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Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

economist.com

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Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#561

Post by randomdata »

runeks wrote: post #271
mac01021 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it takes 3 years to become good at construction work, there can definitely be a 3+ year shortage in qualified construction workers.

Shortage at what price? There’s always a shortage of bread for people willing to pay 1 cent per loaf, and never a shortage for people willing to pay $10. One could argue that, while you think you’re experiencing a shortage, reality is that you’re simply not willing to pay enough.

Technically, a shortage is defined as a situation where price is unable to rise due to an external mechanism, such as government setting a price ceiling. As long as you have an opportunity to pay more, there cannot be a shortage. Rather demand for the given product/service shrinks.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#562

Post by dbingham »

turc1656 wrote: post #431
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think that's a new thing? No, but the extreme automation and beginning of human-like skills across all domains of knowledge are a new thing. With automation of the essentials plus a bit more, we can finally start free ourselves from a lifetime of work. The wealthy already have, and choose what they wish to do. I only want that. > As if not being a productive member of society leading to poverty is this evil…

I fully believe that the asymmetry that exists is due nearly entirely to government. It's hard to have big business without big government. And many of the regulations and barriers to entry are created at the hands of government. I take issue with that entity before private business in most cases. Let's also not forget that the government has effectively stolen a large portion of the additional wealth/productivity ge…

> It's hard to have big business without big government.

The internet provides the perfect counter example to this. It was (and remains) nearly entirely unregulated. And yet Google and Facebook are monsters with immense anti-competitive power.

The evidence really does not support the idea that big business is entirely the result of big government. Quite the opposite in fact. The last time we had this much concentration of economic power was the gilded age, an age of relatively small government. We had a period of lower wealth/power concentration in the 50s and 60s, but that was linked to strong anti-trust laws (administered by government) and 90% top marginal tax laws. Since then, neoliberal ideology has been used to chip away at the restraints on big business in government and now we currently have the worst of both worlds -- corrupt government beholden to vast concentration of economic power generated by big business.

Personally, I am of the opinion that the only way to avoid this is to look at the core of the systematic issue -- allowing equity financing concentrates wealth. Concentrating wealth concentrates power and naturally causes consolidation and centralization. In a world with equity financing, the only way to keep business small and competitive is with strong anti-trust laws and highly progressive taxation.

I think we could have a world of small government and small business, but only if we universally replace the Stock Corporation with the Worker Cooperative. That, of course, is a novel idea and requires a lot more support than I can put in HN post. Maybe some day I'll get to a point where I can stop developing full time to support myself and write that book...

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#563

Post by heedlessly2 »

runeks wrote: post #293
teej wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be 10 people willing to spend $inf for a loaf of bread and only 5 loaves. Supply of skilled work isn't immediately elastic.

No. No person owns an infinite number of dollars. But I will happily bake you a loaf of bread for $10,000 each. In fact, I’d quit my day job to do that. That shortage wouldn’t last long.

>No. No person owns an infinite number of dollars.

you've never heard of billionaires huh?

Bill Gates can do nothing right now and his net worth would still increase.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#564

Post by heedlessly2 »

lostlogin wrote: post #250
danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

some people can appear sober but you will see they are not when you give them a complicated task.

A lot of use huge and dangerous machinery such as forklifts or saws

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#566

Post by lloyd-christmas »

raarts wrote: post #539
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctor pay has almost nothing to do with the absurd medical costs. With 1.1m doctors in the US, and median pay at 180k, that's $200B. US healthcare spending is 3.2 trillion. Beyond that, I think they deserve that much when factoring in the cost of education, liability of the job, and decrease in years of employment. Here's some math: - median age of retirement: 63. - median UPS salary over lifetime: $70k. - UPS drive…

> isn't worth the extra 600k Do you really think you should pay twice as much in the US compared to other countries with equal quality?

If what you're quoting is what you are actually responding to, you've missed the point. That quote is a comparison between a UPS driver and a Doctor, not a Doctor in the US and one in Norway. If you're trying to compare countries, you're not paying twice as much once you account for what goes into achieving that income.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#567

Post by eru »

SilasX wrote: post #404
eru wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because drug tests are not actually about that?

But what would it have to be about, for employers to consistently turn down an approach that gets them access to a bigger class of labor and better filtering for safety?

Good question, and worth investigation. While you do, please keep in mind that employers are not monolithic, but made up of lots of different humans with their own agendas. (And lots of those agendas include the objective of "cover your ass".)

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#568

Post by eru »

adventured wrote: post #261
pure_ambition wrote: post #41

No it won't last, because as soon as the wages start coming up then the fed will say "inflation is heating up" and raise interest rates, causing businesses to spend more on debt service and less on employees.

The US has a long-term severe labor shortage that has already begun. There isn't anything that can stop that, including robotics / automation and artificial intelligence. There's nothing that can happen in the next 20 years, except for a protracted recession-like economy (or big crash), that can significantly ease up that labor shortage. It's a matter of facts. The population growth rate is too low. The rate of retir…

There's a long queue of people around the globe who would be eager to move to the US to participate in the American labour market, if they could. So labour shortages are easy to solve, if there's political will.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#569

Post by eru »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #72
neves wrote: post #33

The article says no, but are there any dissented view that sees a causation between Trump policies and the rise in blue collar wages? Please, polite answers only. I'm just a foreigner that want to understand a little more.

One way that Trump helped is that the illegal migration rate dropped as soon as he came into office. He scared people out of even trying. You've also got his halt to the ever-expanding regulatory environment and his opposition to the TPP.

Did they actually drop? From what I remember, illegal migration has been dropping for years now.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#570

Post by vorotato »

ars wrote: post #425
vorotato wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't abstain from sex for 30 days it's a sign that you can't get your shit together, abstain from sex and pass a sex test.

Yes. And? What point are you trying to make? Are you implying people can not abstain from sex for a month?

Do you really think that's an appropriate job requirement? Should we also have fasting requirements for our jobs? For context I don't smoke, but I'm also not deluded enough to think that we should be testing arbitrary datapoints about their personal life. If they can do the job, they should get the job, and if they can't then they shouldn't. If you aren't hiring capable workers because of puritanical ideals you're wasting money.
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