4 ms·

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

mattnewton 10y ago
One of the biggest job creators is the government, with their massive budget and public needs. Yet we are often lead to believe that we need to coddle billionaires so that they feel comfortable enough to lay a few more jobs, and starve the federal government of revenue and responsibility.
- a3n 10y ago
  Indeed. The government, like poor people, spend every dollar they take in, which allows that money to circulate. To use a cliche, a billionaire can only buy so many yachts, pieces of art or gold bricks; at some point, the excess is going to land in an offshore account or otherwise be underutilized. Billionaires grudgingly create jobs.
  - kbutler 10y ago
    Every dollar given to the billionaire is willingly given because the product benefits the person at least a dollar (net benefit to both parties). "The excess" is invested in other companies that produce other things people are willing to pay for. Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities. This does not mean that there is not a role for government spending (a "common good" in the economic sense is undervalued in the market). Voluntary exchange produces an economic surplus, increasing net well-being. Government (compulsory) spending hopes to create an economic surplus, but is largely not measurable. Sometimes the aim of government spending is simply transfer of wealth, which is zero-sum (or maybe negative sum, if it damages incentives to produce, or maybe positive sum if the recipients can use it to greater net benefit). Again, hard to measure.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - mattnewton 10y ago
      >Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities. Except this is not entirely true. Much of modern income is rent, and people are willing to buy things like defense, and much of the "dead weight loss" you are talking about is offset by collective barganing power. Edit: Like you say, it's complicated and I'll be the first to admit don't understand how it all works but I don't think soaking the rich works well either, in theory or in practice, and government is often unfairly maligned by people who have something to gain by less government involvement.
dctoedt 10y ago
> Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators. Which of course leads to the question: Which job creators are most effective at providing sustainable (and, ideally, scalable) employment for the available talent pool?
MaysonL 10y ago
They're also created by removing roadblocks for job creators to create jobs. Think about all the people who were locked into jobs because switching or going out on their own would require unaffordable (or perhaps unobtainable) health insurace for themselves or family members with preexisting conditions.
tbrownaw 10y ago
Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. 1) A bit over a third of poor people (in the US) do work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm 2) Reducing poverty can work by either raising the baseline (stronger social safety net, maybe higher minimum wage, better overall vocational education, etc) or by moving individuals into other economic classes (getting people (better) jobs). I think raising the baseline is probably a better approach, since it works by not leaving people behind.
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  The problem is obviously complicated. There just isn't the avalilibity of jobs that were once were. Yea--I know that goverment unemployment rate looks good, but when I look out my window, it just doesn't look/feel right. People living in a shared home, or watching that bank account dwindle. The only people I see making real money are the rich kids. (Donald Jr. killing a tiger, or Elephant just screams the how the deck is stacked. Those bastards would be homeless, or dead without that family support net.) The occasional Horato Algier pops up, but it's huge when they make it. Yes you can go to welding school, and join Mike Rowe in the middle of nowhere for six months of solid work. Then what? Yes you can pick fruit for a few months--then what? Yes, you can work for "Letgo.whatever", and hope it competes with one of the big boys. Then talk about the good ole days in Starbucks. It's the lack of jobs that scares me. I really believe we need to seriously consider a basic income. At the same time, we need to make living less illegial. If a guy wants to live in a boat, and he doesn't pollute; leave the guy alone. If a guy wants to sleep in his car, or in a park, don't bother him unless he's causing trouble. (I was listening to our latest Supreme Court justice. He a proud member of The Federalist Society. He stated he's tired of a law for Everything. I couldn't agree more. A man loses a job, and doesn't have a network of support to fall back upon; within weeks he's doing something illegial? If Jesus reappeared. He would most likely get a ticket, or arrest his first night. Fishing in the wrong stream--ticket. Fishing without a license--ticket. Peeing in the wrong area--ticket. Taking a nap in the park--ticket. Loose Robe that exposed a testicle--jail. Picking a Apple--most likely on private property--ticket. Turing water into wine--DEA spontaneously appears. I'd give him a week before being having a cop run their fingers over every inch on his body. It's gotten crazy? We are seeing less, and less jobs by the decade, and I don't see a solution. Oh yea, "An Infrastructure bill will provide jobs?" With such great machinery; I just don't see it pulling the poor into the middle class. We will have nice roads, bridges, and airports, but the real money will go to the Contractors. And it's a sin to go back to shovels. I feel blah. I guess that affects my view lately. I hope I feel better tomorrow.
milesrout 10y ago
They're not called 'job creators'. Jobs don't need creating. They're called self-interested capitalists. They aren't 'creating jobs' out of the goodness of their hearts. They sometimes, to a certain limited extent, require labour in order to maximise their profits.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get the tools necessary to secure and maintain sufficient initial and recurring quantities of material assets; jobs with sufficiently high pay do that (but not all jobs have sufficiently high pay), though they aren't the only thing that could. > Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators. No, jobs are created by paying people to do work. There are several ways government can cause this to happen: the simplest and least prone to be misdirected is to simply pay people to do work. Among the more complex, less reliable, and more likely to be manipulated to maximize profits to other people and minimize jobs to the people for whom the goal is to secure jobs is creating financial incentives to capitalists in the hopes that it will result in them creating jobs that lift people out of poverty.
- kbutler 10y ago
  Different jobs have different levels of net benefit to society. For example, paying someone to "dig a ditch and fill it in" gives that person work, but is a zero-sum game - transferring wealth between people, but not increasing the total pie (total well-being), at least without considering the psychological benefits of work (and exercise!). Similarly, breaking windows to create jobs for window repairmen creates jobs, but is negative-sum - it benefits window repairmen, but reduces the overall pie. You're better off just giving money directly to window repairmen. In contrast, some jobs increase the total wealth, and can benefit both the worker and the people willing to pay for the work to be done. (positive sum). Some positive sum jobs increase the total wealth more or less than others, for the amount of money invested (spend $, increase total wealth .01% or 1%?). Similarly, the net gain of the work may be distributed differently (does the purchaser receive more of the surplus or the provider?) Focussing purely on jobs ignores the cost - is society better off if I employ 100 people to do the work that 1 person could do? The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done. The widespread unrest with classical, 19th Century, capitalism and it's displacement throughout the developed world with modern mixed economies is a direct result of the untruth of this claim.
a3n 10y ago
No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car. If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue. No one creates a job. They satisfy a demand. Steve Jobs supposedly said something like we didn't know we wanted iPhones until we saw them. That may be true, but lucky for Apple that there are enough people with disposable income to buy those iPhones. Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands. The only person who creates a job is the guy buying a pack of cigarettes while filling up his car.
- supremesaboteur 10y ago
  > No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car. True. But when people want a car, they do not automatically fall from the sky. > If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue. And that is how they become rich. People get a car, or a gallon of milk. A few people get jobs selling cars or gallons of milk. Someone gets rich by opening a store or a car delership. > Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands. And when we have all our needs met without people having to work, with machines taking care of all our necessaities, we can think about Universal Basic Income. Until then, enterpreneurs will have to hire people to satisfy demand.

