5 ms·

Do you have any evidence he is wrong? Most of the evidence I've seen (here are mainstream descriptions of it) suggest he is completely right about that. Curren

Do you have any evidence he is wrong? Most of the evidence I've seen (here are mainstream descriptions of it) suggest he is completely right about that. Currently California farmers are desperately raising wages in the hopes of finding workers. Yet millions of able bodied men continue to sit at home playing video games and consuming oxycontin, paid for by the social safety hammock. http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-farms-immigration/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21...

emodendroket 10y ago
Here I was thinking we had an addiction crisis and weak labor market and it turns out a bunch of people have made the completely rational determination that shooting up heroin and collecting some of the stingiest welfare benefits in the OECD is better than working. I wonder, by the way, how carefully you read the article claiming "In our era of no more than indifferent economic growth, 21st–century America has somehow managed to produce markedly more wealth for its wealthholders even as it provided markedly less work for its workers" before linking it to prove your claim that the unemployed are just too damn lazy to work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  As the CA farms going unstaffed show (or our 4.9% unemployment rate), we clearly don't have a weak labor market. If you believe welfare is "stingy", can you name a good or service that non-workers lack? (Remember, I have a secret power - I sometimes read Census and BLS reports and pull them out in internet arguments.) I wonder, by the way, how carefully you read the article claiming... I read it carefully enough to separate the factual claims from the mood affiliation. You should try it sometime.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    U6 unemployment numbers and inflation-adjusted household incomes don't tell the same story, and the anecdote about Californian farms hardly seems like much to base an argument on. But you've got superpowers and are uniquely capable of separating facts from opinion so why bother arguing with the plebes?
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      U6 includes people who aren't looking for work but tell the survey take that they might possibly take the right job if it were dropped in their lap. Inflation adjusted hourly compensation has done nothing but rise. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        Check out table 4: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/art1full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/art1full.pdf For the bottom quarter by income, real wages are largely flat between 1979 and the publish date of that pdf.
        yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Chart 1 of your own source shows the reason for that - growth has been more in benefits and less in wages. If you want to fix this, ban non-wage compensation (e.g. employer sponsored health insurance, 401k, etc).
        adjkant 10y ago
        Let's go back a second: you're claiming that blue collar unskilled labor jobs are going unfilled, but are also arguing that the growth in pay is in benefits. Yet, the jobs you say are going unfilled don't exactly have 401K matching here... And to be clear, I'm not taking either of those claims as true or false, just highlighting the dissonance.
        maxerickson 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

emodendroket 10y ago

Here I was thinking we had an addiction crisis and weak labor market and it turns out a bunch of people have made the completely rational determination that shooting up heroin and collecting some of the stingiest welfare benefits in the OECD is better than working. I wonder, by the way, how carefully you read the article claiming "In our era of no more than indifferent economic growth, 21st–century America has somehow managed to produce markedly more wealth for its wealthholders even as it provided markedly less work for its workers" before linking it to prove your claim that the unemployed are just too damn lazy to work.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
As the CA farms going unstaffed show (or our 4.9% unemployment rate), we clearly don't have a weak labor market. If you believe welfare is "stingy", can you name a good or service that non-workers lack? (Remember, I have a secret power - I sometimes read Census and BLS reports and pull them out in internet arguments.) I wonder, by the way, how carefully you read the article claiming... I read it carefully enough to separate the factual claims from the mood affiliation. You should try it sometime.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  U6 unemployment numbers and inflation-adjusted household incomes don't tell the same story, and the anecdote about Californian farms hardly seems like much to base an argument on. But you've got superpowers and are uniquely capable of separating facts from opinion so why bother arguing with the plebes?
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    U6 includes people who aren't looking for work but tell the survey take that they might possibly take the right job if it were dropped in their lap. Inflation adjusted hourly compensation has done nothing but rise. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Check out table 4: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/art1full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/art1full.pdf For the bottom quarter by income, real wages are largely flat between 1979 and the publish date of that pdf.
      - yummyfajitas 10y ago
        Chart 1 of your own source shows the reason for that - growth has been more in benefits and less in wages. If you want to fix this, ban non-wage compensation (e.g. employer sponsored health insurance, 401k, etc).
        adjkant 10y ago
        Let's go back a second: you're claiming that blue collar unskilled labor jobs are going unfilled, but are also arguing that the growth in pay is in benefits. Yet, the jobs you say are going unfilled don't exactly have 401K matching here... And to be clear, I'm not taking either of those claims as true or false, just highlighting the dissonance.
        maxerickson 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]