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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

#371

Post by nostromo »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #306
opportune wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market were able to solve the problem better, private schools could just provide better service at lower costs (compared to public school cost + state subsidy) and few would still go to public schools right? State subsidies for public schools are not that large anymore (34% of budget for UC Berkeley comes from tuition+fees while 13% comes from state of California). These are actually IMO all examples of Baumol…

How are private schools supposed to offer better service at a lower cost, when public schools are effectively free? This is hardly a market. Even if people wish to move their children out of public schools en masse, it's not like governments are going to reduce property taxes accordingly.

> public schools are effectively free

It's actually even worse than that because you pay for public education even if you don't use it.

So in that regard, if you send your kids to private schools, you're paying for their education twice.

This makes it very difficult to compete, and as a rayiner pointed out, isn't a real market.

I think the best solution to this is vouchers, which is a nice blend of public dollars but competitive schools.

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

#372

Post by wheelerwj »

Yeah, so here's the problem. We now, more than ever, have a key metric for measuring the economy that doesn't really measure the right thing. Just like in every other situation, businesses and startups included, this leads to gamification and optimization for that metric.

"Oh, you want more jobs, great! here you go! We'll cut the hours by 1/2 and employee twice as many people!"

Unemployment goes to 0% but so does quality of life. So the real question remains, what are the metrics we really value as a society and what do we need to do in order to optimize for them?

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

#373

Post by majos »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #87

Labor market conditions are not acts of God, nor inevitable. They are shaped by policies, investments, and institutions. This is a point I keep trying to make about UBI and seemingly utterly failing. It isn't "inevitable" that automation will lead to high rates of chronic unemployment. I've been quiet of late on HN. I often am around Christmas time, but I also wonder if I'm just fed up with feeling like it's complete…

To clarify, are you suggesting that current “low wages” or “wage inequality” are not that important because they fail to account for quality of life (food, shelter, entertainment), which is still achievable, especially by global standards, on a “low” American wage?

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

#374

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#375

Post by weberc2 »

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.

We have prosperous people today and while many of them are engaged in some form of philanthropy, we still have lots of poverty and other social ills. So “compassion” alone seems like a weak guarantee.

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

#376

Post by MAGZine »

zchrykng wrote: post #356
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.

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.

Then just keep tracing it back up the hierarchy to a single common ancestor, declare that without that ancestor, none of the productivity would have been possible, and by the transitivity of worth that you've described, where one is indefinitely ascribed benefit of his or her acestors, everyone should have equal right to the output.

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

#377

Post by darawk »

supernova87a wrote: post #36

I don't think low unemployment is the unequivocal positive sign that politicians/ think it is ("We're putting millions of Americans back to work!"). Maybe it's not something to be so proud of. If people are having to come out of the woodwork to take jobs that aren't moving the average wage up, maybe they're doing it because they have to, in order to get by. Is it a good thing that a 60+ year old goes back to work at…

It's surprising to me that this comment is so highly upvoted, given how fundamentally it misunderstands unemployment.

What you are implying is that "low unemployment" means people who didn't want to work are being forced to. But that is not what the usually-quoted (and quoted here) unenmployment number means. When people quote "unemployment" they usually mean U3, which is the number of people who are actively looking for a job.

If what you describe were happening, that dire economic conditions were forcing more people to look for work, the "unenmployment rate" would go up, not down.

The unemployment rate is not the labor force participation rate. And even the labor force participation rate is deeply misleading, because it encodes demographic statistics in a way that has complex effects that are hard to account for.

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

#378

Post by petermcneeley »

scarejunba wrote: post #339
shijie wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a bit disingenuous to assume that the parent commenter laments the emancipation proclamation just because he/she has a differing view on fiscal policy. This is ad hominem by definition. Not very contributory to the conversation. What parts of his/her points do you disagree with?

Oh this one is easy. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22027504 for the statement: > The worst thing to happen to minorites in the US was the civil Rights Act of 1964. If you think I’m quoting out of context, entertain yourself with the rest of the comment. It’s on this very story. No digging necessary.

+1 nice find.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

Daishiman wrote: post #370
zchrykng wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So why are you being particularly lax about the parasitic wealthy who inherited the vast majority of their assets?

[deleted]
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