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Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

coloradoexcluded.com

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Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#161

Post by rsj_hn »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #158
rsj_hn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all clear that society benefits from efficient markets in labor, or that efficient markets theory is something that can even be applied to labor markets in a consistent and logical manner. Efficient markets assume an infinite amount of indistinguishable goods sold by an infinite amount of producers with only marginal costs. This theory is useful because in many situations (e.g. commodities markets) this i…

I do not see how a society would not benefit from a more efficient labor market, almost by definition of efficient. It is the whole reason why top down control and fascism or communism or Stalinism or Maoism are not ideal, because there is no better signal of supply and demand curves than prices. The way prices move, over a sufficiently large dataset, indicate the way supply and demand curves are moving, and where th…

The alternative to an efficient labor market is an inefficient labor market. One with regulations, unemployment insurance, unions, all kinds of subsidies (education grants are subsidies for the labor market) etc.

Indeed, worrying about the efficiency of labor markets is a mug's game. We should be worrying about creating productive ecosystems and acquiring skills, and leave the labor market to be inefficient.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#162

Post by colinmhayes »

soperj wrote: post #155
colinmhayes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few. Less than 2% of employees are on minimum wage.

So 3 million jobs?

400,000 at federal minimum wage, 1.2 million below according to BLS. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2019/home.htm

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#163

Post by kelnos »

smoldesu wrote: post #67
whiddershins wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve come 180 on minimum wage. How can anyone come between me and another adult trying to exchange services and money like this? It’s kind of insane if you think about it through that lens.

It doesn't. If you wanna pay your neighbor's kid $15 for 3 hours of lawn mowing, you still can. Unmediated transactions of a certain scale don't require any government oversight, it's only when you start breaking out taxable income that it become a problem.

> If you wanna pay your neighbor's kid $15 for 3 hours of lawn mowing, you still can.

Can you, though, legally? Or is it just unlikely that you'd get in trouble for it?

This also raises the question of why it's even ok to do this. Isn't this is why labor laws exist? I imagine if you called up a local landscaping company and asked them to come do 3 hours of lawn mowing, they'd charge you something on the order of $300. I think it's pretty safe to say that they're not doing 20x the work your neighbor's kid would do, or would do it 20x better. Even if you were to find an adult handyman on Craigslist or whatever, I expect you're not paying less than $15/hr for that, and often will be paying quite a bit more.

So for some reason it's socially acceptable to pay kids a pittance because they have no leverage or negotiating power, and because they're "learning responsibility" (sounds like "we should be able to use your professional photographs for free because it gives you exposure" or "this unpaid internship will give you valuable experience!"), and well... they're just kids, so who cares? It's kinda gross when I think about it.

When I was in high school (14-17 years old), I was a referee for my local youth soccer club. I took the same training (with annual refreshers) the adults took, worked alongside them, and got paid the same amount for the same work. The pay varied by the age level of players (older kids play longer games and the expectations for referee rigor are higher), but for most games ended up being around $25-30/hr, which was pretty good for a part-time weekend job in the mid/late 90s.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#165

Post by lotsofpulp »

rsj_hn wrote: post #161
lotsofpulp wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see how a society would not benefit from a more efficient labor market, almost by definition of efficient. It is the whole reason why top down control and fascism or communism or Stalinism or Maoism are not ideal, because there is no better signal of supply and demand curves than prices. The way prices move, over a sufficiently large dataset, indicate the way supply and demand curves are moving, and where th…

The alternative to an efficient labor market is an inefficient labor market. One with regulations, unemployment insurance, unions, all kinds of subsidies (education grants are subsidies for the labor market) etc. Indeed, worrying about the efficiency of labor markets is a mug's game. We should be worrying about creating productive ecosystems and acquiring skills, and leave the labor market to be inefficient.

