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Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

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Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#161

Post by kjsbfkjbf »

amelius wrote: post #63
cryptica wrote: post #33

If market competition wasn't so aggressive, we could start to focus more on value creation. Right now the economy is all about capturing existing value, monopolizing markets to keep competitors out and using targeted advertising to divert people's attention away from real value. Journalism is in such bad shape that if an independent scientist invented a cure for cancer, most people probably wouldn't hear about it and…

> Capital has replaced our values. We need to bring back real values like honesty, integrity, humility, experience, pursuit of knowledge, empathy, efficiency... But how?

Usually? Revolution.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#162

Post by kjsbfkjbf »

tuesdayrain wrote: post #45
majewsky wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're dealing with a mind virus, one that I'm familiar with myself: We feel like we need to spend our free time productively. I'm actively trying to get this out of my head. Not saying that I want to slack off, but I definitely need to slack off from time to time, and I struggle with allowing myself to do it.

> You're dealing with a mind virus, one that I'm familiar with myself: We feel like we need to spend our free time productively. I'm undecided on whether I see that as a "mind virus" or just the right choice to maximize happiness in the long run. My impression is that spending my time doing unproductive things that I strongly enjoy (like videogames) is somewhat of a local maxima in terms of the happiness it can bring…

What then about skills or creations that society deems less useful? Think of the classic starving artist trope. All those underground artists who make little to no money.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#163

Post by dahfizz »

Avshalom wrote: post #134
DuskStar wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the point was that one side could learn to do the other side's job, but not the other way around.

Only if you take as given that people doing unskilled labor are to a one doing it because they are incapable of anything else.

Nobody is arguing that unskilled laborers are incapable. We are saying that they are by definition unskilled. These skills are slow to teach and learn. Having lots of people willing to perform skilled jobs is not enough - they need the skills. The same is not true about unskilled work. Hence the comment about armies of people being able to perform unskilled labor.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#164

Post by dTal »

mruts wrote: post #159
dTal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the right answer. The only reason we don't work 80 hour weeks for 2 bucks an hour is because the law forbids it.

This is just false. Approximately only 2% of American workers are paid minimum wage. Everyone else makes more.

Technically true. But the minimum wage is still clearly an anchor. The amount above minimum is a signal of your worth as a worker. Consider this[1] income distribution chart (with its precipitous falloff left of the minimum wage mark). It's clear that "at or just above minimum" is the largest demographic, even if it represents a small fraction of the whole. If the minimum wage were raised, it wouldn't simply bunch the left of the graph together - the entire curve would move.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Di...

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#165

Post by jandrewrogers »

Retric wrote: post #152
jandrewrogers wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that some labor shortages are the product of artificial restriction. But I strongly disagree that all labor shortages in the US have this property. Some labor shortages are unambiguously intrinsic and very difficult to eliminate. Sometimes there simply aren't enough people with deep expertise necessarily acquired over several years to meet demand. Take my specialty for example. I mostly work on operational mu…

6 months may not be enough to train up someone without a technical background, but when a skill shortage extends beyond the time horizon of training a pool of 100’s of thousands of people up it’s very much self inflicted as the company simply does not want to pay market rate + training. PS: People with related skills can always pick up these deep specialty skills with extreme speeds. I have seen someone paid contract…

There are many deep specialties that no one picks up with "extreme speed" no matter how technical they are, certainly not to the level required by companies that want to hire these skills. Think database kernel engineering or non-trivial parallel systems design. Acquiring these skills happens almost exclusively by apprenticing for years with real experts. In six months you could go from no skills to mediocre skills with a lot of training, but no one wants "mediocre" working on their database kernel for good reason.

It would be like me assuming that I, a broadly competent technical expert, could quickly and easily develop a deep expertise in e.g. high-performance graphics engines. A diagnosis of Dunning-Kruger would not be incorrect were I to make such an assertion.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#166

Post by mruts »

dTal wrote: post #164
mruts wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just false. Approximately only 2% of American workers are paid minimum wage. Everyone else makes more.

Technically true. But the minimum wage is still clearly an anchor. The amount above minimum is a signal of your worth as a worker. Consider this[1] income distribution chart (with its precipitous falloff left of the minimum wage mark). It's clear that "at or just above minimum" is the largest demographic, even if it represents a small fraction of the whole. If the minimum wage were raised, it wouldn't simply bunch th…

Of course the entire curve will move, but then inflation will just go up a similar amount. This means that everyone will effectively be making the same amount of money.

Because of this, I think minimum wage is unnecessary and just manages to distort the market and prices out some people out of any job whatsoever.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#167

Post by Retric »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #165
Retric wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 months may not be enough to train up someone without a technical background, but when a skill shortage extends beyond the time horizon of training a pool of 100’s of thousands of people up it’s very much self inflicted as the company simply does not want to pay market rate + training. PS: People with related skills can always pick up these deep specialty skills with extreme speeds. I have seen someone paid contract…

There are many deep specialties that no one picks up with "extreme speed" no matter how technical they are, certainly not to the level required by companies that want to hire these skills. Think database kernel engineering or non-trivial parallel systems design. Acquiring these skills happens almost exclusively by apprenticing for years with real experts. In six months you could go from no skills to mediocre skills w…

This is not a new problem.

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

Look into it’s history and Walt Disney has been training animators for decades. It’s a deep skill that is takes significant time to master, so you need an actual pipeline.

Continuing the idea, NASA trains astronauts. They don’t need very many world wide, but they need a few and the only way to get them is to train these people.

I could go on, but outside of a months to few years for absolutely new fields shortages are by design.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#168

Post by embersbreaking »

pjdemers wrote: post #11

Economists are obsessed with job creation because the leading ones started their careers in the late 70s and early 80s when the number of jobs was shrinking, but the number of people who wanted a job was growing faster than ever.

"70s and early 80s when the number of jobs was shrinking"

That's very interesting. Got any cites for that? Would like to explore. Thx.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#169

Post by embersbreaking »

dTal wrote: post #164
mruts wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just false. Approximately only 2% of American workers are paid minimum wage. Everyone else makes more.

Technically true. But the minimum wage is still clearly an anchor. The amount above minimum is a signal of your worth as a worker. Consider this[1] income distribution chart (with its precipitous falloff left of the minimum wage mark). It's clear that "at or just above minimum" is the largest demographic, even if it represents a small fraction of the whole. If the minimum wage were raised, it wouldn't simply bunch th…

@mruts: "but then inflation will just go up a similar amount"

That is a faith-based belief.

Re: Economists Are Obsessed with Job Creation – How About Less Work? (2017)

#170

Post by Ericson2314 »

Konnstann wrote: post #155
Ericson2314 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You give people more money for less work by making it policy. UBI, in other words. Captalism isn't going to do this one on its own.

Yes, I even mentioned that in my comment, the problem is actually implementing the system. It's all well and good to say "UBI" but getting it past the lobbyists and through Congress is another thing. I'm trying to understand how we get there, not the end goal, since that's obvious.

A bunch of rich people want UBI for some reason. It's very simple unlike say healthcare so it is harder to stealthily undermine, which is the main tactic of unpopular lobbying. So it has probably more of a chance than other stuff at the same scale.
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