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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

#621

Post by JDiculous »

huntie wrote: post #541
JDiculous wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't act like you're better than politicians when your "expertise" is based on a documentary. My experience is that factory work is not dangerous[1] and companies try to eliminate any danger if it's brought up because any OSHA/medical costs are very expensive. My experience is also that the work is pretty easy. It can be boring but so are most programming jobs. I don't understand how writing CRUD day after day…

I don't know why you're getting so defensive as I'm simply providing an anecdote from a documentary I just watched. I'm happy that your experience at the factory wasn't dangerous. In the documentary some of the workers suffered serious injurious, and many were justifiably greatly concerned with the safety of their working conditions. Working any hard labor job like construction is extremely grueling and involves coming home sore everyday in a way that no office job entails. Meanwhile the worst I've ever had to deal with as a software engineer is avoiding carpel tunnel and eye strain.

Great, if you like working in a factory, then all the power to you. Personally I'd probably be contemplating suicide if I had to work on an assembly line in a work environment similar to how the film portrayed the factory in China, working 12 hour days with only 4 days off per month for crap money.

I never claimed that all programming benefits society.

> the idea that automating these jobs is a good thing demonstrates how out of touch you are

The fact that you'd write such a dumb baseless insulting comment shows how out of touch you are. Since you didn't provide an argument, I'm not going to waste my time trying to decipher whatever your reasoning was and respond to it. Also it doesn't even really matter if it's a good or bad thing because it's happening, and there's nothing you can do to stop it (unless you're suggesting some kind of ludditism movement of breaking machines for the sake of preserving jobs, which is just flat out stupid).

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

#622

Post by ernst_klim »

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #547
ernst_klim wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the "IQ floor" of the economy is rising I bet this is a wrong implication. Agriculture is way harder than writing php. > The result is that the high IQ people are fine, but low IQ people end up simply unemployable at any job Even if this implication were true, there is a whole bunch of new jobs that don't require you to be smart. You could do sports, train people, be a waiter or a beauty blogger or a web program…

>agriculture is way harder than php an illiterate man can pull potatoes out of the ground.

> an illiterate man can pull potatoes

You need to put it there first, and do so avoiding the eruption of soil. Agriculture is very hard and requires much knowledge. Without knowledge you'll destroy both the crop and the land.

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

#623

Post by Erem »

quotemstr wrote: post #566
FireBeyond wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you get to say that working a "full time" job should not have to cover your full time living expenses?

Why are people entitled to a particular set of benefits in exchange for a particular time spent doing some activity? Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?

> Who gets to decide what benefits should result from that amount of time? You? Why?

Practically speaking, voters do because we live in a democracy.

It is perfectly fine for a society to decide "a full time job should have to pay enough to cover a person's full-time living expenses", to define all those terms reasonably, and presto enforce it as law.

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

#624

Post by jpalawaga »

foogazi wrote: post #423
jpalawaga wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think everyone should have access to good education How do you define everyone, access and good? Does access === free where I currently live? If parents can’t afford to live in an area with good schools should they be forced to get better jobs or moved to LCOL area so their kids get a better education? or no matter where you live or how you live a third party should make sure your kids get a proper education?

>How do you define everyone, access and good?

Everyone means everyone. Access means that based on where you reside, there is a school within a reasonable distance, or transportation to one. Good is more tricky to define for me because I'm not an educator. The US has metrics and tests for math skills and reading comprehension. I'm sure we can gin up something. Use other developed countries as a benchmark.

>Does access === free where I currently live?

Sure.

> If parents can’t afford to live in an area with good schools should they be forced to get better jobs or moved to LCOL area so their kids get a better education?

The whole point of my comment is that people shouldn't have to make that decision.

> or no matter where you live or how you live a third party should make sure your kids get a proper education?

parents should have to send their kids to a nearby school. The rest should be taken care of.

You're introducing way more complexity into this. Good schools vs bad schools, HCOL vs LCOL. Not every school has to be exceptional, just bring up the average.

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

#625

Post by nec4b »

hacknat wrote: post #465
contingencies wrote: post #274

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because,…

Also it is a total lie and a very narrow definition of utility. Arguably, we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc), and over priced some of the dumbest (sorry, but if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else). Finally, nothing in evolutionary biology teaches us that human beings ought to work.…

What about farmers, miners, bakers,..., surely they are more important than caregivers and teachers or social workers? This is a silly argument to assign value to a certain profession based on how one feels. And what do hunger-gatherer societies do when they run out of food for whatever reason. Do they just say, no our 20 hour quota was already fulfilled this week, we'll starve now. The a amount of work neccesery to enable our modern lifestyles today is sometimes unimaginable to a person who has everything brought to them.

