[HN Gopher] A nationwide shortage of public workers
___________________________________________________________________
A nationwide shortage of public workers
Author : wallflower
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-09-25 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| nine_zeros wrote:
| REDUCE RED TAPE. You won't need as many public workers. Pay more
| to the remaining irreplaceable workers like teachers.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| This is the problem with the classification "public workers".
| While I haven't been able to find the statistics, my
| understanding is that most local government budgets are
| dominated by school and police/fire department personnel.
| Indeed, I suspect that at the local level, there are very few
| bureaucrats to fire (perhaps building inspectors).
|
| Red tape may have its costs (as well as benefits), but
| bureaucrats do not add a lot of tax burden at the local level,
| which is where most public sector jobs are.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Reducing red tape doesn't mean just reducing the number of
| personnel. It also means utilizing existing personnel
| effectively. Often government processes have SO MANY steps
| (often meaningless) that the total amount of work done by
| existing people is much lower than what they are capable of.
|
| When you go into the bowels of government, you realize how
| many steps are "Send X document by USPS, an employee
| evaluates for 6 weeks and sends Yes, No, Invalid, Request for
| more docs by USPS again." Then you send more documents and
| they take 8 weeks to evaluate again.
| tchaffee wrote:
| The root of the problem is lack of market forces. When a union
| organizes against company owners for better salaries and
| benefits, they have to leave something on the table for the
| business owners who will otherwise just close their doors and
| open some other type of business, maybe even elsewhere.
|
| With public workers, they are organizing indirectly against tax
| payers. Tax payers can't close their doors - they have to pay
| their taxes. Although I've had my eye out for many years, I've
| never come across a good solution that would make this
| relationship work as well as unions versus business owners.
|
| Libertarians hold off. The answer is not privatization. Some
| public services (e.g. NHS) are far more cost efficient and match
| the quality of private competition. Having used both NHS and the
| US system, I'll avoid the mess and gamble of the US system pretty
| much anytime it is convenient.
|
| And you can't privatize national defense for what I hope are
| obvious reasons.
|
| So how can you preserve the factors offered by public services
| and then somehow determine fair wages? That question doesn't seem
| to have an obvious answer. The best I've come up with myself is
| to allow the private sector to compete with public services and
| then simply match the free market wages.
| nixnax wrote:
| mitchbob wrote:
| Archived: https://archive.ph/P3yeR
| tristor wrote:
| This is only going to get worse. Just look at a demographic
| graph, as Boomers retire and Zoomers delay entering the workforce
| expect a shortfall of millions of people to fill existing white
| collar jobs, the trades have already been decimated.
| tarr11 wrote:
| The birth replacement rate in the United States isn't
| sufficient to fill all the jobs, and automation is still
| decades (or more) away from replacing them as well.
|
| I suppose when the pain gets too great than we will consider
| expanding our immigration policies, as the USA is still
| considered a favorable immigration destination.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, or automation just is less convenient/isn't as good.
| We'll probably see a lot more self-service at stores for
| example which (depending) I don't really like but if you have
| to wait 20 minutes in the one open cashier line, I guess you
| adjust. Repeat for ordering at restaurants, etc. And other
| tasks just get more expensive and you either just do them
| yourself, pay more, and/or wait longer.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| _"It's on TV when the city is negotiating with the city manager
| to give them a 3 percent raise," said National League of Cities
| CEO Clarence E. Anthony, describing a "fishbowl effect" that
| doesn't exist for most private-employer wage negotiations.
| "People call in, saying, 'Why do they deserve an increase?
| They're public servants!'"_
|
| _Governments have offered modest raises that (mostly) haven't
| kept up with inflation. Meanwhile, they've devoted large chunks
| of their budget surpluses to tax cuts._
|
| I dug up the lede from where it was buried.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the fattest, laziest, most 401k retirement gold plated health
| care bureaucrats I have ever met in real life, say exactly "you
| don't pay well enough, we need budget increases" as a reply to
| almost every problem. Their leaders rise in the ranks by making
| this statement with ever-more removal of details, essentially
| no accountability, no efficiency designs, no program changes..
| Calling out a single unfair, one-sided statement as your
| rallying cry, is negotiations 101. all sides are guilty here
| rdtwo wrote:
| Paying people 50% of their wages in ballooning retirement
| benefits is not the best way to get the best and brightest.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Given we have stagnant or declining populations any defined
| benefit pension plan will fall short of the promises in the
| coming decades. Not only is deferred compensation
| unappealing to many people because of present time
| orientation, it's a riskier pension than a defined
| contribution plan. You also lose out on the ability to
| negotiate better compensation by changing jobs.
|
| On the whole the lifetime employment model was abandoned by
| the private sector decades ago for many good reasons,
| namely the impossibility of funding defined benefits after
| population growth stalled; as usual the government is the
| last place in society that makes necessary changes.
| rdtwo wrote:
| It's a bad model I ageee but the defined benefits Usally
| get pegged at last couple years salary so you just have
| to hope you don't retire into inflation like we have now
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I hear you, but let's circle back to the part where EMS staff
| is being poached by Dunkin fucking Donuts. That should not
| even be possible. A pizza delivery driver in a decent
| delivery area can make multiples (!!!) of the median salary
| for EMS staff.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > private firms are rapidly raising compensation.
| Government employers have been slower to adapt
|
| Reads like someone has discovered that the government
| sector has a hard time competing with the capitalist
| sector.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The government offers stability and post retirement
| benefits, as opposed to cash remuneration. Neither of
| those have to be properly accounted for in dollar terms
| today, so this type of remuneration is useful for
| campaigning on "keeping taxes low today".
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Pensions are notoriously under/unfunded, particularly in
| local governments. I wouldn't count that as a guaranteed
| benefit. It may retroactively be cut in the future.
|
| > Neither of those have to be properly accounted for in
| dollar terms today
|
| They actually are, at least for pension contributions.
| treis wrote:
| Government is a microcosm of the economy. Like we're not want
| for applicants for cushy middle management and above government
| jobs. We can't find the bus drivers, teachers,cops, and so on
| that get (relative) shit wages for crap jobs.
| JoyfulTurkey wrote:
| My wife is looking to change jobs in the midwest of the US. When
| we search, however, the majority of openings are less than full
| time and have no health insurance benefits.
|
| And she is a public employee and looking to stay in the public
| sector.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| I noticed that this became more and more common back when ACA
| was passed. It's cheaper to hire a lot of people part time than
| it is to hire fewer full time people because of the benefits
| they would be required to cover
| rdtwo wrote:
| Since health insurance is 20-30% of the benefits package it's
| cheaper to either hire under the full time bar or work people
| 7 days a week 10hrs a day and just pay the overtime
| differential. I think the calculus has swung enough that
| overtime at 1.5x is actually cheaper than adding new
| employees.
| JoyfulTurkey wrote:
| It has definitely been a trend at the public entity where she
| works. When full time employees leave/retire, two part-time
| positions are created to replace that person instead of
| hiring one full-time employee.
| antisthenes wrote:
| The jobs can't afford to provide healthcare either.
|
| The underlying harsh truths of health care in the United States
| is that it became bloated by design (incentives for high base
| prices), and also that the US population is incredibly
| unhealthy. And that a few million of health care workers
| (mostly in insurance companies) will have to lose their jobs to
| make it fair for the rest of us.
|
| But because unhealthy people are lumped together with healthier
| ones, it tends to lower the costs to a _tolerable_ (still very
| high) level. Also, many workers don 't pay their full premiums,
| which again helps mask the true costs of health care.
