Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by stopads » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

mlurp wrote: post #34

stopads wrote: post #3

I would love to see tech pivot away from being an industry that is 100% about tracking & advertising more and more every year and towards something, anything that was an actual real new product or service. We used to take it for granted that tech was the industry of innovation and progress, but there seems to be very little of that any more. Just a few more ads on the page.

I'm hoping/wondering if 2020 will be the year there's some sort of real cultural shift in how this is all viewed. We already know about all the research pointing to social media making people generally less happy, but a huge part of the internet/tech economy is just ads and services that... bluntly, don't really add much to the world. And a ton of capital and human effort is going into that.

I had a moment of excitement when Google announced their practical quantum computing breakthrough, then I instantly realized it meant they will just find a way to track me at a quantum level and anticipate my consumer targeting brand preferences 10000x more quickly or something equally as awful.

Not so exciting after all.

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

#292

Post by DoreenMichele » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

ReallyAnonymous wrote: post #262

DoreenMichele wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, good for them and it would be nice if you elucidated whatever you know about how they pulled this off. On the other hand, it's basically dismissive of a very real problem here. I read a lot about homelessness. I've seen far too many people indicate they are homeless in part because they have cancer and it's ruining them financially. America is hardly some utopia where we take wonderful care of all ou…

General surgeon in the South here. What I've seen is that uninsured individuals will prolong going to the doctor for symptoms because of cost and that sometimes costs them their lives because of the advanced presentation of their disease. On the other hand, once you get diagnosed with cancer in South Carolina, you automatically qualify for Medicaid so that you receive some treatment. This way, you die with treatment…

Thank you.

Just for clarity's sake:

Medicare is a health insurance program for all citizens of U.S. whereas Medicaid is health coverage for low income group and people with disabilities.

Medicare is federal-supported program and Medicaid is a joint program by the state and the federal government. As such the eligibility and coverage for Medicaid vary from state to state.

https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-medicar...

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

#293

Post by opportune » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

retrac wrote: post #189

pytester wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was why when Argentina swapped out a job guarantee (plan jefes) with a UBI-type program, many of the women who did the job guarantee jobs of caring for the elderly, etc. kept doing the work in spite of the government telling them it wasn't "necessary" any more. While it's theoretically possible that they might have spontaneously started doing these jobs if a UBI program had been initiated I'm not aware of any ex…

Yes. Many types of extremely valuable work in our society is not valued by the market and so is not compensated. Caring for the elderly, caring for children, my elderly neighbour who sometimes picks up trash on the street, etc. There are all kinds of crucial work our society desperately needs done, but which are often not even conceptualized as work because there's no wage attached to it.

Also, commercialization can create fake economic growth.

For example, suppose in the past one spouse worked a job for a wage/salary and the other spouse cared for some of the couple's ailing parents, provided childcare, and cooked for the couple's children and parents. Now instead, the second spouse also works a wage job, both spouses pay higher taxes some of which go to caring for the old people, and with the extra income they instead purchase prepared food and pay for daycare. The economy grew a lot because formally unpaid labor is now being paid for, but is everyone better off?

Note: I don't think women should be limited to being homemakers, this is just an example.

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

#294

Post by JDiculous » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #279

The low unemployment rate is proof that this techno optimism isn’t true.

No it's not. Low unemployment is a result of a system that forces people into employment to make a living (not to mention how skewed the statistics are when they consider part-time workers seeking full-time opportunities as "employed" and exclude disparaged workers).

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

#295

Post by CivBase » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #217

CivBase wrote: post #142

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. 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 bes…

I gave a reason for my "splitting hairs" and you conveniently ignored it.

Stop projecting opinions that are not mine onto my post. I believe the health care and insurance industries in the US is broken and does not adequately serve a huge portion of citizens with low incomes. I have never suggested the current system is okay.

If your opinion is reliant on misinformation, you should reevaluate it. Otherwise, you should not be concerned with someone like me "splitting hairs".

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

#296

Post by ikeboy » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

deiznof wrote: post #285

ikeboy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07... This is the result Google currently features for "productivity effect on wages". The chart shows total compensation tracking productivity very closely, although it only goes back a quarter century.

This is only because America has incredibly bloated healthcare costs - that "compensation" mostly isn't all that valuable. A $1000 slice of pizza is still only 1 slice of pizza.

This is inflation adjusted, which means it accounts for all that.

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

#297

Post by rayiner » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #264

orangecat wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a good thing that a 60+ year old goes back to work at a low paying job because he/she can't pay the bills? A 60 year old who is voluntarily retired is not "unemployed". If they later end up taking a job due to financial hardship, that changes the unemployment rate very little; it just adds 1 to the denominator of people in the labor force.

I think they meant if lots of them were doing it, not just one, in which case the denominator would go up, well, a lot. I think this was also an example of a hypothesis: Why have people doing crap jobs that are better automated just because they can’t afford to live otherwise? The system is broken, in that we need to better support the folks on the fringes so we can just automate away a lot of mindless, repetitive bo…

> Why waste a human life flipping burgers or banging away in the mines? Make robots do that, and let’s provide a solution to the displaced, like for instance basic income but totally open to alternatives.

Because we don’t have the technology to actually do that? We don’t even have the technology to replace the guy taking drive through orders. (“You want one Big Mech?”).

This discussion is pointless and premature. There are enormous economic incentives to automate away every job that can be done efficiently though automation. It’s just that our technology is actually very primitive, and that shows when trying to apply it to replacing service workers.

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

#298

Post by CivBase » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #233

CivBase wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heath insurance is a benefit offered by some US employers as an alternative form of compensation. Employers get discounted rates because of how many customers they bring to the insurer and they pocket some of those savings while passing the rest on to the employees. You can get health insurance without having a job. It's expensive, but it's not like it's cheap through employers. Just cheap er . Health care - at least…

> Employers get discounted rates because of how many customers That's hilarious. I mean, you are correct that employers bundle employees together. But without massive government intervention during and after WWII, the industry would have been wildly different, and the way the trend began was highly historically contingent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_Act_of_1942 Econ 101 is insufficient for understand…

I do not want to spread misinformation. If that statement was incorrect, could you let me know how to correct it?

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

#299

Post by _23sd » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #76

> Market failures abound: Education and health care are out of reach for many, child care is often prohibitively expensive (even as child care workers are woefully underpaid), and decent, affordable housing is scarce in many regions. It’s utterly ridiculous to call these things “market failures.” Every single one of those areas is not a market but is heavily regulated in a way that limits supply. Education mostly a g…

The types of education that are most like an efficient market are recognized and necessary certification based training in fields like nursing and agricultural tech/safety (probably other “skilled trades” too), the product of regulation. When you “deregulate” education, you get predatory actors like ITT Tech that try to imitate real trade education.

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

#300

Post by GarrisonPrime » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

Merrill wrote: post #244

>In a recent analysis, we found that 53 million workers ages 18 to 64—or 44% of all workers—earn barely enough to live on. >The majority of low-wage workers (77%) have less than a college degree, So there are 53 (1-0.77) = 12.2 million workers with college degrees who are only able to earn "barely enough to live on". Poor instruction or irrelevant majors in college? Or drug use, criminal convictions, disabling diseas…

Are you assuming that everybody who is able-bodied and has a scale degree should be able to find employment?

Did over 12 million people in this country really get worthless degrees or become incapacitated?

Getting a "good" degree might not matter so much, if so many other people also got those degrees. One could say that degree is therefore no longer so good, but there is not an endless train of "even better" degrees for people to move on towards.