One of the biggest job creators is the government, with their massive budget and public needs. Yet we are often lead to believe that we need to coddle billionaires so that they feel comfortable enough to lay a few more jobs, and starve the federal government of revenue and responsibility.

a3n 10y ago
Indeed. The government, like poor people, spend every dollar they take in, which allows that money to circulate. To use a cliche, a billionaire can only buy so many yachts, pieces of art or gold bricks; at some point, the excess is going to land in an offshore account or otherwise be underutilized. Billionaires grudgingly create jobs.
- kbutler 10y ago
  Every dollar given to the billionaire is willingly given because the product benefits the person at least a dollar (net benefit to both parties). "The excess" is invested in other companies that produce other things people are willing to pay for. Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities. This does not mean that there is not a role for government spending (a "common good" in the economic sense is undervalued in the market). Voluntary exchange produces an economic surplus, increasing net well-being. Government (compulsory) spending hopes to create an economic surplus, but is largely not measurable. Sometimes the aim of government spending is simply transfer of wealth, which is zero-sum (or maybe negative sum, if it damages incentives to produce, or maybe positive sum if the recipients can use it to greater net benefit). Again, hard to measure.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    >Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities. Except this is not entirely true. Much of modern income is rent, and people are willing to buy things like defense, and much of the "dead weight loss" you are talking about is offset by collective barganing power. Edit: Like you say, it's complicated and I'll be the first to admit don't understand how it all works but I don't think soaking the rich works well either, in theory or in practice, and government is often unfairly maligned by people who have something to gain by less government involvement.

dctoedt 10y ago

> Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators. Which of course leads to the question: Which job creators are most effective at providing sustainable (and, ideally, scalable) employment for the available talent pool?

