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An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the unemployed

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

#181

Post by 29083011397778 »

danieltillett wrote: post #140
phkahler wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

Don't we already? That was the reason work lots of people enjoy doing, like game development, paid peanuts and/or worked through so many people.

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

#182

Post by thriftwy »

8note wrote: post #159
thriftwy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does not explain the reversion of trend and significant decrease in alcoholism exposure in post-soviet Russia.

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

#183

Post by luckylion »

samus wrote: post #172
luckylion wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

So I work, but still get roughly the same as if I didn't work. 200€ per month more doesn't seem to be a great incentive to start working again if it's, let's say, one of the less desirable jobs. Furthermore, the "Aufstockung" means that effectively the tax payer is footing the bill for companies unwilling to pay a reasonable wage.

15-20% more is some incentive, I agree though, the delta should be larger.

> Furthermore, the "Aufstockung" means that effectively the tax payer is footing the bill for companies unwilling to pay a reasonable wage.

In some cases, yes. But you can also view it as "we need to employ people, but their skills really aren't competitive, so it's better to give them some money from taxes than to give them 100% from taxes".

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

#184

Post by luckylion »

anigbrowl wrote: post #154
luckylion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally, but it's a society-wide conspiracy. You could try a policy proposal asking people to pay 22% instead of 18% of their income for health insurance, and 4% instead of 3% for long-term care insurance, but I doubt that you'll be very successful.

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

#185

Post by namaria »

burlesona wrote: post #114
protoman3000 wrote: post #100

Wait a second, if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving un…

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…

Landowners versus wage slaves. Nothing changed in politics over 25 centuries.

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

#186

Post by wbazant »

marcusverus wrote: post #170
protoman3000 wrote: post #100

Wait a second, if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving un…

> if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving undue housing b…

The person who's getting the welfare typically paid taxes too. Having good public services like an unemployment benefit - essentially a form of state-provided insurance - is in the interest of almost everyone, and especially those working class families you are so concerned with.

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

#187

Post by janalsncm »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #117
andrepd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a problem right with the motion of "uneconomic". If fixing basic infrastructure or growing food is unprofitable, but building sportscars or yachts is not... that seems to indicate a problem with the economic system of allocation of resources.

If society thinks there are too many sports cars or yachts, then it can increase marginal wealth/income/property/sales taxes. And if society thinks there is insufficient food or infrastructure, then it can pay people to make food and build infrastructure. Either way, if both are competing for the same supply of labor, only the highest bidder will get it.

There are too many sports cars and yachts. We don’t need a single one of them. There are half a million homeless people in the US. The only reason taxes aren’t being raised on those and other luxury goods is because politics isn’t controlled by an algorithm but by a system whose outputs feed back into its inputs: the wealthy are made wealthier through political decisions.

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

#188

Post by pjmorris »

blue039 wrote: post #167
pjmorris wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

1/4 of the defense budget used to protect the entire world. If we didn't have to do that, I'd agree. I'm gonna take a long shot and say your education did not cover that part of world history.

You appear to think I meant to take 1/4 of the defense budget. That was only to illustrate the magnitude. You could cherry-pick your favorite US budgetary item instead and spare history.

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

#189

Post by RickJWagner »

protoman3000 wrote: post #100

Wait a second, if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while receiving benefits", but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving un…

I really don't understand the rant.

It's all supply and demand. If we need more housing, people need to move to places where housing is more available. There are plenty of small rural towns that have excess, cheaply priced housing. (In the Bay area, not so much.)

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

#190

Post by pastacacioepepe »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #166
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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]. What a nonsensical comparison. Lol. > I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the people"? Probably talking about the fact that the situation got so bad Gorbachev initiated such major reforms that the USSR collapsed. No biggie. Lol.

> Probably talking about the fact that the situation got so bad Gorbachev initiated such major reforms that the USSR collapsed. No biggie. Lol.

Not really answering my question here, just making some pointless humor.

Curious how all primary metrics for the population fell after the USSR got dissolved by Gorbachev. It's not a mistery that 70% of Russians approve Stalin anyway, guess they're still brainwashed after so many years, right?

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