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>Millennials have spent almost their entire working lives in a labor market that is loose—with too many job seekers and too few jobs—and where private-sector la

by gragas 11y ago

>Millennials have spent almost their entire working lives in a labor market that is loose—with too many job seekers and too few jobs—and where private-sector labor unions are almost entirely absent. Certainly, monetary policy that promotes employment while making it easier for workers to form unions would help Millennials make up lost ground. The issue I have with this is it promotes a certain ideology—that job-seekers have the right to hold jobs even when there are too few. This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers. I'm not trying to argue for one ideology or the other, I just think it's absurd to ignore the existence of one or the other.

geogra4 11y ago
How about if you don't have a job you still deserve a basic income? Ultimately that's the future. There are going to be too few jobs for people going forward. There's no point in makework. Just give each person a basic income.
- collyw 11y ago
  I don't buy the "too few jobs argument". We got told this 30 years ago when computers started becoming mainstream and households had one person going out to work. Certain jobs get automated but more bullshit jobs get created.
  - Retric 11y ago
    The % of total population that works has continued to drop. However, promoting BS jobs makes society worse. EX: 80+% of all time and effort spent on medical billing is simply economic dead weight. Medical billing reduces doctor effectiveness requiring more doctors, more people training doctors, and doctors to work longer hours doing crap work (filling out forms). Remove bullshit jobs and only a small fraction of the population actually works. Long term we can make an endless hell where paperwork is what 98% of humanity does, or we can just chose another system. PS: In the US over 50% of all money spent on healthcare goes to Overhead that has nothing to do with patents. In many cases it’s cheaper for people with insurance to go to private doctors who don’t accept insurance. [Think about that for a bit.]
    - branchless 11y ago
      Your example of medical admin expenses is useful. The reason why many activities are no longer viable is due to the amazing increase in efficiency of rent extraction. Same for land.
thomaspurchas 11y ago
I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job. While it sounds like a good idea in principle, it ignores the fact that without a job many people simply won't have the resources to make themselves more valuable. It creates a catch 22 situation, and the people it effects the most also happen to be the people who will struggle the most to break out of that situation.
- jklinger410 11y ago
  >I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job. In America the market dictates your self worth.
  - barney54 11y ago
    No. No. No. The "value" her is not about self worth. It's about how much someone will pay for your labor. That's a big difference.
    - jklinger410 11y ago
      In America, to, I don't know, probably half of our country, and historically even more, if you don't get paid much you aren't worth a damn. When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being.
      - gragas 11y ago
        >When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being. There are many cultures that don't value people based on how much they earn. I think valuing people based on economic success is largely tied to Indian and Asian culture. As a white person from a white family in the middle of the US, no one that I care about values me based on my salary. Some cultures seem to be more obsessed with economic status than others. To me, it's repulsive.
aklemm 11y ago
That's an important point. Further, isn't it odd how we (Americans? The media? People in general?) talk about "jobs" in such a weird way. As if they exist in nature and just need to be dug up and distributed. Getting to a more accurate way of talking about 'jobs' could help so much from wage inequity, to labor negotiation, to post-scarcity problem solving.
wfo 11y ago
The article is certainly not being even-handed between the human perspective and the business perspective, but can you blame it? It was written by a human, not a business, after all. It focuses on the circumstances for young Americans now and in the past, and tries to understand why -- it notes workers have no power which is why they are worse off than how they were in the past, and suggests giving them more, which by necessity takes power away from their opponents, companies. But I don't think it's necessary that they explicitly state that, it's clear enough. In fact, the article states that it is a brief designed to make that particular argument and outline that position. It's okay for an article to present a position without trying to be "fair and balanced" or consider all points of view, in fact it's generally more insidious and dishonest when they make that attempt; let the opposition make their own, strong case. If you try to make it for them you'll inevitably make a weaker one than they deserve.
dev1n 11y ago
...that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers. Most people do not have the opportunity to make themselves valuable. It's generally understood that at this point in history most people shouldn't really have to work at all. The whole point of technology is to make living easier for everyone. The root of this problem, as far as I can understand it, is misallocation of capital, not of "jobs". The efficiency of the free market is telling the labor market, "hey, you don't need to do this job anymore." So why are we still forcing these people to work? They should be allocated the capital gains reaped from market efficiencies that are a result of technological innovations.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  Because the US has a trauma from the cold war related to anything social this will never happen in the US. There will have to be 50%+ unemployment before anything like that happens here.
