961–970 of 1001 posts
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I've seen what non at-will employment leads to in Europe, and it's pretty good.
Since we're trading anecdotes: I'm European and I disagree.
(Maybe look at my reply which gives more details).
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I've seen what non at-will employment leads to in Europe, and it's pretty good.
Like your smartest citizens leaving to start companies in the US? Restrictive labor laws and high payroll taxes make EU countries an unappealing option for small companies.
And it's worth noting that the EU is very, very different from country to country, so it's a bad idea to generalise.
None of them have at-will employment though, so it's an appropriate comparison to make.
I think the real difference here is what people value. Personally, I value having some advance notice that the boss hates me and wants me gone. This reduces my stress, and allows me to find another job before I stop earning money.
Perhaps other people value the efficiency that comes from being able to change staffing on a whim. I don't think either of these is wrong, they're just different statements of values.
And note that if we're talking about tech people founding US companies, it's driven predominantly by access to capital rather than anything else.
> Like your smartest citizens leaving to start companies in the US?
Do you have any examples of this?
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It doesn't in developed countries, because they have a strong social safety net. But in countries going through late stage capitalism, if you don't have a job, you have to rob your neighbour to eat.
Oh really? So no increase in crime in Europe with increasing unemployment? I doubt it.
Any country with a strong social safety net will be far better off when unemployment spikes than one without such a net.
When humans care about their fellow man, society flourishes. When it's every man for himself, spiralling unemployment means crime, anarchy, and chaos.
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The more I read about Unions in America the more I am befuddled. Don’t you have membership elections for the leadership? How do you even decide who the leadership is then? If you do have elections, then your comment is akin to a republican proclaiming that democracy doesn’t work, but would work in principle but only of the current leadership was replace with Donal Trump.
>Don’t you have membership elections for the leadership? So does Iran, Russia, etc. Do you feel like those elections are free and fair? I don't feel like union leadership votes are. Again, there's a lot of baggage associated with current unions. New unions are needed, not new leadership of existing unions.
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Oh really? So no increase in crime in Europe with increasing unemployment? I doubt it.
Europe is a continent with numerous countries, each on a different spot on the economic spectrum. Any country with a strong social safety net will be far better off when unemployment spikes than one without such a net. When humans care about their fellow man, society flourishes. When it's every man for himself, spiralling unemployment means crime, anarchy, and chaos.
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Rightly so, but the issue is that the conditions pertaining to work in an Amazon warehouse do not lend themselves to being the kind of work one can do for decades+. People burn out, their legs grow week, and they get no insurance benefits for physical therapy, and that sort of thing. It's just not a sustainable job for most people, sadly.
> but the issue is that the conditions pertaining to work in an Amazon warehouse do not lend themselves to being the kind of work one can do for decades+ But why does this work need to be for decades? Why isn't the worker in amazon also educate themselves or upskill, so that they can move to a different career with higher paying prospects? The days of working the same job for your entire life is gone - and that it's…
Secondly, are we really sure that if everyone suddenly educated themselves into a better job that there would be enough better jobs to go around? It seems unlikely. Particularly with increased automation.
My point is that the “get a better job” argument isn’t a strong solution to providing for everyone’s needs. We’re pretty clearly getting worse in this area as a society, with stagnating wages and fewer opportunities for entry-level work which can make ends meet.
At a point, if this trend continues, you get riots and revolution when people feel they don’t have another choice. We aren’t necessarily close to that, but if these trends continue, that’s more people making less money with higher prices. At some point that leads to desperation for enough people that violence happens. Just look at Russia or France in the past couple hundred years.
My meaning with that is that it’s not just someone’s own responsibility, but that there is some level of social responsibility for maintaining a baseline.
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> but the issue is that the conditions pertaining to work in an Amazon warehouse do not lend themselves to being the kind of work one can do for decades+ But why does this work need to be for decades? Why isn't the worker in amazon also educate themselves or upskill, so that they can move to a different career with higher paying prospects? The days of working the same job for your entire life is gone - and that it's…
Firstly, if every Amazon worker (or other low-skill job) educated themselves into a better job, there’d be no low-skill/low-wage workers. I think many of us would really dislike living in a world where these sorts of jobs support even a moderate lifestyle. For example, someone doing the dishes at a restaurant. Therefore, we do find these jobs valuable as a society and we want people to do them. Secondly, are we reall…
If they were valuable, they would be valuable enough to pay a high price.
And i don't believe that it is possible to run out of high skilled jobs. It may be that in the further future, these higher skilled jobs paid just as much as low-skilled jobs of today, and the lowskilled job of today disappears due to automation. But that's a good future - it means that production and output must be very high for it to occur. And who's to say there won't be even higher skilled jobs? Or brand-new job types that's not envisioned yet? After all, human have unlimited desires which is the impetus for all economic progress.
> if this trend continues, you get riots and revolution
only if society don't invest in up-skilling. I'm a big fan of society helping those of lower skill to increase their skill. Education is one of the most efficient forms of investment a gov't can undertake.
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I hereby humbly move to make Matilda the Chicken (or Mike, the Headless) the oficial Amazon mascot. Votes welcome :) Funny enough, I have no heavenly idea how, I had actually run into the article on poor Mike before.- Further edit: Come to think, poor Mike the "headless" would be a great mascot for -at least- AWS, for obvious, ssh-related reasons :)
Matilda can also be the president :)
VP of ... "Customer Engagement"? Prime? ...
... I got it! "Incubator"!
I'll show myself out ...Why are people in America against unionizing? In Spain and I think in Europe it's pretty normal, most people do it.
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No way out either. In a literal sense. There's no national program for helping people relocate to areas where they can have a meaningful job, a home that's affordable to OWN, and hopefully also community as a result. I'm NOT saying it should be forced, I'm saying it should be an option.
No national program to build where people are, either. Which is a shame, because we're the country that built the Interstate Highway System, and a national rail system before it. The truth is that the hyper-local nature of our politics leads to disparity as much as it does prosperity, and the two often go hand-in-hand. There are too many rich towns filled with professionals and managers with a nearby slum that suppli…
A good first step is a country wide housing, healthcare, food, and job guarantee. If bezos zuck musk gates etc can be billionaires we can provide a minimal standard of living for everyone. I'm open to considering any research that says doing so is impossible, but I doubt any such research exists.