Labor shortage or terrible jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#951

Post by whatever1 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #930

whatever1 wrote: post #596

Coming from southern Europe, I have to say that we have been there 20 years ago and it looks ugly. In Southern Europe, the family (and not the individual) is the smallest decision making unit and it is typical to have 3 generations of people living under the same roof, all of them supporting (and applying pressure to) each other in different ways. Parents and grandparents are helping youth financially. Youth in South…

It would be quite a dilemma to choose between the livelihood of my dependent family and the opportunity to make more money elsewhere. What have been the solutions to this problem in Southern Europe?

There is no solution. Significant percentage of qualified youth is migrating to Northern Europe or US where there is short supply for high skill labor (doctors, engineers etc), the rest are just coasting with their families. Weddings and birth-rates are also plummeting, which indicates that youth also have low confidence about their future.

The reason that this structure exists is that older generations accumulated wealth in an era that economy was roaring, and the state was able to provide ample support (free higher education, healthcare, high pensions). This cannot be sustained with the current stagnant economies.

Only solution that I can think of is to embrace immigration, & impose tarrifs to imports from Asia, to restart low cost manufacturing & large scale agriculture in the south. This will also make available positions for high-skilled labor (engineers, mbas etc).

The uglier possibility is that the states collapse due to their unsustainable welfare policies, and everyone goes back to their fields for digging.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#952

Post by prepend » Sat, May 01, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #879

prepend wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I’m making likely assumptions. Obviously, individual experiences will vary, but when trying to estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they can never live with another is not useful. It also denigrates sexual assault victims by assuming that they are alone, without family, friendless, or without a spouse. It is possible for one to recover f…

>...when trying to estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they can never live with another is not useful. I'm not assuming this of people, but that's quite an extreme projection you're making... Rather I'm stating that telling people to find roommates or rent a room is generally bad advice, if they're not first time renters then it is reasonable t…

> live a dignified existence

I think spending $340/year on a decent phone is pretty dignified. I think it’s comical to assume that dignity requires $1200/year in phone service.

I’ve lived in poverty, I’ve worked and fought against extreme poverty and I’m not sure your basis of reality. Poor people live in group settings. I’m not sure what advice you would give to help them as me saying “get a roommate” and you saying “$37k is not livable” have very different levels of usefulness.

I used a lot of help when poor (and still do now) and the most frustrating part was people who expressed their sympathy but did nothing to help me. I didn’t want empathy, I wanted food and safety. Of course I’d rather have both empathy and food, but if I have to choose one, you know what I and most will choose.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#953

Post by malandrew » Sat, May 01, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #949

malandrew wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who are you going to sell the output of the robots to? to other people employing, manufacturing or investing in the robots Gains in a society goes to those that are doing something useful to contribute to increase productivity, such as providing the labor that increases the productivity or providing the capital to make that increased productivity a reality. While they won't get the gains, bystanders to this process…

Is there enough people doing that to justify the scale of robot based manufacturing? I've only seen costs for stuff go up with inflation, and most people don't have wages that track inflation. The owners benefit from the cheaper costs, but nobody else does

define "stuff"

When adjusting for inflation, most things are getting cheaper. It is only a few goods that are getting much more expensive after you adjust for inflation and almost all of those things have one thing in common: government meddling and regulation.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#954

Post by Qwertious » Sat, May 01, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #535

rbg246 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly, it's a balancing act. But equally is it ok for people to work hard and long hours and only barely make Or not quite make ends meet? Sorry I should note that I am not saying you are advocating for the above(could be misread).

I guess the question is what do you do when you find people who present with that situation: that they’re perfectly capable to hold down a job but only to create $10/hr of economic value by their labor. If you set the minimum wage at $15/hr and do nothing else, you have made that person worse off than today. Everyone around them now has more money, so everything is becoming more expensive. They now can’t find or keep…

The problem here is, most peoples' wages are defined by their leverage, not their value. For people in those situations, the benefit of minimum wage is that most people below that wage immediately get leverage in the form of legal requirement to pay them (or anyone else) min wage.

This isn't a matter of improving the situation for everyone, it's a matter of improving the situation for the majority of min-wage workers.

If someone genuinely can't provide $10/hr of value, then either 1) they need to upskill (and there are social services for that, although perhaps not in the US idk) or 2) they're like one of those literal retards who are becoming literally unemployable, and the solution is either to subsidize their employer (which is okay in this instance because you're not subsidizing a race to the bottom like you are with subsidizing normal e.g. McDonalds wages) or put them on a disability pension.

