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Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

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Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#91

Post by Klinky »

orangecat wrote: post #85
quanticle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship. That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real wo…

Without a minimum wage, the number of consumers for any good beyond basic food, clothing and shelter products would be drastically cut. Unlikely. Very few employees in the US make exactly the minimum wage, which is why it's true that minor increases have close to no effect. There are massive lobbying efforts by big business every time the minimum wage issue comes up for debate True, for example WalMart lobbies in fav…

Unlikely. Very few employees in the US make exactly the minimum wage, which is why it's true that minor increases have close to no effect.

Keep in mind how many products are imported from third world countries that have poor labor standards & low wages. The current US lifestyle is heavily subsidized by this cheap labor. Additionally here in the US there is often abuse with illegal immigrants who make well below minimum wage & work in poor working conditions.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#92

Post by donall »

declank wrote: post #71
donall wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when someone describes a politician they don't like as a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered. I know this is veering off-topic, but I think it's worth pointing out that not every instance of the word "fascist" is disrespectful and to deny people the right to use it is just as destructive as when it is misu…

Reductio ad Hitlerum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Well, in this case, I eschewed Germanic examples! But you can consider it a reductio ad Francum if you like (and if my Latin grammar isn't too terrible).

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#93

Post by cturner »

quanticle wrote: post #68
cturner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it that kind of fits. It's important not to do this, because it ruins the sense of scale. For example, when someone describes a politician they don't like as a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered. Along these lines, it doesn't fit to…

>If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship. That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real wo…

    Through the '90s, it didn't matter how good a
    machinist you were - if you lived in the Detroit
    area, your employment prospects were poor, just
    because of the glut caused by hemorrhaging auto
    industry.
In that setting you have to do one or more of retrain, move somewhere else, start your own business. Except the presence of a minimum wage makes two of those three more difficult than it would otherwise be.

    there is no economic evidence whatsoever that the
    presence of a $7.25 minimum wage has had a measurable
    impact on employment.
That's hardly surprising, as you can't reliably measure any economic effect in a complex economic system because there's no mechanism for getting a control.

But your logic is attractice. We'll just move the minimum wage up to a thousand dollars an hour. We can all be rich together.

What you had to say about history of minimum wage in America is interesting, I'll read up on that.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#94

Post by argv_empty »

cturner wrote: post #39
zeemonkee wrote: post #14

Unpaid internships are essentially a form of serfdom. The serf system in Russia IIRC started with free peasants who sold themselves into slavery to the landowner when they fell into debt - unlike African slaves in the US, who were essentially kidnapped into servitude. In the same vein people are taking up voluntary servitude in order to get a paid job - sometimes even paying for the privilege. Moreover - a point not…

There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it that kind of fits. It's important not to do this, because it ruins the sense of scale. For example, when someone describes a politician they don't like as a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered. Along these lines, it doesn't fit to…

It traps people with low skills out of work

What exactly are these skills they lack that are needed in order to get work? Putting together a sandwich? Stacking boxes of food on a shelf? Putting dishes on a table and collecting them after they've been used?

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#95

Post by jeffchuber »

Companies often don't pay interns for 2 reasons: 1. They don't think they can afford to give them responsibility, and with no responsibility = no pay. This is a terrible relationship. (no pay = no responsibility as well) 2. They know that if it's unpaid - it's likely that only people very interested will apply - and this signal is, supposedly, very strong.

The 3 MAJOR problems are: 1. The company is sending a signal that says, "we don't trust you", "we don't think you can do valuable work", "and we don't value you enough to pay you" 2. The company gets lower skilled people, because the good ones get the jobs with good experience AND pay 3. Have you EVER tried to get a volunteer to do anything?! It's impossible. Incentives are not aligned.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#97

Post by quanticle »

cturner wrote: post #93
quanticle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship. That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real wo…

Through the '90s, it didn't matter how good a machinist you were - if you lived in the Detroit area, your employment prospects were poor, just because of the glut caused by hemorrhaging auto industry. In that setting you have to do one or more of retrain, move somewhere else, start your own business. Except the presence of a minimum wage makes two of those three more difficult than it would otherwise be. there is no…

>In that setting you have to do one or more of retrain, move somewhere else, start your own business. Except the presence of a minimum wage makes two of those three more difficult than it would otherwise be.

Without savings, how do you pay for retraining? Without savings, how do you pay for relocation? Without savings, how do you start a new venture of your own? Without a minimum wage, how does a person on the very bottom of the social scale accumulate savings? Without a minimum wage, wages for the lowest skill jobs get driven down to starvation wages. At those rates, its very difficult for people to accumulate enough capital to make the necessary improvements to their situation.

>But your logic is attractice. We'll just move the minimum wage up to a thousand dollars an hour. We can all be rich together.

Right, and while we're at it, we can move the top tax rate right down to 5%. The extra money freed up will generate so much economic activity that government will end up making money in the long run.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#99

Post by sans-serif »

Klinky wrote: post #91
orangecat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a minimum wage, the number of consumers for any good beyond basic food, clothing and shelter products would be drastically cut. Unlikely. Very few employees in the US make exactly the minimum wage, which is why it's true that minor increases have close to no effect. There are massive lobbying efforts by big business every time the minimum wage issue comes up for debate True, for example WalMart lobbies in fav…

Unlikely. Very few employees in the US make exactly the minimum wage, which is why it's true that minor increases have close to no effect. Keep in mind how many products are imported from third world countries that have poor labor standards & low wages. The current US lifestyle is heavily subsidized by this cheap labor. Additionally here in the US there is often abuse with illegal immigrants who make well below minim…

Intriguingly enough, without outsourced jobs from first-world countries, economic development in the third world would be even slower and labor standards poorer due to the lack of employer competition.

Re: Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Interships

#100

Post by Symmetry »

quanticle wrote: post #68
cturner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a temptation in politics to see patterns and then fit language to it that kind of fits. It's important not to do this, because it ruins the sense of scale. For example, when someone describes a politician they don't like as a "fascist" it's disrespectful to the memory of people who are squashed under tanks and who are taken in the night by state agents, raped and murdered. Along these lines, it doesn't fit to…

>If your labour has value then you can find work that pays you a rate for it (except for minimum wage - more about this shortly). You have the opportunity to expose yourself to experience by doing internships. If you don't have anything better to be doing, then it's a win-win situation for you and the person you're doing internship. That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real wo…

That only works in an absolutely frictionless labor market. Meanwhile, in the real world, there are many sources of friction.

Yes there is friction, but how does that effect whether internships are a good idea? By far the biggest source of friction in technology hiring is the lemon problem[1], and internships actually help get around that by providing references. You could credibly argue that unpaid internships are a good idea only in highly frictional labor markets.

As to location, well, if there aren't any jobs in your industry locally there won't be any internships either, so that's a distinction without a difference in this discussion.

[1]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html

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