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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#161

Post by candiodari »

wincy wrote: post #100
beamatronic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone ever calculated the maximum possible wage for a job? Take strawberry picking for an example. If run by a non-profit, what is the highest possible wage? Would be interesting to see this relative to the actual wage.

I think it would fluctuate depending on the prices of strawberries. And if you spent all your money giving out the maximum possible wage and your crops failed you’d go out of business because you weren’t able to save money.

Exactly. This cannot work without forcing a whole range of products a LOT more expensive than they are.

That's a feature, not a bug.

But yes, the rest of society will become a LOT "poorer" (but still comfortable) for no more than a decent increase in the living standard of the working poor.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#162

Post by nitwit005 »

chkdsk wrote: post #147
nitwit005 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an extremely simplified model where all immigrants to a city are experienced taxi drivers. There's more demand for goods, but probably only a small uptick in demand for taxis. The supply of available taxi drivers has gone way up however.

So you believe taxi drivers never need to use taxis?

I rather clearly stated they would, just not much. The poor don't use taxis very frequently, as it's expensive to do so.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#163

Post by toofy »

flukus wrote: post #142
dnomad wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most notably immigration has a huge impact on housing and the ever increasing demand for it. Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I mean, no offense, but I remember when Brexiters were claiming the same [1] earlier this year and it was quickly proven to be nonsense. Maybe you can do a better job? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/hou…

> Do you have any evidence at all for this claim or is this just something you made up out of thin air? I need a citation for "more people == more housing demand"? I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality. The reality is that as a single, well payed software developer with no kids I'm now on the downward slope of paying off the mortgage of my small studio apartment.…

> I need a citation for...

> I really don't care what academics say about the cause because they're divorced from reality...

I feel like this is unfair... We should be here for good faith discussions--not to set up arbitrary goalposts which it would seem are impossible to reach.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#164

Post by YayamiOmate »

neilwilson wrote: post #148

If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is. Systemically the 'interest rate targeting' approach starts to tighten up policy when unemployment gets below 5% - which they consider 'full employment' even though 1 in 20 haven't got jobs.…

I'm not sure what is the point of the first paragraph but it's considered full employment at 5% because not everyone is interested in having a job. It is impossible to have 100% employment rate. So there's no point in pursuing it.

Its a kind of thing like the average number of hands per population is less than two. Seems counter intuitive, but when you think about it, it does make sense. One shouldn't relay on the expected value of people having two hands, for global population it's a tad lower.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#165

Post by candiodari »

badminton1 wrote: post #111
tosser00001 wrote: post #14

Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.

The cost of one AGM-114 Hellfire missile is $100,000+. Most likely they will be used to blow up some random guy in the middle east for no reason. The cost of a 1 liter water bag at a hospital is $500. Walmart evaded $70+ billion dollars in tax. They made that money by keeping all their workforce on medicaid. That's where you money is going to, not $6 an hour fruit pickers spending all their money in food.

You say that as if those products are interchangeable. You cannot simply take those missiles away and buy 2000 water bags.

The US military, especially, is the largest job and training program anywhere in the world, including the military industrial complex (most of those military contracts, incidentally, do not just come with jobs, but with demands that those companies hire x0000 (3 or 4 zeros) in the states that have the highest poverty levels).

I'm not saying it's an ideal occupation (although, hey, Keynes seemed to like it when he was less on guard). So yes, I'd also much prefer them to be building better infrastructure. Or perhaps have a much cheaper postal service.

> That's where you money is going to, not $6 an hour fruit pickers spending all their money in food.

Perhaps. But the inability of the working poor to pick fruit at $15 an hour IS due to (mostly illegal) fruit pickers.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#166

Post by blub »

skookumchuck wrote: post #110
blub wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've seen is irrelevant, when on the whole the lower and middle classes suffer due to lack of a social safety net and an extreme form of capitalism. There's a large amount of news articles which describe the situation of labour in the US. If things keep going like this, those millionares will soon have to build their own fortress cities to keep all the undesirable and disgruntled poor people away. The fact tha…

I know people who profess to be victims, too. I'll tick off the choices they made that got them where they are. Of course, they get angry with me. Nobody wants to hear the truth. Where I am, the good and the bad, is nearly entirely the sum of my choices. For example, if you floss or not eventually has a large effect on your health. Ditto for the amount you choose to drink, smoke, and exercise. Where you choose to liv…

When one US citizen can barely make ends meet, it's reasonable maybe to tell them to try harder.

When millions can barely do it, the political and business classes fucked up and they need to fix it. That's the point of goverment, they can tackle systemic issues.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#167

Post by toofy »

candiodari wrote: post #157
toofy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway eventually regulation caught up and ended the low pay loopholes. So now a job at those factories pays half a million kroner a year, or more than I earn as a senior IT-architect. I think this is an important point that many people seem to gloss over when discussing what humans _deserve_ to be paid. Many believe the uniqueness of a skill set or how much physical stress is inherent to a position should be the o…

This also shows why high import taxes are a necessity. Not an option for Denmark (because they've signed away that authority to Brussels), but a necessity nonetheless.

> This also shows why high import taxes are a necessity.

How so? To artificially keep salaries high?

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#168

Post by candiodari »

mc32 wrote: post #26
tosser00001 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pew Reasearch puts the number at 3.5%, which I think is quite high enough to impact growth. But downward wage pressure at the lowest sectors comes from both legal and illegal immigration. It would be interesting to see what at short term lowering of immigration would have on wage growth.

3.5% is a lot of pressure on housing --which is quite inelastic in demand but also very slow to respond to increased demand.

Furthermore those 3.5% are not divided randomly.

On the lowest rung of society, they're at least 50%. The higher you go the lower the percentage, and it drops off pretty fast.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#169

Post by flukus »

YayamiOmate wrote: post #164
neilwilson wrote: post #148

If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is. Systemically the 'interest rate targeting' approach starts to tighten up policy when unemployment gets below 5% - which they consider 'full employment' even though 1 in 20 haven't got jobs.…

I'm not sure what is the point of the first paragraph but it's considered full employment at 5% because not everyone is interested in having a job. It is impossible to have 100% employment rate. So there's no point in pursuing it. Its a kind of thing like the average number of hands per population is less than two. Seems counter intuitive, but when you think about it, it does make sense. One shouldn't relay on the ex…

> I'm not sure what is the point of the first paragraph but it's considered full employment at 5% because not everyone is interested in having a job. It is impossible to have 100% employment rate. So there's no point in pursuing it.

People not looking for a job aren't included in that 5%, to be considered unemployed you have to be working less than 2 hours a week and looking for work.

More importantly that figure doesn't include the underemployed, those working at least 2 hours but looking for more.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#170

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything.

And yet we have such terrible poverty.

When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simplest thing. Space. Some space to fucking sleep and live.

How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis than we find in jammed up dense countries like Singapore, South Korea, and India?

Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures.

There is space enough in American cities if density is allowed to be increased. In other words if these fake "liberal" NIMBYs in American cities can be persuaded to give up the precious "character" of their neighborhoods, we can make space for everyone. CHEAP space.

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