Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Full Employment

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 192 posts

Re: Full Employment

#121

Post by nine_k »

setgree wrote: post #103
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #77

Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is. I don't know how we get from here to a p…

> we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war). I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, becaus…

The more obligations a state takes to its population (not limited to citizens), the harder it is to enact an open-borders policy while keeping these obligations.

The US used to accept basically anyone, but it did not have any Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits, etc. In EU states, the problem is even more severe, as they provide more benefits, to those who pay taxes an to those who don't alike.

So, high life standards, advanced social protections, open borders: pick any two.

Re: Full Employment

#122

Post by setgree »

bserge wrote: post #115
setgree wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war). I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, becaus…

My issue with open borders is that everyone seems to come to the most populated places. It seems kind of insane how everyone crams into the same old cities. Companies do it because the workers are there, workers do it because the companies are there, and every city just becomes a crowded, unaffordable hellscape. Is it not possible to build new towns and expand them anymore? There's plenty of land as far as I can tell…

What we've experienced is not open borders, at least in America it's mostly a mix of unskilled workers coming in over the Southern border and high-skilled workers coming in via visas. Naturally those recruited specifically to join companies are going to cluster where those companies are.

I also think that immigrants from a generation or two back tend to be spread out much farther. There's a large Indian population in the Detroit area, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_Americans_in...

Bottom line: Immigrants, like the rest of Americans, go where the jobs are, and if that gets more spread out -- as might happen as a long-term response to COVID -- then so will the distribution of new arrivals.

Can't really speak to the experience elsewhere.

Re: Full Employment

#123

Post by bserge »

climwe wrote: post #6
laluser wrote: post #3

I think the general marketing problem with climate change is that people know it's going to happen, but not exactly when. Are we going to have issues next year, 5 years, 20 years, etc? How will these issues impact me and my neighbors? It's difficult to predict these things, so I think many people become skeptical of the milestones we are supposed to be hitting due to climate change and we just become reactive as a so…

But... we are having issues right now? People aren't acting because there's no economic incentive, it is only in part due to denial or ignorance. Many of the world's leaders who have to power to shift the narrative are not doing so because it would be a short term economic loss and businesses aren't happy about it. I mean, many technologies like carbon scrubbers already exist. Why aren't businesses buying them? This…

People could paint their roofs white, but they just buy more A/C units instead. Sadly I don't see people "deciding as a society" unless they're forced to by something or someone.

Re: Full Employment

#124

Post by setgree »

tomjen3 wrote: post #117
setgree wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war). I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, becaus…

I am a fan of open borders, but you can't have any kind of public assistance and open borders.

Bryan Caplan addresses this as one of his "keyhole solutions" to various perceived negative externalities: [0]

> For instance, if the problem lies with migrant welfare use, the most keyhole solution-like approach is to change the rules, or enforcement of rules, surrounding migrant welfare use.

Another option is open borders with a migration tax [1].

At the end of the day, I think that once someone adopts the mindset that, prima facie, it's morally wrong to deny people the right to move where they wish,[2] it becomes a lot easier to shift one's thinking away from "identify that there are hard problems and give up" to solving those problems.

[0] https://openborders.info/keyhole-solutions/

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2035616

[2] http://www.owl232.net/papers/immigration.htm

Re: Full Employment

#125

Post by leovailati »

zumachase wrote: post #4

> Should that day come to pass, the money-issuer – the central bank – can procure all that idle labor, without creating inflation. If the private sector doesn’t want labor, then there’s no bidding war between companies and a federal jobs program or a universal basic income, so creating money to buy people’s labor won’t drive up the price of that labor. I had to stop reading after this. This is not how inflation works…

Exactly that! As I read the article, I kept thinking "this guy is not following the money".

The author's ultimate assumption is that money supply is somehow decoupled from accumulation. People receiving money from the government and using it to buy their basic needs may not drive inflation because their labor is not being procured by anyone else AND those basic goods they are buying would not be produced otherwise. However, the constant money stream will drive accumulation on the other side of the economy.

The owners of capital (or the 1%, however you may want to call them) would become unimaginably wealthy in a scenario like this. And it would be hard to prevent that. A super wealthy class is already a big problem today. Imagine the influence that group would have in politics if they had 10x the purchase power they have today.