|
| Eventually it will all come crashing down and there will be far
| more suffering than there had to be, had we addressed the
| problem earlier and in full (Gut the insurance companies,
| Single-Payer, Cost ceilings on critical medication).
| ok_dad wrote:
| I agree with your assessment that single payer is necessary,
| but as for the millions of job losses claim, I don't agree.
| Those millions of jobs are for doing _something_ right now,
| so do you think that _something_ will be eliminated just
| because the government took over and what is that
| _something_? I don't believe that many jobs could be
| effectively useless, but I stand to be corrected.
| missedthecue wrote:
| If they all get jobs with Government Healthcare inc, where
| are the actual savings coming from? Who is going to be
| earning less? The profit margins of healthcare insurance
| companies are almost nothing. Look at Humana for
| instance... 2.5% net margins. Cut that out and every
| american saves $5 a month.
| noelsusman wrote:
| There wouldn't be much actual savings without massive
| disruption for providers. Right now Medicare and Medicaid
| are cheaper per patient largely because they pay below
| cost for the same services. They are subsidized by
| private insurance.
|
| A move to Medicare for all at current reimbursement rates
| would require drastic budget cuts at every healthcare
| provider in the country. That may be what's necessary to
| fix the broken system, but it would involve a lot of
| pain.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah i don't think Medicare even pays enough to covers
| the providers wages much less they building overhead and
| equipment
| ok_dad wrote:
| That's my point, kinda. I expect there to be some
| savings, but I'm not sure where from and how much. I feel
| like millions of jobs is a lot though.
| mjevans wrote:
| Best case: they're not kept on as 'No men' (contrast,
| 'yes men' for underlings who are just empty enablers),
| but transferred to scientifically evaluating and seeking
| the best treatments.
|
| Worst case: we go back to what things were before the ACA
| where if you had a preexisting condition you were
| screwed.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yea, I'm thinking that there might be a lot of
| administrative work that could be eliminated by a
| centralized electronic system for single payer care, but
| the way I see this going right now is the government
| adding another layer of administration on top of the
| current system to operate it (literally privatising it),
| and then adding a centralized directory of service
| charges and moving towards eliminating the parts of the
| system that are unnecessary under this scheme while also
| working with the same companies as currently exist to
| merge all EHRs into one common system. I expect most of
| the cruft of the current system to remain for several
| decades or more, plus more government cruft, but the
| upside is that we can eliminate the profit as a goal and
| probably balance half or more of the government cruft
| with eliminating inefficiencies. If they privatized
| pharma and the EHR software companies, too, then that
| would probably immediately lower prices due to the insane
| profit motives for investors in those areas, but that
| would never happen.
|
| I think we might save some money right away, but more
| likely we'll lose a bit, gain the ability for our
| citizens to not have to worry as much about their jobs
| being their literal lifeline, and over time we'll save
| more and more versus the current system due to an
| increased quality of living due to better health outcomes
| and longer lives.
| tomrod wrote:
| 2021 report: https://humana.gcs-web.com/static-
| files/78c99040-2eed-4231-8...
|
| Net income: 2.9B USD
|
| HOWEVER:
|
| 1. They paid 3.6B USD in dividends in 2021
|
| 2. They paid 10B in operating costs and receieve ~70B in
| premiums on top of other streams
|
| 3. They increased their interest expense for the KAH
| acquisition
|
| 4. They hold $44B in assets and $28B in liabilities
|
| The story they are clearly telling investors is they are
| seeking to consolidate Payers with Providers to improve
| efficiencies, which ignores that they they could improve
| operational efficiencies today.
| nn3 wrote:
| Margins != overhead. The overhead of insurance is much
| higher than the margins, and a lot of it is wages and
| related expenses.
| 317070 wrote:
| David Graeber has a long book on this, called "Bullshit
| Jobs". It turns out many of those people do think _their
| own_ job is useless and could effectively be removed with
| no impact.
|
| In the book he offers some numbers on the healthcare system
| in the US, where in administration and insurance there are
| indeed many such bullshit jobs. What is worse, they often
| bring a bureaucratic burden on people like nurses, who do
| have real work to do. (All by the assessment of the people
| doing the bullshit job)
|
| He offers quotes to show this was even the point of view of
| Obama
|
| > Everybody who supports single-payer health care says,
| 'Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance
| and paperwork,' " the former President noted. "That
| represents one million, two million, three million jobs."
| Graeber describes this comment as a "smoking gun" of
| bullshittization. "Here is the most powerful man in the
| world at the time publicly reflecting on his signature
| legislative achievement--and he is insisting that a major
| factor in the form that legislature took is the
| preservation of bullshit jobs," he writes. Politicians are
| so fixated on job creation, he thinks, that no one wonders
| which jobs are created, and whether they are necessary.
| Unnecessary employment may be one of the great legacies of
| recent public-private collaboration.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I think a lot of people _think_ we can eliminate a lot of
| things, but cannot properly pick the things to eliminate.
| I think there is a lot of bullshit we hate to do, that is
| still necessary; or alternately, we can 't eliminate it
| due to some sort of momentum or systemic reliance on that
| bullshit.
|
| In healthcare, I imagine there is a lot of bullshit that
| would still have momentum in a post-single-payer world
| that we couldn't eliminate right away, but I still want
| that. See my other recent comment, I went into more
| detail on why I think single-payer would be great, but
| isn't a panacea for healthcare costs and efficiency.
| antiquark wrote:
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Define 'many'
| antiquark wrote:
| For example: "The New York City Department of Education has
| axed another 850 teachers and aides for not complying with
| its vaccine mandate, bringing the total to nearly 2,000, the
| New York Post reported Saturday."
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/09/17/850-more-unvaxxed-nyc-
| teachers...
| Jemm wrote:
| Shortage of jobs that pay and treat people with respect.
|
| Employers have enjoyed exploiting workers for much too long and
| now they feel entitled.
|
| Productivity has greatly increased. Pay and respect have not.
| jszymborski wrote:
| My hot take is that, at least in my corner of the world (Quebec,
| Canada), a lot of this is exacerbated by exceptionally
| restrictive immigration controls which artificially limit
| movement.
|
| The nationalist/populist reasons for these policies (again,
| speaking only for Quebec) are going to suffocate a burgeoning and
| relatively young tech industry here in Montreal and Quebec City.
| peteradio wrote:
| Can you connect the dots for "garbage not getting picked
| up/shitty roads" with tech industry and immigration?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Having come from a poor American community into the tech world,
| I oppose justifying immigration with filling tech jobs. There
| are a whole lot of people in country already very capable of
| learning to fill these jobs and very little industry or state
| encouragement or support to help them.
|
| Siphoning away the most ambitious and capable people from
| around the world also hurts the places they are from.
|
| To be clear I do support immigration, just not as an easier to
| acquire and cheaper source of skilled labor.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| HN had a discussion on the program in Appalachia to try to
| find employable coders among economically dislocated mining
| engineers:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19892155
|
| Under this story about bootcamps there was also the
| experiment by Google to run fiber through those towns. I
| believe the lesson was that only a handful were employable as
| fully-remote devs.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key would be to cultivate the young.
|
| I expect I'd find it moderately hard to learn coal mining
| at my age and though I don't believe it would have been
| impossible in my youth.
| jszymborski wrote:
| There are openings in Quebec for _every_ job. From the
| service to the tech to the civil sectors, there are vacancies
| in every sector. I think a major limitation to our
| immigration programmes is that it is too often limited to
| people with undergraduate or post-graduate degrees rather
| than skilled and unskilled workers of any stripe.
|
| But of course, I agree that increase in immigration needs to
| be balanced and met with social and financial support for
| those who immigrate.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| How do Quebecois feel about immigration from French speaking
| parts of the world? Is it preferred?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Yes.
