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

brookings.edu

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

#411

Post by kofejnik »

soperj wrote: post #321
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…

Or because they're essentially sanctioned by the biggest economy on earth. Do you honestly think the people of Russia are better off under capitalism?

yes. Communism is no better than nazism.

Source: grew up in the USSR.

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

#412

Post by jonfw »

contingencies wrote: post #388
rayiner wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes, we could all live like people do in Bangladesh and reduce the work force dramatically. I fail to see how this would be desirable.

You present a false (and somewhat offensive) dichotomy. Here are some more optimistic ideas. If we reconsidered vehicles, everyone could have access to them when desired. If we reconsidered city layouts, everyone could have a home with desired proximity to others without needing to sacrifice either nature or privacy. If we reconsidered education, medical care and communications infrastructure, they would be universal…

These are very optimistic ideas. But good ideas are actionable. Do you have any of those?

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

#413

Post by knubie »

jpalawaga wrote: post #400
nostromo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 significan…

A profit oriented system doesn’t make outcomes irrelevant. A grocery store could maximize their profit margins by selling rotten fruit at the same price as fresh fruit, but of course no one would buy it.

Maximizing your profit margin is one strategy for increasing profits, but growing market share by producing higher quality outcomes is another (arguably more common) strategy.

This is the case because markets have competition, which the public sector lacks. It’s why spending on public education continues to rise despite decreasing quality of outcomes.

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

#414

Post by pdimitar »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #336
tempsy wrote: 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

These jobs may be bullshit in the feelings they induce in people performing them, or the meaning those people give their jobs, but they are probably not bullshit in the utility they have for the organizations that pay for them.

Could be but I am not so sure. There is something I've seen in at least 10 organisations I worked for: middle managers are afraid their budgets will be reduced if they fire someone and never re-hire the position, so they actively go out of their way to think of a very niche and, yes, bullshitty, activity for them to do.

Seen it happen many times and it made me cynical about the whole "there are no bullshit jobs" meme. IMO there are BS jobs, quite a few of them too.

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

#415

Post by MuffinFlavored »

JDiculous wrote: post #309
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…

Yes it's a ludicrous notion that working for work's sake is a good thing. I just watched the documentary "American Factory" (highly recommended), and it's pretty clear to me that doing repetitive manual labor work in a factory is grueling, mind-numbingly boring, dangerous, and not something we should be doing if we can automate it - not to mention low status and low pay. I'd bet that most of the politicians idealizin…

$29/hr wasn’t sustainable based on what the consumer would buy the product/service for, hence the inevitable closure.

Unskilled labor isn’t worth a whole lot, and our country has a lot of it.

How do you make everybody an engineer? or... is it not even possible? Are some (most?) people mentally incapable of being engineers with the proper education?

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

#416

Post by MuffinFlavored »

wheelerwj wrote: post #372

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…

What’s the metric to use instead?

# of households in America + average household income?

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

#417

Post by sedachv »

rayiner wrote: post #279

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

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

An observation that was already obvious in the 19th century:

"The extraordinary productiveness of modern industry… allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working-class, and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, etc. [footnote: Between 1861 and 1870 the number of male servants nearly doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847 there were 2,694 gamekeepers (for the landlords' preserves), in 1869 there were 4,921.]"

Chapter 15 of volume 1 of Marx's Capital. Today the servants are delivery people, Uber drivers, personal chefs and assistants, maid services, etc.

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

#418

Post by bigcohoneypot »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #241
endothrowho333 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

A very good example of this is how long it took scientists to be comfortable with positively saying that tobacco use caused lung cancer in people. (A fact tobacco companies greatly leveraged in their defense.) Huge surveys long showed a correlation between smokers and increased incidence of cancer. But it took decades of research to rule out confounding factors. For example, it may have been the case that industrial…

You don't think this is an example where industry threw shade and we could have concluded this much earlier?

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

#419

Post by MuffinFlavored »

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…

Childcare (aka mom has a child, goes back to work 6 weeks later, pays $x/week for daycare or a nurse) isn’t a government service and it’s very expensive. Why is it so expensive?

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

#420

Post by pdimitar »

300bps wrote: post #357
Aloha wrote: 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.

So... "I gathered savings and wanted to rest for half a year" is suspicious?

Maybe I am misunderstanding here.

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