51–60 of 74 posts
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>"bus driving has been privatized and the for-profit bus companies laid everyone off for C19" was the main one To be fair, they'd be happy to keep the drivers on the payroll if the schools continued to pay for their service.
Sure can't use any of the $173 million they made in profit last year, though.
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If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. Do you really want the equivalent of an Uber driver taking your kid to school each day?
> If you're going to hire more drivers, might as well instead pay your existing drivers more. They already get paid more than Uber drivers. The problem is that "more" isn't enough right now, and there comes a point where the alternative is less expensive. > You'll get drivers that are more skilled and care more. There isn't a "caring" section on the CDL test. Why is the assumption that anyone without a CDL is some ki…
"There's a lot of downtime during the day that you don't get paid for. You might work a 10-hour day, but you only get compensated for your shifts. .... [Corey Ford] as a driver, he earned $19/hr, which works out to a pre-tax income of ~$19.4k for 180 days of 5-hour shifts." Imagine a job that required your entire day, but they decided not to pay you during the late morning through the early afternoon. This has got to…
There is no labor shortage. There's currently an excess of unemployment benefits. There's no point in working when you make less than not working.
If unemployment pays better than working, then workers aren't getting paid enough. The solution is not to cut unemployment benefits.
There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about. If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you alrea…
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Good solutions to labor shortages rarely involve making things more labor-intensive. In wealthy countries, labor costs are already much higher than the costs of operating the bus itself. (People often claim 70% vs. 30%.) If the economy grows in a way that benefits the working class, labor becomes even more expensive relative to the vehicle. The key to cost-effective services is therefore minimizing the number of peop…
> Good solutions to labor shortages rarely involve making things more labor-intensive. Good solutions to skilled labor shortages frequently involve replacing the skilled labor with a larger amount of unskilled labor.
The labor shortages we see in the US are mostly caused by the wide gap between the working class and the (upper) middle class. The pandemic disrupted the job market and forced people out of their daily routines. In the aftermath, many people didn't return to their old jobs but started trying harder to improve their lives. They are looking for jobs that pay better, offer better working conditions, and where they get more respect. Many traditional services have a hard time hiring enough people. The solution is likely a mix of offering better jobs, providing the same service with fewer people, and not providing the service at all.
That's how the market adapts.
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No, but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extract profit from while making life for everyone else a little shittier, just as we should shame the for-profit bus companies. Oh, and we should also shame the elected officials that keep on cutting the amount of mon…
>No Why not? They're private entities too, with plenty of money to keep the neighborhood resturant from having to shut down. Or better yet, pay their babysitter/dog walker even though they don't need their services? >but we should shame the rich silicon valley workers for participating in the same kind of relentless race to find perfectly functioning systems that they can wedge themselves into the middle of and extra…
Of course for that to work, you have to have a viable public transport system.
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> There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. and those "abused and exploited" people are providing the labor, leading to a labor shortage. I don't understand people who think "shortage" need to be qualified by how sympathetic the reason for the shortage is. You can either be the type of person who thinks any failure to meet demand is a shortage, or that shortages do…
The people saying there is a shortage of workers aren’t using the dictionary definitions. There is a shortage of people willing to accept their terms. There isn’t a shortage of people who want to work.
This is where there's disagreement. Is it people fed up with poor working conditions, life circumstances that prevent employment, or purposeful unwillingness to work?
I believe the first 2 categories are significant and worth fixing to identify if/how many fall into the 3rd category. Not many do in a well functioning society, IMO.
There isn’t a labor shortage. There’s a shortage of people willing to be abused and exploited. I don’t think any amount of money would be enough for me to work with retail customers again. Much less unruly kids that you can’t do anything about. If it’s between your story and the story the kid told their parents, you’ll lose that battle most of the time and likely end up getting yourself in more trouble than you alrea…
Could say, "there's not a hamburger shortage, there's a shortage of cows willing to be abused and exploited for their flesh".
Which is true, and probably worth evaluation, but at the same time, there is in the hamburger isle a hamburger shortage... no point talking past each other here.
If you pay enough, you'll get those microchips delivered to wherever you want by tomorrow morning, trust me. That's how the world works, like it or not.