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Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

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

#571

Post by randomdata »

roseburg wrote: post #319
runeks wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Supply shortage of workers, plain and simple. A. Takes time for new workers to be adequately trained. B. Takes even longer to get people that have been raised to look down on the trades to change their worldview and all of a sudden consider working with their hands, no matter how much money is involved.

You do not normally get a shortage in the labour market because as price goes up, the appeal of hiring someone goes down. As you would expect, the formal definition of shortage is not "not being able to get what you want", a shortage is defined as "a situation where an external mechanism, like government regulation, prevents price from rising."

There are real cases of shortages in the labour market. Where I live, the law defines a fixed rate for doctors. Even if I had all the money in the world, I could not legally pay more than my neighbour to employ the services of the doctor in town. Here, a shortage is a real possibility as there is no monetary way to decide who gets the appointment with the doctor. But these tend to be exceptional cases.

Without that legal requirement, I could simply offer more than my neighbour to get the appointment and the neighbour would have to choose to go without seeing the doctor. There is not a shortage in that scenario as the neighbour was not in the market to begin with. This is the same reason we don't say there is a shortage of Ferraris, even though the vast majority of people will never be able to get their hands on one, no matter how much they wish they could have one. They are simply unaffordable to most people.

It really doesn't matter how long it takes to train someone. As long as the price is able to rise, the business who really need the existing people will pay more, taking them from the businesses that cannot afford them, until everyone who still needs that service is fulfilled.

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

#572

Post by vorotato »

VLM wrote: post #356
Clubber wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee? Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.

I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke. Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline. Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question. To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level…

Yeah because you don't have to smoke pot to understand bodily autonomy, you just have to treat people with respect. If you've gotten drunk this month you don't deserve the job you have is basically what you're saying.

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

#573

Post by taway_1212 »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #558
golergka wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perverse game you wouldn't be able to win or lose, regardless of your actions - and your examples prove that it's not the case.

So, the "I know you are but what am I?" defense? Capitalism fails for many. It succeeds for a very few, with most stuck in the cycle of "Work to live, live to work". It's not much different than a slave or indentured servant class where for the necessities of life; Instead of a single owner, I must find an owner who will take me in. And if you fall through the cracks, it's almost impossible to move back up. I'm sure…

> Capitalism fails for many. It succeeds for a very few, with most stuck in the cycle of "Work to live, live to work"

As long as the goods required to survive (food, housing etc.) don't materialize out of thin air, it makes sense to expect people to work for them.

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

#574

Post by randomdata »

jamesmp98 wrote: post #225

I keep hearing how great blue collar josb are, but looking at glassdoor, most of them seem to be in the $30k - $50k range in my state

If you spend your time around highly-paid software professionals, $30k-$50k may not seem great.

When you consider that the median income in the country is $31,099[1], making more than half the population is pretty great. At the upper end of that range, you are in the top 30%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

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

#575

Post by crankylinuxuser »

golergka wrote: post #559
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the "I know you are but what am I?" defense? Capitalism fails for many. It succeeds for a very few, with most stuck in the cycle of "Work to live, live to work". It's not much different than a slave or indentured servant class where for the necessities of life; Instead of a single owner, I must find an owner who will take me in. And if you fall through the cracks, it's almost impossible to move back up. I'm sure…

> So, the "I know you are but what am I?" defense? Can you elaborate? > Capitalism fails for many. Once again, if you fail, it doesn't mean that the system fails. The system's goal is not to make your life good. Why would it be?

> Once again, if you fail, it doesn't mean that the system fails.

And I refuse the very premise you're working with. We're only as strong as the weakest members. And I see those members begging on the streets, or wandering around because of untreated psychiatric issues. Or they're living in tents off in the back part of the city park.

There's always going to be someone with more, for whatever reasons. But there should be nobody homeless. There should be nobody going hungry. There should be nobody without medical treatment.

I'm not going to budge on those issues. Higher rights exist building on TOP of the essentials. Look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Even YCombinator is doing a program/test on UBI. To pretend it's not an issue is completely absurd.