MaysonL 10y ago

They're also created by removing roadblocks for job creators to create jobs. Think about all the people who were locked into jobs because switching or going out on their own would require unaffordable (or perhaps unobtainable) health insurace for themselves or family members with preexisting conditions.

tbrownaw 10y ago

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. 1) A bit over a third of poor people (in the US) do work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm 2) Reducing poverty can work by either raising the baseline (stronger social safety net, maybe higher minimum wage, better overall vocational education, etc) or by moving individuals into other economic classes (getting people (better) jobs). I think raising the baseline is probably a better approach, since it works by not leaving people behind.

icantdrive55 10y ago
The problem is obviously complicated. There just isn't the avalilibity of jobs that were once were. Yea--I know that goverment unemployment rate looks good, but when I look out my window, it just doesn't look/feel right. People living in a shared home, or watching that bank account dwindle. The only people I see making real money are the rich kids. (Donald Jr. killing a tiger, or Elephant just screams the how the deck is stacked. Those bastards would be homeless, or dead without that family support net.) The occasional Horato Algier pops up, but it's huge when they make it. Yes you can go to welding school, and join Mike Rowe in the middle of nowhere for six months of solid work. Then what? Yes you can pick fruit for a few months--then what? Yes, you can work for "Letgo.whatever", and hope it competes with one of the big boys. Then talk about the good ole days in Starbucks. It's the lack of jobs that scares me. I really believe we need to seriously consider a basic income. At the same time, we need to make living less illegial. If a guy wants to live in a boat, and he doesn't pollute; leave the guy alone. If a guy wants to sleep in his car, or in a park, don't bother him unless he's causing trouble. (I was listening to our latest Supreme Court justice. He a proud member of The Federalist Society. He stated he's tired of a law for Everything. I couldn't agree more. A man loses a job, and doesn't have a network of support to fall back upon; within weeks he's doing something illegial? If Jesus reappeared. He would most likely get a ticket, or arrest his first night. Fishing in the wrong stream--ticket. Fishing without a license--ticket. Peeing in the wrong area--ticket. Taking a nap in the park--ticket. Loose Robe that exposed a testicle--jail. Picking a Apple--most likely on private property--ticket. Turing water into wine--DEA spontaneously appears. I'd give him a week before being having a cop run their fingers over every inch on his body. It's gotten crazy? We are seeing less, and less jobs by the decade, and I don't see a solution. Oh yea, "An Infrastructure bill will provide jobs?" With such great machinery; I just don't see it pulling the poor into the middle class. We will have nice roads, bridges, and airports, but the real money will go to the Contractors. And it's a sin to go back to shovels. I feel blah. I guess that affects my view lately. I hope I feel better tomorrow.

milesrout 10y ago

They're not called 'job creators'. Jobs don't need creating. They're called self-interested capitalists. They aren't 'creating jobs' out of the goodness of their hearts. They sometimes, to a certain limited extent, require labour in order to maximise their profits.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get the tools necessary to secure and maintain sufficient initial and recurring quantities of material assets; jobs with sufficiently high pay do that (but not all jobs have sufficiently high pay), though they aren't the only thing that could. > Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators. No, jobs are created by paying people to do work. There are several ways government can cause this to happen: the simplest and least prone to be misdirected is to simply pay people to do work. Among the more complex, less reliable, and more likely to be manipulated to maximize profits to other people and minimize jobs to the people for whom the goal is to secure jobs is creating financial incentives to capitalists in the hopes that it will result in them creating jobs that lift people out of poverty.

kbutler 10y ago
Different jobs have different levels of net benefit to society. For example, paying someone to "dig a ditch and fill it in" gives that person work, but is a zero-sum game - transferring wealth between people, but not increasing the total pie (total well-being), at least without considering the psychological benefits of work (and exercise!). Similarly, breaking windows to create jobs for window repairmen creates jobs, but is negative-sum - it benefits window repairmen, but reduces the overall pie. You're better off just giving money directly to window repairmen. In contrast, some jobs increase the total wealth, and can benefit both the worker and the people willing to pay for the work to be done. (positive sum). Some positive sum jobs increase the total wealth more or less than others, for the amount of money invested (spend $, increase total wealth .01% or 1%?). Similarly, the net gain of the work may be distributed differently (does the purchaser receive more of the surplus or the provider?) Focussing purely on jobs ignores the cost - is society better off if I employ 100 people to do the work that 1 person could do? The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done. The widespread unrest with classical, 19th Century, capitalism and it's displacement throughout the developed world with modern mixed economies is a direct result of the untruth of this claim.

a3n 10y ago

No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car. If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue. No one creates a job. They satisfy a demand. Steve Jobs supposedly said something like we didn't know we wanted iPhones until we saw them. That may be true, but lucky for Apple that there are enough people with disposable income to buy those iPhones. Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands. The only person who creates a job is the guy buying a pack of cigarettes while filling up his car.

supremesaboteur 10y ago
> No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car. True. But when people want a car, they do not automatically fall from the sky. > If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue. And that is how they become rich. People get a car, or a gallon of milk. A few people get jobs selling cars or gallons of milk. Someone gets rich by opening a store or a car delership. > Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands. And when we have all our needs met without people having to work, with machines taking care of all our necessaities, we can think about Universal Basic Income. Until then, enterpreneurs will have to hire people to satisfy demand.