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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

#521

Post by AdrianB1 »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #515
AdrianB1 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compassion and taxation for redistribution are so much different because the first is the will of the person, the second is by coercion. No idea why you put them side by side in your comment, they are opposites.

Tax is not coercion, we live in a democracy. You pay tax because society has decided to fund certain things via contributions from all. It's like the membership fee in a club used to pay for the clubhouse. If you don't like it, stop using the facilities and leave. I pay my taxes willingly to fund schools, hospitals, police, justice - all the basic infrastructure needed to maintain civilization. I vote to influence th…

Democracy does not exclude coercion, it's just coercion of the minority by the majority. Tell me you have the option not to pay any taxes ... can you?

I grew up and lived in a Communist country, such a speech is not touching me for a very long time. Sorry for the insensitivity to your bubble.

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

#523

Post by MuffinFlavored »

pkaye wrote: post #452
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is a child to caretaker ratio to maintain. And you have to pay for the caretaker wages and benefits, rent, liability insurance, support staff, etc. So those costs are divided among all who are paying for it. It will not scale any better than that.

What’s the solution? Don’t have children?

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

#524

Post by cvwright »

jasonsamoa wrote: post #493
m0zg wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't "ignorant". They just can't admit Donald Trump did something positive. So they engage in logical contortionism like "tax cuts didn't help the middle class" (they did), "low-earner wages aren't growing" (they are), "he will start WW3" (he won't - he's the least militarist president since Jimmy Carter), "low unemployment doesn't matter" (it does - how else do you expect to create upward pressure on wages?),…

Is there a hacker news type forum for people not in the liberal bubble but interested in computer science and entrepreneurship?

I think you’re on it already. While HN certainly gets its share of mindless “Orange Man Bad” comments, overall this place feels more balanced than most.

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

#525

Post by sdinsn »

dplgk wrote: post #213

Does a person working part time who can't afford their own place to rent (i.e. Live with their parents) count as "employed"? If so, then the sharing economy surely boosts this metric significantly when not actually significantly improving lives.

People are counted as employed if they did any work at all for pay, even if it was just 1 hour a week.

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

#526

Post by freeone3000 »

ernst_klim wrote: post #362
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at all of the open source projects listed here: https://paragonie.com/software Especially random_compat (145 million installs) and sodium_compat (6.5 million installs + WordPress 5.2). My revenue for all of this OSS work was precisely $0.00. When was the last time any of us looked something up in Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of Wikipedia? The carrot-and-stick incentive model doesn't work for fully self…

> My revenue for all Your revenue may be, but people behind Gstreamer, Linux and other important serious opensource product do it for money (sometimes pretty big money, Linus has $2millions income). > When was the last time any of us looked something up in Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of Wikipedia? Wikipedia is looking for money constantly, the have sponsors, donators, without them it would cease to exist. Also Wi…

You'll mainly get opposition from people who own patents, not inventors.

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

#527

Post by Double_Cast »

hacknat wrote: post #490
carlmr wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else If you inconvenience 100 million people by costing them 15 minutes more a day, or a few dollars more for lack of competition, then the cost per person may be low, but the cost altogether will be high. This is the essential problem I see with the articles, they say so many jobs are useless, but often they're useful but only a sm…

Totally, but now play the same scenario in your head if all the social workers or teachers disappeared tomorrow. Uber would be a societal inconvenience, but losing all of our teachers would be a catastrophe.

Wages vary according to marginal utility rather than total utility. The question is not "what if all teachers disappeared", but "what if one particular teacher disappeared".

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

#528

Post by sdinsn »

seibelj wrote: post #27

People need to get that first job. That first job leads to skills, experience, knowledge of how to interact with coworkers, and so on. Few people start at minimum wage and then get stuck there. The ranks of the poor are fluid. This is one reason why I’m against the minimum wage - by making it harder to get that first job, you make it increasingly difficult to get into the employment market. I would be less opposed to…

> Few people start at minimum wage and then get stuck there. The ranks of the poor are fluid.

This is false. The US ranks very poorly for economic mobility- in fact, even 3rd world countries like Pakistan rank higher.

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

#529

Post by sdinsn »

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.

He is saying that people in Canada are less concerned about Canada's unemployment numbers than people in America are concerned about America's unemployment numbers.
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