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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#511

Post by nimos »

I've never liked the idea we should expect businesses to provide a living wage.

If we, as a society, think there is some sort of minimum standard for living. (We should) Then we, as a society, should pay for it.

Increasing minimum wage seems like a roundabout unfair way of doing that via selective inflation. Which as far as I can tell would be largely a wealth transfer from the middle class to the lower class. Who spends a larger % of income at places people make minimum wage?

I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications with a system like that but I think it is better to have businesses worry about employing people and governments worry about welfare.

What seems to always be left out of these "if a business can’t pay a living wage, should it be a business?" discussions is what exactly are people going to do instead?

I'm ok subsidizing people's labour. I'm not ok subsidizing people's leisure.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#512

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

I wonder if this is evidence of friction in the labor market. Maybe all this terribleness had built up, but most people won't change paths in a big way because it upends their life for a while. You're not going to learn job B if you're already in job A because, even if job B is better, the first year of B will suck more than A while you're a newbie.

But then a pandemic comes along and takes away job A, meaning that there's not extra friction to leaving job A. You've already left! All these people have gone to job B (or location B, or family arrangement B, ...) which was better all along, it's just that the change had too much additional overhead in normal times.

Now you have places which depended on that friction wondering where everybody went.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#513

Post by lucian1900 »

parineum wrote: post #438
lucian1900 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing the effects of imperialism on the working class of the imperialist countries, a point we communists make all the time. It absolutely is a left/right thing, it’s just that the imperialist countries have largely managed to exclude politics left of centre.

Would a communist United States not trade with China?

Currently, US capitalists exploit workers both in the US and in poorer countries, with the later being super-exploited. Under this arrangement, the vast majority of the value created by both groups of workers is captured by a handful of capitalists.

A socialist US would cease exploiting other countries (including China) and instead pursue mutually beneficial trade (much like China does). This would likely include some amount of reparations and re-building of local industry, easily funded with the vast amount of value no longer stolen from all workers.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#514

Post by dragonwriter »

zizee wrote: post #382

Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It climbs in increments until about $25/hr. This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage. The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed b…

> Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults?

Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working class adults to middle class kids.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#515

Post by lucian1900 »

motohagiography wrote: post #402
lucian1900 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing the effects of imperialism on the working class of the imperialist countries, a point we communists make all the time. It absolutely is a left/right thing, it’s just that the imperialist countries have largely managed to exclude politics left of centre.

Imperialism is bunk and an artifact of a movement predicated on deception, so, there's that. I think the whole critical theory basically lets itself out on reasonable discourse.

Lenin’s work more than a century ago is very much still relevant today. If you haven’t read it, give it a try https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#516

Post by dogman144 »

kjksf wrote: post #475
dogman144 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, without knowing how the Corp is setup, that’s a bad example as this could easily exist: an international company can very easily be paying for high wages in one nation (ie loss leading) by low wages in another. Or staying profitable and with open doors. And so on. Unless you’ve done an FSA class and you can explain me your thinking more, it’s worth appreciating there are a ton of levers that impact Corp finance…

It makes zero sense for McDonalds (or Starbucks or anyone else) to operate a money loosing restaurant. Furthermore, 82% of McDonald restaurants are franchises i.e. not owned by McDonald. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/03/what-perce...

The franchise part is interesting, although McD’s owning them or not doesn’t matter as the cash flow is what’s relevant. In this case I wonder what the terms are for franchise owners in EU vs USA and if they account for higher wage laws.

There are a number of reasons corporate entities operate certain or many stores at a loss. Very well known example is flagship locations that are locally at a loss, but earn for the brand on other ways. Example being Times Square NYC locations. This still makes sense at a franchise model, but less likely I bet.

EU isn’t a flag ship obviously, but I also didn’t say loss. Loss leading is similar, but not a perfect analogy (sure).

My earlier example still holds, even with franchisees per the term, but you should expand your bad event set to loss or low profits. On the net, being in Europe is worth it despite higher operating costs, but maybe USA operating costs need to be lower as a result.

I mean this all to say, there are so many factors involved such that it’s a false premise argument without controlling for intra-market differences.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#517

Post by zepto »

maybelsyrup wrote: post #263
smabie wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plight: "a dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unfortunate situation." Pretty sure a business can have plight.

It was hyperbolic, yes, but only a little, I think. The point I was making is that we've drunk a lot of koolaid about corporations being legal persons, as having rights, etc., such that no one bats an eye at anthropomorphisms like "the suffering of a company". My claim is that a) those words in that context are anthropomorphisms, metaphors, and b) that I don't think we've had much of a conversation about the koolaid…

Nobody talks about “the suffering of a company” - that’s a made up example.

People do say things like ‘the company suffered losses’, but isn’t anthropomorphising.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#518

Post by refurb »

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…

You’re clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers. $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs? $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1 bedroom in the middle of the city?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#519

Post by pessimizer »

kukx wrote: post #406
andrei_says_ wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Maintaining laws which force working employees into poverty in order to support inadequate business models is not the solution. Employees outnumber business owners - more people having spending power is vital for the economy.

Please, define what is a poverty wage, it is important. How much stuff one should afford to avoid being called poor. What is the change of the model in case of the restaurant? I can see only one, automate the jobs away to reduce the costs, namely replace humans with robots. But, if we consider these crappy jobs, what about people that are not qualified/able to do any more advanced jobs? People have vastly different c…

> I can see only one, automate the jobs away to reduce the costs, namely replace humans with robots.

This is generally not possible at twice the cost. The robots generally suck and break down a lot. Now you've replaced a bunch of low-skilled, interchangeable staff who work like dogs with a fleet of mechanics and an engineering department.

Half of the McDonald's automated kiosks I see are broken - and it's usually the store's entire system down, for weeks or months on end. I went to Home Depot today to grab some WD-40, and when I went to do the self-checkout, each of the four stations had a clerk helping the customer "self" checkout. To circle back to McDonald's - it's always been a joke how difficult some fast food clerks find their POS systems - where does this fantasy come from that customers are going to be better at it?

When it is possible to automate a job away, it is desirable. It's good that raising labor costs drives technology development. The better technology we have, the more comfortable we can all be, and the less we have to work as a species.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#520

Post by Frondo »

WalterBright wrote: post #428
Frondo wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or raise the minimum wage, raising the wage floor for all workers, and putting more money in the hands of poor people (who are generally much, much better at managing it than anyone else, due to the need to.)

Frontline (I think it was) many years ago ran an episode on 401k plans. There was a medium sized company that offered an identical 401k plan to all its employees, from the bottom to the top salary levels. They found that the higher the income level, the better percentage returns the employee had on the plan. The lower, the worse performance. The 401k plan offered several investment options. Clearly, the higher income…

What does this have to do with people who are making poverty wages?
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