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Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

jasonstanford.substack.com

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Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#311

Post by ajmurmann »

carapace wrote: post #247
ajmurmann wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I naively thought the whole point of the market was to effectively route resources to where they are most in demand and allow innovation from the ground up where it's needed without central planning

That happens, but it's orthogonal to the point you're replying to. In other words, Efficient markets and social safety nets are not intrinsically antagonistic or incompatible, we can have both. - - - - To me, the unspoken and often unconscious nature of the "stick" of vagrancy and homelessness is revealed clearly when people ask, "But who will pick up the garbage?" when you're talking about things like a "post-scarci…

100% agreed. My ideal is a largely free market (also free from control by large corps) with high, flat tax and high UBI. I think those things go really well together.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#313

Post by oramit »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #122
nepeckman wrote: post #87

It's a shame that the comments here are laser focused on the tipping parts of the article, and not the bigger picture items. The author outlines the struggles of getting service jobs filled in high CoL areas, the vicious cycle of turnover in these jobs, and all the commenters here want to discuss is the 2 paragraphs on tipping.

Is it the only aspect of the article that most on this site can relate with? I take it most have not worked service industry or it was a very long time ago. I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/us/apt-cape-cod-restauran... > The verbal abuse from rude customers got so bad, the owners of one farm-to-table restaurant on Cape Cod said, that som…

I've noticed growing incivility as well and it's a slow moving culture change that I think we're all going to really regret. I don't think it's caused by just one thing and it has been brewing for a while but Covid just pushed it over the edge like so many other trends. Some ideas on the causes:

- The fish rots from the head. Trump was elected in 2016 and he's an asshole. His whole schtick is to mock his opponents and never admit he was wrong. Hell, him being an asshole was a huge selling point to his base. If you elect that guy to the most powerful office in the land then it signals that being an asshole is acceptable. That sort of thing filters down into the culture at large. Politics isn't the only place you see this though, sociopathic behavior seems to be almost a requirement in big business. Where are people being rewarded for kindness and compassion?

- Pandemic burnout. There are a lot of threads on HN about guarding your attention like a currency and I think other emotions work similarly. After more than 2 years of this I know my well of empathy is nearly bone dry. Most issues like some particular thing being out of stock, or slow service because of staffing don't bother me but every once in a while I get really angry at an inconvenience I would normally shrug off. Multiply this across society.

- Being an asshole kind of works? This echoes my first idea but in a different way. All real decision making has been taken away from the people who actually interact with the public. Executives and managers who have the power to change things (like increase wages to bring more employees in) are insulated from the public. There are so many layers of indirection within corporate America that even if you have a legitimate grievance it can be an enormous pain to get it resolved and you have to be kind of a dick sometimes to fix things. So you end up with this situation where powerless employees are being yelled at by a powerless public.

There are certainly more threads here but those are some ideas i've been toying with.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#314

Post by codpiece »

fallingfrog wrote: post #215
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the only aspect of the article that most on this site can relate with? I take it most have not worked service industry or it was a very long time ago. I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/us/apt-cape-cod-restauran... > The verbal abuse from rude customers got so bad, the owners of one farm-to-table restaurant on Cape Cod said, that som…

Yeah, I once got screamed at by a red-faced old man driving a mercedes because he had to wait 4 and a half minutes for a McChicken sandwich. Old rich people are just the most sociopathic people.

I'm getting oldish, and I feel like it's my duty to be courteous and pleasant in order to have a civil civil society.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#315

Post by [deleted] »

dls2016 wrote: post #33
post_break wrote: post #15

Welcome to the terrible world of tipping. Subsidize the wages so the employer doesn't have to. I got out of my way to avoid any type of business or service that has tipping. It's getting so bad out there I've seen people talk about getting asked for a tip in a drive thru. Do I tip when I eat out? Yes. But that's cut down to a minimum now. I think we're headed towards a breaking point. Profits and cost of living canno…

> Welcome to the terrible world of tipping. While I agree, I remember bartenders making $10/hr + tips when I worked in a restaurant... in 1998. I could make $10/hr washing dishes (always the most hard-to-staff position) but wouldn't do so until after the restaurant died down because I made more busing tables with tips. Let's just call this type of employment what it is: wage slavery. People are used to there being a…

[deleted]

