[HN Gopher] The reason employees aren't returning to work in Ame...
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The reason employees aren't returning to work in America [video]
Author : baybal2
Score : 81 points
Date : 2021-09-19 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| drewcoo wrote:
| Thank goodness it's only one reason. I was worried that if the
| workers of the US suddenly developed agency and started thinking
| for themselves, there could be many varied motivations.
| trutannus wrote:
| Fallacy of the Single Cause has become a popular ope-ed trope
| lately.
| uselesscynicism wrote:
| What is this video? A random person wandering around and
| speculating?
|
| This is Reddit content.
| abdel_nasser wrote:
| Why is this on hackernews? Where were the youtube videos on HN
| duing occupy wallstreet? Are we really going to be a place to
| watch videogamedunkey videos and internet talking head videos?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Ignoring your seeming disinterest in all of YouTube (fair
| enough), the creator of the video might be relevant to the
| Hacker News audience.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Rossmann
|
| I personally enjoyed the video. I guess there are a lot of
| business owners on HN? The message seemed fairly simple. People
| got fired and it was the last straw after dealing with their
| employer's bullshit pre-pandemic.
|
| The lie sold by most office jobs in my experience is that if
| you're here for awhile; they will take care of you even when
| times are tough. If you're going to make it 100% about money;
| pay them more/don't fire them. Otherwise they can quit and not
| come back. That's the deal.
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've stopped following Louis Rossmann. I care deeply about right
| to repair but these videos or all the other silly NY-bashing
| videos detract from the right to repair message.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| This seems kinda silly to me.
|
| The channel is named Louis Rossmann, not "Right to repair with
| Louis Rossmann" I don't know _why_ the channel has to be only
| about right to repair, nor do i understand how these videos can
| distract from the right to repair message.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How's all the NY/De Blasio negativity detract from the
| positive right to repair message? It made me, someone not
| from NY, unsubscribe.
|
| It doesn't only have to be about right to repair.
| breput wrote:
| He has addressed this recently.
|
| YouTube incentives 10 to 20 minute videos and also there are
| more people interested in a shorter general interest videos vs.
| a two hour long MacBook repair video. How many people who watch
| his videos aren't already 100% in favor of Right To Repair?
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| I enjoy Louis Rossmann and all, and I've learned a lot about
| computers from his videos.
|
| But this video is purely one lay person's opinion. I'd go as far
| to say "speculation."
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| One of the core arguments seems to be that _"you don't need to go
| finding people to hire if you never let them go"_.
|
| The only people my company lost are the people who were making
| more on unemployment than at their job. Most were making $18/hr
| working, and $24/hr with the extended benefits. We allowed them
| to leave if it made more sense for them, as a favor to them,
| hoping they would return, some have.
|
| All the other positions that we're struggling to fill, are new
| positions. We need a sysadmin in Detroit and I can get one, not
| even close.
|
| So... no, I don't subscribe to this argument. We didn't let a
| single person go, and are in the same boat as everyone else.
|
| Covid was a great thing for the megacorps and I think we should
| consider if that was all coincidence or not.
|
| Local resturants let people go, fast food places didn't, neither
| can get enough people. My local Thai place can't pay the $20/hr
| and signing bonus to match the McDonalads two blocks down. This
| is a particular blight on small business. Maybe if we could pay a
| level1 IT tech $95k/yr we might get one, but big Nope on that.
| guenthert wrote:
| > We allowed them to leave
|
| Unemployment benefits are _only_ paid after lay-off. Those who
| quit their job or a fired for misconduct won 't get a cent.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yes. We agreed to lay them off it if made more sense for them
| financially or for their health.
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Wait till they unlink the health insurance and employment. It's
| another thing that corporations use to keep their wage slaves
| around. That will hit like a nuke on the job market.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I have wondered why hasn't that been pushed through? To me it
| seems it would fix multiple issues. Like employers not wanting
| to employ people full-time because of benefits. Removing the
| benefit trap could be very effective.
| m_ke wrote:
| Because we live in the united corporations of America.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| These reasons are valid even in the tech industry - especially
| for engineers.
|
| I can see engineers making $400k/yr quitting as if it is nothing.
| They just can't see themselves being treated like a cog in the
| wheel, reporting to incompetent management.
|
| From my conversations, these engineers just tired of reporting to
| managers who are not technically as skilled as them but have
| large boss egos. They don't want to be treated as subservient
| slaves with a paycheck. They especially don't want to report to
| paper pusher managers who only do performance reviews and suck
| all the visibility onto themselves - when the real output
| producers are the engineers.
|
| To boot, these engineers have the financial means to just quit
| their previous bosses. Why spend your one life reporting to an
| incompetent management?
| surfingdino wrote:
| It is a huge problem in our industry. I have had people quit
| because of or be fired on a whim of a boneheaded slavedriver
| who couldn't explain what an API is if their own life depended
| on it. The banking industry if probably the worst for overblown
| egos of non-technical managers (who are proud of being non-
| technical) and their incompetence.
| theshadowknows wrote:
| It's so crazy to me that people wonder about this. Maybe it's
| people who've never had a normal job. But most jobs suck. Most
| jobs are demeaning and poorly compensated. Most jobs can and will
| fire you for no good reason and most jobs provide little to no
| protection. Most jobs will fire you for being late a couple of
| times. And most jobs come with no respect or prestige at
| all..what's wild to me is that people don't seem to understand
| that. I guess they never unloaded trucks in 100 degree weather
| for 8 dollars an hour or mopped up gas station toilets at 5 am
| for 12 dollars an hour.
| bogota wrote:
| I really don't get this attitude. Are people just too full of
| themselves today to do menial work? I have a good job now but
| from before high school to after college I worked jobs in
| places were the customers were rude and treated you like shit
| along with your coworkers and managers. As far as I know you
| still need money to live do people think it's now the
| responsibility of the government to take care of them if they
| have to work a job that sucks? I really can't wrap my head
| around it it's just not how i was raised. This just smells like
| entitlement at the same level people accuse "the rich" of
| having.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| People trying to better for themselves is not them being
| entitiled. There is nothing noble about working hard for bad
| pay and in bad conditions just for the sake of being a hard
| worker.
|
| If people are choosing other options instead of going back to
| their shit jobs, and the system isn't providing good enough
| opportunities for enough people that's a failing of the
| system, not of those people for lacking a strong Protestant
| work ethic and not rolling over and letting themselves be
| exploited.
|
| Anyway the video is about these people choosing to work for
| themselves or being otherwise entrepreneurial, not being
| entitled and lazy like you are implying.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| So who does the hard jobs? Who slaughters the cows. Who
| picks the vegetables in 100 degrees.
|
| It sure is damn noble. Someone has to do it, or we all have
| to. And I give those people amazing props for doing those
| things.
|
| Many of us have either done those jobs and taken pride, or
| have family who have in order to better the lives of those
| children. Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to
| those who worked for your current standard of living.
| [deleted]
| ubercow13 wrote:
| >Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to those who
| worked for your current standard of living.
|
| The video is about people choosing better opportunities
| for themselves. If there aren't people to do those hard
| jobs, then those jobs need to compete with the
| opportunities these people are choosing instead, for
| example through higher pay. Saying these people should
| choose worse work, for the benefit of others (eg.
| business owners), by appealing to some nebulous concept
| of nobility is exploitative.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Nobody until those employers start paying enough and stop
| making the job harder for the sake of policies that only
| serve the employers interests.
|
| can't get workers to work hard 8 hours a day doing hard
| labor, maybe add more breaks than the minimum you are
| legally required to? Or maybe stop suspending the workers
| next two shifts because they were 5 minutes late from
| traffic 1 too many times? Maybe consider that threatening
| to fire workers if they don't work late or overtime isn't
| productive? Maybe stop paying minimum wage which hasn't
| risen with inflation or rent prices and increase your
| prices out to compensate or consider that if baseline
| worker wages have risen slower than inflation, but
| management's wages has risen faster than inflation,
| you've had to do so off the back of your workers ability
| to have spending money outside of barely living.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Great goals! Now start motivating people around you to
| ask for those things, vote on those issues, unionize
| their workplaces. Work half as hard as the generations
| that came before did to enshrine our current labor laws.
| Don't just complain on YouTube videos. If the video had a
| coherent call to action and clear headed vision that's
| one thing. But in reality a lot of it is clouded by
| misunderstandings of the job market and the world around
| them.
| pg_1234 wrote:
| Right now there is a more effective strategy - just - do
| - nothing - wait out the exploitative employers until
| they come begging, and then dictate terms ... just as
| they used to.
| endymi0n wrote:
| The Boomer generation needed just 306 hours of minimum wage
| work to pay for four years of public college. Millennials
| need 4,459. Calling that out doesn't sound like entitlement
| to me.
| bogota wrote:
| Sure call it out but not working is what im talking about.
| Life is always unfair. I started working in 2009 I am
| familiar with shit jobs that pay nothing.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Honestly, if you are trying to so a "back in my day" to
| 10 years ago... I think you should take a moment and
| reexamine some of the fundamental facts that you are
| basing your worldview on. You're likely relying on flawed
| anecdotal evidence to decide how things used to be.
|
| It's possible your personal journey is effected by your
| experiences. 2009 was a financial crisis, when I'm sure
| many people were desperate for money. Others delayed
| entering the workforce by taking on college debt. It's
| not a sign of a healthy economy, but the strategic
| decisions of millions of people...
|
| And in 2009 there was no pandemic. You weren't risking
| actual life and limb to work a 9-5. In 2009 most people
| didn't have smartphones. There was no real option to make
| money online.
|
| And let's be clear: just because people aren't working
| _for a corporation in a 9-5_ doesn 't imply they aren't
| working. Today you can make money online easier (Only
| Fans comes to mind). The people who become internet
| models can make more money quitting their jobs and
| devoting their effort to content creation. And honestly,
| a pornstar has more prestige and better hours than
| McDonald's, too...
| aaron-santos wrote:
| It sounds like your saying "life is unfair so we have no
| obligation to try." I want to give you the benefit of the
| doubt, but it's difficult. Maybe you meant something
| else.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's entitlement to refuse to be treated like garbage? I feel
| like it's rather entitlement on the part of those who are
| treating workers like garbage. Employers expect employees to
| "go above and beyond" but I see that as a two way street. I
| will "go above and beyond" for a company that does likewise
| with me. I will do no more than the basic job functions if
| the job demands more than its rightful place in my life, or
| if they attempt to abuse me.
| bogota wrote:
| Being treated like garbage and a job inherently being
| shitty aren't the same thing. People seem to confuse that.
|
| All this is doing is driving automation at a faster pace
| and the people who once did the jobs will now have
| something new to complain about when they have no job
| available at all in 10 years
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| The majority of the jobs that can't hire people are
| customer facing jobs where _the job is to be treated like
| garbage_ by customers
| touisteur wrote:
| Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs,
| then. No more accepting bad customer or managerial behaviour
| would be a start. Customer isn't always right, and even then
| they don't have to be encouraged being shitty to service
| workers by... Letting them pay the lowest price possible.
|
| Maybe now shop owners will have better incentives to
| discipline their customers or give humane working conditions.
| Or you know, barring that, better pay.
|
| About fucking time service workers had some bargaining power
| back.
| indymike wrote:
| > Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs,
| then.
|
| A menial job is not menial. It is just a job. Labels like
| "menial" and "low skill" aren't fair to anyone and are
| there to sell people on taking less pay.
|
| > About fucking time service workers had some bargaining
| power back.
|
| This is really the truth. It is about time.
| touisteur wrote:
| I agree and should at least have put quotes in there.
|
| I've made a personal mission of trying to rehumanize
| every damn job, saying hello, how are you, stopping
| sometimes to talk about kids or the shitty people leaving
| shit in the kids playground, or just asking how's the
| family going. Not only did I make friends with the bus
| drivers, the street cleaner, the store cashier, the
| security people everywhere, but now I feel better the
| pulses of my communities, and have a far less difficult
| time talking to new people and giving or asking for help.
| I know those people and they know me. During the
| pandemic, I just sometimes asked news about family or
| kids and the amazon drivers here were crushed, their
| families sick and dying all around. One of them stopped
| and just cried there. Yes as one other commentor said,
| it's a job, man up, do it. But also, when there's a
| crying father there telling me he's been yelled at the
| whole week, he's been late for deliveries for days, and
| getting his pay docked, fuck ALLL that. Come on, have a
| water, a coffee if you can stomach it, late for late...
| And talk. Learned some of my neighbors needed a talking
| to. No one deserves to be treated like that. I... didn't
| see people were so shitty to each other, especially what
| one lady called 'the help'.
|
| Even the people I'm never gonna see again, it costs me
| almost nothing to say hi, hope your day's OK, thanks, and
| it brings sometimes the simple joy of talking for 2
| minutes and feeling all fucking human. Some make it hard
| (uber eats kids...) but still, hi, everything OK? How's
| your family? I can't do much, but tipping and talking,
| yes.
|
| And don't let me started on making your salary almost
| only from tips. You're really wondering _why_ you can 't
| find 'help'?
| ggggtez wrote:
| I think it requires superhuman levels of mental gymnastics to
| defend accusations against billionaires being parasites,
| while putting down the working class for not putting up with
| having people yell in their faces...
|
| Honestly it's such a leap of logic that likely no one
| understands what exactly the thrust of your comment is trying
| to get at.
|
| I'd like to look at the more charitable part of the argument:
| "back in my day, we worked shitty jobs and we liked it,
| because we needed money". Ok, sure. But the economy was
| different in the past.
|
| Many people need to work 2 jobs to maintain the same standard
| of living. At the same time, the prestige and respect of such
| jobs have declined. There are less paths to retirement. This
| is a logical response to a system that is overworking people,
| without long-term prospects.
| bitcuration wrote:
| Everybody's interest is different, some care about job
| security, others are greedy want much more. It depends on
| personal needs, conditions, life stage and capability. You
| cannot attribute to a single reason universally when explaining
| this.
|
| However in a tough time like this, it's disadvantageous to a
| society where everybody just look after themselves. I bet you
| in Japan this type of problem and question are less wondered,
| as people are treated by and treat the employer as home/family,
| took a personal interest instead of merely a means to make
| living, although at least in the past not sure it's still the
| case nowadays.