But realistically, most people are capable of upskillinng and that's what they should be doing if they're not valuable enough to an employer.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#955

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Sat, May 01, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #619

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of the business side of the problem as a collective action problem. You want to pay your workers a living wage, but to do so, you have to raise your prices. If you raise your prices, your business will go to your competitor, so you can't exist if you increase your wages (and your competitor doesn't). Meanwhile your competitor wants to increase wages but doesn't for the same reason. If the government mandated th…

> If you raise your prices ... and your competitor doesn't this means your business is less efficient than your competitor's, or you are asking for a higher margin than your competitor. Both means that the business deservedly fail under the raised minimum wage. if everybody has to raise their prices to fund the higher minimum wage, then it means the original minimun wage was already at the optimal level for your busi…

> Both means that the business deservedly fail under the raised minimum wage.

Isn't the point that it wouldn't fail under a raised minimum wage? It would only fail under an uncoordinated raised wage.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#956

Post by recursivedoubts » Sat, May 01, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #230

paulpauper wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about socially conservative union workers, for example.

By "socially conservative" do you mean opposed to reproductive choice, anti-immigration, opposed to LGBTQ+ rights, opposed to affirmative action, and those kinds of wedge issues? Kind of the the inverse of libertarian "economically conservative, socially liberal"? I wonder how much those issues would fade from their consciousness if they weren't constantly fed the lie that their precarious economic status is the faul…

Right, so a pro-labor right does exist, you just don't like a lot of their other opinions on wedge issues.

Well, guess what? The corporations are run by some pretty smart sociopaths, and they have figured that out and are happy to keep you fighting with those hated right-wingers over the wedge issues, rather than working with them to improve labor conditions in the US.

It's OK. The corporations are really good at feeding lies to folks. Heck, they might even be feeding some lies to you. Maybe you even believe some of those lies. Like, for example, there is no such thing as a right wing pro-labor movement.

Worth thinking about.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#957

Post by shkkmo » Sun, May 02, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

nimos wrote: post #684

shkkmo wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications Yes it would be difficult to implement. You would encourage people to seek higher paying jobs by progressively phasing the wage subsidy out. Or just not phase it out at all. No real difference between the two depending on income taxes. On the other side you could also target a certain cyclical unemployment rate and have a minimum wage employers must pay that…

The problem with a minimum wage or subsidized labor is that your are dependent on the availability of work for everyone which mandates a constantly growing economy that will destroy our planet.

If you are comfortable with fluctuating minimum wage to control unemployment, you could do the same thing with UBI.

Personally, I don't think that we should to threaten our citizens with homelessness and hunger to get them to be contributing members of society.

I would personally institute UBI gradually, pairing UBI increases with reductions in the minimum wage during economic downturns to stimulate the economy.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#958

Post by shkkmo » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #695

shkkmo wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education and training is solving a different issue, one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. I think making public colleges free (similar to germany) would be a massive benefit to our economy. But making all education free doesn't do anything to help remove the need for the minimum wage. If you have an alternative to the minimum wage that isn't UBI, I would love to hear it.

> one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. no it isn't orthogonal - UBI and minimum is based on the premise that there exists people who would not be able to produce value that is enough to sustain themselves (aka, they consume more resources than they produce), and thus need the rest of society to pick up that slack (otherwise, they'd just die). I'm saying that people would always be…

That is not the premise on which UBI is built. If I had to pick just one it would be that we have more productive capacity than we need, so threatening people with death (your words) to be productive is no longer necessary.

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#959

Post by late2part » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:15 AM UTC

ryanmarsh wrote: post #931

hinkley wrote: post #896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you have the reverse problem where the stores or restaurants are renting their space. As the neighborhood density increases, their customer base goes up but so does rent. And since location matters, you can’t just move if you don’t like the rent prices, so they can squeeze you pretty hard. Goodbye profit margins. In my old neighborhood there were always a few empty places because they were pricing people out, an…

Insert Adam Smith quote about the rent of land.

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property,” he writes, “the landlords… love to reap where they have never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-trouble-with-adam-smith...

Re: Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

#960

Post by shkkmo » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #905

shkkmo wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then your whole point is pointless, the OP granted the possibility of McD EU being less profitable in their original post.

Yes, and then OP said this which is why I responded: “ That implies that the model is (in principle) just alright” It implies any number of things, but not that if the model works in EU it can also coexist with the same model in the US. The scenario I said is an easy and fairly common example of why they could not coexist. Without breaking out a form 10k and a fair bit of financial statement analysis, it’s somewhat l…

I am not arguing that McD should take a particular policy. I am arguing that there are clearly functional business models for fast food under a higher minimum wage so that is not a valid excuse to avoid raising the minimum wage.

What are you trying to argue?