> The system's goal is not to make your life good. Why would it be?

Because, unless you're independently wealthy and can live on residuals for the rest of your life, you're only a few accidents away from destitution. We live in a world of plenty, but allow monied interests to amass it and control access. Why?

And that money can be used to buy influence and laws to further entrench themselves. That argument is "Its my money and I got it and you cant have it", regardless if it's illegal or paid-off "legal" means. This is the might-makes-right argument and principle. And it's time we re-evaluate if this makes sense. I have a feeling that most people will find it absurd, as I do.

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

#576

Post by Simon_says »

lostlogin wrote: post #541
Simon_says wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe ... But the process of getting addicted certainly involves making some choices poorly.

My addiction to coffee involved no poor choices, I don’t regret it and it makes me a better person. Lack of it makes my performance much worse, I get a migraine with vertigo and vomiting.

You seem to be confusing physical dependence with addiction. By your definition, you'd be addicted to food, as I'm sure you'd have adverse consequences, including worse performance, in its absence.

Addiction is continued use in the face of adverse consequences. [1] You may have a physical dependence on coffee, but it doesn't sound like you're experiencing negative consequences in your life from its use.

[1] https://www.addictioninfo.org/articles/2216/1/Addiction-Do-Y...

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

#577

Post by Danihan »

dbingham wrote: post #562
turc1656 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 concentrati…

What a great post. I'm not sure Worker Coops are a novel idea though.

You know any old LLC can be structured as a co-op with a bit of effort.

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

#578

Post by throwawayjava »

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?

> What point are you trying to make?

Drug tests are completely arbitrary, unrelated to job performance, and employers who use those drug tests don't deserve any sympathy when it comes to labor shortage.

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

#579

Post by dbingham »

Danihan wrote: post #577
dbingham wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 concentrati…

What a great post. I'm not sure Worker Coops are a novel idea though. You know any old LLC can be structured as a co-op with a bit of effort.

Worker co-ops in and of themselves aren't a novel idea. Universally replacing the stock corporation (thus doing away with the mechanism of equity financing) in favor of worker co-ops is an idea that seems to be largely absent from our public debate. There are definitely people exploring it, The Next System Project [1], Democracy Collaborative [2], and Foundation for a New Economics [3] have all toyed with it to varying degrees.

But I don't know that I've really seen anyone make a strong case for it (in a way digestible to the layment). Richard Wolff wrote about it in Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism but not in a way that was very digestible for the average reader. Gar Alperovitz has also written about it in What Now Must We Do? and America Beyond Capitalism, but in both cases he wasn't specifically making the argument for universally replacing the Stock Corporation with Worker Cooperatives, but more generally increasing the prevalence of cooperatives (worker, member, and multi-stakeholder) and decreasing the power of capital.

I'd really like to write a book, digestible by the average American, making the case for the universal replacement of the stock corporation with the worker cooperative and speculating about what impacts that might have on society (using evidence to support the speculation as much as possible).

[1] https://thenextsystem.org/ [2] https://democracycollaborative.org/ [3] http://neweconomics.org/

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

#580

Post by Danihan »

dbingham wrote: post #579
Danihan wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great post. I'm not sure Worker Coops are a novel idea though. You know any old LLC can be structured as a co-op with a bit of effort.

Worker co-ops in and of themselves aren't a novel idea. Universally replacing the stock corporation (thus doing away with the mechanism of equity financing) in favor of worker co-ops is an idea that seems to be largely absent from our public debate. There are definitely people exploring it, The Next System Project [1], Democracy Collaborative [2], and Foundation for a New Economics [3] have all toyed with it to varyi…

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll check out these books before the year is out and get back to you. The co-op model is something I've personally thought a lot about as well. I actually own a valid testing arena even -- a successful restaurant that I've been wanting to convert into some form of co-op at some point.

Personally, I don't think capitalism is going away any time soon, it's just a question of which version of it will be the most effective. Co-ops would need to be able to compete and win against the current shareholder model, without government intervention, which may not be possible.

Anyway, shoot me an email if you'd like to discuss more in a few months.

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