  - dev1n 11y ago
    Agreed. Unfortunately, at 50% unemployment we'll more than likely have revolutions. Which is never a fun time for anyone involved.
    - ajmurmann 11y ago
      Or people will vote for insane candidates. We saw that in 1930s Germany...
- ewzimm 11y ago
  The basic problem is that this idea that people shouldn't have to work goes against centuries of religious thinking which is strongly embedded in American culture. The idea of the Protestant/Puritan work ethic is that hard work is a sign of God's grace and centrally important to the character of a person and society as a whole. Sometimes you will hear people talk about this directly, but more often it's just implied because it has become awkward to assert religious ideas on society explicitly. Until that cultural pillar of hard work defining a person's character and place in God's kingdom goes away, we will be stuck with this idea that people are defined by their work.
marcosdumay 11y ago
You've came from a point of view that is basically orthogonal to the way almost everybody (I've talked about, obviously) talks about the issue. I hold the ideology that society should organize itself in a way that makes it easier to both create things that will demand new jobs, and make yourself suitable for work to some of those things. Everywhere I look, it seems society is going the other way, making both of those activities harder.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  Agreed on this one. Every time a company buys up another company just to make money from patents, they are destroying others opportunities for creating wealth and all the people who would team up and work with and for them.
zurn 11y ago
If there are too few jobs, it's just a game of musical chairs. The number of jobs is not a natural phenomena, but a varying outcome of the parameters of our economic system of managed market capitalism. It's very natural for citizens demand better management of the economy to create more jobs when there are too few. Indeed the right to work is a part of the universal declaration of human rights[1]. (Whether we should continue the system of unemployment post-material-scarcity is a whole another question, but a replacement system doesn't seem quick to arrive). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work
- hammock 11y ago
  If there aren't enough chairs for you, and you think you can provide value, then go into business for yourself. You don't have to rely on a pre-existing employer to give you work.
  - zurn 11y ago
    I wonder why all the unemployed people don't do it? Surely anyone can produce a little value.
    - Tactic 11y ago
      Assuming this is a serious question it is because working for yourself is not that easy. It requires sales and marketing to get your value out there to the people that are willing to pay for it. Working for someone else is easy because there is an established system to connect you to the people that are willing to pay for your value. That channel doesn't exist for everyone, especially people with skills in areas that do not commonly hire contractors, like IT.
    - tortoise_face 11y ago
      Because value is a combination of human labor AND the means of production and the means of production aren't owned by working people. I can start making cheeseburgers but McDonald's owns the efficient equipment, the marketing, the good locations to sell them, etc. such that I can't possibly make profit outside their system. So I'm forced to essentially rent space in their kitchen in order to be compensated.
branchless 11y ago
This only tells one half of the story. Because rent extraction is so high in modern western economies usually people have next to no savings and are always two pay checks from ruin. If people had more financial independence they would be able to choose to enter the labour market or not. For example now due to high land costs both parents must work. Some may like this, but many do not, yet they have no choice. This puts pressure on the labour market. The current system sees rent rise to extract all productivity gains. Until this ends we will always see unemployment no matter how productive we become even if it's very clear that most people need not work full time to meet the needs of the country as a whole. Millenials have spent their whole lives in a system with very efficient rent extraction. If productivity jumps land prices will follow and back again we go to the bread line.
coldtea 11y ago
>This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers. A job is something people need to live and have shelter. It's not only the most "valuable" people that should have that.
whybroke 11y ago
There has always been an ideology, always believable but never supported, that justifies the few damaging the many or their society as a whole for their own benefit. You enumerated one that matches today's world view. Previous eras would justify it with some eugenics hand waving and before that would be an invocation of divine will. And just as they did, todays adherents will say that past justifications were nonsense but today's are correct. But the result is the same; general harm done for the benefit of a few and nice story of facile ideology that justifies it.
pasquinelli 11y ago
the other paradigm doesn't need arguing for, it's manifest in the world.
jimbokun 11y ago
"This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers." This paradigm totally ignores basic economics. If there is a greater supply of people looking for work, wages will go down for all employees across the board. Now of course, wages vary from person to person based on skills, connections, and industry. So it's possible to improve your position relative to other potential employees. But across the population, overall wages will stay flat or go down.

