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

#351

Post by CiPHPerCoder » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #337

turbinerneiter wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. People do unpaid work all the time. Ask your mom. Humans have compassion. They want to cooperate and collaborate. Also, right now, we have a system that takes from the productive (workers) and gives it to the unproductive (shareholders) - so please chose wisely which argument you want to make.

> People do unpaid work all the time. Ask your mom. Humans have compassion. They want to cooperate and collaborate. Free work is for people close to me or for special cases like FOSS projects I want to win. It's not for strangers. When the Soviets collectivized farms, output crashed. Let's not so quickly forget the lessons of the 20th century. > have a system that takes from the productive (workers) and gives it to t…

> Profit is not a sin.

What work do shareholders actually do within the confines of the company?

If you gave a poor unemployed person the investment capital that shareholders have, then from the company's perspective, how do you distinguish them from other shareholders?

That was the parent poster's point.

> Tech treats its workers better than practically any other industry, and there's never been an industry with fewer barriers to industry.

Instead of economic or physical barriers, we have hordes toxic personalities that try to gatekeep people. It's not all sunshine and roses.

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

#352

Post by jkoudys » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

bobbydroptables wrote: post #248

jkoudys wrote: post #22

America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. The difference is the US, you basically need a job, or else you're one broken ankle, complex childbirth, or infected hangnail away from complete financial ruin. People being able to take extra time to find the right job is a good thing for the economy. Better than being driven by an abject fear of not having a job.

>America has a weird sense of superiority about its lower unemployment numbers vs Canada. I've literally never heard anyone in America discuss Canada's unemployment numbers in any context whatsoever. I think your premise may be off. Canada is also pretty tiny (smaller than California; much smaller GDP than California) so I'm not sure why we would care.

Usually it's in the political context, as a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't fund healthcare/social programs/etc.

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

#353

Post by sosborn » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #337

turbinerneiter wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. People do unpaid work all the time. Ask your mom. Humans have compassion. They want to cooperate and collaborate. Also, right now, we have a system that takes from the productive (workers) and gives it to the unproductive (shareholders) - so please chose wisely which argument you want to make.

> People do unpaid work all the time. Ask your mom. Humans have compassion. They want to cooperate and collaborate. Free work is for people close to me or for special cases like FOSS projects I want to win. It's not for strangers. When the Soviets collectivized farms, output crashed. Let's not so quickly forget the lessons of the 20th century. > have a system that takes from the productive (workers) and gives it to t…

> Profit is not a sin.

Agree 100%, but it can certainly be argued that letting members of your community die on the streets is.

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

#354

Post by majos » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #37

Great article, but I find it only takes the "wage" side of the equation and not the "cost" side. I'm not an economic expert but the biggest line items for most people seem to be housing (high and regular), healthcare (high and irregular), education, and childcare. If we fix these I'm sure the equation changes a lot for many, many, people. If the market is broken for pricing these main things, then even if everyone su…

Agreed, this is mostly unsupported conjecture, but I think people underestimate how far mitigating healthcare costs would go. Since healthcare costs can be unpredictable (a sudden severe injury, or even just the opacity of health insurance) and costly, they force people to maintain more savings, take less risk, and generally constrain freedom as economic actors.

Do away with, or at least reduce, this bogeyman and I wonder how much economic activity we’d unlock.

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

#355

Post by darkkindness » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #310

rayiner wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole idea of “bullshit jobs” is ignorant. You’ve got armies of managers and bean counters trying to squeeze nickels out of processes, and yet we are supposed to believe that we’re keeping all of these people employed for no reason? It’s the same sort of juvenile thinking that causes someone to look at a vast legacy codebase and decide “oh we could easily rewrite that.” The reality is that automation is progressi…

I’m not talking about service jobs. I wouldn’t consider service workers to be rent seekers at all. I’m actually referring to mostly white collar ones, a lot of administration jobs, finance, government, etc

I think each one of us has a different idea what a "bullshit job" is. My favorite definition is this:

> When it comes to garbage collectors, though, it’s different. Any way you look at it, they do a job we can’t do without. And the harsh truth is that an increasing number of people do jobs that we can do just fine without. Were they to suddenly stop working the world wouldn’t get any poorer, uglier, or in any way worse. Take the slick Wall Street traders who line their pockets at the expense of another retirement fund. Take the shrewd lawyers who can draw a corporate lawsuit out until the end of days. Or take the brilliant ad writer who pens the slogan of the year and puts the competition right out of business.

> Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around.

(the article itself[0] tells about how banks in Ireland went on strike for 6 months, but the strike was shrugged off as there was no impact)

[0]: https://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-than-...

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

#356

Post by zchrykng » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

turbinerneiter wrote: post #331

quotemstr wrote: post #312

> We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living No, what we must absolutely do away with is the specious notion that when you take from the productive and give to the unproductive, the productive will keep producing out of the goodness of their hearts. Every attempt at forming a collectivist utopia fails, and that's because collectivism runs contrary to human nature. All atte…

This isn't true. People do unpaid work all the time. Ask your mom. Humans have compassion. They want to cooperate and collaborate. Also, right now, we have a system that takes from the productive (workers) and gives it to the unproductive (shareholders) - so please chose wisely which argument you want to make.

Where do you think the "unproductive" shareholders got the money they used to invest? Sure, some of them had wealthy families and they are using that, but at root all wealth came from someone who was productive at some point.

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

#357

Post by 300bps » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #319

taiwanboy wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. Also most of the commenters here don’t realize that people who have been unemployed for a while can’t just get to a regular job without a low wage job in between that helps to pay for some of the costs of going to school. Also, wages in the low wage jobs ARE GOING UP, as mentioned throughout the comments

its not even going to school sometimes, often you won't get hired if you've had more then 8-10 months of unemployment without reasonable explanation.

often you won't get hired if you've had more then 8-10 months of unemployment without reasonable explanation.

I do a lot of hiring. You are correct and further - literally any gap at all is viewed as suspicious. And there aren't many reasonable explanations that help the situation.

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

#358

Post by taurath » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

We could achieve 100% unemployment by putting anyone without a job in work camps. Living with a bunch of friends who are still struggling, everyone is aware that opportunity isn’t easy even in this “ideal” conditions. And frankly the number of employers who will abuse the hell out of you is somewhere around 30-60%.

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

#359

Post by simple_phrases » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

dfilppi wrote: post #94

funklute wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually you approach (modern) slavery though, and the transition is not black to white, but a continuous one. So your argument, without any qualifications, actually implies that (modern) slavery is not a problem. I hope it is obvious to you why that is a highly unreasonable argument.

No. Slavery isnt voluntary by definition, and that is it's most essential feature.

Plenty of people sell themselves into slavery to pay off debt. People choosing to do this has been an institution for millennia.

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

#360

Post by majos » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

_23sd wrote: post #320

wufufufu wrote: post #136

I hear agreement that the economy is good, but also that jobs are paying less for more work and that income inequality is larger than ever. At the same time, the housing market where I live is absolutely exploding. I feel like I'm missing something about the real condition of the economy...

Everyone has an agenda but be especially careful of real estate as an economic barometer. There’s so much speculation going on that the level of distortion can often seem criminal in retrospect. A recent example: Manhattan developers seem to be keeping thousands of new, unsold condos off the market. I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine why. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-06/manhattan...

Re: unsold condos, anyone want to try explaining how withholding stock makes sense? I understand flooding the market would depress prices further, but I don’t understand what market would buy up all this stock. If these units can’t sell in what seems to be a nicely growing market, isn’t it going to be a long time before they sell at all? Like, so long that just sitting on them and paying taxes doesn’t make sense?