Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#631

Post by chii »

shkkmo wrote: post #620
nimos wrote: post #511

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 sp…

>I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. That would be horrible. The bottom of wages would drop to zero (since offering above zero but below the government guatantee would provide no benefit in highering.) This would drag down other low wages since the jump from paying zero to paying just over minmum would be a huge cost increase for a minor highering benefit. UBI…

> UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage.

i dont think that's true.

re-education and re-training into higher value work is a better investment. it's just that education of adults isn't funded well by society, and thus the debt load for that re-education is too expensive for the benefit.

I would argue that society should have a funding system where if you re-trained (may be in some category of work that society determins to be useful, like nursing), the cost of that education is only going to be placed on you if you earned above a threshold wage after graduating from training.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#632

Post by heavyset_go »

8note wrote: post #454
conanbatt wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business closes, lots of people lose employment + business owners become more employment competition. Increasing unemployment wrecks wages. It is also not free to give unemployment benefits, it requires higher taxation which moves the sustainability bar higher and more businesses close, etc etc.

This really just raises the question on why employees don't get a share of profits. They take on all the same risk as owners do

It's because the law and financial system exalt capital at the expense of everyone else. There's no reason that labor couldn't translate into equity.

Also, the current system enforces the artificial scarcity of capital available to those who need to work for a living instead of living off of their assets.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#633

Post by Fellshard »

pessimizer wrote: post #493
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…

You don't want to create a class of people who get paid badly because their jobs are terrible (and also low-skilled.) The only reason you would want a lower minimum wage for young people is because young people are stupid, and you want to put them into a job where they can learn i.e. low-skilled, but ramping up over time, like an apprenticeship. Paying people almost nothing to work a horrible job because you can get…

Hang on, hang on.

By definition, age is not a class, because by definition, /everyone moves out of that class/. Your entire proposition is faulty from the foundation!

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#634

Post by dogman144 »

TheRealSteel wrote: post #577
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…

If their entire European, Australian and New Zealand operations weren't profitable, why would they run them at all? They wouldn't use American profits to support them, they'd shut them down.

Mm does this make sense: Profitable is a spectrum, end of the day it all reports back through McD USA. ebtida in EU might be a bit lower than ideal because of laws changing over time. So, to make numbers, they can juice things in USA.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#635

Post by WalterBright »

Frondo wrote: post #520
WalterBright wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It has to do with your claim that poor people "generally much, much better at managing it than anyone else".

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#636

Post by the_only_law »

Clubber wrote: post #40
the_only_law wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ngl it’s got me wondering if I should make some life shattering changes myself.

I've been working professionally for 25 years now. I could take a year off financially, but I'm still shackled by health insurance being so expensive on the private market. Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What regrets will you have?

> Think about this, when you are on your deathbed, whenever that is. Could be tomorrow, could be in 60 years. What regrets will you have?

Tomorrow? Definitely not going for anything’s. In 60 years? I can’t tell. It would all depend on if the risks work out or not.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#637

Post by parineum »

lucian1900 wrote: post #603
parineum wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US trade with China is currently mutually beneficial. That's why China participates. Give me more detail on what that means. If the US Communist party took over absolute leadership of the US tomorrow, what differences would there be in the US China trade agreement.

The amount of benefit is not equal. Imperialist countries (US, western EU, etc.) have extremely favourable terms obtained under military threat. Often onerous terms are imposed, like privatisations or deregulation. One recent example is Bolivia’s rare earth mining. A German company was offering only ~5% of the value of extracted material in exchange for the capital required, while a Chinese SOE offered 50%. Not long…

Still no specifics.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#638

Post by systemvoltage »

Fellshard wrote: post #633
pessimizer wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want to create a class of people who get paid badly because their jobs are terrible (and also low-skilled.) The only reason you would want a lower minimum wage for young people is because young people are stupid, and you want to put them into a job where they can learn i.e. low-skilled, but ramping up over time, like an apprenticeship. Paying people almost nothing to work a horrible job because you can get…

Hang on, hang on. By definition, age is not a class, because by definition, /everyone moves out of that class/. Your entire proposition is faulty from the foundation!

Not by choice though. If we can get younger or older by choice on a whim, I think your point would stand.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#639

Post by MisterBastahrd »

OldTimeCoffee wrote: post #145
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$18 for how many hours? Most "pizza places" will not hire someone full-time. They want part time employees so that they do not have to deal with benefits. Now, the intelligent thing to do as a nation would be to offload those benefits to the government so that companies would be free of the extra work AND employees would be free to move to better jobs... but America is not the land of the smart.

I hear this a lot, but it's really not true. Most "pizza places" are small businesses ( They want part time employees because it offers scheduling flexibility. If all you have is full time workers and someone calls out sick, you're short a person. If you have mostly part time workers, you can call everyone not scheduled that day to see if they can come in. Office jobs don't really have this because it's typically not…

LOL.

In your rush to defend the actions of asshole bosses, you miss an important part: people who are trying to make a living with part time jobs are going to get another part time job. Not only are those people NOT more flexible than full time employees, but half the time they are less available than full time workers because they are stuck on a treadmill where not being at both jobs equals a loss in hours for the next week. There are tons of full time hourly employees who will JUMP at overtime.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#640

Post by tomcam »

Spooky23 wrote: post #453
kukx wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> define what is a poverty wage, it is important. If you work full time as an adult and are Medicaid eligible, you’re being paid poverty wages. > What is the change of the model in case of the restaurant? Raise the prices. It’s already happened anyway, the market has plenty of elasticity. Restauranteurs always whine about how impossible it is to raise prices, yet they seem to manage to do so just fine.

That’s a really excellent idea. On the off chance that you may be wrong in a few cases, what happens if you go out of business after raising your prices enough to get wages high enough to be where you think they should be?
Post reply on HN