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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

#671

Post by ghastmaster »

petermcneeley wrote: post #667
ghastmaster wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. What happened in 1776 was a Constitutional Republic whose amendment process led to the 13th amendment. Liberty is a good thing.

I think most would be disturbed by your support of violent revolutionaries that took it upon themselves to seize the rightful property of the sovereign based on their perceived injustices.

I have no idea how you got the idea that I support violent revolutionaries. I simply stated that the 13th amendment(Emancipation Proclamation implied connection) resulted in liberty. That liberty was justified by the constitution created in 1776. Without that constitution, however it came about, emancipation may have never happened. My original comment stated that this was a fundamental shift as opposed to the authors statements.

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

#672

Post by ghastmaster »

tryptophan wrote: post #257
ghastmaster wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to break it to you but the vast majority of people living in poverty in the united states are and have been white. The majority of government assistance goes to poor whites. Poverty doesn't discriminate. The bad jobs were not pushed off on those we did not notice. The wealth of minorities was rising until we implemented the civil rights act of 1964 which has screwed every minority applicant at a small business.…

>The worst thing to happen to minorites in the US was the civil Rights Act of 1964. Well this is certainly an interesting take of the situation.

I should have phrased that differently. While it is still my opinion, in this context I should have phrased it: "The worst thing to happen to minority employment..."

While your comment does not add much to the conversation, I appreciate your skills in ambiguity.

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

#673

Post by throw0x1away »

jfk13 wrote: post #135
throw0x1away wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm surprised you'd be in favor of welfare for anybody, actually. Why should we protect and support those with a disabled body or feeble mind? Let them freeze, let them starve. Individuals rise and fall. Natural selection is all-powerful. It's dumb to interfere. It's natural, it's evolution. I'm glad not everyone shares your particular morality.

I completely agree with you that we effectively killed natural selection among humans. Natural selection is dead, and now guess what, we are going after artificial one, with UBI, welfare etc. Ridiculous, right?

We reward stupidity, promote mediocracy, and teach dependency.

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

#674

Post by petermcneeley »

ghastmaster wrote: post #671
petermcneeley wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most would be disturbed by your support of violent revolutionaries that took it upon themselves to seize the rightful property of the sovereign based on their perceived injustices.

I have no idea how you got the idea that I support violent revolutionaries. I simply stated that the 13th amendment(Emancipation Proclamation implied connection) resulted in liberty. That liberty was justified by the constitution created in 1776. Without that constitution, however it came about, emancipation may have never happened. My original comment stated that this was a fundamental shift as opposed to the author…

First when you say liberty your mean negative liberty. The supposed shift is from negative to positive liberty. Second The violent revolutionaries are the Englishman that participated in the American Revolution (1776).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty

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

#675

Post by anthony_barker »

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,…

Tell that to the 3 billion people who are just scraping by with no local government help.

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

#676

Post by thereisnospork »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #619
thereisnospork wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a problem with this line of reasoning is that people forget what we used to do before we had certain conveniences. If indoor plumbing disappears, people would just read a book for 15mins or plan everything to take the extra time into account. Of course people would get by, but their lives would be worse and advocating for making people's lives worse is kind of a shitty thing to do.

False equivalence. Indoor plumbing is nothing like an app to call a taxi. Also see both my points. You don’t know if their lives would get worse. You’ve just assumed that the main goal of everyone is to hyper optimise their lives.

Yes I do know their lives would get worse[1] and yes it is an equivalent. You think when indoor plumbing came around people weren't arguing how it was an unnecessary luxury and making people soft and how that wasted time walking to the outhouse builds character and refocuses the self and how we'd all be better off without it?

[1] Because they have said they do, repeatedly, with their wallets.

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

#677

Post by conanbatt »

kiliantics wrote: post #664
conanbatt wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to find comments like these ones very frustrating as an amateur economist. In the end, this idealization of how productivity should be used ends up being a proposal of political power: productivity should be what I think it should be, so we must collectively act as if it is.

Shouldn't you find the current state of things to be equally frustrating then? It's just another example of the same thing. We never got to choose how our economic/productive output is valued or disposed of, we just were born into this highly unequal and unfair system and had to play along or die. I'd find that a lot more frustrating than the proposal that, if the technological and resource capacity exists to provide…

> We never got to choose how our economic/productive output is valued or disposed of,

Bastiat said it long ago: men have the tendency to overvalue their own work and diminish the work of others. There is no better system known to man to solve that issue than the free exchange and refusal of services between them.

When someone says that a farmer that can produce food for a thousand people thanks to productivity gains should mean that people eat for free, does he mean the farmer should not get paid, or does he mean that there should be no farmer? Clearly the idea that because productivity is up there is free labor is a fallacy.

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

#678

Post by kiliantics »

conanbatt wrote: post #677
kiliantics wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't you find the current state of things to be equally frustrating then? It's just another example of the same thing. We never got to choose how our economic/productive output is valued or disposed of, we just were born into this highly unequal and unfair system and had to play along or die. I'd find that a lot more frustrating than the proposal that, if the technological and resource capacity exists to provide…

> We never got to choose how our economic/productive output is valued or disposed of, Bastiat said it long ago: men have the tendency to overvalue their own work and diminish the work of others. There is no better system known to man to solve that issue than the free exchange and refusal of services between them. When someone says that a farmer that can produce food for a thousand people thanks to productivity gains…

While I wouldn't disagree with anything you have put forward here, I would assert that "free exchange" cannot really happen if there is massive wealth inequality. Private property will necessarily lead to labour exploitation that involves unequal circumstances and thus unequal terms of exchange.

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

#679

Post by therealdrag0 »

kiliantics wrote: post #665
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,…

The one in ten thousand does not make that breakthrough alone either. They are "standing on the shoulders of giants" of the past and also relying on infrastructure, education, healthcare, social support, etc. that is provided by the broader community. Of course everyone should share directly (not in some "trickle down" way) in the fruits of such success -- they were all a part of nurturing it!

> broader community

And in most cases a broader community of people working jobs! Huh, turns out those jobs ARE useful. (Sorry in advance for sarcasm.)

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

#680

Post by therealdrag0 »

Gatsky wrote: post #221
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #37

Great article, but I find it only takes the "wage" side of the equation and not the "cost" side. I'm not an economic expert but the biggest line items for most people seem to be housing (high and regular), healthcare (high and irregular), education, and childcare. If we fix these I'm sure the equation changes a lot for many, many, people. If the market is broken for pricing these main things, then even if everyone su…

The standard macroeconomic approach is to keep inflation low so that wages will ‘catch up’ to costs. This isn’t working though, low wages seem to be sticky. This implies that there aren’t enough new jobs, and there are plenty of people who will take whatever they can get.

But if costs come down, that is effectively a raise in wages. The cost of many goods has come down (for some of the same reasons wages are down!), but as OP said housing/education/medical have gone up. So if we can target those rising costs, that can be very effective, without raising wages.
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