Those can all co-exist with price transparency to create a more efficient market than without price transparency. I fail to see why society would not want to benefit from the price signals and have as much of a head start as possible on adjusting labor supply and demand rather than failing to and then having to suffer while trying to correct.

Here is a real world example I know from someone suffering due to their lack of interest in real world prices. Pay for most pharmacists has been flat since 2011, and declining since 2016. This is known from pharmacist sharing their pirate offers on pharmacy forums.

However, 22 year olds entering pharmacy school were not paying attention to this information, and instead were relying on the BLS's predictions that pharmacy demand would go up 10% and the schools' marketing showing that even though they will spend $200k on tuition, they will come out with amazing pay.

Now, if you read the forums, they are full of pharmacists regretting going into pharmacy, being crushed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, and not doing their jobs properly of double checking prescription medications in order to ensure they still have a job because they have that student loan debt gun to their head.

So due to lack of pay transparency, there are tens of millions of Americans going to CVS and Walgreens getting medications from overworked pharmacists who themselves admit cannot properly vet the prescriptions to the degree they should. In the meantime, the schools that inflated tuition and class sizes got to benefit and taxpayers are left holding the bag by subsidizing these student loans.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#166

Post by filereaper »

This link was very insightful and this law from Colorado is incredibly useful for employees.

I looked into LinkedIn's listings for Denver, Colorado [1]

Not all the companies that listed there were compliant with the Colorado Law, these are big companies and not just small startups that may not have the bandwith to keep up with various state laws.

The ones that do list the salary ranges, its insightful to compare those to where you reside, and make a judgement call about wether the salary matches up with the cost-of-living.

These can be combined with levels.fyi and other similar sites out there.

Thank you legislators in Colorado!

[1]https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Staff%2BEngine...

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#167

Post by munk-a »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #100
shrimpx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And wealthy people who prefer to not show it would become targets.

Are wealthy people who do show it frequently "targets"? I am not aware of rich people in the US being at risk from criminals.

Conmen still definitely exist and they will target the recently rich quite frequently. "Oh did you just get a big options buy out - well I run a wealth management fund that can help grow that sustainably..." these sorts of schemes hurt people bad but because the people had a boatload of money they tend not to raise as much media attention - also IMO America is socially accepting to people who fleece others out of their well-earned cash, if the fool was parted from his money then the benefactor is clearly "more deserving" of it.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#168

Post by munk-a »

whiddershins wrote: post #53
kdmccormick wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why minimum wage laws aren't overreach but this is?

I’ve come 180 on minimum wage. How can anyone come between me and another adult trying to exchange services and money like this? It’s kind of insane if you think about it through that lens.

I also think minimum wage laws are BS - but unfortunately if your society doesn't ensure social services then minimum wage steps in to pick up the slack - ideally earned income could be directed entirely toward luxuries, then workers would be empowered to properly balance their life and work... However, at the moment you can end up working a job that results in you not being able to sustain yourself - that's silly, you might say, nobody would take that offer! But someone will accept it without realizing the full depth of pain the debt forced on them will end up extracting and they will suffer for it.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#169

Post by lotsofpulp »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #138
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #45

I’d love to see a law that goes a step further and also mandates that everyone’s salary be public knowledge to everyone else within the same company. If this generates resentment, it means the company is poorly managed. The company would therefore either be compelled to fix their pay discrepancies (thereby allaying the resentment) or risk losing resentful employees to other companies. It would also be great if this c…

This might backfire on employees that ask for a raise, but won't get it because the employer feels like they'd have to give everyone else raises.

Then the employee can go work for someone else who will pay them more.

Re: Companies that are avoiding hiring in Colorado

#170

Post by shrimpx »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #100
shrimpx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And wealthy people who prefer to not show it would become targets.

Are wealthy people who do show it frequently "targets"? I am not aware of rich people in the US being at risk from criminals.

I think statistically it's not the case that wealthy people are more targeted, but I know wealthy people who'd rather live under the radar wrt their wealth.
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