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#316

Post by StewardMcOy »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #293
StewardMcOy wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can definitely see why what would be your interpretation of the end of the article, but I don't think that's what the author was trying to convey. Earlier on, under the "The first and biggest is wages" header, the author implies that the policies around tipping are a big part of the problem. But the reality is that there have long been efforts to end the practice of tipping in the US, and they have all failed. Even…

Tipped workers must be paid at least the untipped minimum wage. If the tips plus the base pay don’t add up to the untipped minimum wage, the employer has to make that up. I know some employers steal wages and don’t do that, but that’s a separate issue too. I’m assuming it’s not a factor here, or else it would be bizarre for him to leave out wage theft.

You're right, and I forgot to factor that into my calculations, because, in my experience, that kind of wage theft is the norm. Employees have to proactively petition their employers for the top-off if they make less than minimum wage, and in situations like this, where even the manager is working 12 hour days without breaks, that kind of thing falls through and gets missed.

But I don't think the author was trying to accuse his employer of that kind of wage theft.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#317

Post by ajmurmann »

tcmart14 wrote: post #233
ajmurmann wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I naively thought the whole point of the market was to effectively route resources to where they are most in demand and allow innovation from the ground up where it's needed without central planning

I think that is the idea, but it doesn't work in practice because, well people. Really useful electronics are harder to get or have been hard to get, but yet if I wanted to buy my daughter a twerking llama toy, I'd have no issue with acquiring one of those. A little more meaningful example, we grow pistachios (a water intensive crop), in a place with limited access to water (desert areas of California) and have been…

The electronics part might more showcase what we actually value as a society. In the case of things that need chips it also demonstrates how we are unable to plan. Car makers cancelled their chip orders when the pandemic hit. They have lots of skin in the game and know their own industry better than any politician would. Why would politicians get planning chip production better than they did?

The water example is pretty bad, given that we don't charge the actual price of water to subsidize businesses. If we'd charge the real price (and ideally tax negative externalities) much farming would likely leave California.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#318

Post by giantg2 »

germinalphrase wrote: post #241
giantg2 wrote: post #105

"The myth that Americans, and especially younger Americans, aren’t willing to work is flat wrong." It's not really a myth, but also can't be universally applied. When a very large percentage of jobs are like this, there's not much alternative. It's you want to work and deal with it, or you don't want to work. Option 3 would be that you want to work a "good" job, but good luck finding one! People don't want to work sh…

Then you should drastically cut your expenses, probably move, and retire as soon as possible.

I have a family. Expenses are already reduced as they can be within reason. My wife won't consider moving. I have at least another 20 years.

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#319

Post by pydry »

sudosysgen wrote: post #177
ajmurmann wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I naively thought the whole point of the market was to effectively route resources to where they are most in demand and allow innovation from the ground up where it's needed without central planning

Markets in general are quite good at routing resources and innovation. A perfectly free market, or at least free enough that you're arguing we should remove regulators and social safety nets, is worse at all of those things, and only really great at controlling people, which as the point of those you were replying to. Also, markets can't allow innovations from the ground up by themselves, the require a government to…

"A perfectly free market" is essentially a deliberately vague pseudoreligious concept.

No true free market would [ insert as appropriate ].

Re: Former Labor Secretary Found What Work Is Like Now

#320

Post by daveevad »

oramit wrote: post #313
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it the only aspect of the article that most on this site can relate with? I take it most have not worked service industry or it was a very long time ago. I'm interested in what seems to be the growing incivility toward other people. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/us/apt-cape-cod-restauran... > The verbal abuse from rude customers got so bad, the owners of one farm-to-table restaurant on Cape Cod said, that som…

I've noticed growing incivility as well and it's a slow moving culture change that I think we're all going to really regret. I don't think it's caused by just one thing and it has been brewing for a while but Covid just pushed it over the edge like so many other trends. Some ideas on the causes: - The fish rots from the head. Trump was elected in 2016 and he's an asshole. His whole schtick is to mock his opponents an…

> The fish rots from the head. Trump was elected in 2016 and he's an asshole. His whole schtick is to mock his opponents and never admit he was wrong.

Obama roasting Trump at the White House Correspondents likely contributed to his decision to run for President. I agree your points by the way, I just think the fire started prior to 2016.

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