Live data from Hacker News

An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

newyorker.com

151–160 of 198 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but your anger re: housing is misdirected. Developers do not short the housing supply. Like most businesses they make more in volume than they do in margin and would happily build more units at any price range if it was legal. In the US and UK (and probably many other countries) the government has a default stance of allowing no or nearly no development without excruciatingly painful, exp…

I understand your willingness to attribute wrong behavior to the correct culprit. But, how does it come, that these procedures to get building permits have been slowed down/bureaucratized to the point that it almost seems intentional? Also, the anger is not about them intentionally shortening supply - it’s about them intentionally asking and taking the higher prices. Nobody forces them to take more than e.g. a 10% sh…

>But, how does it come, that these procedures to get building permits have been slowed down/bureaucratized to the point that it almost seems intentional?

NIMBY. Whomever owns the land/house right now wants it to go up in value which happens more if there is a lack of supply.

>Also, the anger is not about them intentionally shortening supply - it’s about them intentionally asking and taking the higher prices. Nobody forces them to take more than e.g. a 10% shortage signal markup, but we force people on the other side to wipe the floor with their dignity.

So in a free market if they sell for cost+10% then the first person they sell to will either rent it, airbnb it or sell it for market rates. The only difference is that now someone won a bit of a lottery versus the developer getting it. Of course they had to pay market rate for the land they built on so it's likely they're already selling at cost+N%.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but your anger re: housing is misdirected. Developers do not short the housing supply. Like most businesses they make more in volume than they do in margin and would happily build more units at any price range if it was legal. In the US and UK (and probably many other countries) the government has a default stance of allowing no or nearly no development without excruciatingly painful, exp…

I understand your willingness to attribute wrong behavior to the correct culprit. But, how does it come, that these procedures to get building permits have been slowed down/bureaucratized to the point that it almost seems intentional? Also, the anger is not about them intentionally shortening supply - it’s about them intentionally asking and taking the higher prices. Nobody forces them to take more than e.g. a 10% sh…

I’ve been waiting for 8 months in Spain for my building license and it’s been a constant back and forth of bullshit paperwork

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

#153

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

Same east EU countries that are net beneficiaries of EU funding that Austria is net contributor to? https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs Sounds like a signal from the market that they are not paying enough. One might argue about how social welfare programs and / or importing cheap labor distort the labor market; but it doesn’t change the fact that jobs are the dregs of the labor market.

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.

'The market has spoken, but suddenly we'd rather not listen.'

Your argument rests on an unspoken (and perhaps unrealized) premise that profits cannot be allowed to shrink; all costs must be passed to someone else.

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

#155
post #26

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.

>This created a somehow funny effect, were many just did the absolute minimum on the job.

Isn't this where the old joke about Communism came from? "You pretend to work, and we pretend to pay you"?

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

#156
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but your anger re: housing is misdirected. Developers do not short the housing supply. Like most businesses they make more in volume than they do in margin and would happily build more units at any price range if it was legal. In the US and UK (and probably many other countries) the government has a default stance of allowing no or nearly no development without excruciatingly painful, exp…

There's also many companies buying up as much real estate as possible for rent-seeking which inflates home ownership costs substantially (especially in my area).

There are algos creating artificial cartels by buying apartments and raising prices.

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

#157
post #67

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…

> UBI would bankrupt the nation, so would a large scale job guarantee program as described. > When asked to put a dollar value on a program the overeducated go on bleeting about higher order non-sense.

Being overeducated, I'll take a shot: 6 million US unemployed x $15/hour x 2000 hours/year x 2 to cover benefits, SSI, Medicare, etc works out to 360 Billion. Which is about 1/4 of the defense department budget. A lot of money but not disproportionate to what we spend on other things.

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

#158
post #153

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

Same east EU countries that are net beneficiaries of EU funding that Austria is net contributor to? https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...

Yes, same east eu countries that gave up duty fees and sold their industries to countries such as austria, so that people can then cite tired stats. A bit like austria having built a lot of castles with money stolen from its former empire subjects and then pointing out that said subjects are poor and dont own castles.

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

#159
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking got so bad in the US that the government have to set a prohibition on it. Before prohibition, was the US in no employment or universal employment? I don't think there's a strong relationship to this, and the Soviet alcoholism came from something else -- maybe losing many family members or having been shipped far away from everyone you know by a totalitarian government. Or, the soviets never had a prohibition…

Almost none of working age Soviet people of early 80s had personal experience of losing a family member or being shipped away, yet they drank like sailors permanently stuck in a port. This is mostly due to the blandness of life, and partly due to almost absent survival-related risk and stress. Your income and housing is guaranteed, even if often crappy and small. Why bother?

I've met people in their 20s in the 2010s who are still traumatized by the actions of the Soviet government.

The trauma is passed down over time, but the alcoholism even more so. Alcoholic parents are gonna have a lot of alcohol around the house available for teens to party and drink with, to develop a habit and dependence

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

#160

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.

Depends on the nurses qualifications and specialty.

Licensed vocational nurse don’t earn a huge amount.

Registered nurses (4 year degree+) make ok to good money.

Advanced practice nurses make good money overall. But they have post- graduate degrees and still don’t earn what a good senior developer does.

Post reply on HN