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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#41

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

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…

Profit sharing and healthcare are the minimum people want to keep do the same crappy jobs in hostile environments with creepy, violent, or domineering managers. The jobs have gotten harder, people have more bills, and pay hasn't budged. Some introspection by the "job providers" would be greatly appreciated as they complain about labor shortages.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#42

Post by kokanator »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #7

Maybe one of these days the pro-labor left and the pro-labor right are gonna figure it out, stop taking the bait, and we'll finally get a real revolution.

Revolution is NOT the answer.

Think a bit harder on the problem than to simply cry revolution. Swaths of people die, families are destroyed, the economy is destroyed, the nation becomes vulnerable ( if you still have a nation ). You will have to deal with the problems you created before you ever get the opportunity to work on what you were originally revolting about.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#43

Post by rossdavidh »

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 and etc.) business owners are mostly not the ones making big money. Restaurants, in particular, are horribly low margin.

The end result of getting rid of "terrible" jobs, is that everything at the restaurant costs 2-3x as much, and so on at the many other businesses (agriculture?) which rely on cheap labor. Which means all those people in professional class jobs (e.g. programmers) will find that their salary doesn't go nearly as far as it used to.

Personally, I'm ok with that, I think it's the right thing to do. But it's not like it's the small business owners that are standing in the way of it; they cannot pay higher wages if their competition is not, so it has to be mandated. What's standing in the way of it is that this would be, at least temporarily, quite inflationary, and we have a professional class that is accustomed to not having to pay much for anything except houses.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#44

Post by colinmhayes »

throwaway292893 wrote: post #19
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

Neither. If employers really wanted more workers, they'd up wages. If employees really wanted to work they'd settle for less. If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone complaining is a liar in the economic sense.

The people with jobs paying taxes aren't very happy to support freeloaders simply taking unemployment because they don't want to work.

I feel happy enough with the situation. No one should be forced to work a shitty job imo.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#45

Post by petre »

jnwatson wrote: post #14
mc32 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently close to 30% of household income right now is from government payments. I think on average people are getting the equiv of $15/hr from gov checks. So for people to want to work it’s going to have to exceed that by some non trivial amount.

Ultimately, this is a problem with all government benefits with an strict binary income limit. The result is that, in some circumstances, earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of dollars. The marginal income tax system was set up this way for a reason. If these unemployment benefits were paid out UBI-style, regardless of current employment, there wouldn't be a disincentive to find work.

> earning 1 more dollar results in losing thousands of dollars

They might either go out of business or automate those roles if they can't afford to pay blue collar workers a living wage. I'm not a socialist, but some business do rip off low income workers. So they might as well cease to exist if they can't find workers to rip off, instead of claiming that people are lazy.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#46

Post by toomuchtodo »

colinmhayes wrote: post #33
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…

We aren't actually living in a post scarcity world though. We're moving in the right direction, and hopefully we get there soon, but there is still plenty of scarcity.

We would move faster towards post scarcity if businesses were economically incentivized to uptake automation faster (and then we tax businesses [1] to fund social safety nets).

If we continue to encourage an economic system through policy that is satisfied with labor making wages that provides a dystopian poverty level of life quality, it will take longer to arrive post scarcity. Economic incentives matter!

[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/american-equity

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#47

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

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…

I won’t argue your overall point but I will point out that the “sweeping and wiping down tables” are the easiest parts of that job and a small fraction of the labor that is done.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#48

Post by david_allison »

the_only_law wrote: post #23
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.

Unsolicited advice: dip your toe in the water and introspect after a couple of months to see if it's a sustainable change that you want to make.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#49

Post by stakkur »

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…

>is it because making $37k a year in Texas isn't good enough for a no-education, no-experience job?

Maybe it's because it offers no meaningful health insurance, is most likely not full-time (such a job rarely is), and has little long-term promise.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#50

Post by solosoyokaze »

throwaway292893 wrote: post #19
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

Neither. If employers really wanted more workers, they'd up wages. If employees really wanted to work they'd settle for less. If neither is happening then everyone is happy and anyone complaining is a liar in the economic sense.

The people with jobs paying taxes aren't very happy to support freeloaders simply taking unemployment because they don't want to work.

I pay taxes and I'd be super happy if my money went to support people in this country without jobs. It would lower crime and increase the quality of life for everyone living here. I could also be one of those people someday.

Unfortunately many of my tax dollars go to fund a military I find ethically abhorrent instead of improving the quality of life in the US.

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