| jlokier wrote:
| That's surprising to me. Canada has a reputation where I am for
| being generally pro-immigration and friendly to immigrants. Is
| this not the case, or is it specifically different in Quebec?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Quebec is effectively a country within a country. Even our
| legal systems differ in some major ways (this is why you
| often see contests that aren't valid in Quebec)!
| mikrl wrote:
| You have to remember that Canada is not a monolith. Quebec is
| rather nationalistic for historical reasons. In ways both
| productive and pathological IMO. I won't get into it as an
| Anglo and immigrant but I encourage you to visit QC some time
| and steep yourself in the culture.
|
| Montreal is an incredibly diverse city and then you have
| Levis across the river from Quebec City which is something
| like 90%+ white French Canadian.
|
| A few of our recent far right terrorists (groups and
| individuals) came out of Quebec; the historical leftist
| nationalism associated with the FLQ in the 70s is not the
| only style anymore.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Quebec enacts many policies to protect their culture --
| french language requirements, banning religious symbols and
| clothing in certain places and jobs, etc -- which make it
| harder for immigrants (and Canadians from other provinces) to
| integrate.
|
| I don't think Quebec is anti-immigration, but they expect
| immigrants to make more of an effort conforming to Quebec
| culture and identity than other Canadian provinces do.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I wouldn't say Quebec is anti-immigration, but our leading
| politicians are. Premiere Francois Legault linked
| immigration to extremism and violence in the last couple of
| days [0], and the party who is polling second in terms of
| percent thinks that immigration should be lowered still
| [1].
|
| [0] https://ici.radio-
| canada.ca/rci/en/news/1912126/legault-apol...
|
| [1] https://www.lesoleil.com/2021/11/21/le-parti-
| conservateur-du...
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| shouldn't a small degree of forced uniformity aid in
| integration ?
|
| we've seen in other more liberal communities (Denmark,
| Sweden) that influx of culturally different immigrants
| tends to create nuclei of those cultures where they just
| interact amongst themselves, and never integrate.
|
| I would argue that expecting a middle eastern to integrate
| into a northern European society is a farce.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| that might speak more to danish and swedish culture,
| biases than to the immigrants. you picked notoriously
| racist societies with strong public neonazi movements
| instead of an example like toronto
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I picked those societies because those are some of the
| ones I've interacted with therefore can have an opinion.
|
| And what I saw was not racism, what I saw was Arab
| immigrants trying to make Danish schools ban pork, or
| having a complete disregard to the "tidy" Danish way of
| life (whether you like that way of life or not)
| g8oz wrote:
| >>I would argue that expecting a middle eastern to
| integrate into a northern European society is a farce.
|
| I would argue that if the _children_ of those immigrants
| are not fitting in then you have a problem. And that
| problem usually has to do with marginalization. In
| heavily immigrant areas do the people see themselves
| reflected in public insitutions? In teaching staff, bus
| drivers, police? America and Canada have historically
| been much better at this part than Europe.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Why would a society that is almost completely white
| reflect a new group of immigrants. And you obviously know
| that Muslim men aren't Limiting their children's
| educations and integration until the bus driver is brown.
| What is your motivation for lying?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| And how did that end up for America ? A country so
| fragmented and divided, torn by tensions to the point
| where recent discussions were mentioning civil war as a
| possibility, or even as an ongoing thing in a new form.
|
| Does immigration offer so much more other than cheap
| labour ?
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Quebec is extremely nationalistic and bigoted.
| jszymborski wrote:
| well, our politics are.
| christkv wrote:
| We've got plenty here in Spain would be happy to ship you a
| couple hundred thousand might help our budgets and reduce red
| tape at the same time over here.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's okay. It's not the end of the world. Many organizations
| eventually need to die. In the private sector, companies just
| collapse. In the public sector because we will prop them up no
| matter what, we'll need to take some short term pain as we defund
| the department.
| igtztorrero wrote:
| bombcar wrote:
| Rust and lead in the water can be solved by Rust!
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Public sector needs to stop paying shit wages.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I want them to get good wages to the point I paid additional
| taxes, half to the Federal Government and half to the State of
| California. 45% of income, while in the lowest tax bracket,
| blowing literally every billionaire out of the water. Why?
| Gratitude, first off, because they prescribed me stimulants
| knowing I had been treated for addiction, which was risky, and
| which I couldn't have done in the private sector. Took a risk.
| Made a bet. Helped me. Went very very well for everybody. And
| consequently I made sure it went well for the government, sure
| it's not that much money but it does pay for eg a tank of gas
| on a police cruiser, send in the cavalry. And I would argue I
| look great on their balance sheet, obviously better than Jeff
| Bezos.
|
| And I did the math and noted, first, to get a dollar out of
| State of California, you have to pay them a million in taxes.
| In aggregate. Like if you pay a million dollars in taxes and
| it's equally distributed, maybe not a million to one quite but
| around there. Very close, ballpark, at least for the purposes
| of the following estimate:
|
| I got a 1000000000x speedup (actually a bit more but I
| frequently round down to a more impressive number) on an
| algorithm thanks to those stimulants, and then it made sense: I
| still got 1000x ROI from paying taxes. Purely mathematical
| about it. Best money I ever spent! If you get a big enough
| speedup, taxes are a great investment. And they're the only
| thing that get people out of the absolute deepest holes.
| bombcar wrote:
| I wonder what would happen if a state changed their income tax
| laws to exempt public employees?
|
| Probably cause a huge outrage by people who don't understand
| math.
| danaris wrote:
| Then the people, in general, need to stop listening to the
| echoed words of Grover Norquist ("government so small you can
| drown it in a bathtub") and recognize that taxes are the price
| we pay for living in a civilized society.
|
| After all, where else can public sector wages come from?
|
| It also needs to be said that this is a common and despicable
| tactic of the right wing: first, vote consistently against any
| support for the public sector; then, claim that the public
| sector is _fundamentally incapable_ of doing a good job (and
| should thus be deprioritized further), rather than it having
| been _deliberately_ starved of funding and public support over
| the course of _decades_.
|
| We have the public sector we vote for and are willing to pay
| for: no more, no less.
| Gunax wrote:
| Well since we are getting political, how about the left-wing
| tactic of always needing more money. Just a little bit more
| and everything would be better.
|
| I am being a bit pithy, but I think these sort of opinions
| are based in ideology, and not experience. If you are
| untrustful, you will always be skeptical of government, and
| too trustful, will always accept that more money is the
| answer.
| danaris wrote:
| > Well since we are getting political, how about the left-
| wing tactic of always needing more money.
|
| And if government had _ever_ been funded to the point that
| the left wing _actually wants_ (note: not "to the point
| that politics actually allows in compromise budgets, either
| with the Republicans or with the fiscally conservative
| parts of the Democrats"), over the past few hundred years,
| and it had still failed to solve the problems that are
| trying to be solved with more money, you might be able to
| derive a valid criticism out of this.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Also don't forget, use anytime gov is ineffective but your
| enemy party is in power as evidence that they can't do their
| job. When you're in power, still blame them when things don't
| work.
| Victerius wrote:
| Are you ready to pay an extra $35 in taxes on your paychecks to
| make that happen?
| folkhack wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If that's what it takes for public sector employees to be
| well taken care of. Unironically, yes.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I have no idea why you were downvoted for the obvious answer.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I wouldn't put it about the money as much as "there is only
| so deep a pool of competent workers, and if another 5 million
| of them are hired in the public sector, labor in the private
| sector becomes correspondingly worse."
|
| It's unfortunate that the city can't hire enough secretaries.