|
| True, what's feasible in Japan may not be suitable to a multi-
| culture society like US, or many other countries. But human
| motivation and value system are more or less the same across
| the globe.
|
| For example, some companies make employee their partners, gives
| stock options no matter how small percentage it is, a real
| bounding exercise must be financial based.
|
| Relying on enchanting employee to work relentlessly while in
| truth they're just pawn ready to be dispensed at any moment,
| how many cycles does any employer seriously think such trick
| will last before any employee with even below average IO would
| figure it out? It's not sustainable.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| They aren't more or less the same around the globe. It is a
| very western, and relatively recent social structures we
| believe to be true everywhere. What is the same global, for
| the most part is the capitalist model adopted because of it's
| success and power over other models. You get a pay for your
| labour that is negotiated with your employer who keeps a
| company afloat and pays dividends.
|
| The social aspect is vastly different in many countries where
| the shareholder and employer, or at least the manager treat
| its employees nearly like family. Yes you get a pay cheque
| and profit is the ultimate goal, but the bond between workers
| is so strong it influences business decisions. Some will hire
| a less competent candidate simply because he is close to the
| worker community, it provides trusts and reinforces the
| "family" structure. Japan is mentioned, but it applies
| similarly to most countries in Asia, and to some degree other
| continents as well. It is often not spoken of or display, or
| accounted for explicitly. Humans develop and break those
| bonds as things go along.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Thats a rather rosy way to present nepotism.
| nikanj wrote:
| I'm yet to hear an UBI proponent explain to me how those jobs
| would get done. The naive go-to answer is "automation", but on
| HN people generally understand how hard automating unskilled
| labor is
| throw123123123 wrote:
| They would get done - at a higher price. The more aid you
| give to the lowest end workers, the more you need to pay them
| to do that work at all.
| ziml77 wrote:
| For decades people have fought hard against automation or
| against certain industries shutting down (e.g. coal miners
| fighting against renewable energy pushes). People are afraid
| not just about losing their current job but also of the total
| number of available jobs falling. UBI is a potential solution
| to this issue. People won't fight those kinds of changes if
| they know they'll still be able to survive perfectly well.
| dantheman wrote:
| UBI can't work - the math doesn't work. The pandemic
| trillions weren't paid for, and that's not enough for UBI.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You want more money than UBI offers? You get a job on top of
| it.
| eliaspro wrote:
| That's IMHO one of the fundamental ideas behind a UBI: have
| market forces work this out by disarming the currently skewed
| employer/employee power relation through a UBI where no one
| would be forced to take on the most-demeaning jobs just to
| survive.
|
| Right now a lot of the costs of such jobs are simply
| externalized to exploited employees - a UBI would cause the
| wages in those to rise to more fair levels.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Status and hierarchy are a great motivator for humans. UBI
| will feed and house you, but if you want a car or the latest
| iPhone, you'll need a job.
|
| And playing the mating game is a lot easier if you have the
| appropriate status symbols, fancy clothes, et cetera.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Those motivators aren't the ones that disappeared in the
| last 18 months, though.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| iPhones, vacation money, nicer clothes, money to go out and
| do things, etc.
|
| When everything is locked down, what's the point of looking
| nice in fancy clothes that nobody can see you wear?
| Jochim wrote:
| You'd have to start treating them like people.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm yet to hear an UBI proponent explain to me how those
| jobs would get done
|
| The people that need them done would offer sufficient pay to
| induce people to do them [0]. If the need isn't sufficient to
| offer enough to do that in the presence of a sustainable
| (non-hyperinflationary) UBI, then the job doesn't need done
| and the fact that it is happening now is just a demonstration
| of the exploitative nature of the current economy (which
| includes features like time limits and behavior testing that
| mean that not everyone means-qualified gets means-tested
| support.)
|
| [0] which UBI makes easier, at the same maximum benefit
| level, than traditional means-tested welfare, by not cutting
| benefits rapidly with outside income.
| baby wrote:
| Automation and raising wages.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Pay more, design to minimize them, etc. If society can't
| function because nobody will work for $5/hr to clean up after
| people trashing public restrooms, or to get heat stroke doing
| who know what in 100F+ heat, society should change.
| api wrote:
| The most likely outcome is that they would be outsourced to
| people who don't know anything other than menial labor.
|
| There are better ways such as variable work weeks and gig/day
| labor for easily acquired menial labor (on top of UBI), but
| that may be a bigger shift in culture than UBI.
| ScaleneTriangle wrote:
| Better pay, better working conditions.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| They would get done by paying them better. And at some point,
| automation would be cheaper than labour.
|
| That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem that
| can be automated with sufficient containerization.
| ianhawes wrote:
| > That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem
| that can be automated with sufficient containerization.
|
| Go read https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedexers and let me know
| how solved that problem is.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I think a lot of people wouldn't mind doing such types of
| jobs if they only need to do 2-3 shifts a week, in fact, I
| think a lot of people would enjoy it.
|
| I think it's mostly the mix of overworked + low benefits +
| knowing that you have to do it otherwise you'll have nothing
| is the deal breaker - not so much the job itself.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeh this is true, I have done some shit jobs, (grocery,
| retail, door to door sales) and the 5 days a week with only
| a few days off a year was what really ground you down.
| Doing a mindless service job 2 days a week and getting UBI
| would actually be awesome.
| tdfx wrote:
| Just want to echo that I believe this to be true, as
| well. Jobs involving menial, unskilled labor can be
| almost therapeutic if you're only required to do it 2-3
| times a week. I did night jobs while I was working full
| time as a developer and I would actually look forward to
| the work. Whereas the other employees who did it 5-6 days
| a week acted like it was torture.
| logosmonkey wrote:
| And it's often a random 5 days, maybe 6. You never know.
| It's hard to overstate how burdensome that is.
| [deleted]
| s17n wrote:
| Shitty jobs will have to get better, probably. This may mean
| that areas of the economy that depended on cheap mistreated
| labor shrink (eg the price of berries will go up), but that
| would be a good thing, morally.
| varelse wrote:
| Why they will get done when they are priced sufficiently
| above doing nothing silly.
|
| And that in turn will spur development of automation instead
| of Bezos like corner cutting across our entire society.
|
| Now if those low wage to minimum wage gigs came with solid
| health insurance and a social safety net I might have a
| colder heart here but honestly I'm glad they're finally
| figuring out just how rigged the game has been against them
| all along.
|
| To be fair, by worshiping the affluent and hoping that one
| day they will be among them when they almost certainly will
| never be, they played their part in enabling the system that
| holds them down, but it seems we're moving to the next
| chapter here at last.
| pdimitar wrote:
| You barely looked then.
|
| A lot of people, myself included, would still work if they
| receive UBI. We'd just work less, plus it would be liberating
| and healthy for the mind to know that you can quit anytime
| without your survival being at stake.
|
| Nobody is claiming that the entire humanity will stop working
| under an UBI system.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> A lot of people, myself included, would still work_
|
| Is your current job cleaning gas station toilets at 5am?
|
| Because if not, you haven't responded to the posts you're
| replying to.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Employers would finally realize that cleaners provide an
| important and valuable service and would have to
| compensate them accordingly. Adam Smith's invisible hand
| would adjust incomes accordingly.
| pdimitar wrote:
| No. I have no problem cleaning mine however, or
| volunteering to clean up parks. Your point?
| nsonha wrote:
| Their point is the people currently working and sustains
| working such a terrible job will simply stop working, if
| they can secure the same income. The rest of the time
| maybe they learn to code (which they can fail), or not
| and they'll just fuck around.
|
| People will definite do something for sure. It's just I'm
| not sure why something has to be some sort of job or
| anything beneficial to society. There are a lot of people
| whose jobs are damaging to society actually.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Oh, absolutely, I'm not contesting anything that you've
| said.
|
| It's just that I'm fairly sure there will always be
| people willing to clean toilets for little extra money,
| especially if they're not abused and kept hostage of a
| minimum (but lifesaving for them) pay. And those
| conditions should be impossible in an UBI system.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I think you are missing the point: those who do certain
| jobs only do it to get fed and have shelter. There is no
| way to make them do it if they had the choice not to do
| it. The extra money? It wouldn't make enough a difference
| to climb the ladder, they would try their chance doing
| something else.
|
| That's assuming UBI would actually cover the basics. If
| that's half the needs to sustain their life I agree they
| would do that cleaning job, which is getting back to the
| original situation: job filled only because of lack of
| choice.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| I'm a software engineer and fortunately don't need to
| clean bathrooms to feed myself. But to your GP's point I
| would for $1 MM per bathroom.
|
| While I'm using hyperbole, what it shows is that, there
| is some non-exploitative wage for cleaning bathrooms and
| while it might be "too high" for the current business
| that need clean bathrooms, supply and demand "should"
| figure out the rest.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| The issue is markets are not unregulated, and actors are
| not all made equals. You wouldn't clean bathrooms for 5
| bucks an hour, but others will. And it isn't because they
| have more affinities with detergents and less distaste
| for scrubbing dirt.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > supply and demand "should" figure out the rest
|
| The problem is that the market is being distorted. It
| used to be that Alice would pay Bob $2000 per month to
| clean all of the bathrooms in her office. Now, Bob quit
| his job to live off of $2000 per month of UBI, and
| Alice's taxes got raised by $2000 per month to help pay
| for everyone's UBI.
| 6510 wrote:
| It used to be that Alice owned Bob, she purchased him
| fairly at auction. His duty was to clean all of the
| bathrooms in the house. Now, if Bob is released he will
| get a similar job for $2000 per month and someone like
| Alice's has to pay that $2000.
|
| Surely this isn't fair for Alice?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Abolishing slavery corrected a distortion and made the
| market more free. Unemployment bonuses and UBI are new
| distortions that make the market less free.
| pdimitar wrote:
| We're talking past each other.
|
| I'm not saying it's going to be the same group of people
| who will re-pick cleaning jobs.
|
| There's plenty of people out there who need the
| occasional physical thankless labor (myself included). As
| long as it's no more than 3-4h shift IMO there will be
| people who will do it.
|
| In my eyes the key element is having the choice of not
| doing it. UBI might give us that or it might be a half-
| arsed measure that only does things on paper. We have no
| way of knowing that right now though.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I can see that scenario yes. I like that aspect of UBI,
| provide choice to take on those laborious unfulfilling
| jobs. Looking forward to see a country implementing it,
| we could the all quit speculating about the outcomes.
| lordlic wrote:
| If the jobs really need to get done, then the working
| conditions and wages offered will improve until someone's
| incentivized to do them. Usually people's objection to this
| is "but this will raise the prices of consumer goods!" And
| the answer is yes, yes it will. Better-off people used to
| cheap goods/services will no longer be able to fuel their
| consumption on the backs of people getting paid very little
| for work under dehumanizing conditions, and will end up with
| a net loss. Lower-class workers will see their incomes
| increase much more on a proportional basis and end up with a
| net benefit.
|
| On a more meta note, this is an incredibly common and obvious
| answer to your question, and I wonder if it's even asked in
| good faith. If you've "yet to hear an UBI proponent explain"
| this to you then you really don't understand it at all.
| jbboehr wrote:
| > Lower-class workers will see their incomes increase much
| more on a proportional basis and end up with a net benefit.
|
| Except their goods are going to cost more too now. Unless
| you're going to start proposing price controls.
|
| I can't really see UBI doing anything except inflating
| itself away.
| lordlic wrote:
| Their goods will cost more, but they'll also have more
| income, both from employers paying more for labor and
| from the direct payments from UBI.
|
| And even if the benefits are entirely "inflated away" in
| aggregate (which is extremely dubious given that UBI
| produces real economic value in terms of stability),
| that's just the aggregate effect. To take an extreme
| example, if the Fed prints 1,000,000 exadollars and
| distributes them equally, then yeah it's pure inflation,
| but it also massively redistributes wealth to the point
| where everyone is practically identical. Hopefully that
| example demonstrates that the effect isn't zero even if
| it's just "inflating itself away."
|
| Finally, I object to treating this question in pure
| economic terms. We shouldn't be overly concerned with
| optimizing aggregate economic outcomes for society. Those
| at the top end can more than afford to give up some
| wealth, and those at the bottom are struggling to a
| heartbreaking degree. The utility function of holding
| wealth is not linear and if you're interested in
| increasing everyone's well-being then that's a fact you
| have to address.
| jhncls wrote:
| How will printing money lead to redistributing wealth?
| The wealthy will still have their properties, their
| stocks, their personal connections, their education, ...
| . When the water level rises, all boats will rise
| together.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Better-off people used to cheap goods/services will no
| longer be able to fuel their consumption on the backs of
| people getting paid very little for work under dehumanizing
| conditions, and will end up with a net loss. Lower-class
| workers will see their incomes increase much more on a
| proportional basis and end up with a net benefit.
|
| This is totally backwards. Better-off people have more
| disposable income and are less sensitive to price increases
| than lower-class workers are. For example, suppose your
| favorite restaurant raises its prices from $10 to $15 per
| meal. If you're a tech worker, you probably won't care and
| will continue eating there as often as ever. If you're an
| unskilled worker, there's a good chance you'll never go
| there anymore.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| If you're an unskilled worker, you probably didn't go
| there to begin with and so long as you're net ahead when
| going to Food City it seems like a net positive.
|
| I don't know if you've ever worked with people in low
| socioeconomic strata, but I've been a camp counselor with
| some kids who's socioeconomics were such that eating off
| the dollar menu at McDonalds on their birthday was a big
| deal. I don't think Chipotle being more expansive is a
| material concern so long as actual purchasing power goes
| up.
|
| I tend to think the minimum wage should be regarded as a
| moral concern - if you can't make enough to live decently
| then the line between effective indentured servitude and
| freedom is eroded, and this is dangerous in a society
| premised on the general welfare being such that each
| citizen has enough leisure time to be educated and vote.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Okay, a slight change to my example: what if instead of a
| meal at a restaurant, it was the price of broccoli at
| grocery stores that went up 50%?
| jniedrauer wrote:
| The food supply chain is already mostly automated. Food
| is not cheap because of the service economy. It's cheap
| because it only requires work from a very small percent
| of the population to feed everyone else.
