An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed • Hacker News Board

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#131

Post by wizofaus » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #83

luckylion wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only about the person cleaning the toilets, companies often have more than one employee that's paid too little. Look at nurses for example: you need plenty of them in hospitals and nursing homes, they are (in my opinion) severely underpaid. Raise their wages by 50%. You can make an educated guess how that will influence the price of healthcare or living in a nursing home.

Nurses are highly skilled and highly paid workers, they do however have nursing aides for the grunt work.

I'm actually curious in what parts of world anyone would genuinely consider nurses to be "highly paid". The hourly rates for some types of nursing work can be quite decent, but still markedly less than what virtually anyone in IT with similar levels of experience would expect to receive. And it's often sufficiently physically draining that it's not feasible for most to work 40-50 hours a week.

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#132

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

sin7 wrote: post #113

quickthrower2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment assumes that like energy, money cannot be created or destroyed. Which is false. Anyone can create new money by talking a loan from the bank. 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.

Can poor people take out a loan and create new money?

My understanding is any loan from a bank creates new money. However not sure about the types of loans that poor people use such as payday loans and pay-in-4 services. Maybe that us too since an investor may use bank borrowed money to fund them?

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#133

Post by wizofaus » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

burritas wrote: post #31

mgrthrow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic answer to the classic question about anarchy: "who will do the unpleasant, demeaning work?" "We only think it's unpleasant because we make it unpleasant. We can have clean, well lit factories. We just have to prioritize making that work more pleasant."

How do we make cleaning septic tanks more enjoyable?

Why's there a need to? If it's highly unpleasant and there's a shortage of people willing to do it then surely it's a perfect opportunity for the development of self-cleaning tanks... As it is most of the truly unpleasant jobs of previous centuries don't exist anymore - if someone had found a way to make gong farming pleasant (look it up!) then flushing toilets and town sewerage systems might never have been invented...

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#134

Post by luckylion » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

samus wrote: post #115

luckylion wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany doesn't have > the cycle of "I'll take whichever bad choice is least bad right now because I'm desperate." Welfare covers the basics and provides for a modest life, no desperation included.

It provides no incentives to step out of it though. As soon as you start working again, the basics and the modest lifestyle is not covered anymore.

If you work a minijob, you get welfare (housing, utilities, health insurance, cash) + the first 100€ you earn are yours to keep. On the next ~350€ you'll pay 20% for social insurance and get to keep some of it, the rest is deducted from your benefits, so you'll keep 100% of your welfare + 184€. There's no way you're worse off than on benefits if you're working.

If you work more, your benefits will be reduced until you earn enough to not get any benefits. Roughly 20% of people on benefits work, but make less than benefits, so they get the rest via benefits ("Aufstockung").

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#135

Post by pjmorris » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

blue039 wrote: post #67

pjmorris wrote: post #56

Job guarantees make more sense to me than UBI; the government only has to pay for those who aren't employed elsewhere while it still sets a floor for the entire economy about how bad a job can be, squeezing out jobs that are worse than the JG jobs. But I'm still collecting facts and quite open to being wrong. On my list to read: 'The case for a job guarantee', Tcherneva. [0] ' http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-fo…

Full employment never works. Famous example is the soviets. Neither can UBI be penciled into an actual economy. UBI would bankrupt the nation, so would a large scale job guarantee program as described. I am never surprised. When asked to put a dollar value on a program the overeducated go on bleeting about higher order non-sense. It's hard to take any of these academic exercises seriously. Especially when they spawn…

I think there's room for distinguishing between full employment and job guarantees: providing a job for anyone who wants one doesn't have to be the same as requiring everyone to work.

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#136

Post by luckylion » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #126

luckylion wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany doesn't have > the cycle of "I'll take whichever bad choice is least bad right now because I'm desperate." Welfare covers the basics and provides for a modest life, no desperation included.

If welfare provides for a modest life, why are the Tafeln [1] overrun to the point of denying membership applications because of shortages? [1] Die Tafeln are a group of privately-run food banks in Germany: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafel_(Organisation) (no English Wikipedia article unfortunately)

Because free/cheap food allows you to spend the cash part of benefits on other things.

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#137

Post by gumby » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

Hizonner wrote: post #87

gumby wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure the only way a robot is going to convince me that obvious makework is important is to do a lobotomy. Which I'd kind of prefer not to have. Clearly they need to make it non-obvious make work in order to give those who want it adequate satisfaction. To you it will look like productive work but really it will simply be a game. In many small ways we are there already. > Maybe people should get over the idea…

> Clearly they need to make it non-obvious make work in order to give those who want it adequate satisfaction. There are limits to how much you can fool people, no matter how smart you are.

Classic example: Astronauts go into space, mainly to study sending astronauts into space.

Meanwhile robots do all the serious piloting, imaging, exploration, and other research.

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#138

Post by yrgulation » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

All financed by the east eu countries Austria is extracting revenue from. Perhaps a reverse of fortunes might be in order?

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#139

Post by rqtwteye » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:42 PM UTC

burritas wrote: post #31

mgrthrow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic answer to the classic question about anarchy: "who will do the unpleasant, demeaning work?" "We only think it's unpleasant because we make it unpleasant. We can have clean, well lit factories. We just have to prioritize making that work more pleasant."

How do we make cleaning septic tanks more enjoyable?

Pay more. Design the tank and the equipment so it's not a dirty job. All doable if you are willing to spend some money.

Re: An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

#140

Post by danieltillett » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #45

cocacola1 wrote: post #3

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!

Or pay people less to do the pleasant jobs.