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One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

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Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#251

Post by bingguistics »

superturkey650 wrote: post #230
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.

Why do you say there is a finite amount of work needed? There might be, at any one time, a finite amount of work someone is willing to pay x > 0 dollars for, but as x goes to 0 I’d intuitively think the amount of work increases indefinitely.

[dead]

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#252

Post by User23 »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #206
michael9423 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. So the issue is simply in how corporations are set up and how the stock market is designed. The entire system is designed to drain as much val…

No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.

Yes, the minimum wage in Big Macs has absolutely cratered, something like a sevenfold decrease. I haven’t checked the numbers but I expect the price of a house in minimum wage hours has similarly skyrocketed.

This is of course because labor has received virtually none of the labor productivity gains since 1965.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#253

Post by bryanlarsen »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #178
ketzo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And by "problem solved", of course, you mean "very large cost of living increases for the poorest 50% of the country" Not even saying that you're wrong. But tariffs/onshoring don't exist in a vacuum. It's much more expensive to make anything in the U.S., and people do still want to buy things.

Yeah, there's definitely downsides to that since there's no free lunch, but maybe our society should focus on providing affordable essentials for most (education, housing, healthcare, etc), instead of gleiing at the though of getting a new games console for only $199 and that GDP went up by 2%, while food, rent and medical went up by 10%. Optimizing our society for excessive consumerism and the eternal "line must go…

The poor spend a higher percentage of their income on imports than the rich do.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#254

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #237
superturkey650 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say there is a finite amount of work needed? There might be, at any one time, a finite amount of work someone is willing to pay x > 0 dollars for, but as x goes to 0 I’d intuitively think the amount of work increases indefinitely.

This is exactly what happens. Because of automation, the amount of labor needed to do all the work that was done in the 19th century is now a low single digit percentage of the population, and yet the unemployment rate is low. The actual problem is artificial scarcity, not automation. A robot that can build housing cheaper than humans is great. A law that restricts new housing from being built so young people can't a…

We need to find more work for people to do and make it easier to start businesses.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#255

Post by vundercind »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #241
saalweachter wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two basic solutions to this problem. 1. Everyone works less (the government mandates a 35, 30, 20... hour workweek), raising the relative value of labor. 2. We collectively do more than the bare minimum needed for survival and comfort (the government raises taxes, spending them on activities like building sports stadiums or moonbases), raising the demand for labor.

Or we could just have the government stop having laws that constrain competition, so that automation makes things cost less instead of siphoning the money into the coffers of megacorps, and then at lower prices people buy more products and services, increasing the demand for labor and decreasing the cost of living.

The recent profitflation phenomenon demonstrates pretty conclusively that we can’t rely on lower production costs to result in lower prices without a lot of aggressive trust-busting.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#256

Post by the_real_cher »

silverquiet wrote: post #238
monero-xmr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would say that developed western nations, including the USA, have done a pretty good job of providing subsidies and benefits for low skilled workers, so they can get on the lowest rung of the totem pole and contribute to society without starving. We specifically have food stamps, the EITC, welfare, child tax credit, housing vouchers, and so on specifically so they can provide valuable labor to society (and mini…

Asking for a friend - how do you get access to those programs? He's about to be homeless.

Just Google your state plus food stamps.

Typically that will lead to a portal for all of the Social services benefits.

If not they need to also Google your state plus Medicare, as long as your state participated in the Medicare expansion.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#257

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #248
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You're forgetting that there is a finite amount of work needed and so orders-of-magnitude fewer people are required. Also, the average real purchasing power in America has been declining for a very long time and cannot afford goods and services except through taking on debt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

This itself is a fallacy derived from the Keynesian crowd. There isn't unlimited demand for labor and never was. In the real world at microeconomic and local levels, labor demand is absolutely limited to discrete job posting and people who are already employed. This number is ultimately countable and finite. There are not infinite jobs available.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#258

Post by adammarples »

legitster wrote: post #244

We really need to stop treating this as such a "gotcha!" The whole idea of welfare is that it is supposed to go to people who need it - working or not. Are people on Food Stamps always going to be unemployed? No? Then are they are going to be employed somewhere? Am I supposed to be mad that these programs are working as designed? Food stamps and medicaid in particular are also explicitly tied to family need. Unless A…

The food stamps are working as designed, no criticism there. It's the jobs that aren't.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#259

Post by bmitc »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #129

Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve…

Right. It's the workers that have zero value add and not the people who sit in offices or at home making hundreds of thousands, tens of millions, or hundreds if millions doing a job anyone could do or even a job that isn't needed at all.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#260

Post by abfan1127 »

michael9423 wrote: post #182
atleastoptimal wrote: post #129

Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve…

Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. So the issue is simply in how corporations are set up and how the stock market is designed. The entire system is designed to drain as much val…

how have the shareholders siphoned off money? dividends? Has amazon ever paid a dividend? does capital investment provide no value? If "shareholders" suddenly sold the stock, would the workers dump money into the organization to keep it afloat? There are a whole host of logical fallacies here.
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