| lordlic wrote:
| That just doesn't add up. Even _without_ progressive
| taxation, if you give everyone a flat increase in income
| then lower-income people come out ahead relative to where
| they were before wrt the average. It 's directly a wealth
| transfer from classes paying more taxes per capita to
| those paying less taxes per capita. There's no hand-wavy
| economic argument about how, actually, lower-income
| people would be worse off if we gave them money.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'm not saying giving money to lower-income people hurts
| them. I'm saying the price increases will hurt them more
| than the money they get will help them.
| lordlic wrote:
| In other words, you're saying that it hurts them...
| nsonha wrote:
| People's jobs aren't just sources of income, it can be their
| dignity. I don't have an answer to how to create non bullshit
| jobs since those are rarer these days, but highly repetitive
| jobs don't sound like they can give you dignity or meaning in
| your work.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| I loaded trucks earlier in life for a few years and loved
| it. Shit pay, hard work, good camaraderie, very satisfying
| end result. Would I want to do it for a career? No way. Did
| I learn a ton about the pleasures of hard work and a good
| team? Absolutely. I'd actually directly attribute that job
| and a couple others as the foundation for what it took to
| build a business of my own.
|
| So many of the comments in this thread are so absolutely
| horrifying to me. Bunch of spoiled people thinking there
| isn't a space for entry level jobs, like they've never held
| one themselves.
|
| That being said, would I have jumped on the unemployment
| train back then if it got bumped up due to a pandemic?
| Definitely. Do I think people should advocate for living
| wages? Absolutely. Twenty years ago when I had my last
| entry level job, cost of living was half what it is now,
| but pay has only gone up by 50%. There are real issues, but
| they aren't due to jobs being "demeaning", they are with
| wages not keeping up with inflation.
| lordlic wrote:
| _I 've_ held one myself, and what I think is "absolutely
| horrifying" is your moralistic justifications for worker
| exploitation as being simply bestowing "the pleasures of
| hard work" and "the foundation for what it took to build
| a business of your own."
|
| Your hustle-culture narrative is appallingly toxic and
| your entire argument amounts to learning to love being
| treated like garbage so that you don't feel bad when you
| do it to others once you're the one on top.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Definitely was not treated like garbage. Obviously not
| all entry level jobs treat people well (or even fancy
| jobs, ever read a comment thread on being a software dev
| for Amazon?), but just because jobs are low pay does not
| mean they are exploited.
|
| Seriously, do you expect six weeks of paid vacation and
| 30 bucks an hour for running a till at an ice cream shop?
| I can see maybe 18 an hour at an ice cream shop, but even
| at that price I'd be shocked if you don't lose business
| due to a cone costing 5 bucks instead of 4.
|
| Maybe this conversation would be helped by understanding
| what you define "exploited" and "treated like garbage" to
| be, and some examples of how that is happening. I feel we
| must be talking past eachother, because it's hard to
| understand how there's a valid argument for non skilled
| labor to command a high salary.
|
| Again for reference I believe that wages haven't kept up
| with inflation and that a minimum wage of around 18 or so
| an hour would be appropriate given the cost of living
| increases we've seen in the last 12 months.
| bombcar wrote:
| Simple - make UBI not available to immigrants and immigrants
| will do all the shitwork.
| profile53 wrote:
| I dislike reading this, but it's unfortunately true and
| something you already see everywhere in the world when
| immigrants can't access basic social services and are
| easier for people to exploit.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| This is basically how the Gulf States work.
| bombcar wrote:
| This could refer to the Persian Gulf or the Gulf States
| of America, sadly.
| Ekaros wrote:
| UBI would be on level where you get your room, clothes, basic
| healthcare and food. Want to get new fancy Samsung instead of
| basic model. Better go to clean bathrooms for a few days or
| weeks.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The problem is too many people are happy to stay with the
| basics forever if it means they never have to work again.
| soared wrote:
| This is the core disagreement of ubi v. Anti-ubi people.
| Also a common disagreement right now over unemployment,
| covid payments, disability payments, etc.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I was pro-UBI until last year. The labor shortage we're
| in now is what changed my position on it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I don't think either group is a monolith. As one data
| point, I am anti UBI for a completely different reason.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what's your reason?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Stated as a single reason: I don't think it works.
| imtringued wrote:
| That would imply that most people work more than they
| want to.
|
| If they are truly happy with the basics, then they would
| be happy with working 16 hours a week on two days. The
| truth is that the earning opportunity that allows this,
| forces them to live in an expensive location that then
| burdens them with another 24 hours of pointless busy
| work.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why is that a problem? As long as they're on the basics,
| and I have the same option to not work as well, it's
| harder to be jealous of them. If the 'basics' TV is 32",
| and with my _working_ I 've got a 85" TV that dwarfs
| theirs (if my self-worth is wrapped up in the size of my
| TV, that is). If I don't want an 85" TV, I can similarly
| not-work.
|
| If I work hard and then win the lottery playing $2
| tickets (so it already doesn't matter how hard I work), I
| can already not-work for the rest of my life. So the
| question isn't if this is possible, it's how many people
| can be supported at a 'basics' level with current
| technology.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Why is that a problem?
|
| Because there's a bunch of jobs important to society that
| won't get done. To be clear, it's okay that some people
| decide not to work. The problem is that currently, too
| many people are deciding not to work. If we eventually
| automate a bunch of low-skill jobs away, then I'd agree
| that it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm not a UBI proponent, nor am I a fan of exploiting people.
| There is a truth: some business cannot exist profitably if
| you have to pay market wages for labor. Reason: we've had a
| glut in workers for decades. Now the glut is over, and
| workers are scarce. We're finding out the value of an
| employee isn't some index number like minimum wage, or "local
| prevailing wage over the last 18 months", it is what it costs
| to hire someone today. That number goes up and up. Bottom
| line: exploitative employers are going to have to change how
| they do business.
| nsonha wrote:
| Instead of UBI the gov can subsidise salary for those
| businesses.
| ben_w wrote:
| Subsidised salaries do not create new workers, they
| (create an incentive to) move workers from non-subsidised
| jobs. It is effectively the non-subsidised workers whose
| taxes pay for the subsidies.
|
| That kind of thing is best kept for where markets don't
| accurately price externalities, not "$foo businesses
| can't find staff at a price they are happy with".
| rdtwo wrote:
| Nursing and teaching would be a good place for subsidized
| wages
| imtringued wrote:
| It's called negative income tax.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I feel like right now, society has just over-committed to
| wasteful use of resources.
|
| There is a gas station attendant working at 4am because
| they only cost $8/h and the company makes enough revenue
| during that hour that that is worth it.
|
| If they need to start paying $15h/h and have to close from
| 1am to 5am, some people might not be able to get cigarettes
| from the gas station, or buy gas without a credit card.
|
| Or maybe, out of 5 gas stations, 1 will remain open and now
| have 5 times as many customers during those hours, so it's
| worth it to stay open again.
|
| But right now, 4 out of 5 gas stations are open _simply
| because they can be_ , no matter how useful they are.
| axiolite wrote:
| > some people might not be able to get cigarettes from
| the gas station, or buy gas without a credit card.
|
| Switching to credit card kiosks won't help. It's usually
| illegal to have a gas station operating without an
| attendant. Something to do with that whole danger of
| blowing up and killing lots of people thing.
|
| > maybe, out of 5 gas stations, 1 will remain open and
| now have 5 times as many customers
|
| Except it costs some money to open and close the store,
| costs some money to have alarms & surveillance while the
| store is closed, costs the store in damages, and more
| than that, costs customers who will prefer the store that
| will always be open, even during normal hours. It may not
| all be as wasteful as you think.
|
| And what happens when the store that can justify staying
| open happens to be the one that doesn't provide diesel,
| propane, milk, or similar? It can be very detrimental to
| the city.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That worker's hourly wage is a small fraction of the cost
| of just running the gas station at that hour of day. It
| costs money to run the lights, the refrigerators, and the
| gas pumps. The owner of the property doesn't charge less
| rent when the gas station is closed. Property taxes are
| still due.
|
| If the labor cost of the graveyard shift doubled the
| total cost of operations for that shift would increase
| only marginally. That gas station is only going to shut
| down for that shift if there's a significant change in
| costs. A small increase is completely covered by a single
| late night or early morning fill-up.
| marcusverus wrote:
| This is a bizarre argument. The $15/h wage in your
| example put four people out of work (How many end up on
| the dole? How much new taxation will be required to
| support them?) and potentially squashed other economic
| activity by closing the shops.
|
| You're arguing for the destruction of economic activity
| in the name of reducing the 'wasteful use of resources',
| which is just silly. You're just making it harder for
| these folks to support themselves, while burdening others
| with the need to support them.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I dunno, sounds like employing one person that is almost
| 4 times as productive for less than half a cost would be
| overall good move.
|
| Specially when the 4 couldn't properly pay their living
| costs. Issue really is that we can't find different work
| for the 3 anymore...
| structural wrote:
| It's not at all a bizarre argument in a labor shortage.
| Exactly what you should expect to happen is that low-
| value economic activity gets replaced by higher-value
| economic activity!
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Good point. it doesn't imply though that the 4am worker
| would be left doing nothing. He could well be providing
| another service less wastful, day time, for 8 dollars per
| hour or more, or less. Unless or course those who want to
| buy stuff at the gas station at any hour of the night
| would not trade that convenience for any other service
| they aren't getting yet.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > If they need to start paying $15h/h and have to close
| from 1am to 5am, some people might not be able to get
| cigarettes from the gas station, or buy gas without a
| credit card.
|
| You mean they might not be able to buy gas at all. Gas
| stations will shut off their pumps when they close, so
| you can't even do self-service credit-card purchases.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Most unskilled labor was mechanized 100 years ago.
| dagw wrote:
| Immigration. Make UBI only for citizens (and possibly
| permanent residents), and you'll have a large workforce who
| don't qualify for UBI and will have to take those jobs. Add a
| possible path to citizenship and you'll have people lining up
| at border to do all those jobs.
|
| For the record, not a UBI proponent, nor do I think this is a
| good solution. It is however most likely solution, and how
| countries like Qatar have solved the problem.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| That sounds like the worst of both worlds! A codified two
| tier underclass. With one part in an unemplyed malaise,
| angry at having no purpose, and blind to the benefits they
| recieve. The other part an exploited class with no rights
| or benefits.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It would only work, if the penalty for employing the
| illegal-to-hire were severe enough.
|
| As others have pointed out already, this is already true
| today: We use undocumented-workers, recent immigrants who
| don't know better, and prison labor.
|
| Recently, prison labor use has been on the rise.
| dagw wrote:
| _Recently, prison labor use has been on the rise._
|
| Maybe losing UBI for N months could be a new standard
| punishment for certain crimes or a condition for parole.
| We'll let you out of prison early for good behavior, but
| no UBI for 2 years, forcing you to take those jobs no one
| else wants.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| That's interesting. For anyone with enough resources,
| though, it would be a slap on the wrist.
|
| For example, I feel that certain high financial crimes
| are better served by percentage of net-worth, rather than
| exact dollar-figures.
|
| Otherwise it's a fixed cost of doing business.
| kube-system wrote:
| That situation you describe is already the status quo
| today in the US, just replace "UBI" with "SSN".
| rmah wrote:
| Just as an FYI, all permanent residents in the USA can
| get a SSN. You don't need to be a citizen.
| kube-system wrote:
| I understand, however there is a significant population
| of people without one.
| Aunche wrote:
| This is a great way to make your citizens entitled and
| lazy.
| varelse wrote:
| This presents a fantastic opportunity for these gigs to explore
| market efficiency, much to the chagrin of the people who wish
| to keep paying them subpoverty wages. If our overlords can't
| protect us from a deadly pandemic then what good are they?
| anovikov wrote:
| But people will return to work once free stuff is over. And it
| is over now. In a month or so there will be a glut of workers
| again once people realise that their rent is due and free money
| is no longer hitting their accounts.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| > Most jobs can and will fire you for no good reason and most
| jobs provide little to no protection. Most jobs will fire you
| for being late a couple of times.
|
| Well at least in the US we have unemployment benefits when
| you're fired without cause. But yes, being late a few times is
| cause to be fired, and rightly so.
|
| I think perhaps the real issue is that people's perceptions
| have changed, and I don't think for the better.
|
| If you're an unskilled laborer, then for the moment, your value
| to society is doing unskilled jobs.
|
| Now a whole host of reasons cause people to be unskilled. From
| their current socioeconomic status, to mental health reasons
| etc, to just honest poor life choices, like not valuing
| education.
|
| But there's no free lunch in society, and ultimately that's the
| current disconnect. Those that can only get unskilled jobs have
| now gotten benefits extended and are enjoying not doing
| "demeaning jobs". And yet how do they enjoy that? Without
| society safety nets people would then need to do the demeaning
| jobs of supplying their own food and water. Hunting or foraging
| for food in 100 degree weather for 0 dollars, dealing with
| injuries on their own.
|
| So these same people complaining are also willing to take for
| granted the strawberries and meat at the grocery that another
| person worked hard for to provide. They take for granted the
| shelter that was built and maintained over there head, but they
| don't see that they should provide equal work back to society
| for that enjoyment.
|
| Now there's obviously a lot of real issues with labor fairness,
| minimum wage needs to be increased across the board, companies
| need to be held accountable for pushing a gig economy that
| strips employees of benefits etc. But the progress in labor
| fairness in the US, 8 hour work days, minimum wage, workplace
| safety, has been fought for in literal blood.
|
| Now we have a generation of people who take all that for
| granted, and that's a problem.
|
| Edit: I also add this. These same people who say others haven't
| worked such jobs, have not themselves lived in a society that
| is truly difficult. Many people have lived through or had
| family live through conditions that would make these people
| cry. Ask a migrant. Ask people who have had to flee countries
| and could barely subsist.
|
| Those people are the ones thankful to have a "demeaning job"
| because in reality, difficult does not mean demeaning.
|
| It's entitlement, very pure and simple. And it won't serve this
| generation well.
|
| Prove me wrong with reasoned responses and discussion rather
| than downvotes.
| danShumway wrote:
| So, two things:
|
| > It's entitlement, very pure and simple.
|
| There's no such thing as entitlement in a Capitalist market,
| it doesn't exist.
|
| Value is what the market is willing to pay. If you can't hire
| people for minimum wage, and you can't get enough workers,
| then (in Capitalist terms) by definition you are undervaluing
| workers.
