[HN Gopher] An experimental program in Austria that creates work...
___________________________________________________________________
An experimental program in Austria that creates work for the
unemployed
Author : cocacola1
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-12-10 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| One idea I've toyed with is that unemployment is actually a
| societal refusal to help eachother. Yes we all need sustenance,
| but consider something like this
|
| If I'm laid off I can choose to still program. If I don't my time
| might simply be wasted (eg on videogames, netflix, or even job
| applications). But I can also choose to continue to program.
| Maybe by helping local businesses, contributing to FOSS etc.
| While I understand the near impossibility of it all, but we
| actually could continue to have lots of good things so long as
| folks refuse to stop working even if told they're no longer
| employed.
|
| Obviously this fails the moment some unit in the chain refuses to
| participate, but I think in small ways it can actually blunt the
| pain felt in recessions/depressions by creating small communes of
| collusion amongst your social circle. You collude together to
| ensure that eachother gets what they need, at least amongst the
| valuable skills in the circle.
| guerrilla wrote:
| People would do that if they could afford to... They need to be
| able to survive though. So it's rather our refusal to help them
| than their "refusal" to do anything...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How do they pay for food, housing, and healthcare in this
| model?
|
| A family member who is retired performs volunteer work
| (adjacent industry to what they did while employed) because
| their Social Security comfortably covers all of their expenses
| (and Medicare covers their healthcare). Without these age
| tested basic income and benefits (and me providing no cost
| housing), this would not be an option. They would be toiling in
| a bullshit job.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| It's meant as a stop gap not to ride out a temporary
| situation like a recession or depression, not a permanent
| perfect solution.
|
| But for example, if someone gets foreclosed on, up to some
| limit they can still reside with the pool, but perhaps now
| they're doing labor work for everyone, or they're being a
| child caretaker, or cooking etc.. ideally they have some
| trade skills to contribute.
|
| I agree that the global economy and contemporary life has
| become sufficiently complex that it would not just be a non-
| change, but my point is kind like why do we have so many
| homeless families being kicked out, only for the house to sit
| empty (often rapidly depreciating for lack of maintenance)
| etc, sometimes its about seeing that if you contribute to the
| decline, your own decline becomes inevitable.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Sadly there is no evidence for any of what your are saying.
| I would think all super powerful people in history have
| contributed to someone's define without their own becoming
| inevitable.
|
| It sounds like how you wish he world to be, not how it is.
| [deleted]
| visarga wrote:
| > creating small communes of collusion amongst your social
| circle. You collude together to ensure that eachother gets what
| they need, at least amongst the valuable skills in the circle
|
| Exactly. What are a bunch of unemployed, skilled people with
| unmet needs to do? Sit on their hands and be content to get
| their UBI? No, you help yourself, and try to be part of a
| community that does the same. People can build, fix, teach,
| heal, transport, cultivate, we just need resources to do that,
| with a little help we can do most of it on our own. Probably we
| will benefit from smart materials, better batteries, robots and
| AIs that can help us be self reliant faster. It will be easier
| for the state to have a self reliant population. But some
| things will still need to remain, like chip factories, large
| industries and training the AI models.
| itronitron wrote:
| If a person is laid off from a job as a programmer, then they
| might consider that programming is actually a waste of their
| time.
|
| Furthermore, by contributing to FOSS or volunteering your
| programming skills you are devaluing other programmers'
| careers.
| skybrian wrote:
| One difficulty is that many societies are very individualistic.
| People are isolated. It's not enough to say that your skills
| are valuable in the abstract. There needs to be work that's
| obviously worth doing, and this requires either demonstrated
| demand or a leap of faith.
|
| This is fairly unlikely for someone who is depressed.
| Enthusiasm is very important and often in short supply.
|
| Also, entitled customers will repel volunteer labor. Being paid
| is in part compensation for putting up with annoying strangers.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > a leap of faith.
|
| This is absolutely the case. It takes "second" (or more like
| 100th) order thinking to recognize that you're part of an
| ecosystem that will be less well if you stop contributing
| just because you're not being paid. The faith part is that
| you will continue to have your needs (not necessarily wants)
| met through reciprocity -- which is a basic human
| psychological trait, so not the worst gamble.
| VictorPath wrote:
| Karl Marx said unemployment was a foundational necessity of
| capitalism (although not the feudalism that preceded capitalism),
| so I don't see this program lasting long (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ).