| Do I want them to poach competent workers from my ISP,
| Target, Amazon, or my insurance company? Not really, no.
| ghaff wrote:
| Because it makes a naive assumption that there's some magic
| money tree a state government can go to in order to pluck
| dollars from that the voters have chosen not to provide for
| salaries and other expenses.
|
| Yes, the voters want their potholes filled but that doesn't
| mean they'll approve a bond issue or whatever to pay for it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Let these voters suffer their decisions seems like the only
| option? They learn eventually.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/unpacked/2017/07/11/the-
| kansa...
|
| "Voters choose to withhold funding for public services they
| expect" would be a better headline.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Let these voters suffer their decisions seems like the
| only option?
|
| Seems perfectly fine. And maybe they decide that they
| don't actually want to pay for some public services or
| they're fine with more automated/online versions of
| certain things. For example, where I live you do a lot
| more associated with the DMV online than you used to and
| I assume significantly fewer people are employed. Of
| course there can be issues with access and those need to
| be dealt with.
|
| It's not clear to me that, in general, state governments
| are massively underfunded.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Ok fine so hire one worker for 32 an hour instead of 0/2
| for 16. It's not rocket science, you just might have to cut
| hours or services.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _Because it makes a naive assumption that there 's some
| magic money tree a state government can go to in order to
| pluck dollars from that the voters have chosen not to
| provide for salaries and other expenses._
|
| I mean there clearly is one. Ukraine got billions within
| two days of asking. We've sent them what, $70 billion this
| year alone? Funnily enough no new outlet seems to be
| tracking the total, just covering each one individually so
| it doesn't look like we're doing what we're doing:
| Prioritizing Ukraine over US citizens.
| HAL3000 wrote:
| ghaff wrote:
| That's the federal government which owns money printing
| presses. State governments do not and are often required
| by their state constitution to balance their budget.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| There's nothing legally stopping the federal government
| from giving that to the states though. Which makes it
| clear that they just don't want to.
| ghaff wrote:
| The federal government spends quite a bit on
| infrastructure at the state level. But, yes, the federal
| government also prioritizes certain spending related to
| foreign policy over other spending that's related to
| domestic policy (and vice versa).
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I'd put it slightly differently: the public sector needs to pay
| much more of its total compensation in the form of cash wages
| instead of in benefits, work rules, and job stability
| regardless of performance.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yes basically pay the money upfront not after 20 years of
| service after they quit or quit in place
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I suspect this can be generalized beyond the public sector.
|
| How organizations work has changed dramatically over the last
| 20-30 years. Pensions are gone, salaries are higher, job security
| is lower, performance expections are higher, management is more
| merit-based than seniority based, etc. (yes, you can see
| exceptions in any workplace, but the overarching trends are clear
| on a multi-decade scale.)
|
| As with any change, there's a spectrum of early adopters to
| laggards.
|
| Public services are generally going to be in the laggard category
| by virtue of being old and bureaucratic. However, there are lots
| of other established companies and industries that are laggards
| as well and they must be feeling the exact same pain.
|
| The boomer generation grew up in a world where the old model was
| the norm. On average, they would be most comfortable in that
| style of company. This becomes self-perpetuating as the world
| changes around the organization: the current staff reinforces the
| culture and keeps it resistant to change. Doubly-so by virtue of
| the mutual loyalty in those positions.
|
| And now, the baby boomers are retiring and none of the new
| workforce is accustomed to the legacy org model and the tradeoffs
| it requires (are you interest 40% lower salary for a pension? You
| only have to stay for 20 years).
|
| I predict it'll be up to the organizations to adapt to the times.
| Management experience in "modern" companies will be in hot demand
| over the next decade or so.
| danaris wrote:
| > Pensions are gone, salaries are higher, job security is
| lower, performance expections are higher, management is more
| merit-based than seniority based, etc.
|
| Where are salaries higher? That doesn't seem to be the case in
| real terms in most places.
| azinman2 wrote:
| The article literally talked about Dunkin' Donuts and Amazon
| being higher paying.
| danaris wrote:
| Higher paying than what? Than other places you can get jobs
| now?
|
| The most conservative estimate I've seen shows that if the
| minimum wage had kept pace with inflation over the past 50
| years, it would be over $21/hour now. The _minimum_ wage.
|
| From what I've seen, Dunkin and Amazon* pay a $15 minimum
| wage--which, yes, is better than many other places _now_ ,
| but not compared to what you could expect to get for
| similar jobs several decades ago (adjusted for inflation).
| And I haven't heard anything one way or the other about
| Dunkin, but Amazon is actively hostile to unions, which
| were the strong sword and shield of blue collar workers
| like them back when they could expect pensions and such--
| not at all coincidentally.
|
| * For those actually designated employees; I'm given to
| understand that Amazon also does all sorts of shenanigans
| to designate various people who work for them as
| contractors of some type.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Higher paying than what? Than other places you can get
| jobs now?
|
| Yes. That's the only metric that matters for most people.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| This is the correct answer. The public sector is culturally
| further and further away from every other employer in the
| market. That gap needs to narrow.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| One of my jobs is public sector. Our project has maybe half the
| roles filled. A project that was supposed to take 6 months didn't
| even have a line of code written in those first months for want
| of some technical roles to be filled. And those more senior roles
| are still to be filled. But we are charging ahead anyway to give
| the idea of progress.
|
| People complain about terrible bosses and think that it is a
| symptom of "out of touch elites." But the general public is the
| worst boss I have ever had.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > But the general public is the worst boss I have ever had.
|
| General public reflects the existing social order. In a society
| that chews people raw and spits them out for profit, the
| general public won't be responsible or caring. They will start
| caring about the society and related morals and
| responsibilities as much as the society cares for them.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Why is the general public a bad boss?
| Proven wrote:
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Combine the financial stingyness of pretty much every manager
| anywhere with the self righteousness of people who truly
| treat you like you are their Victorian era servant as in
| their minds they own you for paying you.
|
| Customer service people get treated like this all the time,
| public or private sector.
| eastbound wrote:
| It sounds just like the private sector: Lack of staff
| everywhere. Perhaps talking too much about comfort of life led
| too many people to walk away; Meanwhile, well, we obviously
| generate enough wealth since they are walking away satisfied
| with their new standard of living.
|
| The danger is, as a society, perhaps the feedback look has
| inertia: WAY too many people have resigned from the "hustle
| life" and we are not yet feeling the effect of what happens
| when so few people work.
|
| Maybe, after 10 years, the Western countries will drop off the
| G8, and be replaced by cultures who are more willing to work.
| XorNot wrote:
| You're hiring at a pittance rate and then when no one wants
| to work for your company throwing red flags in the interview
| stage, and rather then asking "should we offer more money"
| you turn around and go "guess no one wants to work!"
|
| No. No one wants to work for _you_ at the rate you 're
| offering.
| ghaff wrote:
| Except the public sector, especially at the local level,
| only has a pot of money as big as the voters approve. You
| can pay more for fewer people (and it's often hard to
| layoff people) or pay less for more. So you can decide to
| pay more but that means hiring fewer people and doing fewer
| things (like filling in potholes) or staffing a DMV
| location.
|
| Private companies have constraints too of course but
| generally have more flexibility in dealing with them--which
| can of course be to decide that some job isn't worth it if
| they have to pay $X to fill it.
|
| We do this all the time at a personal level. While there
| are some service people who I would pretty much have to
| grin and bear it. There are plenty of other things I'd just
| let go, do it myself, etc.
| rdtwo wrote:
| The right thing is to just do less at the right staffing
| levels. Trying to do the same amount causes everything to
| grind to a halt.
|
| Most managers end up doing the latter because slowing
| things down against organizational inertia is really hard
| netsharc wrote:
| The pandemic had the effect of the wake-up call of "Why
| hustle all of your life, enjoy it more, for it may end sooner
| than you expect.", although I don't know how great that
| effect is.
|
| Maybe in the West/all over the world the workers have also
| noticed that the wealth is getting funneled more towards the
| top (Bezos can now send Captain Kirk up to the sky in a penis
| and buy a yacht that made headlines because a bridge in the
| Netherlands had to be allegedly disassembled so it would fit
| through...).
|
| Even in China the youth are (or they were, was it just a
| fad?) doing the "lie flat" movement that the government has
| made statements of "Everyone has to work hard for the greater
| good!".
| Forge36 wrote:
| How is the general public your boss?
|
| Why is the project delaying starting until some roles are
| filled? (What was done during this time?)
