Live data from Hacker News

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

brookings.edu

391–400 of 685 posts

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

#391

Work, save up, start a business of your own choosing. So many excuses for those unable to achieve this simple formula that our forefathers fought and died for us to have the right to.

How does someone so painfully propagandized even stumble upon this site? Lmao what a joke

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

#392
post #357
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also do a lot of hiring, and can say that it's also NOT correct. We'll query it, but it's rarely a problem. Different companies have different process and expectations, so let's steer clear of absolute statements like "this is correct" and "this is not true" as it's unhelpful to folks in the situation. Generally speaking, if you have a gap, make sure to explain in a cover letter. These are important and can make the difference between a rejection from HR and being passed onto a hiring manager.

Edit: spelling

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

#393
post #342

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…

> In fast food, for example, self-order touch screens are vastly inferior to a trained order taker. In my experience, once you get used to the interface, it's actually faster to just use the touchscreen to place the order. > There’s not a single job I can think of that qualifies as a “bullshit job.” Any job that involves taking a handwritten form which then is processed or oral instructions could be eliminated by pro…

Yes. It is much, much faster...until you get behind someone who: Never used it before; Has no idea what they want to eat; Wants to check the prices on all the sides; Is waiting for their friends to send them a weChat message with their order also so they don't have to wait; The machine can't print the ticket; The machine crashes after taking payment; The person in front of you has friends show up and they start going back through all of the options.

I love it if it isn't during "rush hour," but some people take a long time to make up their minds when given a plethora of options. And then I seek out a counter person as they will just help the next person if someone hasn't made up their mind yet.

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

#394

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 qua…

You’re right that this one metric doesn’t tell the whole story, but no metric does and they aren’t meant to. Of course you need to look at other metrics besides employment to understand how well your society is doing.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 few…

> Instead of economic or physical barriers, we have hordes toxic personalities that try to gatekeep people. It's not all sunshine and roses. I’m skeptical that these are uniquely tech problems; I suspect they occur in relatively even proportion in other industries, but other industries have bigger problems that tech largely doesn’t have, and so they aren’t preoccupied with “toxic personalities”. In particular, the “t…

Here's my take on that: A marginal amount of gatekeeping is necessary for any group to maintain its group identity. The toxicity comes from the overdose, not the act itself.

A lot of "nerds" have personal insecurities and downtime. The potent mix of the two leads to more gatekeeping behavior than is necessary.

It's for this reason that many people (especially women, PoC, etc.) will be hostilely quizzed when they express an interest in something nerdy. It's not overt racism/sexism, so much as a "oh no, if they share my interests, I'm less special" sort of reaction.

Unfortunately, nerdiness doesn't strongly correlate with emotional maturity.

But things don't have to be this way. We all have the choice of what kind of person we want to be. Some people just choose very poorly-- short-sighted selfishness that hurts them long-term and everyone else at all times.

There are a lot of "nerdy" individuals who choose better. I'm happy to know of at least 100 in my industry.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't run a whole economy on altruism You don't need altruism. You just need autonomy , mastery , and purpose . Those are incentive enough for meaningful work so long as the worker's basic needs are met.

> so long as the worker's basic needs are met. So just the one teeny tiny detail of meeting everyone’s basic needs then?

And deciding which things are "needs" and which are "wants". We'll never agree on that, so no level of basic subsidence will ever seem like enough.

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't run a whole economy on altruism You don't need altruism. You just need autonomy , mastery , and purpose . Those are incentive enough for meaningful work so long as the worker's basic needs are met.

> so long as the worker's basic needs are met. So just the one teeny tiny detail of meeting everyone’s basic needs then?

I'm not speaking from a position of ideology. I'm describing the world based on a scientific understanding of human motivation.

Sorry if that's incomplete.

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

#398
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? No it’s not. He is exactly right that we’ve invented a lot of “bullshit jobs” that don’t add anything of value to society and would not change anything if they were gone tomorrow e.g. How many jobs out there just prop up rent seeking?

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…

> You’ve got armies of managers and bean counters trying to squeeze nickels out of processes

Unfortunately the processes they are squeezing often involve budgets and salaries, like those of factory workers, teachers and nurses. Its a bit hard to sympathise with this kind of 'value' sometimes.

> In fast food, for example, self-order touch screens are vastly inferior to a trained order taker > Grocery checkout automation is atrocious

I don't kniw about elsewhere but in NZ and Japan I'll pick self check out every time it's there. Its a bit sad on the human side of things but it is easier

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

#399
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’m not talking about service jobs. This thread is about low wage workers. > I’m actually referring to mostly white collar ones, a lot of administration jobs, finance, government, etc Why, because you don’t understand what they do? Imagine explaining to those people that Google has “engineers” who just maintain the source repository. I bet they’d think it was a “bullshit job.”

The whole book "bullshit jobs" which is what people are talking about here is talking about useless white collar labor, not service jobs so I'm not sure why you think that that is what's being discussed.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Controversial opinion: I think everyone should have access to good education, and I don't see why a public system is incapable of providing it.

Private systems aren't outcome orientated, they're profit orientated. If a public school and a private school are both given $n to educate a kid, the private option will maximize the proportion they get to keep.

Elite schools are a different story because they have significantly more resources.

The free market is good at some things, but the public wellbeing isn't one of them.

Post reply on HN