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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#121

Post by phillipcarter »

brightball wrote: post #27
medium_burrito wrote: post #15

This is super exciting and scary- we've basically gone basic income, but with zero planning. We'll see how it turns out. We're having some price inflation due to supply chain issues. Cost of housing is more interesting... should we go public housing like Signapore, but contract it out to a country that isn't full of morons that cant plan/lawsuit/consult/build infra for a reasonable price?

We haven't though. The key to basic income is that it provides a baseline and then you can go to work to earn more money. With high unemployment pay, you lose that money the moment you go get a job so it creates a disincentive to work.

> so it creates a disincentive to work

This framing can make it come off as though the wages were fair to begin with. The consensus seems to be that they were never fair. And people in the US are largely tired of the government giving handouts to businesses over people. It's time for those who reaped disproportional benefits over the past 40 years to eat some costs instead.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#122

Post by paulpauper »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #117
gonational wrote: post #22

Timeline of Stupidity A: "we should give everyone free money!" B: "no, that'll make everyone lazy..." A: "no, people will work on things they love instead!" [everyone gets free money] [nobody works, everyone plays video games all day] A: "see, this proves that everyone was being exploited!" B: [smh] Plato's Five Regimes. We're entering the fourth regime.

Do you think that would last? I know I wouldn't be able to sit on my ass and just play video games for very long, even if I got paid or won the lotto, or whatever. My wife wouldn't either (though, we tend to marry our equal - or I hope we do). I'm generally curious as to what percentage of the population would actually sit for their entire lifetime and be stoned, play video games and make nothing for the long term. I…

It depends on individual preferences. Individuals with a high preference for $ would still go to work, whereas others would play games at home. This could mean higher productivity at work and better customer and employer satisfaction, as people who hate working and hate their jobs and do their jobs poorly, would just play videos games instead.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#123

Post by gruez »

pydry wrote: post #83
qudat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Not everyone needs a livable wage (e.g. teenagers) and by removing entry level positions we eliminate the lowest rung of the ladder. This is not a good outcome.

Not a good outcome for employers. Good for everyone else.

Where do you think the employers get the money from?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#124

Post by jolux »

cratermoon wrote: post #107
jolux wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not like the restaurant owner has the option of just deciding to pay twice or three times the labor costs, and trust that their customers will be happy to cover the difference, if their competitors don't have to do the same. This feels a bit backwards. We don’t know that their competitors aren’t already paying more, we only know that some people can’t seem to get labor at the price they were paying before. I th…

> I think America has been too scared of inflation for too long This is true! The Federal Reserve, since the Carter administration, has acted like even the slightest bit of inflation is impending doom.

Blame the Phillips curve ;)

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#125

Post by cratermoon »

unethical_ban wrote: post #21

Occasionally, Twitter provides some nice insights in digestible forms (of course, nuance gets stripped). I saw a post recently that said something like "We watch Star Trek and marvel at their post-scarcity world. We are living in a post-scarcity world now, but all the benefits are being funneled by wage slaves up to the 0.1%." Paraphrased. I was talking with a friend who mentioned that a local pizza place is offering…

> $37k a year in Texas

Where in Texas? On average for the state, that's only a living wage for a single person with no kids. https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/48

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#126

Post by dehrmann »

throwaway292893 wrote: post #53
nradov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strawberry picking robots are coming. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rob.21889

Those exploited immigrants won't hold their breath. I'm sure those farms unwilling to pay a fair wage will start investing in those expensive machines' R&D. Then do it for all other crops.

> farms unwilling to pay a fair wage

Half the blame has to go to consumers and a lack of desire for fair-wage strawberries that cost 2x as much.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#127

Post by Avshalom »

luckylion wrote: post #96
treve wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good thing. Businesses that rely on paying people salaries that keep them under the poverty line have no right to exist. Your business is exploitative and doesn't deserve to survive.

What do you do with people who don't have any skills that are worth more money? Do you just let the government take care of them perpetually?

Yes.

We already do that. Many of my coworkers at Target are on medicaid and SNAP and get child care assistance and they will be, perpetually (well not so much the child care part).

We just also make them work until they're 70+ anyway.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#128

Post by leetcrew »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #97
leetcrew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's pretty common for the second shift to start right around the time highschool gets out. or if it doesn't, the manager might be flexible. dinner rush doesn't usually start until 6:00 or so. there's also the weekend. obviously highschoolers are not filling 100% of entry-level food service jobs, but they make up a pretty good chunk of these workers along with some college kids. it's a good option for someone who has…

Except it’s not really a good option. Maybe a high schooler should be focusing on school.

okay, it's a good option if you want/need work and you're a highschooler. I guess we could debate whether it is a good thing for a highschooler to have a job in the first place. that's going to depend on the situation. if you're working tons of hours to support your family instead of keeping up in school, that's going to hurt your long-term prospects. if you're working a couple shifts a week so you don't have to ask your parents for $20 to go to the movies with your friends, I'd say that's an important step towards independence. you learn a lot of stuff at a shitty job that you can't learn in school.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#129

Post by colinmhayes »

pydry wrote: post #69
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottom 99.9% in America enjoy healthcare, communications, caloric intake, political freedom, public services, education and safety from violence unprecedented in human history. By almost every metric society is better off now than it was in the 1950's, 1800's, etc. The over-focus on the negative propels us toward greater collective good - up to a point. We would do better as a society to revert to a mean that exp…

Worse than 20 years ago but sure, better than the 1800s.

The existence of smartphones alone makes life much better than it was 20 years ago.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#130

Post by throwaway292893 »

dehrmann wrote: post #126
throwaway292893 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those exploited immigrants won't hold their breath. I'm sure those farms unwilling to pay a fair wage will start investing in those expensive machines' R&D. Then do it for all other crops.

> farms unwilling to pay a fair wage Half the blame has to go to consumers and a lack of desire for fair-wage strawberries that cost 2x as much.

No, the full blame goes to the near slave farms exploiting these people.

Raise the prices if you have to and tell the consumers to shove it. Chipotle just did this, farms can do it.

If you can't survive without slave labor don't survive at all.

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