Another problem that I believe exists with instituting a UBI through money creation (e.g., MMT) is lack of innovation and market disruption. It essentially puts a tax on innovation. In order to hire people you now have to be able to afford to pay more than the government and still have sufficient funds to fight well-established mega corporations.

Re: Full Employment

#126

Post by ucosty »

bserge wrote: post #115
setgree wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems Generalization: most of those problems are political rather than technical, and unlike with technical problems, if you make a wrong guess about how to solve a political problem, the costs might be unboundedly catastrophic (e.g. world war). I personally believe that the best response to global warming is open borders, becaus…

My issue with open borders is that everyone seems to come to the most populated places. It seems kind of insane how everyone crams into the same old cities. Companies do it because the workers are there, workers do it because the companies are there, and every city just becomes a crowded, unaffordable hellscape. Is it not possible to build new towns and expand them anymore? There's plenty of land as far as I can tell…

You can build new towns, but they tend to have a chicken-and-egg problem with respect to jobs. No employers will set up shop in a new town because there are no employees, people moving in get jobs in the nearest city because there are none suitable in town. These places are often called bedroom or commuter towns.

Re: Full Employment

#127

Post by departure »

wGeF7H8Z59y985y wrote: post #91
js8 wrote: post #28

It's always refreshing to read someone who really gets that economy is not about money, but rather about what is being produced. The title reminded me of the famous Kalecki essay, Political Aspects of Full Employment, which actually explains deeper why this is not so easy to do as Cory Doctorow imagines (if you hadn't read it, I really recommend it, it's one of the best works on economics ever). Here I think is the c…

> In our (western civilization) societies, everyone wants to be a manager or a scrum master or at least a programmer, have a nice white collar job in the home office. That’s a very coastal city attitude which in most parts of the US would seem utterly provincial. The man who owns the roofing company that’s redoing my roof shakes his head when he hears me talk about staring at a computer screen all day. The HVAC repai…

Counterpoint as someone who group around the trades and whose friends parents where mostly in working class trades, they all stressed going to college so we didn't end up working hard like them.

My parents knew I could make really good money with welding and masonry like other family members but also knew that we were rough to our body, I had a uncle who lost an eye on the job! To someone working 8-10 hrs in the Texas heat all year wearing your body everyday and being physically exhausted by closing time. Sitting in an office and surfing HN is paradise to my old friends.

Re: Full Employment

#128

Post by credit_guy »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #77

Reading the economic and tech-fix discussion here, it strikes me again that we're trapped in a system that doesn't provide workable means to solve our pressing problems. Yet we continue to treat it (economics, the global financial system) as some kind of inevitable force of nature, rather than as something that we invented and (to some degree) chose. I wish I knew why that is. I don't know how we get from here to a p…

> to solve our pressing problems

We will always have finite resources. Given finite resources not every human need/wish will ever be achievable, and various people have various needs and wishes. There will always be a boundary between the needs that are achievable with very little resource allocation and needs that are completely out of the realm of possibility. On that boundary, people will always have disagreements about what's more urgent or not. Some things will necessarily be deprioritized, and for a segment of the population it will look like pressing problems are not solved and the system is broken to the core.

There is no way to get out of this, in any conceivable system with finite resources.

Re: Full Employment

#129

Post by jeffreyrogers »

> Remediating climate change will involve unimaginably labor-intensive tasks, like relocating every coastal city in the world kilometers inland

Isn't sea level rise likely to only be a few feet? Regardless, Holland seems fine living below sea level. I don't think we really need to move cities kilometers inland.

Re: Full Employment

#130

Post by Balgair »

naveen99 wrote: post #105
js8 wrote: post #28

It's always refreshing to read someone who really gets that economy is not about money, but rather about what is being produced. The title reminded me of the famous Kalecki essay, Political Aspects of Full Employment, which actually explains deeper why this is not so easy to do as Cory Doctorow imagines (if you hadn't read it, I really recommend it, it's one of the best works on economics ever). Here I think is the c…

It’s sociopath (not psychopath), clueless, and loser...

For those lost in this minutia, they are referencing The Gervais Principle theory of company management:

"Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves."

Rao intentionally uses mean words to describe all players in the system.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Post reply on HN