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| They aren't my boss. They just act like it in the outside
| world.
|
| We couldn't hire any senior level technical talent, so there
| was nobody who could actually tell management whether what
| they wanted was possible.
|
| What was done during the time? Endlessly updating project
| timeline docs about the new deadline with assumptions about
| when senior tech people would be hired. I didn't touch code
| for months.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| If the trash didn't get collected for 6 months because
| there were no senior garbagemen, I think the general public
| would be upset about that too.
| christophilus wrote:
| Same. I spent a month working in the public sector (two weeks,
| followed by my two week's notice). I just couldn't stand
| sitting around doing nothing. Most of the folks there kind of
| seemed to enjoy not getting stuff done. It just isn't for me.
| Also, it soured my already pretty sour view of public projects
| in the US.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| It's not about enjoying doing nothing.
|
| It is that going out of your way in the public sector is not
| rewarded and just gets you dragged into meetings, so if your
| manager isn't telling you what to do, why not just sit on
| your ass?
|
| The public sector's motivation problem is relying on
| intrinsic motivations.
|
| Why do they rely on intrinsic motivations? As the public
| screams when they hear of people getting large raises or
| bonuses.
| [deleted]
| rdtwo wrote:
| The system actively punishes those that do work so yeah...
| 10x incentive problems
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Why do they rely on intrinsic motivations?
|
| The biggest problem is merit pay is politically impossible.
| Imagine paying a hotshot developer $300k to introduce a new
| LMS for a school district. That very well might be cheaper
| than hiring a consulting firm and paying a team of
| developers $85k.
|
| But there would be howls about taxpayer money being wasted
| on such a highly paid individual. The public only tolerates
| raises based on seniority because absent some tragedy
| everyone gets old, so everyone can imagine themselves in
| the public workers' shoes.
|
| This in turn attracts workers who bank on seniority rather
| than merit for pay increases, creating a culture of
| mediocrity and tall poppy attitudes.
|
| The private sector is shielded from such criticism by the
| magical "just don't patronize them" argument (when in fact
| many businesses are monopolistic and essential), and
| frankly because the public is ignorant of how well-paid
| certain individuals are within firms.
|
| Not arguing against high merit pay, as it can lead to the
| most efficient outcome, but boy oh boy is it unpopular with
| a lot of people who never fall into the highly paid bucket.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| How much does it pay compared to the private sector?
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| J2 (public sector) pays about 30% less than J1 (private
| sector), not including equity (which is kind of worthless now
| anyway).
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Same here in the UK with local council (government) and NHS
| (healthcare) jobs.
|
| The system is basically in a zombie state since Covid-19, a
| sizeable portion of staff either left those areas because of
| redundancy, overworked or stressed, died from Covid or went and
| found a better job elsewhere.
|
| These institutions have become atrophied (weakened) but not given
| a chance to replenish.
|
| No-one has done anything to address it. Giving payrises or better
| work conditions won't solve it, there is an apathy in these
| institutions, brought around by crippling bureaucracy. This
| apathy translates into poor recruitment and external sentiment by
| the public, "oh you don't want a job in the NHS, its hard
| unforgiving work with low pay".
|
| Going to be a hard and unforgiving winter for the poorest and
| most vulnerable this year who need public services in the UK.
|
| Anecdotally - a friend in North of Spain says a similar issue as
| well.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > Giving payrises or better work conditions won't solve it
|
| > "oh you don't want a job in the NHS, its hard unforgiving
| work with low pay".
|
| You're saying fixing the root cause of this sentiment, wont fix
| the sentiment?
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Would you still work in an organisation if they gave you more
| money but they still didn't help you with:
|
| - Work hours / shifts
|
| - Holidays
|
| - Micromanagement of your workload
|
| - Having orders given down but taking full responsibility if
| it goes wrong?
|
| - Miscommunication and resources not being available or sent
| to the wrong place?
| rdtwo wrote:
| Ask the railroad workers... that's what they are striking
| about
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Me? No. But enough people to solve a worker shortage?
| Maybe.
| lozenge wrote:
| There was already a multi-year pay freeze in the NHS that
| added up to about 10-15% pay cut. If they reversed it and
| started giving the 10% annual inflation raise, then yes it
| could go some way to helping. However, that is so far out of
| the Overton window. Instead, tax cuts for the rich were
| prioritised last week.
| globalreset wrote:
| Lack of people to work should be the norm. Getting enough humans
| to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating
| them well and optimize everything around them.
|
| The globalization and demographic trends that has undercut the
| value of labor in the west for decades are now reversing. Expect
| inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes
| but also wage increases and the working class getting larger
| chunk of the pie.
| nly wrote:
| High taxes part is interesting, since in the UK we've just had
| the biggest tax cuts in a generation and more seem to be in the
| way in the new year.
|
| Winding back the clock to stimulate growth seems to be the
| order of the day
| mhuffman wrote:
| >Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the
| system to force treating them well and optimize everything
| around them.
|
| I have the suspicion this will only be used to import cheaper
| labor, not to treat current labor better or pay them more.
| legutierr wrote:
| This is getting harder to do. Wages are going up all over the
| world, and classic sources of immigration are no longer
| sending as many people abroad.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| That is absolutely the plan. And if it weren't for human-
| trafficked labor, we would have reached low points like this
| a long time ago. There are plenty more humans to traffic in
| the world, and the ruling elite has no problem starving them
| away from their families and communities then congratulating
| themselves as though they have done a good deed.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I was recently listening to population growth lecture from
| 90s Yale and among few things that really struck me was a
| phrase that said something to the effect of 'while the
| locals may object over their personal interests, we, the
| elite, may see it through a more wide economic lens'. It
| was fascinating and it helped me understand the deeply
| ingrained distrust in US population of the educated
| 'elite'. I always thought thought it was largely uninformed
| bias, as I keep listening to old Yale lectures, I learn
| that US populace is a lot smarter than most give it credit.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Without (recent) immigration the US population would be
| shrinking and aging trend. In addition a large part of
| immigration to the US is educated boosting the country
| even further. Immigration is not the problem' politicians
| selling the populace out for profits to corporations is a
| much bigger issue.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Oh give me a break! With higher wages, the US Population
| would have its own children. I know I certainly would!
| And studies agree!
| rdtwo wrote:
| We can't afford childcare and maintenance of standard of
| living. Dual income is a trap
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Maybe. Maybe not. People do respond to their current
| situation. It is hard to predict with a dose of certainty
| that X would happen as people could very easily reverse
| the predicted trend.
|
| It may not be THE problem, but dismissing it as just one
| of the culture wars items is in itself counter-productive
| ( if only, because perception is reality and people do
| vote based on their belief systems ).
|
| I do not disagree with you on the clear focus of US on
| the true beneficiary of this system ( corporations ).