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| No need to bother Marx, plenty of economists will tell you that
| the market needs unemployment or "bad things will happen".
|
| I think unemployment simply can't be solved in a capitalist
| society, as it would expose a major contradiction of liberist
| economies.
|
| We tell people they have to work or they're parasites and don't
| deserve to have their basic needs covered, but at the same time
| we need a mass of them to be out of work, in order to be able
| to exploit the rest.
|
| So much of our lifestyle is built on exploitation of the
| working class, be it local or foreign.
| blue039 wrote:
| History has shown full employment does not work. The most famous
| example being communist countries such as the USSR. They achieved
| full employment, except that it was mostly useless labor. Sure,
| you have a job. But your job is to count buckets of nails by hand
| all day. When you're done with that you go back to the beginning
| and count them again. You'll get paid a pittance for your
| trouble. However, I would not call this "valuable work". Or, work
| that the article supposes would provide someone some meaning.
|
| > So far, a hundred and twelve people have used the Job
| Guarantee, as the program is known, to find work; at least fifty
| more are expected to do so before 2024, when the program is
| scheduled to end. Participants complete an eight-week training
| course, then receive a job offer; they're free to decline it
| without losing their unemployment benefits, but so far everyone
| who's been offered a job has chosen to work.
|
| This is insane on principle when scaled up to a society. You can
| get trained, be offered a job (under the assumption of livable
| pay), and then can refuse it and stay on the government tit? NO.
| ABSOLUTELY NOT. This will never work. It's the BS machinations of
| an overeducated academic trying to prove a point. If you accept
| tax payer funded job training you should be obligated to take the
| first job, in that field, that pays you the minimum liveable
| wage. Otherwise it's anarchy.
|
| > Sven Hergovich, the regional director of the Public Employment
| Service of Lower Austria, essentially agrees with this analysis.
| He thinks that rising demands for productivity and efficiency
| mean that, now and in the future, not everyone will be able to
| find a job without support. "There are not sufficient jobs
| available for all of the long-term unemployed," he told me. "In
| fact, we have only two options. Either we finance long-term
| unemployment, or we create a job guarantee."
|
| Some people are useless. This is not any different than any other
| time in history. There are people who, if it wasn't for menial
| work, would actually be fundamentally _useless_ by the definition
| of the term. The internet calls these people NEETS. They are
| generally burdens on society and IMO we should just let nature
| run it 's course. They will either starve or skill up. Either
| way, society wins.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > Otherwise it's anarchy.
|
| Omigod! Not ANARCHY!
|
| > just let nature run it's course. They will either starve or
| skill up.
|
| You sound nice.
|
| I actually agree with you about universal employment being a
| crock. Just do a UBI already. Not only will that work better,
| but it will have entertainment value when your head explodes.
| jen20 wrote:
| > They are generally burdens on society and IMO we should just
| let nature run it's course. They will either starve or skill
| up. Either way, society wins.
|
| The natural extension to this is that we should just kill off
| the elderly - they serve no economic value, are a burden to the
| economy and so forth.
|
| Unfortunately for you that would remove the vast majority of
| people who could be tricked via Fox News to vote for the
| viewpoints this and your other (vile) comments espouse.
| oraetlabora wrote:
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like this sort of thing will make more sense in rural
| areas with a low cost of living, like where they tried this?
|
| If so that's fine. Programs don't need to be universal to work
| well.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Programs don't need to be universal to work well.
|
| Love this attitude! So often on HN we see responses like "It
| doesnt work in <this one case>, because <nuance>" ... To which
| it seems so obvious like "then dont do it in that case?"
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Is there a name for this response template? It would be
| helpful to be able to reference by name rather than prototype
| when it comes up again.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Seems like a subcategory of whataboutism.
| vijayr02 wrote:
| Not a name, but I think it's called making the perfect the
| enemy of the good.
| brntsllvn wrote:
| > Work is a source of structure, esteem, and motivation, and its
| disappearance can lead to depression, anxiety, addiction, and
| interpersonal turmoil.
|
| So true
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I don't think retired people are overloaded with depression,
| anxiety, addiction, and interpersonal turmoil.
|
| The fact that the lack of work / ability to sustain yourself
| leads to those things: those states of mind reflect the literal
| existential insecurity you must deal with.
|
| Because having a really shitty job that is just slightly less
| insecure kinda leads to the same thing.
| brntsllvn wrote:
| Totally agree a shitty job is unhealthy.
| gumby wrote:
| That's why, as we strive towards the morally necessary system
| of universal unemployment (with robots doing all the work) we
| will need for the robots to create jobs for those who want them
| (and to convince the job holders of the importance of these
| "jobs").
|
| I mean this in all seriousness and am only sorry that I'm
| unkikely to live long enough to enjoy this paradise. Of course
| I'm one of those who loves to work.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Work is not production or service by itself. This is
| something we all tend to forget.
|
| A bonsai is as much work as shining shoes.
| 988747 wrote:
| brntsllvn wrote:
| I also love work. It's such a great way to meet and work with
| other people. Crucial for mental health.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Nobody's ever going to STOP you, you realize...
| gumby wrote:
| But nobody will necessarily pay you for the work you want
| to do. Which is true today as well.
| brntsllvn wrote:
| True. For better or worse. Sometimes I feel a little
| anxious when I can't work.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Pretty sure the only way a robot is going to convince me that
| obvious makework is important is to do a lobotomy. Which I'd
| kind of prefer not to have.