|
| Of course standards rise over time; workers both have more
| expectations of what they'll be offered as the market becomes
| more efficient, and social structures outside of the market
| make it easier for them to be more demanding. But that's the
| same thing that's true of everything on the market, you can't
| claim that people are "entitled" because Open Source software
| makes it hard to charge $1000 for your web framework. If the
| government builds a free park, you can't claim that consumers
| are entitled because they stop paying you to go into your
| private park. Capitalism always exists inside the broader
| context of social/public resources, and in that context you
| adjust to the prices that the market demands or you go
| someplace else.
|
| Part of the confusion here is that the word "value" means
| different things inside of a market than it does as a non-
| market, abstract term. It is valid to talk about the non-
| market, "objective" value that workers provide to a company,
| but once we start talking about prices inside the market, we
| have to keep in mind that the market definition of value is
| different. When we're specifically talking about Capitalism,
| value is what the market is willing to pay, and the market is
| not entitled just because it demands more than employers are
| currently willing (or even able) to offer.
|
| It bothers me a lot when people apply one-directional
| morality to Capitalist systems. There's always this
| underlying idea that society needs to be grateful for
| businesses for giving us stuff, but that businesses don't own
| anyone anything. The reality is that after a free
| transaction, nobody should be feeling grateful to anyone.
| Workers do not owe anybody anything, it's up to businesses to
| build attractive enough jobs to get them to sign on, and
| workers do not owe businesses any gratitude or loyalty beyond
| what the contract states.
|
| If that's disturbing to business owners, I don't know to say;
| that how Capitalism works, you form contracts. You bought
| into this system. And certainly, the idea that businesses are
| allowed to optimize purely for profitability and should be
| expected to be amoral machines, but that workers still have
| some moral obligation to know their place and be grateful for
| what they've been given -- that idea is antithetical to what
| Capitalism is.
|
| ----
|
| Secondly:
|
| > But there's no free lunch in society, and ultimately that's
| the current disconnect.
|
| Multiple people have different views of this, I'm not going
| to act like mine is universal. But I personally believe that
| an involuntary market can not truly be called a free market.
| Coercing someone into buying something doesn't result in a
| completely free, willing contract.
|
| So when I look at the labor market and I see people
| complaining that workers have unemployment benefits, what I
| hear them saying is that they don't think a free market for
| jobs will actually work, and what I hear them saying that
| they think people have to be compelled into working under the
| threat of poverty and violence in order to keep the current
| system from collapsing.
|
| And that's a view someone can have, that's fine; but then
| it's really hard to turn around and say that the market is
| necessarily compensating people fairly, because if the only
| reason someone is taking a contract is because they're scared
| of what will happen if they don't, then that contract is
| being made under duress.
|
| My take on the current labor market is that if workers don't
| feel like they have the ability to quit jobs, and people are
| calling them entitled just for quitting abusive jobs, and if
| employers feel that slashing public safety nets is the only
| way that they'll get workers to take those jobs... I don't
| know, to me that doesn't sound much like a free market, it
| sounds like a coercive structure. And maybe it's OK to have a
| coercive structure, maybe that's just how the labor market
| has to work. But if that's the case we should at least
| acknowledge that it's coercive and treat it that way.
|
| ----
|
| > Prove me wrong with reasoned responses and discussion
| rather than downvotes.
|
| The thing is, in a certain sense you're not wrong. Moving
| people's perception of what is "normal" will make them accept
| more abusive conditions without complaint, this is a commonly
| understood fact.
|
| But it doesn't add a lot to the conversation, because it
| doesn't tell us whether it's _reasonable_ to try and lower
| people 's standards. It also feels vaguely anti-Capitalist in
| the sense that whole point of Capitalism is that over time
| people's standards should _rise_ and that specialization
| should increase. Ideally, markets become more competitive
| over time, not less.
|
| So you're right in the sense that, yeah, if we slashed
| minimum wage and social safety nets, people would have to
| take worse jobs with lower pay. If we brought back debtors
| prison and workhouses, that would probably lower their
| standards even more.
|
| But if you're advocating that a free market can't exist
| unless people's baseline experience is so crappy that bad
| jobs seem good in comparison, then you shouldn't be surprised
| your view is unpopular.
|
| ----
|
| Also, generally I don't want to get into the "censorship"
| stuff, but since we're talking about free markets, downvotes
| on HN aren't censorship, they're the free market of
| commenters/readers in the comment section signaling they
| disagree with something or that they don't think it adds
| value to the conversation. The marketplace of ideas does not
| have an obligation to accommodate or prop up every idea. It's
| fine for the market to just say someone's wrong without
| providing additional context, in the same way that it's fine
| for someone to leave a one star review on a product without
| providing a justification why they did so.
| [deleted]
| crazydoggers wrote:
| But the current labor issues didn't start until after the
| pandemic, and until the massive government spending to ease
| the issue of business closures and people losing jobs.
|
| It's not a fair market when people are avoiding those jobs
| because they can get paid for not working.
|
| Once the government spending stops, things will change
| quickly.
|
| And in fact we actually have had the opposite, people
| willing to give up benefits for worse jobs, gig economy
| jobs that provide no stability nor benefits. The reason is
| because there's not actually a labor shortage at all.
|
| So you might say that the pandemic reset people's value
| assessment on the job market. That may be a good thing. But
| until government payouts stop we won't see the actual
| market in a clear light.
|
| For instance here our dog daycare can't hire enough
| employees. What's been happening is people apply, in order
| to show applications, and then don't follow up because
| they're still able to receive extended unemployment
| benefits. So at the moment there is gaming of the system.
|
| And you are correct. Downvotes are not censorship. But they
| are a toxic method to communicate outrage and add little to
| positive discussions. As has been outlined both from other
| articles here, as well as recent coverage from the Wall
| Street Journal, social media companies are well aware these
| tactics result in increased outrage and mental health
| issues, but they choose to ignore them because it adds to
| their bottoms lines.
|
| > what I hear them saying that they think people have to be
| compelled into working under the threat of poverty and
| violence in order to keep the current system from
| collapsing.
|
| But this is ultimately the system of nature. If you don't
| provide for yourself you starve. If you don't provide for
| your shelter you freeze. If you don't provide for your
| safety you are a victim of violence. Society has
| distributed those tasks, yes, and we can debate that
| distribution. But you can't claim that you just shouldn't
| have to work to prevent those things. If you assume you
| have free access to those things, they are being supplied
| by someone else. So why should they be free for that person
| and not the provider?
|
| Could we supply those things free for everyone? I and
| everyone else would love that utopia. But it's not where
| the world is at the moment, even if it's a worthy goal. We
| need to keep moving forward as a species. Parasitic
| behavior is a real issue in any area of life, and in nature
| things balance out via Nash equilibrium.
| maxsilver wrote:
| >It's not a fair market when people are avoiding those
| jobs because they can get paid for not working
|
| This is not a real thing, this is a fake assertion you
| have invented in your mind. No one is getting paid to
| "not work". And no, workers who have lost their job,
| collecting their unemployment they earned during past
| labour, never counts as getting "paid to not work".
|
| >Once the government spending stops, things will change
| quickly.
|
| In most places, the _paltry_ , _tiny_ financial aid for
| workers ended months ago, and nothing has changed at all.
|
| > For instance here our dog daycare can't hire enough
| employees
|
| They should consider paying wages. If they paid money for
| labor, they'd get labour. It's really that simple.
|
| What most "employers" actually want is nearly slave
| labour, _volunteers_ , like they had pre pandemic.
| Employers swear up and down that no one wants to work,
| and then you find out they pay just $15/hr or some other
| insultingly low slave-like wage (a wage so low that no
| human could feasibly live alone off of it, much less
| advance in any way in their life).
|
| A single adult with no debt, and no dependents, in
| Michigan, "making" $15/hr doesn't even take home enough
| money to rent a modest 1-bed apartment in the city, much
| less eat or do anything else with their life. At this
| wage, the adult is _literally poorer_ every day they show
| up to work, they are _literally donating_ their labour to
| a for-profit company. And most people are not "perfect
| ideal adults", they have children, or student loans, or
| elderly parents, or a tricky medical condition, or any
| other totally-normal totally-reasonable life complication
| that they need money to help cover, so they can show up
| to do good work for you.
|
| I don't know your local market, but I guarantee if your
| dog daycare was in Michigan and it started paying $25/hr,
| they'd fill those positions in just a few days. Their
| employee "shortage" is a fake problem they have
| _intentionally_ created for themselves, not some sort of
| indicator of people 's willingness to work.
|
| ---
|
| Everyone wants to work right now. No one is hiring at a
| liveable wage. Most reasonable people are _not_ going to
| get out of bed and go to work all day, just to end the
| day _poorer_ then they started. That would be insane. But
| that insanity is what every company seems to demand of
| labour these days.
| danShumway wrote:
| > It's not a fair market
|
| Well, "fair" is whatever the market is willing to pay and
| whatever the environment is that it finds itself inside.
| And the market doesn't get to shape the entire world
| outside of the market to suite it.
|
| The market exists _inside_ of a society. Sometimes
| society meets needs that the market would otherwise
| provide. In those cases it 's just kind of tough luck, if
| you don't like it go find another market. Is it "fair"
| that Open Source has made certain segments of software
| impossible to monetize using traditional means? I don't
| know, but it's reality. Is it "fair" that we as a society
| are unwilling to let people starve, and that gives them a
| sense of confidence about selecting jobs? Well, it's
| reality.
|
| People voluntarily decide to form communities and
| societies. When businesses enter those communities and
| enter those societies, they consent to play by the
| democratic rules of those societies. If society decides
| that it wants a minimum wage or unemployment benefits,
| businesses are free to move elsewhere. In fact, they're
| much _more_ free to move elsewhere than their workers.
| The average American citizen can not afford to move to
| another country, that takes money.
|
| So I disagree quite strongly with the notion that giving
| those people who don't have the funds or ability to move
| more agency over whether they want to work is some kind
| of restriction of the market. Amazon _could_ pull out of
| the US if it really needed to, Bezos is living here by
| choice. Most of its workers couldn 't, most of its
| workers don't have the ability to consent to the system
| they find themselves in.
|
| > So why should the be free for that person and not the
| provider?
|
| Because businesses consented to living in a democratic
| society with rules, including social safety nets and
| standards based on whether the society at large is
| willing to let its citizens live in poverty.
|
| In a lot of ways, the ultimate system of nature for
| humans is collectivism and government, there has never
| been a human society that hasn't eventually ended up
| setting up some system of standards for how far we're
| willing to let people fall and how much poverty we're
| willing to subject people to, and that collectivism and
| shared standard of living is no small part of why we are
| the dominant creatures on the planet. I disagree that it
| is "natural" for people who are out of work to starve to
| death, I think it's very natural for human beings to set
| up formal structures that prevent that from happening,
| it's one of the really big things that we do as a
| species.
|
| ----
|
| I also want to point out that it's very selective to
| argue that "fairness" in nature means people having no
| leverage over whether or not to participate in a market.
| Even more than that, it's also very... questionable... to
| correlate "natural" with "fair." Even in a situation
| where a business didn't the create the problem, even in a
| situation where a business isn't holding a gun to your
| head and forcing you to work with threats of violence, a
| coerced contract is still coerced, and appealing to the
| natural state of that coercion doesn't really make it
| better.
|
| If I find you bleeding to death and sell you a single
| bandage for a million dollars, you can argue that it's
| not my fault you're in that position. But that doesn't
| mean the sale isn't happening under duress, it doesn't
| mean it's suddenly a free transaction. Duress and
| coercion does not need to be actively created by the
| party that benefits from it.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Well I think we're getting down into philosophical
| political divides here which have been argued for ages,
| and probably can't be solved on an Internet forum.
|
| I'll just say this about the video that started all of
| this. At the moment there is a clear perception issue
| from some in the society on job fairness. Everyone is
| entitled to their perceptions, but all I'm claiming is
| that it is inaccurate, and those perceptions are doing
| them a disservice. I honestly believe it's clouded by
| lack of insight.
|
| I think if you met some of the people I have who can tell
| you six ways to Sunday how to game the welfare system,
| collect unemployment, sell drugs on the side etc, you
| might feel different about that "free market" ideal which
| doesn't really exists. Instead look to nature for the
| truth where you have exploiters in most species around
| every corner. So we must always be vigilant.
|
| > the ultimate system of nature for humans is
| collectivism and government
|
| The ultimate system of nature is an evolutionarily stable
| strategy that involves things like pacifists, parasites,
| violent struggle, etc. Society attempt to regulate those
| things and protect from the worst of it, but it can't
| make it disappear by itself.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_str
| ate...
|
| The United States wasn't founded with the idea of keeping
| people out of poverty. Indeed it's primary concern was
| the protection of private property from the government
| taking that property without representation. See John
| Lockes philosophy equating theft to war etc, etc.
|
| Welfare is required to lift parts of the society out of
| destitution who really truly need it. It's not meant to
| provide for perfectly capable people to receive free
| passes from the rest of society. And that's part of the
| problem at the moment causing an illusion in the job
| market.
|
| As to your point if someone tried to sell me a bandage
| for a million dollars while I was under duress, I and the
| rest of the community would remember that person and
| treat them accordingly. We live in a society, and there
| are consequences to actions. Both exploitation and
| parasitism. Those consequences don't always hold people
| accountable like they should, and that's where we get
| into trouble.
| danShumway wrote:
| > you might feel different about that "free market" ideal
| which doesn't really exists. Instead look to nature for
| the truth where you have exploiters in most species
| around every corner. So we must always be vigilant.
|
| It's fine to have that opinion, I just don't think people
| should pretend that it's in alignment with the ideals of
| a completely free market society. Where I lose patience
| is if someone doesn't have the guts to say that coercion
| is a major part of our current economy.
|
| If the belief is that we can't entice people to work
| unless they're scared of poverty, that's just a very
| different argument than saying that the current systems
| of coercion are actually voluntary and free.
|
| > I and the rest of the community would remember that
| person and treat them accordingly. We live in a society,
| and there are consequences to actions. Both exploitation
| and parasitism.
|
| Sure, just as long as we both understand that some of
| those consequences are also sometimes expressed through
| people voting for policy changes.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I guess I don't see the coercion. To me I come from a
| background where grandparents either plowed the fields or
| died. Where famines caused starvation of relatives and
| friends. So coercion doesn't make sense to me. To me it's
| nature, and I do my part for society how I can.
