461–470 of 915 posts
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No one is forced to sit. For example, sit stand desks, and waking breaks.
They're forced to sit in many offices.
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Certainly nobody can reasonably conclude that "working long hours to live a basic life in an extremely low cost of living area" is "wealthy". We can all agree that we have different definitions of wealthy. But I think we can also all agree that your description of that life, which is maybe "well-lived", is not one of wealth in the context of this discussion. It is certainly not an "ass-busting outcome".
OK, I grant that the life I described is perhaps not aspirational for anybody born and raised in a first-world country in the last 30 years or so. (I know many from other backgrounds whose idea of unimaginable wealth is exactly that.) But if it's not an ass-busting outcome, would you say it's a middling outcome? Or the most minimal outcome that anyone should have, regardless of how hard they work? What makes you say…
Same labor shortage as everywhere that the government likes to pretend doesn't exist. 10 million working-age men can't or won't work. Of the ones willing to work, almost none want to spend their time learning skills for back-breaking, barely-middle class skills jobs which they'll be forced to retire from at 55 because their knees give out. Same answer for the shortage as everywhere that the economists don't want to h…
I don’t think it’s correct to characterize the 10 million men who can’t or won’t work as a labor shortage; it sounds more like excess supply. The solution to this is to increase the demand these laborers have for work. As you say in your post, paying more might do it. I’m sure businesses would pay more if they needed the employees and could profitably employ them at a higher wage. Surely they’d rather make less money…
Many are dependent on wives/parents to get by. So not paying welfare probably won't help much because those men aren't on it to begin with.
If you want people to work, you need to be willing to take on some of the opportunity risk and train them. If you want them to work in the trades, you probably need to train them and pay them well.
Even then the status issue wrt blue-collar work is hard to get around without a significant cultural shift.
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-a...
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Yes! I grew up in California and my dad was a tradesperson. The union is the only reason my siblings and I had health insurance growing up. He never got any vacation time though, insurance was the main benefit of the union I think. Unfortunately, other states in the US have much weaker unions or none at all, especially in the south.
I am English but moved to the Bay Area a few years back and became friends with a union electrician from Alabama so this conversation comes up a little - it sounded like unions are supported in the south even if they look a little different. However I’m not American and am not certain about that at all :)
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I know people who surfed the COBRA wave - ie, joined full-time for a company for a month every year or two to keep COBRA going and then going back to contract work in the interim.
I just left FTE and took COBRA and they are giving me 18mo!
Normally it just means you get to pay the full cost of your health plan, which is often double or more what you were paying as an employee. It's just so you're not immediately ineligible for the employer's group.
Unless yours is also paying the premium those 18 months, which I've never heard of but I suppose is possible.
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Where are you finding small wage plumbers or carpenters? All the trades here (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, carpentry (perhaps more on the finish side vs framing though) are extremely expensive, with hourly rates between $80-$150/hour. (source - did a lot of renovations on my house, and my BIL is an electrician).
Lol, the tradesman isn't taking that home. Neither is the apprentice that probably is doing half the work.
Talked to the guy doing the painting, he was getting $80/hr.
(Related: IMHO my neighbor sucks at finding affordable prices for painters!)
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Certainly nobody can reasonably conclude that "working long hours to live a basic life in an extremely low cost of living area" is "wealthy". We can all agree that we have different definitions of wealthy. But I think we can also all agree that your description of that life, which is maybe "well-lived", is not one of wealth in the context of this discussion. It is certainly not an "ass-busting outcome".
OK, I grant that the life I described is perhaps not aspirational for anybody born and raised in a first-world country in the last 30 years or so. (I know many from other backgrounds whose idea of unimaginable wealth is exactly that.) But if it's not an ass-busting outcome, would you say it's a middling outcome? Or the most minimal outcome that anyone should have, regardless of how hard they work? What makes you say…
And yea obviously wealth is relative. But to anyone accustomed to living in a reasonably developed country what you’re describing is not wealthy. We both know this. Not sure why you continue doubling down.
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I am English but moved to the Bay Area a few years back and became friends with a union electrician from Alabama so this conversation comes up a little - it sounded like unions are supported in the south even if they look a little different. However I’m not American and am not certain about that at all :)
States in the south have laws that neuter unions, and some that make unionizing for certain fields/roles illegal. Unions might exist, but they might not have the same teeth they'd have in states with friendlier organizing laws.
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> You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years. Actually, if 50 years ago you used to be able to pay for a house in 18 months, today you should be able to pay for a house in ~30 months: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco... . You're thinking of a t…
Yeah, my napkin math is probably superlative. The biggest factor is certainly housing - 1950s homes that cost $20k would easily cost 50x that today with similar lot size, layout and location. I think perspectives on what housing is 'comparable' are pretty squishy. Inflation only accounts for 12x since 1950. I think "median' might be adding some error to your analysis: I suspect skilled trades were probably earning mo…
Compared to the median tradesmen salary it has not kept up to inflation: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm
But to be quite honest, those are exact comparisons, but it was what I found in like 5 minutes.
20ish years ago this was a working class satellite to a small industrial city, just a few shops and a petrol station. Most of the houses were fibro-cement and most of them empty except for a few weeks in summer when tourists came, but even then it wasn't really thriving, too flat for ocean views, the ocean was on the other side of a enormous dune. There had been a fishing industry here once but that was gone. Nearby Torquay launched the companies quicksilver and rip curl and a surfing culture. This town started to attract student doctors working in the city teaching hospital who wanted to be near the ocean, more than half of them are women, and many of them met young tradies who lived here for the surf. And then a momentous event, the town was used as the set for a tv show about people leaving the city for the coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaChange
A really common story in this town is a couple where one partner works in the hospital as a health professional, which meant they had a steady income to borrow for a cheap block of land, and the other partner is a builder or a carpenter or an electrician, who sub divided the block and built a couple of units.
These couples who have combined the low risk well paid and regular income of a health professional in Australia's public health system, with the higher risk irregular income of small scale property development have mad astonishing amounts of money, all while surfing a couple of days a week.