|
| Maybe people should get over the idea that work should be
| their source of worth. Which I suspect they will manage to do
| within a generation or so.
| gumby wrote:
| > Pretty sure the only way a robot is going to convince me
| that obvious makework is important is to do a lobotomy.
| Which I'd kind of prefer not to have.
|
| Clearly they need to make it _non-obvious_ make work in
| order to give those who want it adequate satisfaction. To
| you it will look like productive work but really it will
| simply be a game. In many small ways we are there already.
|
| > Maybe people should get over the idea that work should be
| their source of worth.
|
| I hope universal unemployment leads to a flourishing in
| poetry etc from people who delight themselves and (some of)
| their friends sharing and collaborating on all sorts of fun
| projects. They don't even have to be very good.
|
| Life worked out pretty well before we outsourced our
| creativity to "professionals". Even the word "profession"
| has been hijacked by the industrial revolution.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > Clearly they need to make it non-obvious make work in
| order to give those who want it adequate satisfaction.
|
| There are limits to how much you can fool people, no
| matter how smart you are.
| gumby wrote:
| Classic example: Astronauts go into space, mainly to
| study sending astronauts into space.
|
| Meanwhile robots do all the serious piloting, imaging,
| exploration, and other research.
| yrgulation wrote:
| All financed by the east eu countries Austria is extracting
| revenue from. Perhaps a reverse of fortunes might be in order?
| dxdm wrote:
| Could you link to anything that explains what you're talking
| about?
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Wait a second,
|
| if somebody asks an overinflated way-over productivity wage for
| cleaning toilets because of a supply shortage, this is considered
| being unethical and "unwilling to do the dirty work, while
| receiving benefits",
|
| but asking a way way overinflated price for housing because of a
| supply shortage is considered good and healthy for the market and
| drives investment without shaming the investors for receiving
| undue housing benefits?
|
| Why do we yell at people artificially shortening toilet cleaner
| supply, while at the same time not yelling at developers for
| artificially shortening housing supply?
|
| Don't people need to live AND shit?
|
| Looks like it is not about an economic argument after all. Seems
| like it's again a pattern of abusing less privileged, weaker,
| less defensible people. Shaming them for what they naturally and
| humanly want - and which is the same what the privileged
| naturally want: To be able to say no, when they want to say no.
|
| Where do these schemes of maliciously founded shame on false
| grounds come from? How did we start to listen to the voice of the
| psychopaths which want to divide us?
| burlesona wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but your anger re: housing is
| misdirected. Developers do not short the housing supply. Like
| most businesses they make more in volume than they do in margin
| and would happily build more units at any price range if it was
| legal.
|
| In the US and UK (and probably many other countries) the
| government has a default stance of allowing no or nearly no
| development without excruciatingly painful, expensive, and slow
| bargaining with city hall. The primary job of a developer is to
| _get permission to build something._
|
| The government is killing supply, not the developers.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| I understand your willingness to attribute wrong behavior to
| the correct culprit.
|
| But, how does it come, that these procedures to get building
| permits have been slowed down/bureaucratized to the point
| that it almost seems intentional?
|
| Also, the anger is not about them intentionally shortening
| supply - it's about them intentionally asking and taking the
| higher prices. Nobody forces them to take more than e.g. a
| 10% shortage signal markup, but we force people on the other
| side to wipe the floor with their dignity.
| swearwolf wrote:
| In many of the places that are the hardest to build in,
| like California, they are intentional. Those regulations
| were out there to slow down development as much as
| possible. The motivation behind doing so varied some;
| sometimes it was hippie's concern about the environment,
| sometimes it was homeowners seeking to protect the
| character of their neighborhood, and sometimes it was the
| latter masquerading as the former. All of it was
| intentional.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| No clue, but I will tell you as a property developer myself
| I would love to build more, faster. Everyone I know in the
| business would love to build more as well.
|
| Time from project to building permit here in Lisbon can
| stretch to two years and vast tracts of land close to
| infrastructure are considered unbuildable by the
| municipality for no good reason. Also consider that
| developers need the government to work with them on roads,
| subways, sewers and others to be able to build.
|
| In large parts of urbanised Asia where building more
| housing is encouraged this problem does not exist.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| These two paragraphs in particular stuck out to me:
|
| > Critics of labor-market programs such as the Job Guarantee
| argue that they enable precisely this sort of choice--they make
| it easier to decline work that one doesn't like. One program
| participant in his thirties told me that, while on unemployment
| benefits, he'd been offered a job cleaning toilets at a gas
| station; he'd decided that he didn't want "that sort of job," and
| had instead found work in the carpentry workshop. If everyone
| were guaranteed a reasonably pleasant job, suited to their
| interests and needs and paying a living wage, who would do the
| grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers, like those in
| America, are currently having difficulty hiring people to take
| hard, poorly paid jobs; many of the workers in Austria who wash
| dishes or clean hotel rooms are immigrants from Eastern Europe,
| and during the pandemic many of them went home, some for good.