|
| One of my favorite quotes is from Star Trek:
|
| "As with all living things, each according to his gift".
|
| It's a play on the Marxist adage "From each according to
| his ability, to each according to his needs".
|
| It leaves off the second part since what an individuals
| needs are and what should be supplied to everyone is a
| quagmire of a problem, given that humans can be selfish
| and unfair (hence why socialist countries tend to
| corruption just like the rest). And I fully agree that
| voting for policy change is a must. So is demonstrating,
| organizing, etc etc. I just think goals should be clear,
| and a willingness to understand ones own role, rather
| than only point fingers.
|
| BTW, I've upvoted your comments even if I disagree with
| them, since they're insightful and constructive. More of
| this is needed, and less moral outrage, so thanks.
| danShumway wrote:
| I guess it comes down to whether or not you believe that
| coercive force is only real if it's consciously applied
| by another person. But I don't think that distinction
| makes sense or that it really matters to most people.
| Freedom is closely tied to agency. If you don't have
| agency to decide whether or not you're going to work,
| then that's what involuntarily labor _is_ , you're
| working because you have no choice.
|
| In your grandparent's situation, they worked the fields
| because nature took away their freedom, they didn't have
| a choice about whether or not to work the fields (unless
| you count dying as a choice, but most people don't).
| There may not have ever been a person coming and holding
| a gun to their head and telling them to plow the field,
| but at the end of the day their situation was the same.
|
| To someone being forced into an abusive job, it doesn't
| really matter to them why they're being forced into that
| job. If someone is blackmailing them or threatening them
| to do that job, then they don't really have a free
| choice. If a government has socialized the entire economy
| and is forcing them to work that job under threats of
| imprisonment, that's not really a free choice either. And
| in the same way, if the economy gives them no mechanism
| to move away or improve their life, and if they have no
| choice except to keep working or to starve, then they are
| still being forced to work. Their choice is still exactly
| the same as it would be under any other coercive system.
|
| Natural systems can be coercive, there doesn't need to be
| a human deliberately forcing the system to work that way.
| It's about whether or not someone can realistically make
| a choice.
|
| To me, it is very strange to describe a situation where a
| worker has no real leverage to choose to do something
| different, and to describe that person as being free --
| regardless of the scenario that has put them into that
| position. This gets back to a previous criticism, which
| is that "nature" is very often neither fair nor free. If
| there is any major praise of collectivism, it's that
| humans decided to build systems that were more fair and
| more free than nature would be on its own.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > If the belief is that we can't entice people to work
| unless they're scared of poverty
|
| Hasn't the last year or so taught us that, unfortunately,
| that is the only motivator to work that's actually
| effective enough?
| danShumway wrote:
| Which is, again, a belief you can have. Just don't call
| it a free market, call it what it is: a forced/captive
| market.
|
| If you really believe that poverty is the only motivator,
| then fine. Just own it, don't argue that motivating
| people through threats of poverty somehow makes them more
| free.
| josephcsible wrote:
| How does that make it not a free market? You're not
| getting tossed in a gulag for refusing to work.
| danShumway wrote:
| Your belief is that if people aren't scared of poverty
| they won't work. Literally you are saying if they're not
| forced to work by the threat of poverty, they won't. And
| of course being forced to work isn't voluntary.
|
| Now we don't have debtors prison, so nobody is actively
| going to take them and throw them into a gulag, but I
| already talked quite a bit about why that distinction
| doesn't matter above, so not sure what to say other than
| go back and reread previous comments if it's something
| you're confused about.
| [deleted]
| mindslight wrote:
| You need to direct the moralizing where it belongs - this
| decoupling of value from labor has been happening for
| decades, led by the managerial class and the economic
| priesthood.
|
| I'd much rather develop software than scrub toilets, and yet
| the former is highly compensated while the latter is not.
| This is highly convenient if you're a software developer or
| (other) vectoralist, but is ultimately unsustainable for
| having a distributed economy. People deciding to not show up
| to do physical tasks for peanuts (while being told to ignore
| the pandemic) is the correction from the decades long trend
| of their work being devalued.
|
| Although really I think this whole "labor shortage" thing is
| overblown. What really happened is a reorganization. Most
| jobs of last resort laid everyone off, and those people found
| new uses for their time - taking care of their own children,
| working for better-paying delivery companies, gig work where
| they didn't have to come into contact with screaming randos,
| etc. Now the jobs of last resort feel entitled to magically
| conjure "their" workers back, and are finding that they've
| gone elsewhere.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Im not the one moralizing. In fact I'm doing the opposite.
|
| Scrubbing toilets pays less because fewer people can write
| software. Any human being can scrub a toilet. That's what
| unskilled labor means.
|
| I have done menial jobs and taken pride in every one. The
| vast majority of your "managerial class" have done the
| same.
|
| The difference is they never stopped applying themselves
| and worked tooth and nail to get where they are.
|
| The idea of some huge protected aristocracy in the US is a
| convenient myth. It makes up less than 1%. The rest of us
| work and worked our asses off.
|
| So please stop covering laziness with moralizing. The rest
| of us are working and tired of the entitlement from the
| parasites.
|
| Edit:
|
| One only needs to look at your words. "Puppet masters",
| "preisthood", "debt based economy", etc.
|
| None of it jibes with reality. I suggest perhaps examining
| what psychologist would call your external locus of
| control, it won't serve you well in life. Taking a class in
| economics and reading up on labor history on the US would
| also be helpful.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _So please stop covering laziness with moralizing. The
| rest of us are working and tired of the entitlement from
| the parasites._
|
| What is your second sentence here, apart from pure
| moralizing?
|
| > _Scrubbing toilets pays less because fewer people can
| write software_
|
| Sure, this is the obvious dogma so I didn't repeat it.
| But it only applies within certain assumptions - namely
| that unskilled labor can be arbitraged across borders,
| and that the people who aren't capable of writing
| software still need to bid against those who can to make
| a comparable amount of income to pay as rent. As I said,
| the contextless narrative is quite _convenient_ if you
| 're not subject to the pointy end of the market
| mechanism. But when we're critiquing the system, we need
| to examine its assumptions.
|
| > _The idea of some huge protected aristocracy in the US
| is a convenient myth_
|
| I never said there was one. By my analysis, our
| oppression is quite democratic - hence the lower-middle
| class goal of buying into real estate / stonks / etc and
| thereby becoming beneficiaries of the problem. While this
| is a common path to success under the current system,
| that doesn't mean that it is possible for everyone to
| actually take it.
|
| In a debt-based economy, economic positioning is
| intrinsically zero-sum - by succeeding in moving up the
| ladder, others must be stuck below you. And the economic
| priesthood has driven us more and more into debt because
| it puts the economy under centralized direction. I'd
| wager this is the true source of your discontent, yet
| rather than looking at the puppetmasters pulling the
| abstract strings that define the large-scale trends,
| you're doing the easy thing of blaming those closest to
| your position.
|
| Since we're responding in edits:
|
| > _One only needs to look at your words. "Puppet
| masters", "preisthood", "debt based economy", etc. None
| of it jibes with reality._
|
| Puppet masters is hyperbolic, but priesthood is simply a
| call back to an older term for the same role - setting
| and promulgating societal policy while pretending to be
| neutral. And "debt based economy" is straightforwardly
| factual - add up your monthly budget and look at the
| proportion that goes to your actual survival (food,
| utilities, maintenance, depreciation), versus how much
| goes to servicing debt streams (mortgage and property
| taxes). We're a debt based society - the poorest members
| don't have small positive balances but rather negative
| balances, and are thus forced to work to pay their
| economic rent "or else".
|
| > _I suggest perhaps examining what psychologist would
| call your external locus of control, it won't serve you
| well in life_
|
| When describing how the system works, what else would I
| use besides an external locus of control? I obviously
| don't control the economy!
|
| I'm on the financial treadmill the same as everyone else,
| and take my own actions based on what I can change
| (internal locus of control). But touting those actions as
| if they're a solution rather than mere mitigations is
| falling into the trap of assuming the system can only be
| this way.
|
| Economically, I'm in the libertarian-Austrian camp rather
| than progressive-MMT/UBI. It's my experience that when
| people say to "study economics", they really just mean
| stop questioning the assumptions of the Keynesian/post-
| Bretton-Woods regime of overwhelming monetary inflation.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Thanks for a well reasoned response. I too am always
| blown away at the comments here when it comes to labor. I
| think the reality is that most people making these
| comments didn't have to build themselves up to where they
| are, and they have sympathy toward people having to do
| "demeaning work", having never done it themselves. I've
| scrubbed bathrooms, loaded trucks, pumped gas, and served
| people and enjoyed every single one despite them being
| low skill, entry level jobs.
|
| Did I expect a job that anyone else could do to compete
| for me with a high salary? No way. I wanted a higher
| salary so I hustled on the side and got a degree in a
| field that paid more. Some of the people I worked with
| did the same, some didn't. That's the way it goes. I
| think the people complaining mostly feel guilty about
| straight to college and a high paying job tract. Think of
| it as the jobs equivalent of white guilt.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I definitely think it's interesting that those arguing
| these things tend not to be the ones who have worked
| those jobs, instead avoiding them. I think that tells you
| something right there.
|
| It feels like an era of moral outrage outweighing common
| sense. And I think social media bears a very large
| responsibility. Facebook, Twitter etc is creating a
| generation involved in spending too much time online
| becoming angry and not enough time actually going outside
| and changing the world.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If you think that society can function without those jobs
| being done, then there actually isn't an issue and there
| isn't a shortage, there's actually a surplus. If you don't
| think that society can function with a pure workforce of
| managers, bureaucrats, and specialists, then you believe that
| no matter the individual merits and judgments you make of
| people's inherent worth, a large proportion of them will
| actually have to build, move, or operate physical objects.
|
| These are the people who you're saying are asking for a free
| lunch. The people who do things, rather than comment on them.
| If everyone reached the baseline of worthiness that you've
| set up, you'd just have more educated strawberry pickers (or
| import more slaves.)
|
| > But the progress in labor fairness in the US, 8 hour work
| days, minimum wage, workplace safety, has been fought for in
| literal blood.
|
| The blood of the people you're talking shit about. Not your
| blood, not your classes' blood. The you 100 years ago was
| making this same fucking speech about how spoiled workers
| were for wanting any of that, and that in your day you had
| _actual slaves_ who understood the value of work.
|
| This is really a slimy take. If we paid people based on their
| effort rather than our leverage, there wouldn't be a problem.
| Free lunches are being eaten, but not by the people who quit
| washing dishes and waiting tables i.e. _making and serving
| your lunch._
| jerry1979 wrote:
| > But the progress in labor fairness in the US, 8 hour work
| days, minimum wage, workplace safety, has been fought for in
| literal blood.
|
| What changes would you make to improve the labor system
| today? Or, have people in the past already made all the good
| changes?
|
| > But there's no free lunch in society
|
| Out of curiosity, what about things like wikipedia or other
| copy-left works?
| crazydoggers wrote:
| I think the gig economy is a serious issue in need of
| federal regulation. Companies are managing to convince
| people that they should trade benefits that have been won
| through labor disputes over the decades for "flexibility"
| whatever that means. When you break the veil you see they
| are just skirting labor laws.
|
| Another issue is that unions have lost their strength and
| have been vilified. Although they are not perfect, they are
| a critical part of forcing companies to maintain positive
| work standards. This is where people need to stop
| complaining about their plight, and stand up for
| themselves. The laws and systems are in place to support
| it. People just need to motivation. We've just seen this
| occur when workers voted against unionization at Amazon
| against their own interests (also demonstrates that claims
| of massive worker unhappiness just don't ring true)
|
| As for copy-left, wikipedia etc. Those were donations made
| from people's hard work, so again nothing comes free. Such
| donations should be treasured as such, not taken for
| granted. I and many others donate significant sums to
| Wikipedia and the like to promote their existence.
| [deleted]
| mdorazio wrote:
| Personally, I don't buy this argument. Economics doesn't care
| about your feelings or your dreams. If you need money to pay your
| bills and the only way to get that money is to work a shit job,
| you will work the shit job.
|
| Three things changed during the pandemic: 1) the government paid
| a huge amount of money to people to not work for a long time, 2)
| people got used to living much more cheaply than they had before
| due everything being closed, and 3) the immigration and trade
| market shifted significantly. So suddenly you have a large number
| of people who, at least temporarily, have options that they
| didn't have before and who probably aren't competing with the
| same size labor pool that they did before.
|
| The whole narrative that Americans are suddenly waking up and
| realizing that they should all be entrepreneurs and follow their
| dreams is at best a feel-good second-order effect. It's a nice
| story, but the only reason new business starts are so high right
| now is because there were so many business closures last year.
| I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I just haven't seen the
| data or economic theory to support this video's position.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Agree and would emphasize these options are _temporary_. The
| sustainability of this labor program is dubious. People are
| going to wake up to a very different labor market when these
| benefits end.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, economies are severely path-dependent. It will be
| different from today, but it will also be different from the
| pre-pandemic.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What do you mean?
|
| The US labor force is on track to be constrained for decades.
| If we don't massively expand immigration or figure out how to
| have more babies, that's where we will be.
| ctrlp wrote:
| I mean there is this UBI experiment is going to have a
| crushing impact on small business who can't afford to
| compete against the government and their preferred business
| partners for labor. This will produce a cascade of
| unemployed competing with each other for crappy jobs in the
| service sector. Meanwhile, the border is wide open and
| people are most definitely coming. Are they high-skill
| laborers? Hardly. They'll also compete for the low-skill
| agriculture, construction, and service sector jobs. The
| net-net will be that the Precariat will be driven to penury
| and servitude. Don't worry, they'll be masked so the rest
| of us don't have to see the anguish on their faces.
| droidist2 wrote:
| At the same time we're automating away millions of jobs, so
| maybe we shouldn't be so quick to take measures to flood
| the labor market.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| the benefits have already ended. Places still can't get
| workers.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Give it time.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| We can also ask people why. When we do, we consistently hear a
| few things:
|
| 1. Reliable childcare still isn't a thing.
|
| 2. A lot of restaurant and retail workers had a full year to
| find something else to do. Many did. And why go back to working
| for tips if you found a junior marketing position that you can
| do remotely home and has a career path?
