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Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#241

Post by scatters »

benbojangles wrote: post #199
M2Ys4U wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd be tackling housing prices. The government has absolutely no desire to do that. Their voter base is predominantly home owners who think of their house as an asset that should only go up in value.

I agree. Also, High streets don't have to 'die' due to excessive rent either, the government could hike taxes on vacant stores 1000% then make possession orders on unpaid premises after 18 months. Then the gov can nationalise shop rents according to reasonable incomes.

> hike taxes on vacant stores 1000%

That's how you get high streets lined with charity shops. Not that I have anything against charity shops, but is that really what you want to see?

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#242

Post by outside1234 »

Factorium wrote: post #193
nly wrote: post #44

Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…

If you permanently reduce immigration, including deporting unauthorised migrants, you can achieve both of those things. Given the cost of land and building, we should consider Western nations 'full' and only allow immigration 'swaps' from other highly developed countries.

You'll also have nobody to work in the hospitals or pick food for you :)

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#243

Post by rjsw »

pjc50 wrote: post #180
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't making a claim about what impacted house prices the most. If I was, then I'd say a system where the government basically gives you free money/tax breaks if you buy a home, is the root cause behind the things you mentioned which then drives house prices. The point is, without fixing that issue, you can't solve it by wage rises. People who don't even want homes are buying them, either as outright investments t…

> the government basically gives you free money/tax breaks if you buy a home Such as? MIRAS was abolished 20 years ago. Homes are arguably under-taxed (no US style property tax), but that's not really a "break".

There is Help to Buy [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_to_Buy

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#244

Post by pessimizer »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #224
tomp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how all the elite arguments that immigration doesn't reduce wages (which the working class always thought were complete bullshit) were proved to be complete bullshit during the pandemic-related border closures. Of course, the discussion about what to do about that remains - open borders & keep wages low, or close borders & raise local wages, or close borders & keep wages low & invest in automation - but it's n…

The meme to mock those critical of immigration (usually conservatives) is "Those dirty immigrants are taking our jerbs!" It's a miss statement about when the crux of the issue is. It's not jobs being taken, it's wages being held low. I worked at a warehouse that started pay at $12/hr. This was in 2016. Talking to one of the older guys, he started at $12/hr as well. In 2001 . I'm sure you can guess what the worker mak…

> (usually conservatives)

Usually nationalists. Conservatives love wages being lowered, and employees that can't complain without being deported. They're anti-immigration when it comes to law, but very pro-immigration when it comes to enforcement. Ideally, for them, they would have draconian immigration laws that would only begin investigations based on a tipline that only employers would have access to.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#245

Post by CivBase »

I'm not so sure about the whole "just pay workers more" solution every talks about. If that were viable for many businesses, don't you think they'd choose to do that over closing their doors? A business owner has to consider what kind of wage increases would even be needed for a short-term hiring boom and whether they could sustain that increase in the long term.

A case could be made that some businesses are not viable if they can't afford to pay market rates for labor, so they should close. However, the market rates for labor seem to be in fluctuation due to the ongoing pandemic and associated government responses. It looks to me like many businesses are still just trying to ride the storm out and hope things look better for them on the other side, hence many businesses opting to close temporarily rather than committing to more expenses - especially in a time when revenue is still down.

I'm also concerned about the competitive landscape going forward. Big businesses will all survive this recession no doubt, but what happens when a significant portion of their competition vanishes? I'd guess markets will consolidate even more as competition dries up and we'll double down on our dependency on cheap foreign labor.

Maybe raising wages is part of the solution, but I think this problem is a bit trickier than just that.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#246

Post by pessimizer »

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #128
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build more housing. A lot more housing. A good portion of it should be publicly owned.

Existing owners won't let you do that, as it would depreciate their real estate portfolio.

If existing owners are allowed to build how they want, it would actually make their portfolio shoot up. Fewer restrictions on property use makes property values rise, obviously and trivially.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#247

Post by Pxtl »

api wrote: post #173
Pxtl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a recipe for suburban housing sprawl, which is what you get in North America when people start moving en masse to a rural area, and it's expensive on infrastructure and unsustainable from a climate perspective.