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| Like Europe, right? The continent which hasn't seen economic
| growth in 15 years and each subsequent generation sinks further
| closer to poverty?
| lossolo wrote:
| Data shows similar growth to USA.
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2.
| ..
|
| edit: updated link to last 15 years
| Retric wrote:
| The favor the EU when you look at GDP per capita.
|
| USA GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 87%.
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/gdp-...
|
| EU GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 126%
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-
| union/gdp...
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| You really believe that?
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locat
| ion...
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| Why would you look at localized growth rates?
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locatio
| n...
| lamontcg wrote:
| I sort of agree with where you think we are, but not where
| we're going.
|
| > Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?),
| higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class
| getting larger chunk of the pie.
|
| The Fed is clearly going to engineer a massive recession and
| financial crisis to throw enough people out of work to get
| inflation under control and make people continue to work for
| peanuts.
|
| They're not giving the working class a larger chunk of the pie
| without a massive fight (and what remains to be seen is if how
| far they'll go before they realize they're harming themselves
| in the process, and even if they capitulate before they destroy
| everything).
| 7speter wrote:
| The fed's job is to keep inflation under control, not to
| "engineer (a) financial crisis." If the fed raises the
| interest rates and sinks us into a financial crisis, it was a
| mistake, as seen during the great depression.
|
| If you want working class pay to go up, go vote for people
| who will help working class pay up instead of assigning
| conspiracy theories to the fed.
| tomcam wrote:
| Are under the impression the Fed is an arm of the
| government? It is a private entity.
| tarboreus wrote:
| Weird comment.
| lovich wrote:
| It's a public private partnership, it runs privately but
| the federal government decides who is appointed to its
| leadership roles
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| I think OP was using "financial crisis" in a non-technical
| way and was referring to the Fed's targeted plan to leave
| an additional 1 million people unemployed by the end of the
| year.
|
| If we assume this is what they meant, I think the post is
| reasonable. The fed is targeting labor in this way
| specifically to avoid a wage/price inflation spiral. Those
| hurt the most by such a spiral are _capital_ holders as the
| relative power of their capital decreases.
|
| (all this said, I would actually prefer solutions targeting
| the land-holding class, over labor and capital).
| lamontcg wrote:
| It won't be a mistake. The Fed will raise interest rates to
| tame inflation and will create unemployment by doing so.
| That will also cause a financial crisis, though. Every time
| the tide goes out we find out who was swimming around
| naked. This time isn't going to be any different.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| More specifically, business models which expected to make money
| by extracting money from everyday citizens after first
| establishing a bunch of customers don't actually make sense
| because tons of companies are doing the same thing while
| ignoring that everyday people don't have any disposable income
| anymore and will never pay for their products and services.
|
| The continued running of the economy is practically dependant
| on a wealth transfer to labour so we can enable a second wealth
| transfer to capital.
| mycall wrote:
| Is that because money tends to become held by people who
| don't need it?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I know that wealth tends to follow a Pareto distribution
| historically, this is the qualitative fact. My impression
| is honestly that this is a function of some people being
| able to earn a return on money more easily than other
| people. The poor can make better use of fifty dollars than
| a millionaire, a millionaire can take better advantage of a
| fifty thousand dollars than a billionaire, and a
| billionaire can make better use of 50 million dollars than
| the poor or millionaires. So things eventually reach some
| sort of equilibrium as it's self-correcting, somebody who
| uses money badly gets overcome by somebody who uses it
| well.
|
| Right now I think that equilibrium is out of sorts because
| I think it's almost self-evident how much somebody poor
| could do with a thousand dollars, whereas a company like
| Berkshire Hathaway right now is at such a loss as to what
| to invest in that they're literally just sitting on cash
| when they get it. There's are exceptions but I see too much
| of this these days. Wealth also isn't distributed like a
| Pareto distribution, it's too top-sided to follow the
| distribution perfectly, and if history repeats itself we
| will see that unravel. I expect the top to fall more than I
| expect the bottom to rise though.
| bfung wrote:
| I think this comment and the parent comment are key
| insights. My random thoughts and rant:
|
| The extract of money to the rich has created the wealth
| gap: CEO pay , investors with money to invest, all of got
| richer when the money supply was expanding while keeping
| worker (actual producers) pay raise at a far lower rate.
|
| Now that there are supply issues, due to different Covid
| rules across countries for global trade, and demand
| relatively high, the rich are looking for "growth" still.
| But with a cash tightening, they can't borrow as much to
| produce goods at an accelerated pace. Hence "worker
| shortage".
|
| If CEOs and companies are cutting staff, the board should
| consider readjusting executive pay as well to save money
| and reallocate the savings towards hiring! It's time to
| adjust executive pay vs. worker pay and shrink the wealth
| gap a little.
|
| I don't usually agree with Robert Reich as I'm more
| moderate than he is positions, but topic I'm in agreement:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/25/infla
| t...
| lazide wrote:
| To put it more simply - money tends to end up with people
| who earn/acquire it faster than they spend it.
|
| It's pretty obvious when you think about it.
| criley2 wrote:
| The working class will get a larger chunk of the pie only if
| they organize into powerful unions and directly negotiate with
| the wealthy to dramatically reduce corporate profits. Right now
| all that pie that should go to workers goes to investors.
|
| Without that dramatic shift in power, you'll just get what we
| have: worker pay rising half the speed of inflation. Good luck
| with that.
|
| Until the corporations stop posting record profits and we stop
| pumping the stock market to dramatic new highs every year,
| you're not going to see the working class better off.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Unions don't work the way you think they do. If they are
| large unions they actually actively negotiate against the
| workers as well. Take a look at the railroad union as an
| example.
|
| Only smaller local unions are effective at negotiating wages
| and benefits
| criley2 wrote:
| It's ironic that you mention the railworkers union to
| defend your claim that I don't understand unions, when the
| rail industry in America got everything they wanted from
| the workers.
|
| Your point is basically "the worst union imaginable is the
| same as no union".
|
| That's not the own you think it is.
| rdtwo wrote:
| You are misinformed.
|
| The railroad union got screwed. For one they didn't get
| an actual contract. As far as I can tell they got
| Tentative deal that was used as a procedural trick to
| delay the strike till after the midterms. It's not even
| clear that there was anything in this "tentative deal".
| More importantly the strike wasn't about pay as much as
| it was about absolutely terrible scheduling practices.
| Employees were on call 24/7/365 had to show up at very
| short notice, couldn't take vacation or sick leave etc.
| There was no promise of actually fixing any of the
| problems in that deal.
|
| This happens a lot in union strikes, workers want better
| work conditions but instead the union negotiates like
| 1-2% more pay and the media reports it as greedy unions
| getting overpaid. Even though that's not what the workers
| even wanted.
| vincnetas wrote:
| ok, lets go with smaller unions then.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Using one union as a stand-in for all is pretty silly...
| Should we understand large corporations entirely on the
| basis of Enron?
| rdtwo wrote:
| It's pretty systematic, look at state wide teachers
| strokes of nurses. Any big union
| rdtwo wrote:
| Ha you say that in jest but Enron is a good model for
| large zombie corporations. We know a lot more about the
| inner workings of Enron that we do about many
| corporations as well.
| Aunche wrote:
| This is talking about the public sector. Public sector unions
| are a disaster, with the police unions being the the star
| example. Unlike the private sector, you can't capture profits
| from the owners because there is no profit to begin with.
| Instead, the money comes from the more junior employees and
| in the form of taxpayer debt. Thanks to unions, 40% of
| Chicago's education budget goes towards paying pensions.
| Meanwhile, younger teachers are stuck in dead-end part time
| roles because that's all the city has budget for.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Thanks to unions
|
| That's more like thanks to disinvestment in retirement
| funds to build capital for future payouts.
| AJ007 wrote:
| To make the irony worse, the pension returns are dependent
| on allocating their capital to monopolies which are able to
| capture excess returns. Re-allocating profits from
| shareholders to workers de-funds the pensions (and retirees
| more broadly.)