|
| 3. They moved! If you're a service job in an expensive city,
| many of the people you hoped to rehire relocated last summer
| and aren't necessarily itching to come back.
|
| And that doesn't even cover the fact that a lot of the managers
| complaining about this really don't appear to be trying very
| hard. They don't want to pay market rate, or train anyone on
| the job, or offer a modicum of respect. Instead, they just call
| their would-be candidates lazy.
|
| Calling people lazy is a great way to convince them to avoid
| you at all cost.
| subpixel wrote:
| I've been quite surprised by the attitude of local employers
| who are utterly contemptuous of workers not knocking down the
| door for what are essentially dead end jobs.
|
| I've even remarked on occasion that hey, if you had a lousy
| job working for someone who took you for granted and
| something happened that changed that you might not rush back
| either.
| ianhawes wrote:
| Your first point (childcare) is probably one of the more
| understated points. When families have 2 children under 5,
| the cost of childcare for both children encroaches the income
| of one parent alone. Many find it more convenient just to
| stay home with their kids for 3-4 years than work just so
| their kids have childcare.
|
| I don't know that there is much the government can do.
| Childcare facilities actually run on thin margins and
| turnover is high. State regulations are often aggressive
| towards child to caretaker ratios.
|
| I would also suggest a 4th point:
|
| 4. People that were on the verge of retirement (within 5-10
| years) that were either laid off and never re-entered the
| workforce or opted for early retirement.
|
| Age discrimination probably sets in with folks 50 and over
| that want to either change careers or re-engage with their
| career path after time off due to the pandemic. Plus with the
| stock market seeing record gains, their retirement plans are
| probably looking very enticing.
| unpolloloco wrote:
| And to add some more nuance to point 4: there were a LOT of
| people who could have retired years ago, but chose not to
| for various reasons. This was their reason. I've seen
| estimates as high as 2M extra people in the US have just
| flat out retired due to covid (some left under their own
| volition, some not - but few of them are coming back). This
| isn't just old people either - early retirees are a
| sizeable contingent here.
| Arete314159 wrote:
| The estimates I saw were 3.5 million took early
| retirement.
|
| Also, sorry this is grim, but the pandemic has also
| killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them were
| workers.
| Tarsul wrote:
| and dont forget those who cant work anymore because of
| (most serious versions of) long covid.
| fragmede wrote:
| Your second point, grim as it may be, is probably worth
| larger consideration. I'm projecting here, but I believe
| many of them were the kind of people that had 3 jobs in
| order to make ends meet and couldn't take time off to get
| the vaccine, and the subtext is that the economy was
| actually more reliant on that tiny pool of people (<0.2%
| of Americans) than we realized!
| unpolloloco wrote:
| Your point still stands (those people had high contact
| jobs), but most of the people who died did so prior to
| vaccine availability. It's only been the past ~4-5 months
| where there's been widespread availability. And there are
| very few people at this point (in the US) who haven't
| gotten the vaccine solely because of their scheduling
| (though that reason might be cited as a clean
| justification!). It's clearly vaccine hesitancy...
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| > I don't know that there is much the government can do.
|
| Universal subsidized childcare like most developed
| countries?
| Clubber wrote:
| Childcare lobby doesn't pay enough for that. All joking
| aside, I wonder if some people had one of those near-
| death experiences during the pandemic and realized
| wasting the only life you have slaving away at some dump
| for chump change wasn't a great path to be on.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| It's not a matter of access for many. The universal
| subsidized childcare of primary education was closed for
| over a year, and subsequently private childcare couldn't
| keep up with demand. Combined with the fact that existing
| childcare providers couldn't necessarily expand their
| sizes due to distancing needs and labor shortages
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I wonder about Universal Childcare, and it's not that
| it's not needed.
|
| I wonder who's going to provide it.
|
| Being male, I don't know if I would even venture into the
| area. I couldn't imagine being interrogated by parents,
| and the whole vetting process. And yes--it might make
| more sence for a woman to open up a child care facility?
| The list of government regulation must get onerious too?
|
| Where are we going to find all these babysitters?
|
| Second--the money will come on the form of a federal tax
| credit. Why do I feel that money will end up going to
| other things a young family needs?
|
| At this point, I'd rather see a Basic Income that goes to
| all low income Americans. They could use the money for
| anything.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Tax credits are not the only mechanism for government
| funding.
|
| We already have a very successful model of government
| provided childcare: the public school system.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _At this point, I 'd rather see a Basic Income that
| goes to all low income Americans. They could use the
| money for anything._
|
| If you apply this logic to other government subsidized
| programs, where we remove the subsidies and give people
| some cash, you'll quickly run into problems.
|
| Look at how much money it costs to simply buy health
| coverage on the individual market for a family with one
| kid with no subsidies. It's $16k - $24k in yearly
| premiums, with $6k - $12k yearly deductibles, and $17k+
| yearly out of pocket maximums. Almost all of the proposed
| UBI amounts would go towards just the premiums alone,
| without even getting into deductibles, out of pocket
| maximums, copays or out of network care.
|
| The situation many families would face would be a choice
| between being able to see a doctor, receiving adequate
| and safe childcare, paying rent, etc.
| jseliger wrote:
| _I don 't know that there is much the government can do_
|
| Real estate is much of the cost keeping childcare high,
| particularly in big cities, which is to say left-leaning
| cities, and some movement is afoot to address this problem:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-
| progr....
|
| If cost of housing for the workers themselves is high,
| they'll also be forced to demand higher wages to
| compensate: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-
| housing-theory-of-e...
| jeromegv wrote:
| I think a lot of people are now classifying NIMBY people
| as conservative, after all, they are advocating for the
| status quo and increase value of their personal property.
| tibiahurried wrote:
| > the cost of childcare for both children encroaches the
| income of one parent alone
|
| That's the case in the US. In countries where family
| welfare policies exist and where governments incentive and
| support families: that's hardly the case. Childcare is
| pretty much free or does not cost as nearly as much as in
| the US.
|
| I think the US may be an advanced country for many aspects,
| but it is just ridiculously behind when it comes to
| healthcare and families.
| bentlegen wrote:
| Subsidized childcare. That's it, that's the secret.
| Societies that value their workforce use tax dollars to
| fund childcare.
| sologoub wrote:
| Pandemic of course messed with much of the social infra the
| world over, BUT no real social option for child care in a
| developed country is a very USA problem. Good family leave
| policy (1 year+) and wide availability of kindergarten-type
| facilities (no it's not a "grade" in childcare, it's a type
| of a facility) with universal guarantee of availability are
| the norm elsewhere and do wonders to enable parents to
| work.
|
| When caring for a newborn for more than a few weeks means
| one becomes unemployed, no wonder families decide to not
| play that game until kids are a bit older. Otherwise, you
| look for a job just to risk needing a leave that can result
| in loss of this job if the kid gets sufficiently sick.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| All you have to do is require companies to offer child care
| facilities when building real estate. Having a parent just
| a few minutes away makes working and parenting more
| possible with young children.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Childcare can definitely be made much more efficient. Here
| in Quebec we have 7$/day and 8.5$/day childcare, the total
| budget is 2.5 billion dollars for an 8.6 million people
| population.
| axiolite wrote:
| > When families have 2 children under 5, the cost of
| childcare for both children encroaches the income of one
| parent alone.
|
| Except: 1) That was true BEFORE the pandemic, yet there was
| no labor shortage. 2) Salaries have gone up due to the
| (temporary) labor shortage, so it should be easier for more
| parents to justify childcare costs.
|
| So I don't see that it has anything to do with the current
| situation.
| sathackr wrote:
| Childcare costs have gone up also. As have most other
| cost of living metrics. That's what inflation is.
|
| Full time child care in Brooklyn, NY was $2000/mo for 1
| child when I inquired earlier this year.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| The dogmatism of putting all women to work for the last 50
| years. Here we are, women have gotten their "equal" pay
| (rightly so) and are nearly all employees or freelancers.
| After a long battle, so of course childcare like everything
| else needs paid. Most social workers are women. What's the
| way out, migrants from poorer countries? Just pushing the
| problem for later.
|
| We are waking up to the fact this model cannot work for the
| overall population. It has been promoted by those who would
| greatly benefit from having everyone at work, and echoed by
| those who would somewhat benefit, and echoed more times all
| the way down to those who had everything to loose.
|
| The problem of childcare cost is unsolvable with women at
| work, it's as simple as that. At best the average working
| woman will pay the same as she earns to afford full time
| child care. But if tax is taken into account, then it won't
| cover it. Or we squeeze more staff per child.
|
| I think it will take some more time for most of us to come
| around to the reality of a model doomed to fail.
| mcv wrote:
| The big thing that went wrong when women went to work, is
| that it didn't really help households in any way. What
| should have happened is that either households doubled
| their income, or each earner would work only 3 days a
| week at most. Instead, thanks to decades of stagnating
| wages and rising housing costs, households wouldn't have
| any more money to spend, but have a lot less time.
|
| What should have been a great deal turned into a terrible
| deal. Unequal pay meant that initially, men didn't want
| to work any less when their wives started working, rising
| housing costs and child care ate up pretty much all the
| extra income, and stagnating wages meant that even as the
| pay gap closed, households still weren't getting ahead.
| We're overworked and underpaid, and employers just got
| more productivity for the same money as before.
|
| We should go to a 24 hour working week.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Many countries have state-run or state-subsidised
| childcare.
|
| Universal or managed childcare - like health care - is
| one of those things that is a massive drag on the economy
| if it isn't provided.
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-
| style/abroad/childcare-a...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Most of the countries with state run daycare have even
| lower fertility than US has. I don't think there is a
| single country with all of: government childcare, high
| female labor market participation, and above replacement
| fertility. If anything, the correlation is opposite: the
| more subsidized the childcare is, the fewer children are
| born.
| riffraff wrote:
| While I agree with your point in general, the Faroe
| islands might qualify.
|
| I do not know why, but they have a 2.4 fertility rate,
| could be related to an influx of women from poor
| countries (which in turn might not participate in the
| workforce, confirming what you state).
| xyzzyz wrote:
| If you asked me, I'd say that the most probable cause is
| that people in Faroe Islands have less opportunity to get
| Education and build a Career, which makes childbearing
| more attractive in relative terms, as opportunity cost is
| lower. For the same reason, policies that in the west
| make it easier to have Education and Career, like
| subsidized daycare, end up depressing the fertility even
| further, contrary to expectations.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| > The dogmatism of putting all women to work for the last
| 50 years.
|
| > The problem of childcare cost is unsolvable with women
| at work, it's as simple as that.
|
| What kind of nonsense is this?
|
| One in six women never go on to have children, it's great
| news that these women's access to the labour market has
| improved.
|
| Second, childcare ratios aren't 1 to 1. In fact they're
| about 1 to 4 for babies <1 year, 1 to 10 for 5 year olds,
| and 1 to 12 at school age. Suppose all women had children
| (they don't), society still greatly benefits from the
| efficiency of a childcare ratio as high as 1:12 as
| opposed to women caring for their child 1:1.
|
| Third, children aren't permanently children, and
| certainly not permanently babies. The first few years
| requires a lot of parental or private childcare, but
| afterwards kids mostly go to school for most of the day.
| A woman will have at least 45 years between adulthood and
| retirement and most of that kids won't need constant
| parental care like the first few years. Making sure women
| stay active in the labour force (even part-time) will
| greatly help their chances in the labour market
| throughout their career.
|
| Fourth, I see no reason why we're speaking about women
| rather than about parents. Providing income and childcare
| are shared responsibilities. It's fine to arrange it in
| your own family as you wish, but society shouldn't speak
| about these topics as if they should only apply to women.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I worked on a remote work program for a large company
| about a decade ago. One of the objectives was to improve
| retention of female professionals.
|
| Women have two heavy drivers for leaving the workforce -
| pregnancy/early childhood (age 20-35) and caregiving
| (45-60). This is a big deal, as when you lose a skilled
| attorney, engineer, or product manager, it's difficult to
| replace them.
|
| Offering work flexibility was projected to reduce this
| attrition by 30-50% depending on occupational category.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I do expect some sensitivity when daring to question
| women being in the work force rather than prioritising
| the care of their own children. Let me be clear first, I
| entirely agree with you that society shouldn't tell us
| what is right with this regard. But society has spoken,
| the dogma of having women be the same as men and get to
| work. With the pretence of more freedom and independence
| of course. I don't speak for women, nor men. Each person
| is free to decide whether they should enter the workforce
| or not. I'm not advocating that women shouldn't be
| allowed to work.
|
| I disagree with the ratio argument you've proposed, I'm
| sorry 1 carer for 12 toddlers is undeseriable. Ask any
| stay-at-home moms how it goes when they get their 3rd
| kid. And a carer will never care as much as a parent, so
| 1 to 12 is surely compromising on the children well
| being.
|
| I would gladly consider parents rather than women, but
| for the vast majority of human history it appears that
| females have been rather focusing on taking care of home
| and children. Things can be arranged differently, but
| there are surely some deep rooted reasons as to the
| adoption of the role fulfilled by women for so long, and
| it must have shown superiority over having men take that
| role since it has survived across very different
| cultures.
|
| We aren't hunter gatherers, we are even past the
| sedentary model that organised societies for millenia, so
| models can and better be questioned, but the childcare
| dead end needs to be looked at the way it is. It is not
| working.
|
| Yes children grow up, I give you that. And of course it
| is natural for women who were mostly taking care of their
| own children to find an occupation, work is one. My
| comment was in the context of the child care chaos we've
| created. Not in the context of trying to hijack the
| thread into claiming women should not be in the
| workplace.
| danShumway wrote:
| Surprising sexism aside, I think the broader point here
| is that focusing on specifically the women is kind of
| weird and unnecessary. The issue isn't that men and women
| are being treated equally, the issue is that both parents
| are expected to work.
|
| If women drop out of the workforce, are employers
| suddenly going to start doubling salaries so household
| income will stay the same? If not, then this isn't really
| a problem with gender roles, it doesn't seem.
|
| It sounds to me like the thread of logic you're following
| is:
|
| - Women have started working more, so child care is
| harder
|
| - Child care costs went up during the pandemic, so more
| workers of all genders are staying home to care for their
| children directly
|
| - Therefore, there's a labor shortage.
