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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

#651

Post by [deleted] »

Erem wrote: post #623
quotemstr wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#652

Post by quotemstr »

FireBeyond wrote: post #647
lenkite wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also perfectly fine for the free market to decide this. This is society too and captures relative value far more effectively and adaptably than a fixed one-time vote.

The free market considers the monetary tradeoffs in this. Comparing it to a holistic societal value (quality of life, family time, other non-monetary factors) is a disservice, that I believe negates the (subjective) "effective and adaptable" value measurement of the free market. Otherwise you're just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value, which in many people's eyes is the dark/down side of…

> just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value

What's wrong with that? Our resources are finite. Our attention is short. We have to prioritize society's investment. How can anyone decide on the relative priority of two things without casting them to some common unit? It's only when we describe people's lives in terms of dollars that we can make intelligent decisions about where to apply society's scarce resources.

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

#653

Post by lenkite »

FireBeyond wrote: post #647
lenkite wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also perfectly fine for the free market to decide this. This is society too and captures relative value far more effectively and adaptably than a fixed one-time vote.

The free market considers the monetary tradeoffs in this. Comparing it to a holistic societal value (quality of life, family time, other non-monetary factors) is a disservice, that I believe negates the (subjective) "effective and adaptable" value measurement of the free market. Otherwise you're just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value, which in many people's eyes is the dark/down side of…

(PS: I did not downvote you). People have the same rights. However, relative economic value is definitely different from person to person. Denying this is denying basic reality.

Taking an example from a parent post - caregivers do NOT have high relative economic value. Anyone over 18 can become a caregiver without even passing high school and become a certified home care aide. Enforcing a higher pay through law will is only likely to increase un-employment. The market on the other hand is self-correcting.

The federal government being the lender for loans has only lead to higher cost of loans and un-employed arts graduates who cannot get a job and cannot payback those loans. Without the federal government backing, those loans were un-likely to have been offered in the first place, unless there was current/future demand for arts graduates.

I strongly believe that most aspects of living (for people and communities as you put it) indeed need a dollar value otherwise un-realistic and un-workable economic expectations come into play.

We have seen this play out in the past with failed governments and we will continue to see this in the future.

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

#654

Post by lenkite »

quotemstr wrote: post #652
FireBeyond wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market considers the monetary tradeoffs in this. Comparing it to a holistic societal value (quality of life, family time, other non-monetary factors) is a disservice, that I believe negates the (subjective) "effective and adaptable" value measurement of the free market. Otherwise you're just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value, which in many people's eyes is the dark/down side of…

> just distilling people's lives and communities down to a dollar value What's wrong with that? Our resources are finite. Our attention is short. We have to prioritize society's investment. How can anyone decide on the relative priority of two things without casting them to some common unit? It's only when we describe people's lives in terms of dollars that we can make intelligent decisions about where to apply socie…

This. All professions have relative economic value. The free market - a market without permanent subsidies, monopolies and correct application of import tax (to balance non-free foreign subsidies) is the best and most fair judge of this.

Not some social welfare activist or even some elected representative of the party in power.

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

#655

Post by quotemstr »

weberc2 wrote: post #637
quotemstr wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're employing precisely the stereotypes that weberc2 mentions in his comment. You've presented no evidence. You've only invited readers to indulge their animus against your disfavored groups. This kind of rhetoric is unacceptable in other areas of society and it ought to be unacceptable here.

I don’t know why this is downvoted; this is exactly correct. These were the stereotypes I was referring to, employed without irony.

Lots of HN power users use the downvote button to defend the indefensible.

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

#656

Post by Twixes »

trentnix wrote: post #151
wufufufu wrote: post #136

I hear agreement that the economy is good, but also that jobs are paying less for more work and that income inequality is larger than ever. At the same time, the housing market where I live is absolutely exploding. I feel like I'm missing something about the real condition of the economy...

Politics infests everything, so inevitably all economic news is propaganda to be twisted however is deemed appropriate. When unemployment is high, the house organs lament the poor people out of work. When unemployment is low, the house organs lament that it’s the wrong kind of employment. And always, the problems can be solved with putting my candidate in charge with access to a lot of other people’s money.

Well, maybe it's just that these are actual problems felt by many people and things need to be done about them. The problem is, rarely are things actually done (say, about housing affordability, healthcare accessibility or economic inequality), mostly because doing things endangers interests of privileged groups (property owners, the insurance industry, executives etc.)

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

#657

Post by webXL »

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,…

> It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest.

What does that mean? Supporting all the rest at 1970 first world living standards? And how is that a fact exactly?

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

#658

Post by weberc2 »

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.…

Evolutionary biology can only tell us the bare minimum about what we need to survive as a species. If you want anything more than that (say for example, a cushy third-world quality of life), evolutionary biology is the wrong field (or rather, not the complete set of fields) to look at.

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

#659

Post by Proziam »

Buge wrote: post #590
Proziam wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one that actually agrees with the spirit of what you're saying. Unfortunately, where I have to admit shortcomings with that philosophy is that there's no evidence that the government of the United States can reliably yield good education for students. My own public schooling was a nightmare, and I know many who had an equally bad experience. Part of this is due to the fact that there isn't (and probably shouldn'…

> Another part is the fact that quality education is insanely high-priced because a parent has to pay for the public and the private system concurrently. This pressure pushes private tuitions upward and makes the private schools more exclusive because they can't take on kids below certain income thresholds at all. How does that hurt public schools? I would assume that would help public schools. Because instead of the…

Realistically, it hurts private schools by reducing the number of students they could take on. Public schools, however, are governmentally forced to abide by a certain curriculum, which hurts students dramatically (basic biology and sex education is a big one here).

Because of this, what actually happens is the top half of students that can't go to private schools get an underwhelming education. Compounding on that, local districts can mismanage funds and security to an extent that reduces the likelihood of a student's success in the classroom to near-zero.

Net result - Example numbers, based on your comment.

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

#660

Post by weberc2 »

hacknat wrote: post #491
7thaccount wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think work is pretty important to being human, but working 40-60 hours a week is absurd. 30 seems like a sweet spot to me. If we could remote, do only 30, and reduce pointless meetings than I bet we'd have a lot more time for the things that make us happy like family, side projects, exercise, and Netflix.

Why do you think work in and of itself is important? Being useful to your community is absolutely important, but our definition of that utility is absurdly narrow in this market economy. In fact, sometimes what we value and what is useful are totally orthogonal (again teachers are probably undervalued way too much, because we are poor long term thinkers).

Work is important because we value a high quality of life. Things like comfort and shelter and medicine and protection from violence and all of the other trappings of civilization never mind luxuries like cars, Internet, cell phones, etc. These things have never existed apart from work. I keep hearing about how awful capitalism is and how absurd and morally wrong it is for humans to need to work, but no one has offered a better solution (certainly nothing that bears up to a layman’s understanding of economics). Substantiate your claims about how “absurd” things are—articulate a system that can appropriately channel resources “where they really should go” (e.g., caregivers) better than capitalism (specifically what imbues your system with more moral authority than a market? If your system depends on a majority of voters feeling the same way as you, what happens when you can’t guarantee that invariant? What happens when you realize that voters and their representatives are even less efficient at allocating resources efficiently than a market? And how does your system guard against corruption better than capitalism?).
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