by gragas 11y ago

geogra4 11y ago

How about if you don't have a job you still deserve a basic income? Ultimately that's the future. There are going to be too few jobs for people going forward. There's no point in makework. Just give each person a basic income.

collyw 11y ago
I don't buy the "too few jobs argument". We got told this 30 years ago when computers started becoming mainstream and households had one person going out to work. Certain jobs get automated but more bullshit jobs get created.
- Retric 11y ago
  The % of total population that works has continued to drop. However, promoting BS jobs makes society worse. EX: 80+% of all time and effort spent on medical billing is simply economic dead weight. Medical billing reduces doctor effectiveness requiring more doctors, more people training doctors, and doctors to work longer hours doing crap work (filling out forms). Remove bullshit jobs and only a small fraction of the population actually works. Long term we can make an endless hell where paperwork is what 98% of humanity does, or we can just chose another system. PS: In the US over 50% of all money spent on healthcare goes to Overhead that has nothing to do with patents. In many cases it’s cheaper for people with insurance to go to private doctors who don’t accept insurance. [Think about that for a bit.]
  - branchless 11y ago
    Your example of medical admin expenses is useful. The reason why many activities are no longer viable is due to the amazing increase in efficiency of rent extraction. Same for land.

thomaspurchas 11y ago

I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job. While it sounds like a good idea in principle, it ignores the fact that without a job many people simply won't have the resources to make themselves more valuable. It creates a catch 22 situation, and the people it effects the most also happen to be the people who will struggle the most to break out of that situation.

jklinger410 11y ago
>I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job. In America the market dictates your self worth.
- barney54 11y ago
  No. No. No. The "value" her is not about self worth. It's about how much someone will pay for your labor. That's a big difference.
  - jklinger410 11y ago
    In America, to, I don't know, probably half of our country, and historically even more, if you don't get paid much you aren't worth a damn. When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being.
    - gragas 11y ago
      >When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being. There are many cultures that don't value people based on how much they earn. I think valuing people based on economic success is largely tied to Indian and Asian culture. As a white person from a white family in the middle of the US, no one that I care about values me based on my salary. Some cultures seem to be more obsessed with economic status than others. To me, it's repulsive.

aklemm 11y ago

That's an important point. Further, isn't it odd how we (Americans? The media? People in general?) talk about "jobs" in such a weird way. As if they exist in nature and just need to be dug up and distributed. Getting to a more accurate way of talking about 'jobs' could help so much from wage inequity, to labor negotiation, to post-scarcity problem solving.

wfo 11y ago

The article is certainly not being even-handed between the human perspective and the business perspective, but can you blame it? It was written by a human, not a business, after all. It focuses on the circumstances for young Americans now and in the past, and tries to understand why -- it notes workers have no power which is why they are worse off than how they were in the past, and suggests giving them more, which by necessity takes power away from their opponents, companies. But I don't think it's necessary that they explicitly state that, it's clear enough. In fact, the article states that it is a brief designed to make that particular argument and outline that position. It's okay for an article to present a position without trying to be "fair and balanced" or consider all points of view, in fact it's generally more insidious and dishonest when they make that attempt; let the opposition make their own, strong case. If you try to make it for them you'll inevitably make a weaker one than they deserve.

dev1n 11y ago

...that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers. Most people do not have the opportunity to make themselves valuable. It's generally understood that at this point in history most people shouldn't really have to work at all. The whole point of technology is to make living easier for everyone. The root of this problem, as far as I can understand it, is misallocation of capital, not of "jobs". The efficiency of the free market is telling the labor market, "hey, you don't need to do this job anymore." So why are we still forcing these people to work? They should be allocated the capital gains reaped from market efficiencies that are a result of technological innovations.