|
| Well, the obvious conclusion from that thread of logic is
| that employers apparently need women to work in order for
| the economy to keep functioning, and if they stop working
| and stop sending their kids to daycare then there'll be a
| labor shortage.
|
| If you don't have a plan to fix _that_ problem, then
| complaining about gender roles seems kind of useless. If
| you 're worried about the direction of childcare and you
| think more women should be in that role, then shouldn't
| you be happy that more people are staying home now to
| take care of their kids, and that this is forcing the
| market to adjust salaries to meet the new numbers of
| available workers?
|
| You can't both have your cake and eat it, you can't be
| upset that women aren't staying home to look after their
| kids _and_ upset that there are fewer available workers
| to hire once parents start staying home to watch their
| kids.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I am not upset women aren't staying home to take care of
| children. I'm upset that women have so willingly been
| trapped in fighting for their rights to be part of the
| Labour force, and in the end have to work full time
| without the ability to afford child care.
|
| At least you got a few things right. Yes, women have been
| working "more" and it has created the difficulty to get
| their children proper care. It's rather logical. You can
| add to that it is not just women's problem. It's men's
| too. It is our problem : we have a model that cannot
| solve an absolute road block: if women work, and get
| equal pay, then childcare become out of reach to a large
| portion of the population. Unless you increase the kids
| to carer ratio of course, or build robots as carer. I
| think the issue with the work arounds are rather obvious.
| Or maybe not since I've only commented with simple
| logical critics but many won't cease to conceive a
| society with women taking care of their children until a
| proven solution comes along.
|
| I don't have a plan to fix that problem, no. That's why I
| blame the dogma that introduced the problem in the first
| place. And I refer to the previous model that worked for
| millenia, which is a gender based role system. It doesn't
| have to be that way, but sure let's consider any way, but
| I don't see why criticising today's model and referring
| to one that worked is useless.
| danShumway wrote:
| So I guess same question as I ask below. Are you happy
| with the current labor shortage, do you see it as a good
| thing?
|
| It seems like it's directly addressing a problem you have
| with the current state of child-rearing, and that in
| order to move to the model you prefer, businesses
| necessarily need to get used to the fact that fewer
| people are going to apply for jobs and that they'll have
| to pay workers more.
|
| This should be a good thing as far as you're concerned,
| right?
| wrycoder wrote:
| > If women drop out of the workforce, are employers
| suddenly going to start doubling salaries so household
| income will stay the same?
|
| Taken in reverse, that's pretty much what happened when
| women entered the workforce in large numbers. It now
| generally takes two incomes to support a household, where
| it used to take one. (Yes, the standard of living and
| expectations in general are higher these days, but
| still.)
| danShumway wrote:
| Well then this thread is very odd, because if people have
| that perspective about why current wages are what they
| are, then I don't understand what they're complaining
| about with the current labor shortage. They should see
| lower supply driving up wages as a good thing.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Yes, for the government to respond to wage inflation by
| allowing inflation in the general market basket of goods
| would be an error imo.
| dboreham wrote:
| I don't think it was dogmatism -- it was the need to have
| money. The cost of living rose such that families needed
| two incomes.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It is dogmatism. Just look at the propaganda from the 50s
| and 60s. And all the way to today, it is less cheesy but
| nonetheless propagandist: schools educating boys and
| girls to get jobs, encouraging girls to be more
| ambitious, campaigns to get women in industries they are
| not interested in, and to fight for equal pay. Add to
| that how politically incorrect the comments I made are.
| If that is not a dogma, I don't know what is.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Even where it is not strictly necessary for women to work
| having women in the workforce can be an economic
| advantage. For instance it is plausible that the
| increasing proportion of women in work since the 1950s
| has contributed as much to Norway's economy as the oil.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| I agree with your conclusion. Childcare is a societal
| issue that needs to be addressed at the societal level.
| Women who stay at home is a poppycock solution.
|
| At a cynical minimum it wastes tremendous resources. I
| want smart, competent, engaged women to have children. I
| also want them to choose how to direct their considerable
| energies as they see fit.
| Frost1x wrote:
| If we make childcare a societal issue then we need to
| broaden that to make it easier for anyone and everyone to
| not only care for children but have children. There are
| plenty of those who want children but can't have them for
| a variety of reasons, some of which are other related
| costs (medical, legal adoption, etc.).
|
| If you select childcare alone you bias towards those can
| easily have children which can foster resentment and
| opposition for tax based support. We already do this a
| bit where everyone pays for for public schooling
| regardless to if they have children or not and we also
| subsidize parents further by allowing them to be claimed
| as dependents.
|
| Let's not keep this limited and make it so anyone wanting
| a child through a socially acceptable method be able to
| afford them long term since ultimately that's more
| generically what we're taking about.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I'm all with you. I'm denouncing the dogma that put women
| to work. It doesn't imply that women should be kept off
| the work force.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think you could have preserved the good points if you
| had removed what I perceive as sexism. Instead of saying
| the problem is having put women to work, the issue is
| that costs (due to larger houses, desire for luxuries,
| and generally keeping up with the Joneses) have
| increased. They have also increased because incomes have
| increased, and the ways in which to spend your money have
| also increased.
|
| It has nothing to do with genders - it has to do with the
| carrying cost of a household nowadays is tied to dual
| incomes (+ housing and health care costs have eaten up a
| lot of surplus income)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It does have to do with sex. There are of course
| exceptions, but women are naturally more equipped and
| inclined to be nurturers and caregivers, and men
| providers, especially for young children. It is also why
| women are disproportionate in early childhood care and
| education jobs (it gets somewhat more even with older
| kids; e.g there is a much higher proportion of male
| teachers at most high schools compared to elementary
| schools or preschool/daycare).
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It is sad to see the most logical comment out there is
| getting downvoted given the logical aptitudes of this
| community.
|
| Statistics show you are right, evolutionary biology says
| you are right.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| FWIW, I think your argument would earn a lot more
| consideration if you used a gender neutral term like
| "partner/spouse/parent" rather than "women", because it
| distracts from what I charitably assume is the seed of
| your point.
|
| Certainly, my wife and I have ~semi-annual conversations
| on whether our lifestyle still makes sense (2 parents
| working, 2 kids under 5 in daycare:). There's definitely
| room to discuss that on societal level too. But there's
| no immediate assumption that my wife would necessarily be
| the one to quit work and spend extra time with kids -
| we're both engaged parents, both have our strengths and
| weaknesses, and once breastfeeding stage was complete
| both equally capable of parenting; and at the same time
| have both been career oriented and hold very successful
| positions.
|
| in short:
|
| "Are we as society on average supporting the model of two
| parents working" - a reasonable even crucial discussion
| to have.
|
| "Should women be working" - hopefully settled a long time
| ago and anybody still questioning this will seem
| regressive at least, misogynistic more likely :-/
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Although we have sort of solved the issue of "which
| parent" through the uses of baby formula, refrigerated
| breast milk, and other workarounds, there is still
| something to be said for direct breastfeeding, which is
| generally done by the mother (or a wet nurse, but that's
| another, older workaround). It's not misogynistic to
| recognize biologically beneficial relationships between
| small children and their mothers.
| inside65 wrote:
| Not picking on you but this scenario is so common I find
| it borderline humorous as it is so outrageously
| ridiculous. Both parents working all day and the kids
| getting a mediocre upbringing under the care of strangers
| - now that's freedom! Thank goodness for democracy and
| equality helping us improve our society. Where would we
| be if only 1 parent worked and the other took care of the
| kids.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That too is a relevant discussion, but probably better
| off without sarcasm and with a little bit more
| intellectual honesty.
|
| If I had to pick one point - it's that absolutely, yes,
| freedom is great, options are great. We HAVE the social
| and legal freedom to choose what lifestyle and
| combination makes the most sense for our family. And we
| weigh all the pros and cons and think of short and long
| term benefits and then have that discussion again few
| months later to see if anything has changed. We are
| lucky, blessed and privileged, on many different levels.
| So I don't feel picked on; I only wish more people here
| and around the world had the freedom, support and
| opportunities my wife and I have.
|
| (as others have pointed out, daycare is not necessarily a
| bad thing. It's staffed by certified professionals who
| specialize in teaching kids - whereas let's be honest I'm
| just making it up as a parent. It's also great
| opportunity to socialize and make friends outside of
| their family. We don't see daycare as a downside - we see
| it as opportunity for our kids to get diverse experience
| between family and friends. As I said discussions revolve
| around all the many factors and options but certainly
| does not start from "daycare is bad" stance)
| kiklion wrote:
| > Both parents working all day and the kids getting a
| mediocre upbringing under the care of strangers
|
| The only problem here is the 'mediocre' upbringing. My
| daughter is in a daycare where she is learning Spanish
| words/phrases in addition to English.
|
| My daughter will be 2 in December and the daycare has her
| recognizing most letters, numbers, colors and shapes
| through dedicated practice. She uses tongs and spoons to
| practice picking up items and separating them by color or
| by number 'grab 4 purple fuzz balls!'
|
| These are teaching programs I would never have thought of
| at her age. I'd just point to fingers and toes and count
| to 10 or sing the ABC's.
|
| My daycare printed out paper with every letter and asks
| her to grab the letters of her name. Or she has an image
| with lower case letters on it and she asks my daughter to
| match the upper case letters out of a pile.
|
| Long story short, raising kids newborn to 5 is a
| specialized skill just like teaching 5 to whatever, and
| society can benefit from having better educators for our
| children than what random adults turn out to be.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| We would be back to the dark ages where women were
| chained to their husband's tyrany.
| omosubi wrote:
| Most women (and men for that matter) work shit jobs as
| clerks or similar and not the sort of professional level
| jobs you're probably thinking of. I highly doubt they
| find these fulfilling in any way and would rather stay at
| home with their children if given the option. Polls
| support this. https://fortune.com/2016/10/05/working-
| moms-stay-home/
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Point taken. My other comment hopefully clarifies the
| rather provocative choice of terms.
|
| I think the debate hasn't been settled though. It wasn't
| so long ago that women were, for the most part,
| prioritising being a successful housewives rather than
| their careers. Surely they had little to no choice since
| society expected just that from them. I wouldn't argue
| that the pressure wasn't forcing their hands, but was a
| model where the roles were gender defined. The good thing
| with clearly defined roles for something as challenging
| as being a parent is that one can work towards developing
| the required abilities to become an adult well equipped
| when family comes around.
|
| I do see your point though. Your parental situation is
| not a rarety any longer, a gender based role assignment
| can't de facto be most adequate.
|
| I don't have a desire to regress. It does seem to me we
| have regressed though. We created created society of kids
| at day care then schools, and are only starting to see
| the contradictions that come with that.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Two parents work 5 days a week because family houses cost
| so much they're unaffordable unless you have two parents
| working.
|
| If the norm was instead working 2/3 days a week for less
| pay, there would be less money to spend on houses, so
| prices would come down (because the money that's charged
| is what can be afforded)
|
| But part time jobs are nowhere near as common as full
| time jobs - especially for professionals.
|
| Having parents looking after kids is a far better
| solution than outsourcing parenting to an external
| company, but it's far less profitable, and reduces things
| like GDP and stock markets, which is bad.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Having parents looking after kids is a far better
| solution than outsourcing parenting to an external
| company
|
| I don't necessarily agree with this. If the
| people/company that is looking after the children can do
| a good job, then it's far more efficient to have multiple
| children per person (company) vs 1-2 per person (parent).
| Plus (some of) the people that work for the company
| generally have an education that supports good
| developmental growth for the children under their care.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| You summarised the issue quite well.
|
| We could have both parents work part-time, and make
| everyone happy. But we want the GDP to go up, not down,
| throw more people and hours into the system, at the
| expense of children (our future they say) well-being.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| your dialog with your wife is one way to live, of many
|
| IIR from the Pew Research Foundation on Family in the
| United States, less than fifty percent of all children in
| the US have two married parents, across all demographics
| and education levels, minus the one-percent highest
| income bracket.
|
| lots of people in the city here with children, almost
| entirely the women.. the men are out of the picture for
| lots of reasons.. a non-zero percentage of young children
| have not met their biological father. The dental hygenist
| told me a month ago she has five kids of various ages and
| their father "lost his green card" and is gone.. she was
| cheerful and matter-of-fact. A plain spoken man in his
| fifties told me he has five children with three women and
| he never married any of them. This is not "terrible" it
| is true in his own words, he complains about the women
| and changes the subject.
| wrycoder wrote:
| And we are destroying our society by normalizing this
| behavior.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| But at least we aren't "regressing" to how societies
| always worked, having the expectation that a woman would
| prioritise the care of children over a "career".
|
| Thanks for pointing out the separation rates. It would be
| misogynistic to dare considering a correlation between
| women not prioritising being a housewives over a career
| and men getting less interested in sticking around.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > But at least we aren't "regressing" to how societies
| always worked, having the expectation that a woman would
| prioritise the care of children over a "career".
|
| No, but where there are 2 parents involved in the child's
| birth (most cases), we _should_ have the expectation that
| both of those parents contribute to raising the child,
| barring edge cases.
| wrycoder wrote:
| And over the history of humans, they contribute in very
| different ways. It's a contemporary fantasy to claim they
| don't and to think this is progressive.
| [deleted]
| katbyte wrote:
| Normalizing what behaviour exactly?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Er, it's detailed in the comment to which I responded.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Interesting second order affect:
|
| lack of childcare -> smaller available labor pool ->
| disproportionate difficulty hiring in childcare (because it
| doesn't pay well) -> continued lack of childcare
|
| We could actually be looking at a bistable system, in which
| (because childcare jobs are towards the bottom end of the
| pay spectrum) you don't get available childcare unless you
| have surplus labor, and until you have available childcare
| you will have a labor shortage.
|
| The solution would be the pay more for childcare, but that
| money has to come from somewhere, and a lot of people who
| require it cannot pay a lot more. A conundrum...
| TheSocialAndrew wrote:
| We could always invite in more au-pairs using the J1
| visa. Many au pairs end up taking up college here and
| switch to an F1 visa. This system is tested and works
| well.
| yardie wrote:
| You could almost say that reliable childcare is necessary
| infrastructure as bridges and highways are. Almost.
| fragmede wrote:
| If only there were some sort of system, by which the
| richest people would give money to some sort of a shared
| pool, and the money in that pool could be given out to
| pay of childcare. It's pretty out there, I know!
