Labor shortage or terrible jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#831

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

dstaley wrote: post #354

humanrebar wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A teenager making change on bagel purchases isn't working for "poverty wages". And a business that providing tennagers jobs isn't being exploitive. I do think employers should be conscious about the kinds of lives they set their employees up for, though we can talk about that without overgeneralization.

Two things: 1. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half of people making minimum wage or less are older than 25 years old. 2. A single person working a full-time job (32 hours) at minimum wage makes $12,064. The US federal definition of poverty for this individual would be anything below $12,880. So yes, minimum wage workers are literally, by definition, working for poverty wages.

Where is a full time job 32 hours? We work 40 hours in most of the world, that is 25% more.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#832

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

vlahmot wrote: post #468

humanrebar wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point, and I appreciate the evenhanded approach. I'm still far from sold that "poverty wage" is a useful term if we want to have a healthy discussion. It leaves too much nuance out.

It doesn’t though. Poverty is well defined (and is defined based on the number of people in the household). https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

So wages should be linked to the number of people in the household? Workers with more kids should earn more by law?

We do this is Europe, we pay something called 'kid allowance'. In some places people make 10 kids for the allowance, ignore them or mistreat them and live on that money.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#833

Post by cbozeman » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

avidphantasm wrote: post #663

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…

Countries like Australia and France seem to have figured out the non-tipping thing. What makes us so special that it won’t work here?

American exceptionalism... for every single thing... 1000_eyeroll_smileys.gif

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#834

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #824

AdrianB1 wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can’t live without shelter or medical care.

Really? Tell that to Hiroo Onoda and his 29 years in the jungle. You see, people play on the subjective nature of life and honesty is not a virtue anymore.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#835

Post by fighterpilot » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #820

fighterpilot wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Perhaps. Difficult to know the extent exactly. My guess would be yes, given theory, but we'd need a natural experiment to find that out. 2. This particular thing isn't really an argument against minimum wage, although I personally am not automatically in support of it for other reasons. I can see an argument that it creates poverty by making unskilled workers unable to compete with lower skilled labor overseas for…

> This robs them of their ability to get a foothold in their economy from which they can stabilize and level up. You're kidding, right? You're sayig that minimum wage robs people of ability to get a foothold in the economy? Please enlighten me how "getting a foothold" works for people that have to work several jobs just to barely keep afloat? > It's also rather intrusive and authoritarian, if two people want to get t…

  >  You're sayig that minimum wage robs people of ability to get a foothold in the economy? Please enlighten me how "getting a foothold" works for people that have to work several jobs just to barely keep afloat?

I explained why already.

(1) If their value to an employer is less than the miminum wage, then that's going to contribute to unemployment, because an employer would now rather pursue automation or some other solution, or simply go out of business. That's what happens when you fix prices. This robs those people of the ability to get that first job that they can leverage for better opportunities later, and pushes people to drug dealing (which pays worse than minimum wage most of the time) and so on. It is terrible for social mobility and keeps people stuck at the absolute bottom.

(2) Domestic unskilled labor is now uncompetitive with foreign unskilled labor. The government has effectively banned domestic unskilled labor from working those particular jobs which means manufacturing moves overseas and benefits foreign unskilled labor instead. This devastates communities that used to function on the back of manufacturing.

  >  What about if a bunch of people come together and agree this is a good thing?

Democratic != not authoritarian.

Internment of Japanese was done by democratically elected representatives, and it was authoritarian.

  >  keep slaves or indentured servants

You can frame it like that, and I can point to communities that have been devastated and people that are chronically unemployed because of these kind of supposedly well-intentioned laws that fix prices. Who has the real moral high ground?

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#836

Post by grumple » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #578

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…

You keep using the word class, but I don't think it's applicable here. If everyone in the country is subjected to a lower minimum wage while a teenager, there is no disadvantaged "class".

The disadvantaged class is poor people. Poor kids will have to work and will make less money while doing it than they should. So not only do these kids have to waste valuable time at low-wage jobs (rather than studying, being kids), but they get even less money while doing it. Wealthy people's kids won't work.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#837

Post by xyzzyz » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #819

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's" mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most likely below 10%. Here is an estimate: https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi... . A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is al…

> raise prices and hope that customers won't just go down the street I always found the idea that restaurants need to compete on price strange. A typic Mexican restaurant is always going to lose to Taco Bell on that, so raising the price of your enchiladas or margaritas probably won’t have much impact on traffic. We read a lot here about founders not setting prices high enough (see patio11 for tons of discussion). Or…

That $15 vs $17 difference per dish might be immaterial to you, but if you include tax and tips, it’s a difference of a full hour of wage labor for a night out of a family with 2-3 kids with parents earning average wage.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#838

Post by xyzzyz » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

neilwilson wrote: post #704

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's" mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most likely below 10%. Here is an estimate: https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi... . A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is al…

"I'm just saying that both sides of the equation need to be examined, i.e. the plight of the worker AND the plight of the business." It was examined. In 1944 in the Beverage Report "Full Employment in a Free Society". It concluded that people not earning sufficient to eat is an order of magnitude more harm than businesses not earning a profit and that the labour market should always be a sellers market, not a buyers…

> It was examined. In 1944 in the Beverage Report "Full Employment in a Free Society". It concluded that people not earning sufficient to eat is an order of magnitude more harm than businesses not earning a profit and that the labour market should always be a sellers market, not a buyers market

This report is completely irrelevant in today’s America, where everyone has more than enough to eat, especially if they are working.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#839

Post by poloopolo » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

plankers wrote: post #761

deburo wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If they honestly can't afford to pay a living wage It's not logical to kill businesses by arbitrarily raising the minimum wage. Do you think the people they employ are better off not working at all? These people may not have a decent enough salary, but they get to work as opposed to staying at home and degenerate (mentally and physically). I always thought the better solution is to help them financially in other way…

>they get to work as opposed to staying at home and degenerate (mentally and physically) I almost spit out my drink. You must have a pretty small imagination if you think that working for somebody else is the only way to stimulate yourself mentally and physically.

For the lower classes it usually is the case

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#840

Post by BeFlatXIII » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

anthony_romeo wrote: post #156

mywittyname wrote: post #20

I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt. It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person…

There’s another aspect: there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery store, fast food jobs, I’ve interacted with far too many stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat ont…

There is the additional factor that, at least in fast food, a salaried manager often makes a lower hourly rate than if they were paid at minimum wage plus overtime. It’s an industry filled with horrible bosses because the good bosses either leave or ran the math and declined the promotion in the first place.