8 ms·

We don't have labor gluts at all. In the US working mothers struggle to find child care for their children, houses go uncleaned, and productive people drive the

We don't have labor gluts at all. In the US working mothers struggle to find child care for their children, houses go uncleaned, and productive people drive themselves to work. That's a situation of labor scarcity, not a labor glut.

cperciva 11y ago
No, we have a labour glut (unemployed people) and a jobs glut (work not being done) at the same time. In other words, a market failure -- caused in part because for work which is valued at less than minimum wage, the market can only function by evading minimum wage laws.
makomk 11y ago
Well, childcare, house-cleaning and car driving have potential costs far in excess of the cost of wages - if someone steals your stuff or damages your furnishings whilst cleaning your house, or crashes when they're driving you to work, or injures your kids, that can be hugely expensive. Also, getting someone else to drive you to work is really inefficient - it means that two people are stuck in a car being unproductive for the entire drive rather than one, plus the driver probably has to drive back afterwards.
zanny 11y ago
If you offered sufficiently high wages to do those jobs, you would find plenty of people willing to do them. A labor glut does not necessitate me being able to ask for someone to mow my lawn for one cent and having someone volunteer. You have a labor glut when the availability of living wage work declines below the working population who need to earn such a living.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  That's fine - the point is that people aren't obsolete and work is available. People are just unwilling to do the work. That's not an argument in favor of a basic income - a basic income just increases the incentives for laziness and makes the labor scarcity worse. (10% or so in the Canadian experiments.)
  - zanny 11y ago
    Basic income gives the poor bargaining power in wage negotiations. It would require cultural adaptation, but I know of few individuals whose whole needs can be satiated by just having food and shelter. People still want things. They take out insane loans, mismanage their money, and even sacrifice those base necessities to possess things. We have a strong consumer culture, and UBI can take advantage of that to reduce suffering and empower workers more to actually negotiate with employers rather than it being a one sided conversation with your only failsafe being an undesirable minimum wage. I highly doubt making labor more scarce, when we are in such a glut (and continued automation will perpetuate and expand the glut) would actually cause any real harm to the economy. We already pad economics with millions of ghost jobs that exist solely because the marginal loss in productivity and efficiency having unnecessary workers is less than the cost of having mass destitution and social instability.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      A glut is when the supply is available to anyone who wants it and additional supply goes unused. We've already established that we have the exact opposite problem. Our national infrastructure is crumbling because no one is fixing it. Skilled women stay home with their children because child care is unavailable. Homes go uncleaned, nails go un-manicured, etc, because no one is available to do these things. If we reduce the labor supply by 13% (what was done during the Mincome experiment) that only makes these problems worse. For comparison, the great recession cut labor supply by 5%. https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/31639050894-e44e2c00 https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money... As you note, people want things - if we cut the labor supply we have fewer things to go around.
      - zanny 11y ago
        The supply and demand of labor does not care what people need - it does not care at all that mothers want childcare, or the citizens want better roads. All that matters is if that mother or if the citizenry are willing to pay for it. Predominantly most of that is due to the labor glut driving down median incomes and leaving people with less economic negotiating power to get the things they want done. It isn't appropriate to talk in absolute figures of reducing labor supply. That is one side of an equation without considering the other. UBI would generate tremendous real demand for cheap housing, cheap healthy food, and all manner of amenities that can fit in that universal budget. Those demands would be met, because everyone than has the economic negotiating power equal to their UBI as a minimum, rather than today where many people have no (unemployed) or negative (indebted) negotiating power at all and thus have no effective economic influence at all. It is always about supply and demand, and to only talk about economics in terms of one or the other is to argue for an intended outcome rather than seeking out the best possible one. If there were actual demand for childcare, the going rate of childcare workers would continuously rise as capital fought to be supplied by limited demand. The rising prices would create incentive for people to enter that labor force. That does not happen because real economic demand does not exist at those levels - it is not an actual labor shortage if all you want is childcare workers at minimum wage. If I want rocket scientists at minimum wage, I cannot claim there is a shortage of rocket scientists period if they are not willing to take the lowest possible payment I can give them. There is a shortage of something when the real supply cannot meet demand at sustainable price points. Are Nannies expensive? Yes. Is that not a sustainable cost? Absolutely not, Nannies are a valuable commodity, and those that can do a good job should be paid for the scarcity of their skillset. The reason there are not more Nannies is not because of some incredibly bullshit argument about how "nobody wants to do the job, we would pay them anything, but people just refuse to act rationally economically" it is because nobody is willing to pay anyone sufficient wages to justify the career pivot into the discipline. And that relates back to my central argument for UBI - our economy prioritizes the work "worth doing" as a central tenant of capitalism. All a UBI does is potentially drop out the labor force of the work being done now that is the least worth doing to begin with. But TLDR, fundamentally, it is important to recognize that in capitalist economies, demand is not people wanting something (better roads), it is the money willing to be spent on the supply. So if nobody will supply the money to build better roads at rates construction workers are willing to take, you do not have a shortage of construction workers, you have a shortage of funds to pay for better roads and thus you are not generating enough demand for them. We have a demand problem, not a supply problem, as long as major corporations are hoarding money and the stock market is at all time highs, capital is out there. There is just nothing the controllers of that capital actually want that anyone who isn't working now could supply.

