Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

True Rate of Unemployment

lisep.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 381 posts

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#241

Post by boxed »

user____name wrote: post #232
boxed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down If any price for any reason goes down, that money ends up in housing. The only way to bring down housing pricing is to build more housing. This is extremely well documented.

Meanwhile my country has tons of vacant housing and prices keep going up.

You mean the prices are going up, so people can afford to keep the housing empty for more time to get a better price. That's not the same if you think about it.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#242

Post by RandomLensman »

imtringued wrote: post #212
lkirkwood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is capital gains / wealth tax a fix here though? Definitely not saying it doesn't work, I have no idea. But I'd be curious to hear both sides of the argument.

You tax the non reproducible assets like money [0] and land. The reason is quite obvious. You can't make more land so you have to force owners to use it efficiently. Money is transactional real estate, it grants the ability to perform transactions. What people call "saving" is actually just holding onto money and blocking the capacity, it's no different than blocking a lane on the high way and building a toll booth o…

Not sure forcing land use to its highest efficiency will get nice results.

Where is money stored (other than physical) that has its capacity blocked?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#243

Post by RivieraKid »

sph wrote: post #238
RivieraKid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In basic economic theory, high wages mean that there's insufficient supply. So I wonder why don't the "truly unemployed" people learn whatever the market rewards and compete with the highly paid workers. If it is because they can't for whatever reason, 4 day working week doesn't solve anything. (Genuine question, I'm not making some kind of a right-wing point.)

Yeah go ask a homeless person why don’t they become a hedge fund manager or neurosurgeon. Are they stupid?

A homeless person usually isn't able to learn what is needed to become a neurosurgeon. So the issue isn't that we don't have enough highly paid jobs - it's that we don't have enough people able to do those jobs. Which makes sense, if everybody could easily become a neurosurgeon, it wouldn't be a highly paid job.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#244

Post by RandomLensman »

Gareth321 wrote: post #122
xbmcuser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the true problem which most countries dont even acknowledge is low wealth and capital gains tax. Salaries are not enough because of land prices and the prices inflation it causes through out the economy. You bring down price of home land rent then price of everything else comes down. And their is a lot more economic activity as trillions of dollars are not parked in real estate for wealth generation.

Economists have been championing Georgism for more than a century and we still refuse to consider it. I would argue that unreasonably expensive land prices are the most serious economic and social issue in the West today. It's a systemic problem, from which so many other issues are caused: homelessness, poverty, suppressed economic activity, inflation, class stratification, "failure to launch," fertility rates, inequ…

There are also high real estate values in places with low homeownership and largely pay-as-you-go retirement systems.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#245

Post by steveBK123 »

runako wrote: post #11

Anybody who believes ~30% of the workforce was functionally unemployed in 1999 does not know what those words mean, or was not an adult in 1999. I get what they are trying to convey, but the stronger message is the more straightforward: there are too many jobs that do not pay enough to live on.

Right, unless this is counting some broad definition of "underemployed" its obviously off by a large multiple.

What is interesting though is that, despite whatever they are trying to convey about how high their made up rate is.. we are at a lower rate of unemployment than the entirety of 1995-2019?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#246

Post by ahoka »

RivieraKid wrote: post #216
hhjinks wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because learning involves being effectively unemployed for multiple years, and is only available to those who did well in school. Then, on the other side, you're still not guaranteed a job. Add to all of that the fact that you'll probably have to move and effectively restart your life elsewhere. My fiancée is currently in the middle of this. I don't know if she would've been able to go through it alone.

Yeah, makes sense that this would be part of the reason. But the question is whether a 4 day week is the right solution.

People could use the fifth day to go to school.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#247

Post by squishington »

rightnutwingjob wrote: post #157
lkirkwood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is capital gains / wealth tax a fix here though? Definitely not saying it doesn't work, I have no idea. But I'd be curious to hear both sides of the argument.

How do you tax wealth on unrealised gains? Australia’s current federal Labor government proposed such a a scheme, but had to back pedal hard when everyone told them it ain’t gonna work. The same federal Labor government introduced changes to capital gains tax, after promising “50 times” they wouldn’t. All the while a not insignificant fraction of MPs and Senators of said party sold significant realestate holdings bef…

The labor party doesn't know what it stands for anymore. The HAFF was supposed to make housing more affordable, but the housing minister said explicitly that she doesn't want house prices to decrease, rather increase at a rate slower than wage growth. But they have no plan for how to grow wages. So they are speaking out of both sides of their mouth, and the electorate will hear what they want to hear. Labor will make housing affordable for my kids in the future. Labor will protect my investment. The whole thing is a farce.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#248

Post by wallst07 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #108
Aurornis wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household This statistic looked suspect so I had to look it up. The study defined multiple levels of food insecurity. The big 47 million number included mostly households where eating patterns were not disrupted and people did not reduce their food intake. So most “food insecure households” actually had enough food and maintained their normal eating patterns. That’s not…

Food insecure is defined as "lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet". In the wealthiest country in the world. I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.

You have a very negative biased tone in your wording that makes it difficult to refute your claims.

Further, you keep shifting the goal posts on the discussion from

Living->Surviving->Food insecure (claiming not enough to eat)>"affordable nutritious"

Opinion: 50k/yr (outside urban areas) is enough for a family of 4 to have necessities and eat healthy, America is still the land of opportunity.

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#249

Post by wallst07 »

MoltenMan wrote: post #147
ElProlactin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food insecure is defined as "lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet". In the wealthiest country in the world. I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.

No, I think the person you're responding to is just saying that they really just are not starving or having trouble getting access to food at all. It's difficult in the US to really not have access to nutritious food.

"It's difficult in the US to really not have access to nutritious food."

You mean it is easy to get access to nutritious food?

Re: True Rate of Unemployment

#250

Post by EdZitron3 »

cobbzilla wrote: post #217
EdZitron2 wrote: post #211

168M employees / 340M people in the US. Means 51% unemployed people. Raw figures

> Raw figures sure, for an upper bound. how many of those 340M people are actually employable? how many are children? how many are retired? permanently unable to work? subtract those out, it’s a better upper bound but still a swag then add in all the self-employed, your swag is a little better, still a swag your throwaway name is apt and funny

That’s the point of raw figures.

You are asking for not raw figures.

But if you do the math and subtract out another 75-100M it’s still very bad

Post reply on HN