| Jorg Flecker, a sociologist at the University of Vienna who is
| evaluating the program in Gramatneusiedl, told me that pressure
| from employers could prevent its expansion across Austria.
| "Employers say, 'There are so many unemployed. We have to have a
| tougher regime for them because we have jobs to fill.' "
|
| >
|
| > Lukas Lehner and Maximilian Kasy, economists at Oxford who are
| evaluating data from Gramatneusiedl, argue that competition with
| the private sector is a good thing. "I think, from an economic
| perspective, that argument doesn't make much sense," Kasy said,
| of the dirty-jobs view. "If they're shit jobs, try to pay them as
| well as possible. Try to change the working conditions as much as
| possible until you reach the point that somebody wants to do
| them, or automate them if you can. And then, if nobody wants to
| do them, maybe we shouldn't do them." Kasy thinks that an
| important function of initiatives like job guarantees--and of
| universal basic incomes--is to improve the bargaining positions
| of people who want to change their lives. "Whether it's abuse
| from an employment relationship, a bureaucrat in the welfare
| state, or a romantic relationship, the question is, What's your
| outside option?" he said. "Having the safety of the basic income
| or a guaranteed job improves your outside option. If your boss is
| abusive, or doesn't respect your hours, or is harassing you or
| whatever, you have the option to say no."
| phkahler wrote:
| >> If everyone were guaranteed a reasonably pleasant job,
| suited to their interests and needs and paying a living wage,
| who would do the grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers,
| like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring
| people to take hard, poorly paid jobs; ma....
|
| That the answer. Pay people _more_ to do the jobs nobody wants!
| [deleted]
| danieltillett wrote:
| Or pay people less to do the pleasant jobs.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| In general, there's a scratch for every itch. There's no
| dishonor in cleaning toilets, but if you're aspiring to be a
| carpenter, it's not an optimal choice.
|
| The manipulative behavior around hours and time off traps
| people in jobs and makes them "dirty jobs".
|
| I have a high fulutin' tech gig, but I worked on farms and in
| retail in high school and college. The laws don't protect
| workers, and the people who were working in those jobs for a
| living were beaten down and exploited because the employers
| could.
| davethedevguy wrote:
| I think this would cause a fundamental shift in our society.
|
| Who would want to work minimum wage server jobs when offered
| the same salary for something more rewarding?
|
| Who wants to do gruelling, poorly paid labouring on a
| construction site, if the alternative is training to be a
| craftsman for the same wage?
|
| Those jobs would either need to be paid much more attractively
| (pushing up the cost of restaurant food and construction, in
| these examples), or - as quoted above - eliminated entirely.
|
| I would be really interested to see how this would play out at
| scale.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Restaurant food and construction are in the non-tradables
| sector, so we can just look at places where these jobs pay
| more by virtue of location - such as expensive city cores,
| particularly outside the U.S. Looks like they still have
| restaurants and construction and they're priced roughly the
| same as anywhere else, so paying low-skilled labor so much
| more can't be affecting them all that much.
| majewsky wrote:
| > where these jobs pay more by virtue of location - such as
| expensive city cores
|
| The way this works is that the workers are commuting in
| from poorer neighborhoods on the outskirts, since they
| cannot afford to live in the rich communities that they
| serve because of the low salaries.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The criticism has some merit if the carpentry job was
| subsidized by the government whilst the toilet cleaning was
| not. Why should the latter be less deserving of a subsidy than
| the former? Ultimately, established social programs such as the
| EITC are intended to address this in a comprehensive, neutral
| way.
| pfisherman wrote:
| > Austrian employers, like those in America, are currently
| having difficulty hiring people to take hard, poorly paid jobs
|
| Sounds like a signal from the market that they are not paying
| enough. One might argue about how social welfare programs and /
| or importing cheap labor distort the labor market; but it
| doesn't change the fact that jobs are the dregs of the labor
| market.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What does distort mean?
|
| Penicillin distorts the growth of bacteria.
|
| This will sound like a crazy commie rant to some people, but
| the trick that the powerful have played on is all is to think
| there's some natural market condition that is had for us to
| influence.
| luckylion wrote:
| It is that signal, but are we ready to pay everyone more,
| even for low-skill jobs? How much more is everyone willing to
| pay for groceries? How much more for health care?
|
| For most people here, that won't matter, because paying 50%
| more for groceries would barely be noticeable, and neither
| would 50% more for health care be. But for society at large,
| that would kill many lifestyles.
| selestify wrote:
| > But for society at large, that would kill many
| lifestyles.