cperciva 11y ago

No, we have a labour glut (unemployed people) and a jobs glut (work not being done) at the same time. In other words, a market failure -- caused in part because for work which is valued at less than minimum wage, the market can only function by evading minimum wage laws.

makomk 11y ago

Well, childcare, house-cleaning and car driving have potential costs far in excess of the cost of wages - if someone steals your stuff or damages your furnishings whilst cleaning your house, or crashes when they're driving you to work, or injures your kids, that can be hugely expensive. Also, getting someone else to drive you to work is really inefficient - it means that two people are stuck in a car being unproductive for the entire drive rather than one, plus the driver probably has to drive back afterwards.

zanny 11y ago

If you offered sufficiently high wages to do those jobs, you would find plenty of people willing to do them. A labor glut does not necessitate me being able to ask for someone to mow my lawn for one cent and having someone volunteer. You have a labor glut when the availability of living wage work declines below the working population who need to earn such a living.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
That's fine - the point is that people aren't obsolete and work is available. People are just unwilling to do the work. That's not an argument in favor of a basic income - a basic income just increases the incentives for laziness and makes the labor scarcity worse. (10% or so in the Canadian experiments.)
- zanny 11y ago
  Basic income gives the poor bargaining power in wage negotiations. It would require cultural adaptation, but I know of few individuals whose whole needs can be satiated by just having food and shelter. People still want things. They take out insane loans, mismanage their money, and even sacrifice those base necessities to possess things. We have a strong consumer culture, and UBI can take advantage of that to reduce suffering and empower workers more to actually negotiate with employers rather than it being a one sided conversation with your only failsafe being an undesirable minimum wage. I highly doubt making labor more scarce, when we are in such a glut (and continued automation will perpetuate and expand the glut) would actually cause any real harm to the economy. We already pad economics with millions of ghost jobs that exist solely because the marginal loss in productivity and efficiency having unnecessary workers is less than the cost of having mass destitution and social instability.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    A glut is when the supply is available to anyone who wants it and additional supply goes unused. We've already established that we have the exact opposite problem. Our national infrastructure is crumbling because no one is fixing it. Skilled women stay home with their children because child care is unavailable. Homes go uncleaned, nails go un-manicured, etc, because no one is available to do these things. If we reduce the labor supply by 13% (what was done during the Mincome experiment) that only makes these problems worse. For comparison, the great recession cut labor supply by 5%. https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/31639050894-e44e2c00 https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money... As you note, people want things - if we cut the labor supply we have fewer things to go around.
    - zanny 11y ago
      The supply and demand of labor does not care what people need - it does not care at all that mothers want childcare, or the citizens want better roads. All that matters is if that mother or if the citizenry are willing to pay for it. Predominantly most of that is due to the labor glut driving down median incomes and leaving people with less economic negotiating power to get the things they want done. It isn't appropriate to talk in absolute figures of reducing labor supply. That is one side of an equation without considering the other. UBI would generate tremendous real demand for cheap housing, cheap healthy food, and all manner of amenities that can fit in that universal budget. Those demands would be met, because everyone than has the economic negotiating power equal to their UBI as a minimum, rather than today where many people have no (unemployed) or negative (indebted) negotiating power at all and thus have no effective economic influence at all. It is always about supply and demand, and to only talk about economics in terms of one or the other is to argue for an intended outcome rather than seeking out the best possible one. If there were actual demand for childcare, the going rate of childcare workers would continuously rise as capital fought to be supplied by limited demand. The rising prices would create incentive for people to enter that labor force. That does not happen because real economic demand does not exist at those levels - it is not an actual labor shortage if all you want is childcare workers at minimum wage. If I want rocket scientists at minimum wage, I cannot claim there is a shortage of rocket scientists period if they are not willing to take the lowest possible payment I can give them. There is a shortage of something when the real supply cannot meet demand at sustainable price points. Are Nannies expensive? Yes. Is that not a sustainable cost? Absolutely not, Nannies are a valuable commodity, and those that can do a good job should be paid for the scarcity of their skillset. The reason there are not more Nannies is not because of some incredibly bullshit argument about how "nobody wants to do the job, we would pay them anything, but people just refuse to act rationally economically" it is because nobody is willing to pay anyone sufficient wages to justify the career pivot into the discipline. And that relates back to my central argument for UBI - our economy prioritizes the work "worth doing" as a central tenant of capitalism. All a UBI does is potentially drop out the labor force of the work being done now that is the least worth doing to begin with. But TLDR, fundamentally, it is important to recognize that in capitalist economies, demand is not people wanting something (better roads), it is the money willing to be spent on the supply. So if nobody will supply the money to build better roads at rates construction workers are willing to take, you do not have a shortage of construction workers, you have a shortage of funds to pay for better roads and thus you are not generating enough demand for them. We have a demand problem, not a supply problem, as long as major corporations are hoarding money and the stock market is at all time highs, capital is out there. There is just nothing the controllers of that capital actually want that anyone who isn't working now could supply.