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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#91

Post by anovikov »

tosser00001 wrote: post #14

Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.

The scale of immigration has definitely been whole lot higher in 1960s, not to mention 1920s of course when it was free and open for everyone who could pass a basic medical check.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#92

Post by anovikov »

Why is this a problem? I just can't see any indication of problem here, this is just supply vs demand: world is globalized now and most of what uneducated people could do can be imported from much cheaper places. If we started to look hard for 'fixes' for this we'd end up just breaking the economy. Force businesses to pay them more and even more of these job will evaporate, because there will be no point any longer. And most of these jobs will be automated away anyway.

My advice is: invest money into better law enforcement, including ML and AI-based, like crime prediction and drones. Make sure, by a combination of legislative and informal methods, that poor and well to do communities are better separated from each other. Invest more in stuff which gives poor people something to fill their time with, like video games, so they don't do as much crime. And that's it.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#93

Post by blub »

skookumchuck wrote: post #60
noobermin wrote: post #18

It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…

> the meritocratic myth I've been around to see people over decades, and how their decisions affect their lives. Meritocracy is not a myth. Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices. This isn't the Soviet Union where one is assigned a career, a job and an apartment. I've seen immigrants arrive here with nothing and become millionaires. That's why everyone wants to come to America. The opportuni…

What you've seen is irrelevant, when on the whole the lower and middle classes suffer due to lack of a social safety net and an extreme form of capitalism. There's a large amount of news articles which describe the situation of labour in the US.

If things keep going like this, those millionares will soon have to build their own fortress cities to keep all the undesirable and disgruntled poor people away.

The fact that poor people come to the US doesn't prove anything either, 99,(9)% of them will never be millionares, just like most people won't.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#94

Post by whatever1 »

viraptor wrote: post #67
whatever1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The People do not have stake at company A. Company A does not share the true values of the People. Company A is now banned. Repeat until all companies comply.

True. But what does this have to do with poverty levels discussed here?

That you cannot call capitalism any successful economic system. China proved that a protectionist model with colossal government intervention can successfully reduce poverty.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#95

Post by burfog »

Joeri wrote: post #69
dgut wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? By how much? Immigrants have usually low wages. Anyways, in Western Europe, the increased demand (which is probably smaller than in the US), those things are easily canceled by the added costs to public healthcare + social benefits.

In belgium the rising healthcare cost is almost entirely due to an aging population. To take care of those elderly you need nurses and care workers, 46000 extra per year for the coming decade. Meanwhile the schools only graduate 5000 per year, due to lack of interest by the native population because of the odd hours in nursing. The only way they’ve found to bridge the gap and take care of the elderly is bringing over…

There is "lack of interest by the native population" only because wages have been pushed down by people from the Philippines. Even with odd hours, people will gladly do the job if the pay is good.

The elderly, with failing ears and minds, have enough trouble understanding the speech of the native population. Subjecting your elderly to nurses that can't be understood at all is elder abuse.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#96

Post by sidstling »

tosser00001 wrote: post #24
tosser00001 wrote: post #14

Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.

It’s interesting the immigration cannot even be mentioned without getting down voted. It seems obvious to me that fewer low skill workers would result in higher wages for those who could most benefit from it.

It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses.

It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in factories. But the system and legalization was still exploited so paying immigrants less was possible.

Anyway eventually regulation caught up and ended the low pay loopholes. So now a job at those factories pays half a million kroner a year, or more than I earn as a senior IT-architect.

As a result a lot of our slaughtering houses moved production and enrichment out of the country, but the really interesting thing is the fishing factories. They couldn’t move or outsource production because they need to be located close to where the fish are caught.

Despite the pay hike they still can’t hire enough people without relying on immigration. It turned out that nobody wanted those jobs, even when they pay really well.

Ps. Im not sure what fishing factories and slaughtering houses are called in English but I hope you get the point.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#97

Post by adwn »

dnomad wrote: post #65
jjoonathan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. In fact, the suggestion that tosser00001's main point had anything to do with silly internet points is a minimization/redirection tactic that is itself a more important instance of the very thing being complained about.

> The suppression of dialogue surrounding immigration far exceeds downvotes in scope and severity. The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages. People who actually study the economic impact of immigration in the West have generally concluded it has insignificant impact or improves the economy.…

> The problem with the anti-immigrant zealots is they never provide any evidence for their paranoid fantasies about immigrants increasing unemployment or supressing wages.

Ironically, your post also contains zero evidence for your claims.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#98

Post by [deleted] »

fzeroracer wrote: post #79

I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father. You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in th…

[deleted]

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#99

Post by allendoerfer »

xivzgrev wrote: post #90
fzeroracer wrote: post #79

I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father. You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in th…

I'm sorry to hear about your parents. However I don't know what your point is. On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. Then you say your parents are an example of where hard work and grit are NOT all you need. Honestly it sounds like you were born with a certain amount of intelligence, got some money to go to college, and you made the most of it. But where would you be if you ha…

I think that is exactly what he is saying.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#100

Post by wincy »

beamatronic wrote: post #55
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The illegals are all picking strawberries for below minimum wage so we don't have the bear the true costs of our food. Remove them and there would be serious repercussions for those at the lower strata of society.

Has anyone ever calculated the maximum possible wage for a job? Take strawberry picking for an example. If run by a non-profit, what is the highest possible wage? Would be interesting to see this relative to the actual wage.

I think it would fluctuate depending on the prices of strawberries. And if you spent all your money giving out the maximum possible wage and your crops failed you’d go out of business because you weren’t able to save money.
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