I am no longer convinced that urbanism is categorically better for the environment. Here's why. First of all, consider direct energy consumption. A suburban or rural home can probably get >50% of its energy use (including cars if they are EVs) from solar power directly off its own roof and property. This is year round in the sun belt and at least 2/3 of the year elsewhere. Batteries are getting cheap enough that home…

For the last part, I'd argue that our failure to make enough city is the reason you've got people spending 50% on rent.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#248

Post by jseliger »

nly wrote: post #44

Housing is anything from a third to 50% of the average UK earners take home income. Median house price to median income ratios are at historically high levels[0], and rents are now also rising[1] Either wages need to rise or house prices need to fall. [0] If you look at somewhere mundane like Essex the median 'affordability ratio', as measured by the Office of National Statistics ( https://tinyurl.com/x5jatcx8 ), was…

The housing theory of everything: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#249

Post by ghaff »

api wrote: post #206
ghaff wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's already slowly happening. You're basically describing the norm in the US from post-WWII until about 20 years ago. Many large cities that many think of as desirable elite cities today (with real estate prices to match) were losing population into the 1990s. The attractiveness of living in downtowns to mostly college educated young people is mostly a fairly recent phenomenon and there's no guarantees it won't re…

I already see it reversing among everyone but those in high income industries. I'm seeing a ton of artists settling in small towns these days. The cost of living is low, allowing you to live on things like Patreon and Etsy and make your art. This kind of radical decentralization is something the original boosters of the Internet in the 90s predicted, but then the great urbanism wave of 2000-2020 happened. But... reme…

I'm not sure I've ever heard a good explanation for why the urbanism wave (among a fairly specific demographic) happened. As far as I can tell, it was mostly led by people and employers increased their urban presence in response to better educated/better off young people wanting to live in cities--not the other way around.

(There are some exceptions I can think of like pharma in Kendall Square Cambridge. But I assume Google, VMware, and Facebook would be just as happy if not happier establishing offices in Metro West--where most of the computer tech has historically been--rather than Cambridge.

Manhattan is somewhat of an outlier but Manhattan has long been an outlier in lots of ways.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#250

Post by adventured »

willcipriano wrote: post #158
adventured wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US there is a particularly pro big business conservative wing of the right that is hyper in favor of unlimited low skill immigration. It's totally at odds with the mainstream conservative position on immigration. So why do they hold that position? It's not out of the kindness of their gentle pro-immigration conservative hearts of course. It's because they want the cheap labor to feed to big business and it hel…

The more you think about it the worse it gets. It's one thing to be in favor of immigration, it's another thing entirely to be in favor of illegal immigration. The Tyson Chickens of the world love illegal immigrants, they don't file workers comp claims or take you to court if you fail to pay them. Supporting illegal immigration is supporting the creation of a untouchable quasi-slave caste. If immigrants had the same…

That's certainly right. One of the big lies in the US today about illegal immigration is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. That has been the same number touted for most of two decades (it's still mindlessly repeated by talking heads on TV).

The real number is now closer to 22 million illegal immigrants, according to a recent Yale study [1]. Representing around 6% of all people in the US. So wait, how are all of those people surviving? They're cheap labor for the big business machine, they're an unprotected cheap labor caste as you correctly point out. They can't complain, they don't have well protected worker rights, and it can take a long time to become a citizen. It's a human rights travesty, and both the big business conservatives and the Democrats (as both are pro open borders) are morally culpable for it.

The rational approach for the US would be to remodel its immigration system as something similar to Canada, focused more on high skill labor. We need to turn off the flood of illegal immigration while simultaneously creating a reasonable citizenship pathway for the 22 million illegal immigrants that are here now (most are never leaving, so the proper thing to do is to provide a citizenship pathway), which would also begin bringing them into the tax base and protecting them as workers.

[1] https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twic...

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