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

#626

Post by conanbatt »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #580
conanbatt wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Medical is a special market due to emotional heartstrings. At a certain point, people will pay anything when death or health is involved. This is a common misconception of what healthcare services are. People pay more for unsafer cars every day or decide to travel by plane that carries life&death risks for the pleasures of tourism. Life is a currency we pay with anything, from eating garbage to smoking and drinking…

Meh, I trust pilots to handle planes well. That being said, I don't like commuting by bike because of all the dorks going 50-60mph in a 35mph area. Not worth it. Also makes you think twice before slamming the accelerator when I myself drive. Something like every 10mph faster you go equates to like 50% higher risk of fatality- and when your knees and back are the crumple zones, no thank you! Risks are an inherent part…

Of course. Thats why the whole line of "a healthcare provider can get your entire life's savings and future earning because otherwise you die" is an idea that doesn't make any sense in theory or in practice.

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

#627

Post by rayiner »

hacknat wrote: post #465
contingencies wrote: post #274

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because,…

Also it is a total lie and a very narrow definition of utility. Arguably, we’ve actually under priced some of the most important labor in our society (caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc), and over priced some of the dumbest (sorry, but if Uber disappeared tomorrow, society would be moderately inconvenienced, but little else). Finally, nothing in evolutionary biology teaches us that human beings ought to work.…

> Studied hunter-gatherer societies are as multi-faceted as agrarian and technologically driven ones, but they all seem to share a 20 hour work week and a strong affinity for story telling and art.

Yes, and in pretty much every conflict against hard working agricultural societies, they got wiped out.

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

#628

Post by davidgraeber »

rayiner wrote: post #573
lwneal wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber defines five types of jobs, two of which are "goons" and "box tickers". Goons include hired people who lobby aggressively on behalf of their employer: lobbyists, corporate lawyers, PR specialists. Box tickers are those who use paperwork and process to appear to be busy, even though the real useful work would continue without their intervention. It's no secret that the top-5 t…

David Graeber is an anthropologist. He apparently did a PhD thesis on "magic, slavery, and politics." What qualifies him to talk about the economy and the function of various jobs? I mean, hell, he's an anthropology professor declaring other jobs to be "bullshit." (But I won't go so far as to say "anthropology professor" is a bullshit job, because I'm self aware enough to realize that I probably just don't understand…

Anthropologists are not qualified to decide whose job is bullshit and neither is anyone else. That's the whole premise of the book. Anthropologists however are trained to listen to what people say about their own lives and understandings of it and that's what I did - a bullshit job is defined as one which the person doing the job believes doesn't have to, or shouldn't, exist.

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

#629

Post by dredmorbius »

datashow wrote: post #43
qeternity wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t tell from your comment but I’m not sure this is what you expect. This is not people who have never had a job. This is a (now politically motivated) estimate of the number of employable people. Subtle difference.

I have never heard of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics being politically motivated. This is a very new accusation. Do you have any reference?

The notion that unemployment (or other economic) statistics are manipulated is neither novel nor confined to the US specifically.

Whether it's generally accurate is another question.

But a Google Scholar search will (along with numerous false hits) turn up multiple discussions:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=une...

I've chosen Scholar rather than a general Web (or literature) search as the frequency of this accusation online or in the general press is so common as to be a trope, though you can repeat my query in either.

My own read is that unemployment is at best an incomplete metric for reasons expressed in the Brookings article: it fails to consider wages or compensation, and a large number of low-wage, low-skill, low-opportunity jobs really isn't commensurate with a strong labour sector.

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

#630

Post by conradfr »

enraged_camel wrote: post #454
rayiner wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

>>Why, because you don’t understand what they do? I was a business analyst at my previous job. My core function was to gain a deep understanding of what the various people in an organization did, where the input for their work came from and where the output went, and why. Here's an example that actually embodies an extremely common scenario: I worked with a customer whose clients filled out and submitted online forms…

I love this anecdote. This is some Office Space stuff.

What were the people receiving the forms from the retired person were doing with them ?

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