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In my opinion, we as a society should aim to work less and less, collectively making use of automation and technological progress. But it will be hard when we label this as being lazy and not valuable member of society.
>In a recent analysis, we found that 53 million workers ages 18 to 64—or 44% of all workers—earn barely enough to live on. Their median earnings are $10.22 per hour, and about $18,000 per year. Right away, they're presenting some large number that's actually double the real number of people below that threshold. If the median is $10.22, that means only half of them make less than that. They then make a bunch of broad…
I do not agree with that, having a job is always a good thing for mental health. It is always better than staying at home doing nothing.
Having work one finds valuable is. Having a shitty mind numbing job is hell. Adam Smith wrote about it (paraphrasing) extreme division of labor will create servile, ignorant humans. IMO billionaires suffer from it too. Offloading so much real doing and learning while existing in the context of abstract decision maker. You think Bezos can do much more than validate or demean people around him? Bet he can barely rotate…
According to Wikipedia, Bezos "once rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room" and "worked at McDonald's as a short-order line cook during the breakfast shift".
I expect he's in the American average range for practical workaday skills.
I don't know whether or not he can specifically "rotate a tire"... but rotating just one tire is pointless anyway, you have to rotate the entire set to even out wear.
I would love to see tech pivot away from being an industry that is 100% about tracking & advertising more and more every year and towards something, anything that was an actual real new product or service. We used to take it for granted that tech was the industry of innovation and progress, but there seems to be very little of that any more. Just a few more ads on the page.
Similarly, minimum wage isn’t worth much if there’s high unemployment
These regulations upon regulations, shitty policies and "governing" from socialists are killing the market and gotta stop. It's dumb to interfere with the market and dictate how much your skills are worth. USSR as a reference? We know what financial top-down planning and dictatorship does to countries.
Minimum wage should be abolished.
Maybe it's not something to be so proud of. If people are having to come out of the woodwork to take jobs that aren't moving the average wage up, maybe they're doing it because they have to, in order to get by.
Is it a good thing that a 60+ year old goes back to work at a low paying job because he/she can't pay the bills?
If we fix these I'm sure the equation changes a lot for many, many, people.
If the market is broken for pricing these main things, then even if everyone suddenly gets an income increase, it probably wouldn't matter much.
I do not agree with that, having a job is always a good thing for mental health. It is always better than staying at home doing nothing.
If you have to take a bus for an hour to get to your four-hour shift at a stressful minimum wage job, where your manager is abusive and the workplace is unsafe, your mental health may suffer. Meaningful work, or contributing to the wellbeing of those around you -- that would be a worthwhile goal. Suffering just so your family isn't hungry is a harder sell. Inevitably, someone will say they should just learn skills fr…
You don’t commute that far for minimum wage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t tell from your comment but I’m not sure this is what you expect. This is not people who have never had a job. This is a (now politically motivated) estimate of the number of employable people. Subtle difference.
Participation rate is not politically motivated, but citing it can be. This was widely cited by the right during the Obama administration and now by the left during the Trump administration.
Workers with skills that align add productivity see wage gains. Workers and entire businesses on the wrong side of the productivity wave end up dislocated.
I'm sure UBI and other public policy efforts can correct this, right about the time we can control weather, solar cycles and cure cancer. Or, we can just accept there's some things outside our control and plan for the ups and downs.