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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#231

Post by AdrianB1 »

I see a logical fallacy because I lived in some conditions that are very relevant.

Paying everyone a living wage (last sentence) is impossible; not because 'living wage' is relative - from a city to another, from a country to another, from a person to another (can you live without an iPhone? why not?) - but because increasing wages to that level, assuming you can determine one, will just increase the prices to fit.

My first job was paying $100 and it was about the average in the capital city of my country. 5 years later I was earning $700, but that was just double the average pay. Another 10 years later, a bit over $1000 was above average, but not by much. The salaries grew 10 times, but the prices adjusted about the same rate, at least the price of food, rent and houses: if you pay 10x more to workers, the house will cost 10 times more. If you increase the salaries of many people, you will not increase their standard of living, just create inflation because they will not produce more, it's just their cost is higher and the money value is reduced.

This is the real story of a country with 20 million people. If you increase the wages of the lowest paid, you need to increase to everyone to keep some proportions, otherwise you will pay restaurant cleaners more than teachers or doctors and that is dangerous, ~ 20% of the younger doctors in my country emigrated because at some point their salary after 20 years of tough school was sometimes lower than a driver's salary. If you increase the salary of everyone, that is very soon making all prices to increase at the same rate, changing practically nothing.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#232

Post by AdrianB1 »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #231

I see a logical fallacy because I lived in some conditions that are very relevant. Paying everyone a living wage (last sentence) is impossible; not because 'living wage' is relative - from a city to another, from a country to another, from a person to another (can you live without an iPhone? why not?) - but because increasing wages to that level, assuming you can determine one, will just increase the prices to fit. M…

And another thing: if you have workers that you cannot pay 'living wages' because they don't produce output to pay them more, automate and leave them on the streets. Do this with all low skilled workers.

Is this what the article is suggesting?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#233

Post by mywittyname »

gruez wrote: post #113
mywittyname wrote: post #20

I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt. It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person…

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance.

Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup.

Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees, and charge for things like actually getting your money.

That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.

I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years. One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on their car through very long car loans and were not paying for the insurance coverage they should have been.

Most low wage positions are only possible because they are subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and payday loans to handle emergencies.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#234

Post by AdrianB1 »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #94
honksillet wrote: post #56

There are no such things as “jobs americans won’t do”. It’s just you have to compensate people accordingly. With this failing stealth UBI experiment that we are currently engaged in, people aren’t willing to work when many of them are getting near 100% the same income not to work. The rest of us are being crushed by inflation.

> The rest of us are being crushed by inflation. The top 1% are making more money than ever before. If you're holding assets impacted by inflation, you're doing quite well now. If we take it as a given that in a modern, humane society no one should starve to death on the street and everyone should have access to the basics of survival, then the answer to the labor "shortage" is simply to shift some of the historicall…

How do you define the basics of survival? In parts of the world people live with 2 hamburgers a day, is that what you propose? Even $15/hour seems huge compared with basics of survival.

Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#235

Post by rossdavidh »

cosmodisk wrote: post #115
rossdavidh wrote: post #43

Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). 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. Because, those restaurant (and retail a…

I think we should be going that direction,where a meal in a simple place is expensive enough to support normal wages with benefits and whatnot. Because right now, whenever someone brings up an argument that people don't get paid adequately, there's always the same 'but but the customer won't pay'. We all seem to love to have cheap meals, cheap uber drivers and cheap cleaners, while at the same time expensive office w…

I agree.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#236

Post by rossdavidh »

indigochill wrote: post #108
rossdavidh wrote: post #43

Well, there's a straightforward (I don't say easy) way to fix this: you require a high enough minimum wage (and healthcare, and sick leave, and etc.). 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. Because, those restaurant (and retail a…

Maybe I'm naive, but this seems to have some significant problems: 1. Yes, everything costs 2x more for professional-class people, but also for working-class people. The numbers might get bigger, but the impact for those in the position to consider these terrible jobs is net nil. 2. For anything that doesn't require physical presence, the more you raise minimum domestic labor cost, the more attractive foreign labor l…

You would absolutely have to back away from free-trade with low-wage countries for this, but in the restaurant/retail side of things it's not as big of a consideration, because not many people cross borders to do that in a country as big as the U.S. But for many industries it is absolutely a consideration (e.g. agriculture).

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#237

Post by solosoyokaze »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #234
solosoyokaze wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of us are being crushed by inflation. The top 1% are making more money than ever before. If you're holding assets impacted by inflation, you're doing quite well now. If we take it as a given that in a modern, humane society no one should starve to death on the street and everyone should have access to the basics of survival, then the answer to the labor "shortage" is simply to shift some of the historicall…

How do you define the basics of survival? In parts of the world people live with 2 hamburgers a day, is that what you propose? Even $15/hour seems huge compared with basics of survival. Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.

I would define the basics of survival as:

* Basic groceries

* Healthcare

* Housing

I don't think these things are easy to achieve but they seem like obvious goals to societal progress. If not, what are we even progressing towards?

> Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.

I said if a company wants to fill a role, that they should pull from executive pay. The average CEO gets 70-1 the pay of the average employee. There is absolutely a surplus of capital to pull from to increase worker pay (thus filling the role).

https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#238

Post by maxerickson »

inetknght wrote: post #164
gruez wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

> Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.* Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. $58/day = $1740 for 30 days Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, chee…

I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high.

I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the definition of basically no internet). My car insurance (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500 for 6 months.

I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for several as heating is a major utility cost here).

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#239

Post by unethical_ban »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #189
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…

To me, no education, no experience jobs are the norm. Does that restaurant pay incoming career food service staff a wage sufficient to raise a family on? A solid third of the households in the US take in under 50k/yr. More than half that are under 25k. I don't know about you, but 37k doesn't go far. Assuming 30% effective tax rate that's 2158/mo. 1 bed flat in my city $1400 Cell phone bill: $100 Home internet: $100 E…

I should have been more clear, but I didn't have coffee yet.

$18/hr being "great" was meant to compare to what I hear people tend to make in that position, not that it is objectively great as a living wage for a family.

My post was a little twist-and-turn - I was thinking about two related things, one being the tactical issue of wages in food service, and the other macro issue about the fact that this country has enough wealth in it for everyone to be well taken care of.

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