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Problem is, there's no lack of people looking for work -
| there's a lack of people who want to work these particular
| jobs. For every 300 applicants for an ez comfy remote six-
| figure developer position, there's 0 for a (literal shit-job)
| wastewater treatment plant position paying $16/hr - and it's no
| wonder why.
| msbarnett wrote:
| I take your point but lol at the idea of 300 applicants for a
| remote dev position. If we saw 30 applicants all year is
| would be a miracle.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I've seen this exact problem with home health assistants. If
| you have a Medicaid waiver and qualify for a home assistant,
| Virginia will pay $16/hr for a full-time assistant in a high
| COL area. The bottleneck is of course finding someone willing
| to accept unlivably low wages (edit: which you cannot
| supplement) for a very hands-on, dead-end job that entails
| significant liability.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| It's physically exhausting work too.
|
| The conditions are so shitty and pay so poor that I almost
| question the motivations of people doing it.
|
| A lot of 'saints' but also a lot of theft and abuse ,
| particularly around medication occurs in these low cost
| facilities and low pay home help.
| z9znz wrote:
| > working class getting larger chunk of the pie
|
| I don't see this happening as a net result. There are just too
| many powerful (wealthy) interests working multiple angles to
| ensure that a vast majority of any gains go to the top.
|
| There will be faux gains or benefits which appear substantive
| but are either offset by some new life cost (such as inflation,
| but not necessarily so great and complex) or are outright new
| expenses.
| shakezula wrote:
| Which is why the only real way to fix this problem is with
| legislation. Minimum wage laws aren't perfect but they
| address core issues like this far better than most, imo.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yawn.
|
| Raise pay, train on the job, hire competent managers that fire
| people who do nothing, improve working conditions. (For example,
| public universities are filled with administrators who don't do
| anything useful at all)
|
| It's not a "crisis" it's just competitive pressure. There's
| nothing quite like people not needing your shitty jobs to improve
| conditions.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Lots of comments saying more immigration is the answer. Perhaps
| historically that has helped. But it's a worrying position, and
| here's why:
|
| 1) implicitly you are saying that lots of public sector jobs are
| so bad they can/should only be done by "others" that move "here"
| to do them for us.
|
| 2) who will do the crappy jobs where the immigrants came from?
|
| Getting immigrants to do exclusively jobs that locals won't do
| feels like a bandaid to me. Does anyone else worry about this?
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| I'm worried about how this reality is leading to the formation
| of a modern slavery system. That might seem hyperbolic but I
| can assure all who read this, it is not.
|
| In the US especially, it cannot be forgotten _why_ people from
| Central and South America are flooding the southern border. It
| 's because of the US's meddling in the affairs of other
| nations, particularly via the War on Drugs.
|
| So if the immigrants are supposed to take these public sector
| jobs because the current citizens refuse to do them, it would
| be considerably more ideal if they were to not take them under
| duress, which the US actively caused.
| ryan93 wrote:
| The US isn't meddling in Central American affairs by banning
| drugs here in the US. Although it does affect them! They
| should also feel bad for allowing poison to be created and
| sold from their country.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Astute observation, but at the same time it's the lesser evil
| to allow them to take that job. Let's not allow misguided
| compassion to do real world harm to the people to whom that
| compassion is directed.
| datadata wrote:
| If the US is supporting the worse conditions that make
| taking the job the lesser evil, and benefiting from the
| resultant labor (as parent comment claims), then it isn't
| really compassionate to support that system, as the system
| depends largely on suppressing quality of life elsewhere
| rather than creating opportunity. An analogy is that it
| might be the lessor evil for an African centuries ago to
| get on a slave ship rather than to be murdered on the spot.
| That doesn't make supporting slavery compassionate.
| hackerlight wrote:
| I disagree. You can support immigrants being allowed to
| work without supporting all parts of the system!
|
| Cause and effect is what matters. Not some abstract
| purity test of "supporting a system" that's totally
| disconnected from actual moral outcomes. If you advocate
| a policy that blocks immigrants from working in the US,
| you are _directly causing their suffering_. If your
| position aligns closely with ethnonationalists, it 's
| time for some deep introspection. This is malevolence
| masquerading as compassion.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Why do people insist on calling something slavery when it
| clearly isn't slavery? You say something is bad without lying
| about what it is.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Its true we're working towards more of a indentured model.
| bombcar wrote:
| Immigration cannot be a permanent solution, because eventually
| everyone will have immigrated.
|
| Immigration is basically arbitrage on living conditions, the US
| could directly institute "compassionate slavery" and many very
| poor countries would gladly sell themselves and their children
| into it.
|
| In fact, there are likely people who would rather live in US
| prisons than in the country they're currently in.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| We're very fortunate that the high birth rates are in places
| where the people are desperately trying to get out and to
| immigrate to rich countries.
|
| For this reason, we will never have "everyone has immigrated"
| be a serious problem.
|
| Also, legal immigration has been down under Trump and has not
| bounced back to Obama levels under Biden.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Why are we fortunate, because this bandaid solution can
| continue to work? Even though it's not a morally good
| solution?
| proffeatur8 wrote:
| What I worry about is that the same people who call for more
| immigration also call for higher wages and better working
| conditions for blue collar labor.
|
| Increased immigration from poorer countries only results in
| lower wages and less leverage to negotiate for the most
| vulnerable. Regardless of whatever laws you try to bring forth
| to counter this, you'll be fighting a permanent uphill battle
| against physical reality.
|
| The modern progressive attitude is to simply be for everything
| indiscriminately, without regard for the contradictions.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| And yet historically, the period with the highest immigration
| to the US, roughly 1880-1920, was also a period of rising
| wages, not lower wages, as well as generally improving living
| conditions.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| which has nothing to do with immigration, and just with the
| post-industrialisation boom.
|
| growth was so large that society could accommodate such
| immigration rates
| hackerlight wrote:
| "Increased immigration from poorer countries only results in
| lower wages and less leverage to negotiate for the most
| vulnerable."
|
| Nonsense, given that the "most vulnerable" -- by a large
| margin -- are the people inside the poor country who have now
| been unbanned from the landmass you've declared that you own
| at the barrel of a gun.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| People are saying that states and cities just need to raise
| wages, but that's not always possible...
|
| >...vicious cycles happen at state/city level. Financial duress -
| higher taxes/worse services - decline in tax base - financial
| duress. There's no solution for this. No one can "fix" Illinois.
| It's trapped in its debt.
|
| https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/12953914014637506...
|
| Where are the anarcho-capitalists when you need them?
|
| Seriously, I would love to see a state or municipality try an
| explicit move to private sector provisioning of "essential"
| services as an experiment. Imagine if instead of voting for
| politicians, you voted for what fraction of city contracts should
| be assigned to which commercial providers. The space of possible
| institutions is way underexplored, and the risk from a single
| failing municipality trying something radically new seems low.
|
| https://fee.org/articles/the-man-who-outsourced-the-governme...
| bombcar wrote:
| Our little town has privatized garbagemen and you have
| something like five+ companies to choose from.
|
| It seems to be working decently well.
|
| But we also have a very local town power and water utility that
| is also working well, too. So perhaps it's something else.