|
| So change those unsustainable lifestyles then
| scottLobster wrote:
| Yes, if you can't painlessly absorb a 50% increase in
| most peoples' second biggest expense after housing, it's
| all your fault and you're just being a spoiled child. /s
|
| The word "lifestyle" means more than beer, nice cars, and
| smoked-salmon-avocado-toast on vacation. It includes
| peoples' capability to invest in their future. I'm sure
| you can cite many examples of fools and their money being
| soon parted, but there are plenty of people doing
| everything right who are being screwed by inflation as
| well.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In this hypothetical, the people that can't just absorb
| it are in the group getting paid more.
|
| And if the prices are increasing 50%, then the low end
| pay increases must be a lot higher than 50%.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Exactly, wealth is being concentrated at the top to such
| extremes that there is no more excess money in the
| lower/middle classes to tap. So somehow or other the
| increase in wages will have to come from the wealthy,
| whether through intentional redistribution, market forces,
| or peasant uprisings. Likely some combination of all three.
|
| Eventually it just becomes a physics problem. If $100 exist
| in the world, and one guy has $99, and you need to fund
| something that takes $2, you have to get $1 out of the rich
| guy somehow.
| raincom wrote:
| Or devalue the dollar to the extent that $1 becomes $2.
| In which case, the person who holds $99 doesn't hold $99
| as "raw cash"(nominal asset), but holds $99 worth of real
| assets. With this inflation or devaluation, his $99 will
| become $198 + delta. This delta comes as rent extraction
| from the ordinary people.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Your comment assumes that like energy, money cannot be
| created or destroyed. Which is false. Anyone can create
| new money by talking a loan from the bank.
|
| However this point also helps your argument: When you
| borrow you pay interest to someone richer. In a sense a
| combination of whoever you sent the money to, and the
| bank.
| sin7 wrote:
| Can poor people take out a loan and create new money?
| loa_in_ wrote:
| They don't, and in times where there's most need for
| that, banks squeeze their wallet close even tighter.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| My understanding is any loan from a bank creates new
| money. However not sure about the types of loans that
| poor people use such as payday loans and pay-in-4
| services. Maybe that us too since an investor may use
| bank borrowed money to fund them?
| swearwolf wrote:
| Maybe that's the point though - maybe we should kill some
| lifestyles because they aren't sustainable at scale.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| While many large corporations declare record profits, I
| doubt that the person cleaning the toilets is really a
| major issue.
| luckylion wrote:
| It's not only about the person cleaning the toilets,
| companies often have more than one employee that's paid
| too little.
|
| Look at nurses for example: you need plenty of them in
| hospitals and nursing homes, they are (in my opinion)
| severely underpaid. Raise their wages by 50%. You can
| make an educated guess how that will influence the price
| of healthcare or living in a nursing home.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| >You can make an educated guess how that will influence
| the price of healthcare or living in a nursing home.
|
| Based on the $49 charge for 5ml of sugar water to calm
| our newborn baby down so a nurse could draw his blood,
| probably not much.
|
| (The nurse failed to draw his blood. After four or five
| failed attempts over several hours they eventually asked
| a nurse from the NICU to come over, who got it first
| try.)
| samus wrote:
| The nurse is probably receiving very little of these $49.
| It's probably an inflated price charged by the hospital
| that is usually negotiated down to something reasonable
| by the health insurance provider. Similar to the
| discussion I had with my product manager recently: she
| can't expect that consultant to work according to the
| 100$ per hour that his company charges, because he is
| likely receiving a lot less.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The nurse is probably receiving very little of these
| $49
|
| Yes, that was the point. That the price of healthcare
| isn't based on the wages of the nurse.
| majewsky wrote:
| But that's the point, no? If you double the consultant's
| salary, you won't have to pay double because most of it
| is just pure margin.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Nurses are highly skilled and highly paid workers, they
| do however have nursing aides for the grunt work.
| luckylion wrote:
| That may be the case in the US, but not in Germany and
| Austria. Nurses are paid pretty bad, and, surprise
| surprise, they're having problems finding people to
| choose that career.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| In some places they may be highly paid. In many, they are
| not. I know this because of close family who have worked
| as managers of multiple hospitals and hospice that have
| extremely uneven pay scales even in a single region. You
| might even assert that the people with less pay have
| more/sufficient staffing on hand but you would be wrong.
| The amount of WTF/hospital in the US never ceases to
| surprise me.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'm actually curious in what parts of world anyone would
| genuinely consider nurses to be "highly paid". The hourly
| rates for some types of nursing work can be quite decent,
| but still markedly less than what virtually anyone in IT
| with similar levels of experience would expect to
| receive. And it's often sufficiently physically draining
| that it's not feasible for most to work 40-50 hours a
| week.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > who would do the grungy, difficult work? Austrian employers,
| like those in America, are currently having difficulty hiring
| people to take hard, poorly paid jobs
|
| > "If they're shit jobs, try to pay them as well as possible.
| Try to change the working conditions as much as possible until
| you reach the point that somebody wants to do them, or automate
| them if you can. And then, if nobody wants to do them, maybe we
| shouldn't do them."
|
| Seriously, if you can't find people to do those jobs then
| you're simply not paying them enough. This whole idea of
| intentionally disadvantaging people in order to force them to
| do what you want them to do is some comic book super villain
| thinking.
| mgrthrow wrote:
| This is the classic answer to the classic question about
| anarchy:
|
| "who will do the unpleasant, demeaning work?"
|
| "We only think it's unpleasant because we make it unpleasant.
| We can have clean, well lit factories. We just have to
| prioritize making that work more pleasant."