ajmurmann 11y ago
Because the US has a trauma from the cold war related to anything social this will never happen in the US. There will have to be 50%+ unemployment before anything like that happens here.
- dev1n 11y ago
  Agreed. Unfortunately, at 50% unemployment we'll more than likely have revolutions. Which is never a fun time for anyone involved.
  - ajmurmann 11y ago
    Or people will vote for insane candidates. We saw that in 1930s Germany...
ewzimm 11y ago
The basic problem is that this idea that people shouldn't have to work goes against centuries of religious thinking which is strongly embedded in American culture. The idea of the Protestant/Puritan work ethic is that hard work is a sign of God's grace and centrally important to the character of a person and society as a whole. Sometimes you will hear people talk about this directly, but more often it's just implied because it has become awkward to assert religious ideas on society explicitly. Until that cultural pillar of hard work defining a person's character and place in God's kingdom goes away, we will be stuck with this idea that people are defined by their work.

marcosdumay 11y ago

You've came from a point of view that is basically orthogonal to the way almost everybody (I've talked about, obviously) talks about the issue. I hold the ideology that society should organize itself in a way that makes it easier to both create things that will demand new jobs, and make yourself suitable for work to some of those things. Everywhere I look, it seems society is going the other way, making both of those activities harder.

michaelbuddy 11y ago
Agreed on this one. Every time a company buys up another company just to make money from patents, they are destroying others opportunities for creating wealth and all the people who would team up and work with and for them.

zurn 11y ago

If there are too few jobs, it's just a game of musical chairs. The number of jobs is not a natural phenomena, but a varying outcome of the parameters of our economic system of managed market capitalism. It's very natural for citizens demand better management of the economy to create more jobs when there are too few. Indeed the right to work is a part of the universal declaration of human rights[1]. (Whether we should continue the system of unemployment post-material-scarcity is a whole another question, but a replacement system doesn't seem quick to arrive). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work

hammock 11y ago
If there aren't enough chairs for you, and you think you can provide value, then go into business for yourself. You don't have to rely on a pre-existing employer to give you work.
- zurn 11y ago
  I wonder why all the unemployed people don't do it? Surely anyone can produce a little value.
  - Tactic 11y ago
    Assuming this is a serious question it is because working for yourself is not that easy. It requires sales and marketing to get your value out there to the people that are willing to pay for it. Working for someone else is easy because there is an established system to connect you to the people that are willing to pay for your value. That channel doesn't exist for everyone, especially people with skills in areas that do not commonly hire contractors, like IT.
  - tortoise_face 11y ago
    Because value is a combination of human labor AND the means of production and the means of production aren't owned by working people. I can start making cheeseburgers but McDonald's owns the efficient equipment, the marketing, the good locations to sell them, etc. such that I can't possibly make profit outside their system. So I'm forced to essentially rent space in their kitchen in order to be compensated.

branchless 11y ago

This only tells one half of the story. Because rent extraction is so high in modern western economies usually people have next to no savings and are always two pay checks from ruin. If people had more financial independence they would be able to choose to enter the labour market or not. For example now due to high land costs both parents must work. Some may like this, but many do not, yet they have no choice. This puts pressure on the labour market. The current system sees rent rise to extract all productivity gains. Until this ends we will always see unemployment no matter how productive we become even if it's very clear that most people need not work full time to meet the needs of the country as a whole. Millenials have spent their whole lives in a system with very efficient rent extraction. If productivity jumps land prices will follow and back again we go to the bread line.

coldtea 11y ago

>This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers. A job is something people need to live and have shelter. It's not only the most "valuable" people that should have that.

whybroke 11y ago

There has always been an ideology, always believable but never supported, that justifies the few damaging the many or their society as a whole for their own benefit. You enumerated one that matches today's world view. Previous eras would justify it with some eugenics hand waving and before that would be an invocation of divine will. And just as they did, todays adherents will say that past justifications were nonsense but today's are correct. But the result is the same; general harm done for the benefit of a few and nice story of facile ideology that justifies it.

pasquinelli 11y ago

the other paradigm doesn't need arguing for, it's manifest in the world.

jimbokun 11y ago

"This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers." This paradigm totally ignores basic economics. If there is a greater supply of people looking for work, wages will go down for all employees across the board. Now of course, wages vary from person to person based on skills, connections, and industry. So it's possible to improve your position relative to other potential employees. But across the population, overall wages will stay flat or go down.