US is almost certainly driven by a lower supply of jobs, rather than as you posit a lower demand for employment" (GGP), because that's bad science!

What the GGP did is create an inference -- one based on misread data and faulty assumptions about scientific methods -- and expressed it as de facto. Now, in order for his inference to have weight, he must either support it with further evidence (DIY meta-analysis) or carry out some other type of experiment to test said inference.

Here's a very brief primer: https://socialresearchmethods.net/kb/concval.php

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#214

Post by Vlad_Zamfor »

>Two-thirds (64%) of low-wage workers are in their prime working years of 25 to 54.

I agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky that this is a disgrace, y'know? Like, why can't that guy get a real job? Am I the one stopping him?

To quote Professor Spock: The answer is, yes and no.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#215

Post by rexreed »

tehjoker wrote: post #143
syshum wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The "goal" of a low wage job is for an employer to make a profit from someone else's labor That is the goal of all jobs, high, low, middle Employers are not charity, they do not employ people so they can have a good income. Employers employ people because they need work done to make money off that work, the second you cost your employer more than they make off your work you are out of a job. Sometimes that cut off…

That's right, but we don't have a society unless people have incomes so maybe this isn't a good model for funding a civil society?

This is not the case - there's plenty of civil societies that have existed over the millennia that are subsistence economies. They aren't wealthy, but that isn't the point.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#216

Post by cheriot »

williamDafoe wrote: post #165

Unemployment is NOT very low. The government publicizes a fake unemployment number which includes a HUGE imaginary subtraction called "discouraged workers", which was originally imagined during the Clinton administration. To get a real idea about EMPLOYMENT, including those pesky minorities that Clinton excluded, see the employment population ratio, ages 25-54: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060 When Obam…

So from the FRED series you link to, the current market is the second best for employment in history. How is that "NOT very low"? It's better than any point in history other than a couple years when the dot com bubble was inflating.

BLS labor statistics are phenomenal. It's some of the most trustworthy data available. Please don't call them "fake" just because you want to use a different time series than someone else.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#217

Post by eropple »

CivBase wrote: post #142
vertex-four wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work. Yeah... thought so. You edited your post to add a line about emergency healthcare being a legal obligation of hospitals - we both know that emergency healthcare (i.e. "I am literally dying right this second") is not the total of necessary healthcare for many people. I invite you to try s…

> Try getting healthcare in the US without health insurance, and try affording health insurance when you don't have good enough work. I'm not offering an opinion here. I just think the distinction between health care and insurance is important. The original post I was responding to implies to some that you need a job to receive treatment. It also conversely implies that having a job means you can get treatment. I've…

If you're not offering an opinion through the kind of hair-splitting that elides the immediate and generally permanently life-wrecking consequences of not having health insurance, then that hair-splitting serves very little purpose. On the other hand, if your opinion is that the status quo is acceptable, it allows you to rhetorically minimize those consequences because, hey, at least they're not dead, even if the best way out of that debt can seem to be suicide[0].

If you believe that, you've bilged a test of basic humanity. If you don't, perhaps re-think what drives your well-actuallies in the future?

[0] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elderly-couple-found-dead-in-ap...

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#218

Post by sokoloff »

adamsea wrote: post #181
sokoloff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of tradespeople who enjoy their work and find value and some fulfillment in what they do. Do they love it like I love programming? Maybe; maybe not, but it seems possible.

True but tradespeople !== trash man or inkjet-printer factory worker (similar to example from an above post).

My primary point was that these were not highly-paid, white collar jobs.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#219

Post by toohotatopic »

MH15 wrote: post #48
toohotatopic wrote: post #26

>53 million people earn low wages, with a median of just $10.22 per hour. That’s nearly half of the 18 to 64 workforce. 10.22 is just a number. It wouldn't be better if they earned $20.44 per hour because costs would double, too. It's like the SF housing market: people spend what they have. SF residents could live luxurious lives if they wouldn't outbid each other and kept prices low. Likewise, the lower half of the…

Doubling the minimum wage does not cause costs to double. This is a very flawed analysis- the minimum wage doesn't affect the entire population (less than half!) so raising that wage only raises the costs of things a small, proportional factor, if at all. I find we tend to apply microeconomic theorems to macroeconomic activities far too often.

You have overlooked a key part of my argument: Costs are low because the lower half cannot afford to pay more. Vendors have to keep low prices to compete for the hard earned Dollars. Give the lower half more money and things will simply cost more because they are able to spend the money.

This alone will start a demand for higher wages which will end in a situation where everything will cost proportionally more for everybody. The only losers will be those with bonds and cash because inflation will eat away the value.

Additionally, I don't think that you can ignore the supply chains. If you have a maid and you have to pay double, do you stomach the increased cost or are you going to ask for a rise yourself? And don't forget that you have to pay taxes. So you don't ask for her increase but you double it.

Low wages are not for those who operate machines, where the wage doesn't matter because the value is created by the machine. Low wages exist where a huge part of the value is directly created by the person. So double that cost and you increase the prices of those goods.

I don't know how big the low-wage part is relative to the entire economy. If it is minuscule, increasing minimum wage doesn't matter. But as the article says, it's almost 50% of the workforce, so I doubt that costs will only rise a small, proportional factor, if at all.

Re: Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

#220

Post by petermcneeley »

ghastmaster wrote: post #172

"...we need to rethink the fundamentals of our economic and social policies" They suggest fixes in the next paragraph that are not fundamental, have already been implemented, and have directly contributed to the problem: "Federal, state, and local governments can take a number of steps to improve workers’ economic security. Boosting wages through tax credits, a higher minimum wage, or supporting sectoral bargaining;…

Would part of that bastardization since 1776 be the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863?
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