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Also perhaps the least dignified work should be the highest
| paid? Unfortunately America has a sort of wealth cult going
| on that we dignify (and deify) those who are already wealthy.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| The unfortunate reality is because these jobs are plentiful
| and easy to do (NOT saying they aren't demanding, just that
| they don't require advanced training) it incentivizes a
| race to the bottom in terms of wages - but we should do
| better as a society in guaranteeing high working standards
| and wages through regulation instead.
| andrepd wrote:
| Or, precisely, through programs like this. What Marx
| called the "reserve army of labour" ensures that these
| jobs will remain poorly paid.
| 8note wrote:
| Given the jobs are plentiful, isn't that an incentive to
| raise the wages? If you actually want somebody at your
| horrible job, you have to incentivize them to do yours
| and not somebody else's
| lesam wrote:
| If there was an alternative in the form of a guaranteed
| not-terrible job at minimum wage, wouldn't that
| necessarily raise wages (or maybe working conditions) for
| currently terrible jobs?
|
| Giving people a real choice seems easier than regulating
| every possible kind of job.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why even bother with a guaranteed not terrible job? Seems
| simpler to go with universal basic income than wasting
| resources on uneconomic jobs.
| andrepd wrote:
| There is a problem right with the motion of "uneconomic".
| If fixing basic infrastructure or growing food is
| unprofitable, but building sportscars or yachts is not...
| that seems to indicate a problem with the economic system
| of allocation of resources.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If society thinks there are too many sports cars or
| yachts, then it can increase marginal
| wealth/income/property/sales taxes. And if society thinks
| there is insufficient food or infrastructure, then it can
| pay people to make food and build infrastructure. Either
| way, if both are competing for the same supply of labor,
| only the highest bidder will get it.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Plentiful and easy to do means nothing in the face of
| sufficiently low supply of workers. If there isn't a low
| supply of workers, then why is there a quote given about
| people turning down work?
| burritas wrote:
| How do we make cleaning septic tanks more enjoyable?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Why's there a need to? If it's highly unpleasant and
| there's a shortage of people willing to do it then surely
| it's a perfect opportunity for the development of self-
| cleaning tanks... As it is most of the truly unpleasant
| jobs of previous centuries don't exist anymore - if someone
| had found a way to make gong farming pleasant (look it up!)
| then flushing toilets and town sewerage systems might never
| have been invented...
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Pay more. Design the tank and the equipment so it's not a
| dirty job. All doable if you are willing to spend some
| money.
| bombcar wrote:
| By making it it well and entertaining.
|
| There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to it. Septic
| sucking is a function of capital costs not labor costs.
| guerrilla wrote:
| By paying a lot more.
| burritas wrote:
| Cheaper to hire a felon or immigrant. I'm not saying I
| agree with this arrangement.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Which is why nobody should be in such a weak position.
| It's exploitation pure and simple.
| burritas wrote:
| I don't disagree that it's exploitation, but I think you
| obscure a very complex problem with "nobody should be in
| such a weak position".
|
| I'm not sure any economic or legal arrangement could do
| away with weak positions like that entirely.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Re _a very complex problem with "nobody should be in such
| a weak position"._
|
| It is only complex if avoiding questions about the value
| of human dignity, and the inability of laissez faire
| capitalism to deliver that, need to be avoided.
| blacksqr wrote:
| This is the crux of the issue. Most everything else
| herein is chin music.
| arglebargle123 wrote:
| UBI would go a long way towards pulling the very poor up
| out of the cycle of "I'll take whichever bad choice is
| least bad right now because I'm desperate."
| luckylion wrote:
| We don't have that cycle in Germany at all. Yet we don't
| see any of the promises of UBI materializing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Germany doesn't have Minijobs? They're pretty much what
| this article is describing.
| luckylion wrote:
| Germany doesn't have
|
| > the cycle of "I'll take whichever bad choice is least
| bad right now because I'm desperate."
|
| Welfare covers the basics and provides for a modest life,
| no desperation included.
| majewsky wrote:
| If welfare provides for a modest life, why are the Tafeln
| [1] overrun to the point of denying membership
| applications because of shortages?
|
| [1] Die Tafeln are a group of privately-run food banks in
| Germany:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafel_(Organisation) (no
| English Wikipedia article unfortunately)
| luckylion wrote:
| Because free/cheap food allows you to spend the cash part
| of benefits on other things.
