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Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

nytimes.com

81–90 of 152 posts

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#81
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think $1 million in liquid assets is enough to plan for the next ~100 years?

Nothing's for sure but you can live pretty comfortably on ~$15k a year and it's pretty easy to earn 1.5% more than inflation on $1 million.

Without trying to poke holes in your economic assumptions (which I think I could), giving your kid 15K a year seems a lot less valuable than teaching them self reliance, logical reasoning, frugality, a love of education/learning, work ethic, etc.

You can do all of those things without being a rich parent, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that a trust fund impairs someones ability to learn these things.

The idea that teaching a kid to make their own way in the world is cruel seems downright backwards to me...

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#82
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My solution: Company towns. Give the workers daycare, food, accommodation, training/education and pay them peanuts... in the middle of nowhere. But that'll never fly ...because its been done before, became widely and accurately recognized as de facto slavery, and the key components of such schemes outlawed.

Enlighten me how that is slavery? Bear in mind, in my example people have the choice to go there, or not.

Consult your history--even in the event where going there was a choice, there are many, many ways to rig the game so that it becomes economically infeasible to leave again.

You also assume that people have free choice; when you're near flat broke, it's easy to miss your other options.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#83
post #48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people making minimum wage struggle to make ends meet. Do you propose that this will significantly change if we remove minimum wage? I understand the "prices will fall" mantra, but cost of living goes up with inflation. One would think that there would be no need for a minimum wage because as cost of living goes up, no one would be paying the 'bare minimum' anymore. The problem is that this is not what we see in…

I don't see him proposing that minimum wages should be removed, or that anything will "magically" work out if they are. I merely see him stating that minimum wages contribute to this particular problem, which is true. It does not then follow that minimum wages should be eliminated. This sort of knee-jerk reaction makes it really hard to discuss any sort of public policy in a rational way. The moment you point out any…

Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it?

Also, the process of proposal and rebuttal you describe has another name: Debate. And the constant rebutting is why it works so well. You attack the other side's idea while defending your own and the best ideas survive the process.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#84
post #16

Minimum wages also contribute to this: when you remove flexibility from one parameter of a gigantic system in dynamic tension, it can be partially clawed back elsewhere. So if the mix "lower wages but consistent (and often overstaffed) schedules" is prohibited by the wage law, you may instead get the mix "slightly higher wages but hours aggressively trimmed and rearranged".

This has little to do with minimum wage, it's purely driven by profit incentive. Assume there is no minimum wage, or a really low one, what's to stop them from both paying less, and aggressively trimming the hours?

With no minimum wage, an employer who offers the absolute worst in predictability would have to offer a higher wage than the same sort of work with predictability-as-a-benefit. Similarly, an employer who offers lots of employee-friendly flexibility – you can always leave early, no penalties for refusing an offered shift, etc – could pay less.

People then get compensated for what they care most about, not what a legislature has decreed as the only acceptable wage rate. They'd also tend to sort into the workplaces that best fit their circumstances. Social surplus is maximized.

A wage floor prevents these sorts of adjustments, because it creates a surplus of hours-offered at the higher wage, while eliminating other hours-demanded. (For example, it's no longer economical to have 3 registers open, or to check on the restrooms hourly, or to bring customers their own orders as opposed to having them picked up, or to have someone wandering the store floor for issues/questions.) Thus the hours available can be rationed out as an inducement for other, harder-to-regulate concessions.

So while the wage floor makes employers (who continue to employ) pay more, in that one dimension, it strengthens their powers of control/coercion is most others.

The absolute best system for employees is tight labor markets, where if anything about the job is bad – wage, hours, respect – they can walk across the street for another job-on-offer at about the same wage with a better mix of everything. That best system is sabotaged by lots of well-intended restrictions on employment relationships, so we only see it occasionally, during transient booms and in boom regions (like, recently, North Dakota).

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#85
post #12

Am I the only one who thinks you shouldn't have a child if you haven't yet set up a stable environment for them? That includes sorting out your education and jobs.

It's obviously as not as simple as that if you didn't choose to have your child.

What if things were good when you had your child, then it all went to hell?

Life is unpredictable.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#86
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see him proposing that minimum wages should be removed, or that anything will "magically" work out if they are. I merely see him stating that minimum wages contribute to this particular problem, which is true. It does not then follow that minimum wages should be eliminated. This sort of knee-jerk reaction makes it really hard to discuss any sort of public policy in a rational way. The moment you point out any…

Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it? Also, the process of proposal and rebuttal you describe has another name: Debate. And the constant rebutting is why it works so well. You attack the other side's idea while defending your own and the best ideas survive the process.

"Why would you blame minimum wage for this problem if you weren't implying we should reform or abolish it?"

Seriously? It's possible to think that something causes a problem while still thinking that it's a net gain. Is that concept actually foreign to you? Do you truly think that you must either see no faults in something or you must think it should be changed?

Debate involves a mutual discussion. The process I describe, where a person "rebuts" something that was never said, is not debate, it's simple argument.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#87
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing's for sure but you can live pretty comfortably on ~$15k a year and it's pretty easy to earn 1.5% more than inflation on $1 million.

Without trying to poke holes in your economic assumptions (which I think I could), giving your kid 15K a year seems a lot less valuable than teaching them self reliance, logical reasoning, frugality, a love of education/learning, work ethic, etc. You can do all of those things without being a rich parent, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that a trust fund impairs someones ability to learn these things. The id…

Well they didn't choose to be born so leaving them with the option of killing themselves or spending most of their lives doing things they don't enjoy just to stay alive seems cruel to me.

I would hope I could teach them all of those things you outlined and have them be happy and productive on their own terms, not some other rich guy's.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#88
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're different from their traditional competitors in that they increase the utilization of one's pre-owned assets. I can use the same car for commuting as I do for moonlighting as an UberX driver, for example. That's pretty innovative, whether people like to admit it or not.

> They're different from their traditional competitors in that they increase the utilization of one's pre-owned assets. That's actually not a difference from their traditional competitors, in that (to the extent that the uses weren't actually illegal at the time) agent-intermediated rentals for already-owned assets weren't new things when these apps started doing it, and also because these apps aren't specific to "pr…

Normal people didn't rent out their bedrooms overnight before AirBnB came around and now they do. Normal people also didn't drive strangers around for money in their own cars before Lyft and UberX came along and now they do.

You can't say there's nothing new there.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#89
post #6

> she was scheduled to work until 11 p.m. on Friday; report again just hours later, at 4 a.m. on Saturday; I have family working for the german train company, which has highly fluctuating shifts too, but something like that would be straight-up illegal here.

Yep, the same here - I mean, it's ridiculous.

The company has two reasonable choices - either have the time between shifts be at least 9 hours, so the people can eat,sleep and wash; or if they really want a single person to handle closing+opening, and that person is okay with that, then they're welcome to pay for the whole nightshift including the downtime.

There shouldn't be a third option, and in most of the civilized world workers actually have the right to demand that.

Re: Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos

#90
> If she dared ask for more stable hours, she feared, she would get fewer work hours over all.

While being in this position sucks, I kind of think that this is a compromise she chose for herself. "I want to work as many hours possible" is obviously going to conflict with "I want to work a stable shift".

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