| gajjanag wrote:
| There is one aspect that helps with this in certain
| cultures, namely grandparents. Grandparents are usually
| thrilled to spend time with young grandchildren.
|
| This is an age old mechanism that mostly alleviates two
| problems simultaneously - old age care, and the two working
| parents situation.
|
| The other option (which also works nearly as well) is what
| other commentators mentioned - European style subsidized
| childcare/old age support.
|
| The USA shuns the first culturally (I get strange looks
| from people when I say I am happy working and living with
| my parents), and shuns the second culturally as well as
| politically. Some awareness/willingness to learn from
| history/other cultures would fix that, but I am not holding
| my breath.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Grandparents only work if your parents retired or your
| grandparents are alive and functional. Current
| generations millennials and Z have grandparents
| dead(shorter average lifespan, waiting with having
| children) and working parents(economic situation, better
| healthcare). Not only that, but you also need to live
| close by. We are migrating way more than before, there
| are whole cities in Europe and US left with retirees. You
| also need to have a larger house to host grandparents.
| Millennials have a worse economic situation than boomers.
|
| Current life of young people look like:
| -- Get expensive degree -- Move to expensive city
| for jobs -- Hard to find partner -- Cannot
| afford to start family, postpone children -- Have
| children without family support -- Get into high
| level of debt
|
| There two things happening -- People have
| less or no children. This lead to increased taxation and
| increasing retirement age in many countries. It often
| causes social unrest when governments try uncontrolled
| external immigration to fill the gaps. -- People
| try to live frugal lives, reduce spending and try to save
| for retirement individually. This disturbs housing market
| and stall country economy and destroy luxury brands.
| patentatt wrote:
| Also your parents have to not suck. My 'greatest
| generation' grandmother took care of me a lot when I was
| a kid, and my children's two boomer grandmothers really
| can't be bothered. Yet another anti-boomer trope, but so
| real in my life.
| edrxty wrote:
| This brings up a good point. Most (all?) people get
| complacent to some degree or another. When you have a big
| event come along and disrupt, in particular, low paying jobs,
| suddenly the inertia of complacency is gone and people start
| looking for options. I think that's a large part of what
| we've seen here. That combined with the societal realization
| of how shitty service jobs are lead to a perfect storm of
| migration away from such jobs.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > 1. Reliable childcare still isn't a thing.
|
| I think lack of reliable & _economical_ childcare drives a
| series of tradeoffs that are in many cases strange to think
| about.
|
| A - I have good / economical childcare, or supportive spouse,
| and I can do a demanding professional job
|
| B - I have good childcare but it is too expensive.
| Considering the cost and tax burder of two workers, best I
| quit and let my husband/wife/partner/etc work only, and I
| stay home with the kids
|
| C - I have neither good, nor economical childcare, or cannot
| afford it. I'm trapped into a bad situation. I don't have a
| spouse. Welfare/WIC/foodstamps/Section 8 is better than
| starving. I'll take that.
|
| D - I have neither good, nor economical childcare, or cannot
| afford it. I'm trapped into a bad situation. I don't have a
| spouse. Jobs in my local area offer me nothing over
| Welfare/WIC/foodstamps/Section 8, so I will stay with that.
|
| C & D both provide a strong argument for UBI. Although I am
| against communism, I do think that if we are going to do
| transfer payments, UBI is the least evil / most righteous
| approach, but I am concerned about the potential inflationary
| effects.
| [deleted]
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > 3. They moved! If you're a service job in an expensive
| city, many of the people you hoped to rehire relocated last
| summer and aren't necessarily itching to come back.
|
| From my experience, that point increases in resort towns
| where hospitality is mostly the only game in town and not so
| much in the expensive big cities with lots of other kinds of
| jobs. The expensive big cities are back to their outsized
| growth mode they were at before the pandemic, the resort
| towns are really hurting.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _2. A lot of restaurant and retail workers had a full year
| to find something else to do. Many did. And why go back to
| working for tips if you found a junior marketing position
| that you can do remotely home and has a career path?_
|
| To this end, I have several friends who worked in the food
| industry pre-pandemic who have spent the last almost 2 years
| studying, finishing school and finding jobs in the tech
| sector.
|
| Some are now working as software engineers after waiting
| tables two years ago. They aren't going back to working for
| tips any time soon.
| tlogan wrote:
| Both you and parent's comments are correct.
|
| 1) child care (schools and crap). Especially schools.
|
| 2) unemployment insurance
|
| 3) move out from expensive cities (where restaurants are)
|
| 4) immigrantions is stopped / shifted
|
| 5) people found different jobs
|
| 6) people living more frugal
|
| 7) people starting their own business
|
| 8) retiring
|
| I personally saw each of the above. One's political
| affiliation will ranks them differently...
| ffggvv wrote:
| yeah, i'm sure it applies to a few thousand peoples but not the
| millions of jobless people. not everyone even has a dream they
| are passionate about following in the first place. for the most
| part people just want a stable job and to be able to enjoy
| their life outside work. there aren't millions of new
| entrepreneurs out of nowhere. it's a romantic idea
| Frost1x wrote:
| >2) people got used to living much more cheaply than they had
| before due everything being closed
|
| Not just more cheaply,the lockdowns forced many to become more
| self-sufficient and in many cases, they either needed or wanted
| to do some services they typically paid for. For example, if
| there's a type of food you were craving you'd normally just
| order, you probably tried to cook it. In many cases people
| learned it's not that hard, they too could do it, and it was
| portion of the cost. That's just eating out. People probably
| also tried all sorts of stuff like basic car maintenance,
| simple housework, etc. because they not only had incentives to
| save money, they also lacked access to services and had free
| time to give things a try themselves.
| [deleted]
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| > Economics doesn't care about your feelings or your dreams.
|
| This is an example of business thinking gone wrong.
|
| Economics prescribes behaviors to humans using logical and
| historical arguments, and tries work out how this scales up.
|
| You can't use it to pretend humanity doesn't exist.
|
| > If you need money to pay your bills and the only way to get
| that money is to work a shit job, you will work the shit job.
|
| I think you'll find the rising homeless problem in every major
| city in america proves this wrong.
|
| Sometimes you just get anxious and depressed until you fall
| into an addiction fueled rut and you end up homeless and
| clueless.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| yep, and funny enough, both your reply and OPs comment show
| the limits of economics as any sort of explanatory science
| for the behaviors of people at scale. It's at some level
| basically reading tea leaves.
| junon wrote:
| > the government paid a huge amount of money to people to not
| work for a long time
|
| They did? I remember three teeny tiny payments. Certainly not
| enough to live on for a long time.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Did you go on unemployment benefits?
| junon wrote:
| Ah okay, that's the difference. No I didn't.
| xvedejas wrote:
| This is an important question. The pandemic response added
| both extensions to unemployment and additional payout
| beyond the typical maximum ($300/week extra, if I remember
| correctly). If you were laid off any time over the last 18
| months, you would be making well over minimum wage by doing
| nothing. That's a pretty big incentive for plenty of
| people.
| guenthert wrote:
| If you received maximum benefits and the extra $300, then
| you got more than you would have earned on minimum wage.
| You'll receive however maximum benefit only if you earned
| fairly well before. So I don't see anyone getting more
| benefits than they could plausibly earn, if the jobs they
| held before were still available to them. Last year, for
| a time, $600 were paid in addition to unemployment
| benefit, which changed that equation.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > That's a pretty big incentive for plenty of people.
|
| If $300 a week (before taxes) is a "big incentive" for
| people, they were being criminally underpaid before they
| lost their job.
| bink wrote:
| But if that were the case I'd expect to see the
| employment numbers dramatically shift in states that
| removed their unemployment assistance earlier than
| others, which I don't think we've seen any evidence of
| yet.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| So far the evidence is that job growth is worse in those
| states.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/amid-covid-surge-states-
| tha...
| xvedejas wrote:
| Has it been quite a month yet? If there is an effect I'd
| guess we won't even see it in the statistics yet, and
| that's without accounting for the fact that it takes time
| to find and start a job even in a favorable market.
| [deleted]
| theflork wrote:
| Massively, they did, yes. By both injecting money directly
| and taking away the burden of repayments. And this
| unemployment boost that expired is just one small piece of
| equation:
|
| 1 - unemployment boost 2 - stimulus payments 3 - extending
| unemployment to workers who would normally be ineligible
| (contractors etc) 4 - eviction moratorium 5 - mortgage
| forbearance programs 6 - student loans forbearance 7 -
| locally available , utilities payments pauses 8 - ppp grants
| listless wrote:
| I have at least 3 friends who were working retail jobs who
| were on unemployment for over a year. 1 has gone back to
| work. 2 still milk it. They just figured out how to live VERY
| modestly. It's mostly trailers and video games.
| kingTug wrote:
| Trailers and video games sounds preferable to any type of
| "customer is always right" retail job. Retail jobs are
| abusive and cause depression. They are not viable careers.
| I too would live on the poverty line before returning to
| that life.
| unpolloloco wrote:
| Easy solution: pay more. Easy to get people to go back if
| they get paid well enough! At some point, the employer
| will find enough people to go back to work - and that
| point is what (economically) the job is worth. A lot of
| people realized their number is higher than they thought
| because their alternative was not as bad as they thought.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's still a dead end job though. Even if it pays
| $100k/yr, if that's all it'll ever be, it's just not
| worth if the alternative is something with an actual
| career path.
| giantrobot wrote:
| If retail paid well, even if it was still a dead end unto
| itself, would allow people to save money. They would have
| options. Retail is a dead end job _and_ barely pays above
| poverty level. They usually don 't get any healthcare
| coverage either. Unless a retail worker is lucky or lives
| like a monk it's hard to make enough money to ever get
| ahead. One bad illness or injury can ruin them
| financially.
|
| Retail _could_ be a starting point for someone. It doesn
| 't have to be a career. But with low wages and no
| benefits it's usually just enough to keep someone barely
| living.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The stimulus checks were a very small part of the overall
| program.
| kristjansson wrote:
| The stimulus payments were just that - extra money to
| stimulate economic activity - not assistance to those
| directly impacted. There was an order of magnitude or so more
| money (per recipient) available through the unemployment
| supplement programs, and a huge amount (meditated by
| employers) available through the PPP program.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Well you could also stop paying rent and not get evicted, so
| there's that.
| maxerickson wrote:
| For several months last year there was a $600 a week federal
| unemployment supplement, and there has been $300 a week since
| the beginning of this year (it expired a couple weeks ago).
|
| Netting out $400 a week (state+federal) isn't a huge amount
| of money of course.
|
| Several other rules were also changed, but there are still
| limits on the number of weeks people can collect
| unemployment.
|
| What I've seen here and there is that the states that ended
| benefits earlier did see a small bump in employment (but not
| a particularly meaningful one).
| wrycoder wrote:
| There were many people making the equivalent of $50K per
| year, between federal and state payments. That was more than
| many of them made when working.
|
| These are all expiring now, we'll see what happens next.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Those are the general stimulus payments, the upthread comment
| is referring to the temporary boost in unemployment to on-
| average full-replacement level instead of around 2/3, along
| with the temporary removal of job search requirements.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| The claims in this video are absurd. It suggests that there are
| no stable jobs, which is patently false. If you want the promise
| of a steady job, however, you need to pick a field which will
| always be in demand. Off the top of my head: corrections,
| sanitation, healthcare, and the legal system.
| aazaa wrote:
| tldw: They realize that job security is an illusion.
|
| Aside from the problem that zero evidence is presented that
| "employees aren't returning to work in America," the idea that
| they're freelancing instead is just outlandish. It's the kind of
| thing you might expect a successful but out-of-touch entrepreneur
| to spout.
|
| Paycheck-to-paycheck living, which has been amply documented,
| means you have no agency. You work or you begin your journey down
| the social ladder. Often you do both. Assuming employees aren't
| returning to work, there can only be two reasons:
|
| 1. there are no jobs, despite what employers might be saying; or
|
| 2. government transfers (extended unemployment, etc.) have been
| keeping them afloat.
|
| Extended unemployment (extra $300/week) ended in all 50 states
| around Labor Day.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2021/09/05/unemplo...
|
| That leaves just (1). It's a doozy, because if jobs have really
| disappeared and government transfers are really done, then we are
| about to witness what happens when millions of people suddenly
| don't just lose their jobs, but their ability to pay for basic
| needs.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Third possibility: Full-time work allowed employees to scrape
| by but provided them little more than that. They neither have a
| home to call their own nor do they have any possessions worth
| mentioning. Health care coverage is often absymal on top of
| that. Why work full-time for that? You can have all that living
| a homeless/drifter lifestyle, working odd jobs here and there.
| lph wrote:
| Sure, job security for many has collapsed in a way that makes
| traditional jobs less appealing. That's a good insight. But
| "everybody wants to follow their dreams and go into business for
| themselves!" is sort of an LOL Hacker News caricature. Low-wage
| workers already knew they had no job security. They didn't need a
| pandemic and recession to show them that.
|
| What I want to know is why aren't wages going up? Isn't that the
| textbook free market thing that should happen when the entire
| economy is having trouble hiring?
| axiolite wrote:
| > What I want to know is why aren't wages going up?
|
| Who says they aren't? Every business around here has a banner
| about hiring, usually listing a $1,000 bonus, and hourly wages
| are shown at least 20% higher than they were pre-pandemic.
|
| Amazon is pretty desperate to hire, with $3,000 bonuses, and
| talk of nation-wide $18/hr minimums.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/amazon-hire-125000-workers-...
|
| It seems that still isn't quite enough. But perhaps with the
| end of summer vacation, that picture may soon change.
| mst wrote:
| I remember reading about cases where a minimum wage increase in
| a particular area actually benefited employers because they've
| had less turnover as a result so saved on training and ramp-up
| costs - but (effectively) none of them could convince
| themselves to do that spontaneously.
|
| I keep wondering if a similar thing is happening here.
| Beached wrote:
| in my area I have seen low wage jobs like McDonald's and
| stocking shelves advertised at 12$ before the pandemic, I now
| see them publicly advertising starting at 14/15 and even 18$
| for the super market.
|
| from the outside looking in. it does appear to have gone up a
| little in those jobs, but it doesn't appear to have gone up in
| any other job (like mine)
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