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Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#781

Post by atoav »

dogman144 wrote: post #634
TheRealSteel wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are aware that when you say "they can juice things in USA", "things" stands for people?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#782

Post by Broken_Hippo »

ruined wrote: post #727
kukx wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ability to afford adequate housing, food, and clothing. I'm not saying we should mandate people can afford a 1500 sq. ft. home, ribeye steaks every evening, and Ralph Lauren Polo threads, but how about at least a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment; nutritious, nourishing food; Walmart clothing at a minimum. Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep, a place to clean oneself, food and clothing seem…

>Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep, a place to clean oneself, food and clothing seems like a reasonable bar for a wage above poverty. Are there many full time jobs in the US that do not allow that? https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/minimum-wage-workers-cannot-...

And as an aside: This is for a two bedroom - and it is important to afford a two bedroom. Single parents often need to keep a two bedroom even if their child or children only visit every other weekend. A one bedroom often isn't significantly cheaper, and a studio isn't always cheaper than a one bedroom.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#783

Post by luckylion »

bradlys wrote: post #388
thunfischbrot wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh - I see one of the benefits of working outside of FAANG and other enterprises to work on something you trule believe in. Who truly loves working on improving the returns on online advertising to extract more money out of people's pockets?

I mean, that’s nice but it doesn’t really afford a typical professional middle class lifestyle that you would see outside the SF bay area. (Unless partner is at FAANG or surgeon) You’re mostly stuck at liquid comp of $180-220k tops. Obviously if the startup works out, hallelujah. But if it doesn’t - that salary sucks for trying to have a home in a nice school district along with some normal vacations and what not.

> You’re mostly stuck at liquid comp of $180-220k tops [...] that salary sucks for trying to have a home in a nice school district along with some normal vacations and what not.

Do you mean "in SF, where the cost of living is extremely high", or are you suggesting that you can't have a comfortable life on $180k/year?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#784

Post by Noumenon72 »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #309
djbebs wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? I dont understand how this is a question. If a businesa is in operation profitably it is because it is providing more value than if it were not, otherwise it would not be able to remain in business

If a business is operating profitably by paying people wages below the cost of living, it is being subsidized by the government and therefore is not independently profitable in any meaningful sense.

I view the government as setting up a playing field which entrepreneurs than explore to find profit opportunities. With welfare and especially the Earned Income Tax Credit, the government created a class of people who can be profitably employed by paying $X below the cost of living. This was intentional, a way to keep people in the market economy even though they're not productive enough to survive in current conditions.

An entrepreneur who employs someone like this is like someone living in New York City in a rent-controlled apartment. You can't say they're not supporting themselves just because they couldn't afford rent in a pure market system. The actual system was purposely designed to make certain activities profitable that would ordinarily be losses. Without people taking advantage of those niches, the subsidies would be pointless.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#785

Post by lucian1900 »

parineum wrote: post #779
lucian1900 wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty has decreased in China in spite of US imperialism, not because of it. Most notably, poor capitalist countries have had poverty increase in the past several decades instead. All countries that have had a successful socialist revolution so far were oppressed impoverished ones. They all then went on to develop very quickly, in spite of constant attack from the imperialist countries. An already-developed former i…

China lifted itself out of poverty when it became a capitalist, dictatorial oligarchy.

No. It was only allowed to develop after making deep concessions to imperialism, including special economic areas where capitalism is allowed.

Thankfully the working class is still in control of the state, as we’ve seen the limits on capitalism tightened recently, especially during covid.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#786

Post by lucian1900 »

parineum wrote: post #637
lucian1900 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a more recent example, the vaccine apartheid https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-129-vaccine-apart...

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#787

Post by parineum »

lucian1900 wrote: post #785
parineum wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China lifted itself out of poverty when it became a capitalist, dictatorial oligarchy.

No. It was only allowed to develop after making deep concessions to imperialism, including special economic areas where capitalism is allowed. Thankfully the working class is still in control of the state, as we’ve seen the limits on capitalism tightened recently, especially during covid.

You think the working class is in control of China? The working class that has nets installed in their job provided dormatories because too many of them are commiting suicide?

Those people are nearly slaves.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#788

Post by AdrianB1 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #335
solosoyokaze wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would define the basics of survival as: * Basic groceries * Healthcare * Housing I don't think these things are easy to achieve but they seem like obvious goals to societal progress. If not, what are we even progressing towards? > Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man. I said if a company wants to…

I would add transportation and communications to the "basics of survival".

This is nowhere close to 'basics of survival'. You can survive on 2 hamburgers a day and 1 liter of drinking water, this is called survival. If you want 'basics of nice living' then call it that way, but don't redefine the dictionary. Think of 'basics of survival' what you need to continue to live if you land on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, naked and with no tools.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#789

Post by aliceryhl »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #318
aliceryhl wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has bad public transport, but is it really that bad?

If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot

If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month.

To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#790

Post by aliceryhl »

seoaeu wrote: post #322
aliceryhl wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has bad public transport, but is it really that bad?

Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant. The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.

Fair enough. I guess it really is that bad in the US.
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