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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#21

Post by unethical_ban »

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 *$18/hr* for bussers at the restaurant. To me, that is a great wage for someone to wipe down tables and sweep floors. If they're still having trouble filling that, is it because making $37k a year in Texas isn't good enough for a no-education, no-experience job? Is it because the high-schoolers who would normally do that aren't looking for jobs due to pandemic? Is it the unemployment security and not having to actually do work 40 hours a week?

I wonder if the roles of people at restaurants will have to shift, so each person does some of everything, and get paid more, instead of having dedicated low-wage cleaners. Or that profit-sharing and healthcare may be the new model for restaurants.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#22

Post by gonational »

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.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#23

Post by the_only_law »

Clubber wrote: post #5

I think the "life is short," phenomenon that recently occurred to everybody due to COVID is also playing a part. People are thinking, something along the lines of, "I could have died and my gift of life has mostly consisted of working for this shithole company for the last 5 years." Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather t…

Ngl it’s got me wondering if I should make some life shattering changes myself.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#24

Post by Forge36 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #11
Clubber wrote: post #5

I think the "life is short," phenomenon that recently occurred to everybody due to COVID is also playing a part. People are thinking, something along the lines of, "I could have died and my gift of life has mostly consisted of working for this shithole company for the last 5 years." Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather t…

> Employers might want to consider hiring more people in smaller shifts. Maybe an extra person and put everyone on 3-4 day shifts rather than 5-6. I thought that doing this to avoid providing healthcare was the problem. Many jobs that can't be filled are for part time hours at terrible pay with no benefits.

This is where a government provided healthcare (as an option or as the only option) can be very beneficial.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#27

Post by brightball »

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.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#28

Post by kokanator »

Pre-covid businesses which paid borderline wages are going to find it really difficult to compete with the government.

Basically, you have an administration 'silently' waging war of certain types of business or jobs without needing to pass controversial legislation for things like a minimum wage increase or universal income. If it feel subversive, it is. But the cost of controversy these days causes people to find alternative options.

It is now possible to make 130% to 200% your pre-covid salary/wage by being on unemployment. [0] It is generally human nature to do as little as possible to survive. In this case you don't have to do anything to survive. Why would you go look for a job.

This will put large swaths of businesses who could stay afloat pre-covid and were forced to close due to covid to not be able to open their doors again.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/09/it-pays-to-stay-unemployed-t...

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#29

Post by thrower123 »

The problem is essentially that you can get paid $X to not work at all, or you can maybe get paid $Y to work some shitty job.

But you can't get the $X that you'd get if you didn't work at all, and add on $Z dollars working a job of some kind.

The perverse incentives of these programs around their phaseouts are and have long been a reality of low-income communities.

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