| samus wrote:
| It provides no incentives to step out of it though. As
| soon as you start working again, the basics and the
| modest lifestyle is not covered anymore.
| luckylion wrote:
| If you work a minijob, you get welfare (housing,
| utilities, health insurance, cash) + the first 100EUR you
| earn are yours to keep. On the next ~350EUR you'll pay
| 20% for social insurance and get to keep some of it, the
| rest is deducted from your benefits, so you'll keep 100%
| of your welfare + 184EUR. There's no way you're worse off
| than on benefits if you're working.
|
| If you work more, your benefits will be reduced until you
| earn enough to not get any benefits. Roughly 20% of
| people on benefits work, but make less than benefits, so
| they get the rest via benefits ("Aufstockung").
| guerrilla wrote:
| I think libertarian socialism does exactly that but in
| this case what's being argued for is JG (and UBI) which
| would help empower many, so we shouldn't be arguing
| _against_ those things (not saying you are.)
| Retric wrote:
| Robots and or increased pay.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| By paying enough
| unity1001 wrote:
| > who would do the grungy, difficult work
|
| Robots.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nah, too expensive as long as there are poor and desperate
| people that can be abused.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Just a little standardization of things like bathrooms,
| kitchens would enable robots, leave aside automated
| bathrooms, kitchens themselves.
| almost_usual wrote:
| At that point Robots will do all the work.
| Proven wrote:
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Bzgjm
| odiroot wrote:
| In communist Poland (probably whole Warsaw Pact), not only were
| they guaranteed, there was an obligation to work. You could go to
| jail if you avoided work.
|
| This created a somehow funny effect, were many just did the
| absolute minimum on the job.
| haunter wrote:
| Yes that was true for Hungary too. From the 50s up until to
| 1989 it was a crime to be unemployed.
| kbelder wrote:
| In Belarus, you have to pay an extra tax if you're
| unemployed. A coworker of mine was struggling with that,
| because she was having trouble proving she was working in the
| US, they were trying to tax her parents.
|
| Corrupt hellhole, that country.
| pydry wrote:
| >many just did the absolute minimum on the job.
|
| Just like here then.
| dudzik wrote:
| My grandma used to tell me about this situation. Specifically,
| how infuriating it was to work with people that would do the
| absolute minimum and be rewarded like people making an effort.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| And there's also some kind of a real psychological incentive
| for some, like myself, to be basically unable to do "absolute
| minimum" when I come to do the job and engage myself, because
| that would drive me crazy.
| itronitron wrote:
| That is the human condition and also prevalent in capitalist
| economies.
| thriftwy wrote:
| In Soviet Union, they were.
|
| Among other things, universal employment shown to do the same as
| no employment: a lot of people binge drinking and not caring to
| do anything useful with their life. Work ethic problems surfaced
| in a bad way.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It doesn't seem to have changed post 1991 either.
| 8note wrote:
| Drinking got so bad in the US that the government have to set a
| prohibition on it. Before prohibition, was the US in no
| employment or universal employment?
|
| I don't think there's a strong relationship to this, and the
| Soviet alcoholism came from something else -- maybe losing many
| family members or having been shipped far away from everyone
| you know by a totalitarian government.
|
| Or, the soviets never had a prohibition to change up what
| people drink
| thriftwy wrote:
| Almost none of working age Soviet people of early 80s had
| personal experience of losing a family member or being
| shipped away, yet they drank like sailors permanently stuck
| in a port.
|
| This is mostly due to the blandness of life, and partly due
| to almost absent survival-related risk and stress. Your
| income and housing is guaranteed, even if often crappy and
| small. Why bother?
| mgrthrow wrote:
| The soviets also had the problem that they were an autocracy
| who had little regard for the conditions of their people.
|
| They were also _huge_. Community level programs like this can
| be much more functionally democratic and uplifting.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Late Soviet communities mostly ran themselves within the
| existing law/power frameworks. Soviet society indeed had
| comparatively little regard for the conditions of people, but
| it is more of a cultural problem, and not an unique one.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > The soviets also had the problem that they were an
| autocracy who had little regard for the conditions of their
| people.
|
| This is just false.
|
| In the USSR life expectancy went from 30 years in 1925 to 69
| years in 1990[0]. On the other hand, in the US it started
| declining in 2015 without having recovered yet[1].
|
| In the USSR, "In 1926, the literacy rate was 56.6 percent of
| the population. By 1937, according to census data, the
| literacy rate was 86% for men and 65% for women, making a
| total literacy rate of 75%"[2].
|
| The USSR was also the first country in the world to legalize
| abortion, and it championed gender equality. In the meantime
| the US is going in the direction of banning abortion once
| again.
|
| I have yo ask you, what you do mean by "conditions of the
| people"?
|
| - [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-
| expectancy-...
|
| - [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-
| expectancy-...
