101–110 of 198 posts
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> Programs don't need to be universal to work well. Love this attitude! So often on HN we see responses like "It doesnt work in , because " ... To which it seems so obvious like "then dont do it in that case?"
Is there a name for this response template? It would be helpful to be able to reference by name rather than prototype when it comes up again.
These two paragraphs in particular stuck out to me: > Critics of labor-market programs such as the Job Guarantee argue that they enable precisely this sort of choice—they make it easier to decline work that one doesn’t like. One program participant in his thirties told me that, while on unemployment benefits, he’d been offered a job cleaning toilets at a gas station; he’d decided that he didn’t want “that sort of job…
>> If everyone were guaranteed a reasonably pleasant job, suited to their interests and needs and paying a living wage, who would do the grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs; ma.... That the answer. Pay people more to do the jobs nobody wants!
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Also perhaps the least dignified work should be the highest paid? Unfortunately America has a sort of wealth cult going on that we dignify (and deify) those who are already wealthy.
The unfortunate reality is because these jobs are plentiful and easy to do (NOT saying they aren’t demanding, just that they don’t require advanced training) it incentivizes a race to the bottom in terms of wages - but we should do better as a society in guaranteeing high working standards and wages through regulation instead.
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It is that signal, but are we ready to pay everyone more, even for low-skill jobs? How much more is everyone willing to pay for groceries? How much more for health care? For most people here, that won't matter, because paying 50% more for groceries would barely be noticeable, and neither would 50% more for health care be. But for society at large, that would kill many lifestyles.
> But for society at large, that would kill many lifestyles. So change those unsustainable lifestyles then
The word "lifestyle" means more than beer, nice cars, and smoked-salmon-avocado-toast on vacation. It includes peoples' capability to invest in their future. I'm sure you can cite many examples of fools and their money being soon parted, but there are plenty of people doing everything right who are being screwed by inflation as well.
In communist Poland (probably whole Warsaw Pact), not only were they guaranteed, there was an obligation to work. You could go to jail if you avoided work. This created a somehow funny effect, were many just did the absolute minimum on the job.
Just like here then.
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It is that signal, but are we ready to pay everyone more, even for low-skill jobs? How much more is everyone willing to pay for groceries? How much more for health care? For most people here, that won't matter, because paying 50% more for groceries would barely be noticeable, and neither would 50% more for health care be. But for society at large, that would kill many lifestyles.
Exactly, wealth is being concentrated at the top to such extremes that there is no more excess money in the lower/middle classes to tap. So somehow or other the increase in wages will have to come from the wealthy, whether through intentional redistribution, market forces, or peasant uprisings. Likely some combination of all three. Eventually it just becomes a physics problem. If $100 exist in the world, and one guy…
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The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. They were also huge . Community level programs like this can be much more functionally democratic and uplifting.
> The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their people. This is just false. In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69 years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1]. In the USSR, "In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of the population. By 1937, according to census dat…
Maybe USA is on the same track.
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> who would do the grungy, difficult work Robots.
Nah, too expensive as long as there are poor and desperate people that can be abused.
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It is that signal, but are we ready to pay everyone more, even for low-skill jobs? How much more is everyone willing to pay for groceries? How much more for health care? For most people here, that won't matter, because paying 50% more for groceries would barely be noticeable, and neither would 50% more for health care be. But for society at large, that would kill many lifestyles.
Exactly, wealth is being concentrated at the top to such extremes that there is no more excess money in the lower/middle classes to tap. So somehow or other the increase in wages will have to come from the wealthy, whether through intentional redistribution, market forces, or peasant uprisings. Likely some combination of all three. Eventually it just becomes a physics problem. If $100 exist in the world, and one guy…
However this point also helps your argument: When you borrow you pay interest to someone richer. In a sense a combination of whoever you sent the money to, and the bank.