| jawns wrote:
| In Delaware, where I live, garbage and recycling pickup are
| done by private companies, rather than municipal governments.
|
| The result is... Four different garbage trucks from four
| different companies clatter through my neighborhood in the
| early-morning hours of four different days of the week.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| You could have the garbage companies bid for the rights to
| serve a particular neighborhood, or pay a tax to the
| municipality according to the product of
|
| decibels emitted * estimated fraction of the population
| sleeping at the hour services are delivered * population
| size affected
| bombcar wrote:
| That is definitely the downside.
|
| And if you allocate the contract city-wide each year very
| quickly there is only one company that CAN fulfill the
| contract.
|
| I'd love to see something like an electric dumpster that
| collects the smaller cans and then goes to a main location
| to be truck collected.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| The electric dumpster sounds like a great idea.
|
| Your point about there being only one company that can
| fulfill the contract is a good one. My suggestion was to
| vote for what fraction of city contracts should be
| assigned to which commercial providers. I haven't worked
| out exact details of how this voting would work -- maybe
| voters could upvote/downvote service providers reddit
| style, and their contract percentages could be adjusted
| accordingly. But the overall thought was that if company
| A is currently providing 100% of Centerville waste
| services, and company B from Borderville is looking to
| expand into Centerville, they try to convince voters to
| assign 5% of Centerville waste disposal contracts to
| company B.
|
| Monopolies arise because it is an individual's best
| interest to buy whichever option is cheapest. But it is
| in our collective best interest to have healthy
| competition. By having voters vote on what % of contracts
| should go to which provider, they end up choosing in our
| collective best interest, and keeping providers on their
| toes by maintaining a bit of diversity.
|
| It's a bit of a wacky idea, I just had it this morning
| actually. My larger point is there is a disappointing
| lack of willingness to discuss and run small scale
| experiments on wacky ideas that could totally work :-D
| For example, the scheme I described incentivizes
| companies to tattle on each other for bad behavior like
| harming the environment! Isn't that interesting? It also
| goes a long way to address the classic problem of charter
| schools trying to goose their test scores by kicking out
| low-performing students.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Funny, I want exactly the opposite.
|
| I don't give a fuck about 5 choices if they are all bad. In
| fact, most people in the USA are in this exact conundrum with
| certain types of utilities (e.g. Internet). In fact, public
| ISPs in the USA have a phenomenal track-record compared to
| their private competitors.
|
| I want one good choice for my utility. Portland, for all of its
| problems, has a pretty excellent electric company, also named
| "PGE", which absolutely mogs the fuck out of the other "PG&E"
| that people on HN are likely more aware of due to the blackouts
| that the public private partnership, PG&E have instituted.
|
| In fact, I can't think of any large-scale situations where
| public utilities in the USA were privatized and it led to
| improvements in services rendered.
|
| As it turns out, fiduciary duty is kinda fucked up when you're
| talking about essential utilities. I want there to be no profit
| incentive.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| PG&E has blackouts to prevent wildfires. It's not clear how
| switching to a different provider would solve that problem.
|
| But even accepting your premise that Portland's PGE "mogs the
| fuck out of PG&E", under the scheme I proposed, California
| voters could vote to assign say 5% of California energy
| contracts to Portland's PGE and see how it goes. That % could
| increase every year if the voters think they're doing a good
| job.
|
| The thing I proposed is not the same as traditional utility
| privatization. Utilities are natural monopolies, so
| privatizing them doesn't actually create competition. With
| the proposal above, the voters get to vote on exactly how
| much competition they want in each industry, including
| utilities.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Illinois can absolutely be fixed. It's called bankruptcy and
| jails (for corruption) and the sooner you do it the better off
| everyone will be.
| adjwilli wrote:
| I'm surprised no comment yet (or the article even) has mentioned
| the Republican motto of "government is the problem" being the
| root cause of this. When one political party makes it there goal
| to destroy functioning government how can we not expect shortages
| in government services? Maybe less government and more guns isn't
| the solution, but rewarding hardworking, non-cynical people is?
| peteradio wrote:
| Republicans operate differently at the federal level than they
| do at the State and Local level...
| MereInterest wrote:
| Maybe this is region-dependent, but I haven't seen that to be
| the case. For example, Betsy DeVos pushed to defund public
| schools in favor of charter schools at the state level, to
| disastrous consequences [0], then pushed for the exact same
| policies at the national level.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/education/detroit-
| public-...
| peteradio wrote:
| I can't read that article, so it would be difficult to
| discuss the solitary example you have.
| ryan93 wrote:
| There is already a right to education in Detroit. What does
| a right to literacy look like? You can't make people learn
| ajross wrote:
| As cynical as that rhetoric is, it's not the problem.
|
| The article answers the question quite convincingly, though it
| takes eight paragraphs to get there: government jobs don't pay
| well and governments[1] are very slow to adjust worker pay to
| market conditions. So no one wants to work these jobs because
| they're working better jobs elsewhere.
|
| [1] Across the ideological spectrum. Sure, republicans might
| have a cynical reason to want to torpedo the government, but no
| bureaucrat wants to raise pay scales. It's all downsides from
| the perspective of middle management.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You're missing the forest for the trees. The problem is not
| solvable because of the Republican stance.
| darawk wrote:
| If that were true, the problem would be less severe in
| majority Democratic cities. As far as I can tell, that
| seems to be quite far from the case.
| dominotw wrote:
| Trash pickup isn't controlled by 'evil republicans', i am
| surprised to see this as top comment here. It took me 1.5 hrs
| (vs < 20 mins) yesterday to go downtown on CTA chicago because
| apparently 'labor shortages due to covid' they keep making
| announcements on speakers to plan for slowdowns due to covid. (
| Even though president declared 'covid is over' )
| giantg2 wrote:
| A major part of the problem in my experience is actually
| government regulation and policy as it applies to those
| workers.
|
| Want to stay remote? As a federal employee, too bad. Furloughs
| suck too. You have little negotiation power compared to private
| bosses.
|
| The teachers I know would rather change professions, or work at
| a lower paying private school than at a public school. They're
| tired of all the administrative problems. I'm sure pay is more
| of an issue in certain states (mine pays well), but this lack
| of freedom, or even micromanagement is a major factor as a
| teacher or in the private sector.
|
| I have had coworkers that left government work and government
| contract work that did so because the policies are crippling
| the mission.
|
| I have no interest in working at a public school. I have little
| interest in working for the government either - both due to the
| regulations and bureaucracy.
| halffaday wrote:
| Can you name any cities or counties controlled by the Democrat
| party machine that provides a level of service which you would
| say is at least satisfactory or an example for others to
| follow? I ask because the majority of people with jobs I know
| accept a pretty significant cost in terms of time and money
| with regard to their commute to not have to live in these
| places. That's a pretty clear realized preference.
|
| If nobody is getting this right, then it probably isn't an
| issue of whether the rubes are voting for team A or team B.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Do you want me to list wealthy enclaves filled with
| Democratic voters?
| bombcar wrote:
| If the wealthy enclaves of democrats and republicans are
| both model cities but the poor center cities of both are
| hellholes it tells you more about money than politics.
|
| But some cities like San Francisco have had both for
| decades, and should be doing exceptionally well.
| hackerlight wrote:
| That argument is self refuting. Such wealthy enclaves are
| wealthy enclaves by virtue of the local planning laws that
| ban poor people from being allowed to live there.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| "Democrat party" is immature, right-wing insult jargon. It's
| spelled "Democratic Party."
|
| I assume you're talking about places like San Francisco. For
| what you say to be true in that case, it would mean your
| "majority of people with jobs" are commuting to the central
| valley, which is ludicrous.
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