|
| - [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union
| thriftwy wrote:
| Male life expectancy was steadily decreasing in Russia
| (RSFSR) from 1965 to 1985.
|
| Maybe USA is on the same track.
| jemmyw wrote:
| The way I see it is competition. The government in a particular
| place sees that wages and conditions are poor so they offer
| guaranteed jobs with better wages and conditions - now companies
| have to compete for their workers. And if that sounds like a tax
| payer burden, consider that low wage workers tend to be net tax
| beneficiaries their whole lives, it probably saves the state
| money long term. You just get to exchange higher priced goods and
| services for lower tax (or more tax services).
| my_city wrote:
| An experimental program I propose: give the proletariat the means
| of production.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Job guarantees make more sense to me than UBI; the government
| only has to pay for those who aren't employed elsewhere while it
| still sets a floor for the entire economy about how bad a job can
| be, squeezing out jobs that are worse than the JG jobs. But I'm
| still collecting facts and quite open to being wrong. On my list
| to read: 'The case for a job guarantee', Tcherneva.
|
| [0] 'http://pavlina-tcherneva.net/the-case-for-a-job-guarantee/'
| pengaru wrote:
| It seems like a no-brainer to me for Social Security to include
| Guaranteed Employment of a full-time federal minimum-wage
| income position.
|
| Just add a debit card to the social security card citizens
| receive. They can use the debit card to withdraw up to a full-
| time minimum-wage amt of money per month. If they take the
| income, it's assumed they did some kind of proportional work. I
| don't think there's even any need to police it.
|
| Simply characterizing it as employment and establishing the
| expectation that consumers of the program perform work for
| their country/community commensurate for what they withdraw is
| miles better than UBI in my opinion. Most people are honest,
| and frankly a lot of the people I know would work more hours
| than full-time, it'd just be volunteer-like work helping people
| and cleaning up around the neighborhood, and probably creating
| a lot of public art. Positive things to facilitate, and largely
| not things for-profit businesses would pay for.
|
| It's also nice to couple it to the already established federal
| minimum-wage, which already has an (admittedly lacking) process
| for adjusting to keep up with inflation. We should ensure the
| minimum-wage reflects a minimum livable wage by modern
| standards, and guaranteed employment would always provide a
| worst-case income of a minimum livable wage.
|
| I don't think we're lacking of good options for these style
| solutions. We're just lacking support in the general public for
| such a socialist-looking program. Pull yourself up by your own
| bootstraps and all that.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| What you are suggesting would not be guaranteed employment,
| it would be UBI wrapped in a lie. Ignoring problems with the
| system (i.e., fraud) would not address any of the reasons why
| there is not already UBI in the United States. Your idea is
| crazy beyond the Overton window.
| blue039 wrote:
| Full employment never works. Famous example is the soviets.
| Neither can UBI be penciled into an actual economy. UBI would
| bankrupt the nation, so would a large scale job guarantee
| program as described.
|
| I am never surprised. When asked to put a dollar value on a
| program the overeducated go on bleeting about higher order non-
| sense. It's hard to take any of these academic exercises
| seriously. Especially when they spawn from fields as fraudulent
| as economics and social science.
| majewsky wrote:
| If full employment is a pipe dream, why are we routinely
| treating unemployment as a personal failure?
| pjmorris wrote:
| I think there's room for distinguishing between full
| employment and job guarantees: providing a job for anyone who
| wants one doesn't have to be the same as requiring everyone
| to work.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| oraetlabora wrote:
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think these programs are very positive. One thing that worries
| me today is the reductive way we talk about work often. On the
| one hand there's the "just give them cash, let the market figure
| it out" aspect that just reduces work to a commodity, on the
| other there's the 'all work is terrible' mentality. Oddly enough
| both have a sort of similar disregard for work in a way.
|
| There's really a lack of discussion about the meaning-giving and
| social aspect of work and how to actively design work in
| communities. I wonder whether the parallel decline of both
| traditional labor and religious groups had a strong impact on the
| perception of work because those were the two main camps
| resisting that reductive mentality.
| Hizonner wrote:
| If you don't want work to be treated as a commodity, then you
| need to stop coupling it tightly to how you make your living
| (the problem being that we're not yet quite technologically
| ready to do that...).
|
| If work is so "meaning-giving and social", then people will
| presumably do it even if they don't have to do it to eat, and
| even if the boss isn't breathing down their necks.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I sort of disagree with that. Work _can_ provide meaning if
| its entirely voluntary, but for many people the fact that it
| 's necessary, sustaining and vital is part of what makes work
| meaningful. An important aspect of the value of work is that
| if you didn't do your work, there's real consequences to
| that. Otherwise very quickly you go from work to something
| that is more like a game or a hobby in nature. And while
| games and hobbies are great, they don't really fulfill the
| same need. On the boss part I agree of course, but that's an
| orthogonal issue.
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