7 ms·

Unemployment is really low right now, and burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. This has been said countless times, but it's

Unemployment is really low right now, and burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment.

wavefunction 8y ago
>full employment We have folks living in tent cities. 12.8% is "on disability" Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5.
- adventured 8y ago
  Fortunately, disability applications are declining soundly. June, 2018: "Disability Applications Plunge as the Economy Strengthens" "The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-security-applications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-s...
- verylittlemeat 8y ago
  How many of those people in tent cities would even take a job if you offered them one? How many are drug addicted or mentally ill to the point of being unemployable? Society shouldn't pretend these people don't exist but they're rightfully a different class of unemployed.
  - jaggederest 8y ago
    Those folks don't deserve to have meaningful work, if they want it? Which percentage of society should be permanently alienated from ownership and engagement, and who decides?
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      I think the point was that people who currently choose not to work are not harmed by automation of low-barrier-to-entry jobs that they are already choosing not to take. And it's a valid point! If people really are choosing not to take jobs that are readily available, then automating those jobs is a net benefit. Now, we should not ignore the fact that this is stated as a hypothetical! Are there a mass of unemployed who are choosing not to work? And would all of the people who lose their jobs due to burger flipping automation be able to find new jobs or be happy with no job? Those seem like the more relevant questions.
  - ta1234567890 8y ago
    A lot of those people are actually employed but can't afford housing. This is a problem with no good solution in sight so far and it's going to get exacerbated with job automation.
    - briandear 8y ago
      Were we not making these same vapid arguments in the 1800s regarding automation and machines? The Luddites were an entire movement opposed to machines for exactly the same reasons, yet living standards are vastly higher than in those times — even the poor have air conditioners, TV and refrigerators. If we would have listened to the Luddites, we’d still be riding horses and using outhouses with a life expectancy of 45.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        Sure, maybe 200 years from now everyone in the world "on average" might be doing better. That still doesn't mean people whose jobs get automated today wont suffer, or that the Luddites didn't suffer when their jobs got taken away back in the day. In any case, very few technologies (relative to everything that's created) actually make living standards better, mostly just things in healthcare. Almost everything else is pretty much a rats race fueled by business and profit, not by intentions of improving people's lives.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        Seems like this comment struck a cord. To make it a bit clearer... Currently, humanity as a whole has the resources (materials, technology, etc), to provide good housing, education, food and healthcare for everyone on this planet. However, everyday we choose not to do that and do whatever else it is we do instead. This is just an observation, not a moral judgement on anyone in particular. By the way, I'm personally not doing anything to change the current state of affairs, so I can't really point any fingers. Hopefully the situation will change at some point.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  Anyone with a pulse can have a job flipping burgers TODAY if they want it. Same with various other categories of work (farm labor, etc.). The folks living in tent cities who are not flipping burgers are choosing not to do that work. A reasonable choice, I'd say, depending on your circumstances, but it's a choice.
  - i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
    I remember thinking this until McDonald's turned me down for a job. True story.
- rory096 8y ago
  >Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5. U5 is at 4.6%... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm It is also, by definition, lower than U6.
ranci 8y ago
More than 37% of the country does not have a job according to labor participation rate. The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded.
- rory096 8y ago
  You're spouting a conspiracy theory. U6 unemployment is at historic lows and has at no point diverged from the trend in U3. Unless you plan on conscripting children, students, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and the elderly into jobs (like Steve King[0]), we're at the long run full employment rate. [0] https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104 https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104
  - ranci 8y ago
    What I said is backed up by facts. How is it a conspiracy? The labor participation rate is 62.x. That means that 37% of the US is not employed. Fact, not a conspiracy. The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Again, fact, not a conspiracy.
    - rory096 8y ago
      >How is it a conspiracy? >The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded. >The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Uh huh. In any case, you might want to take a look at the 25-54 LFP. It currently sits at 82%, the same as the rate during the 2000s and two points shy of the all-time high during the height of the dot-com bubble. Prior to 1986 it had never reached this level. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Amygaz 8y ago
Hey! Sometime I think about taking a 6 months leave to go flip burgers a the local gourmet burger place. Blacksmithing would be a close second. As for peat I wouldn't do it, because I do not see the point. Peats are very important ecosystems that we're wasting. Golf-quality front-yard aren't useful or important. And people should compost.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  That is a very privileged point of view. You want to think the grass is at least more interesting on the other side, but I've done a stint in fast food. It is hard, smelly, nasty, poorly compensated labor. It is not at all like home cooking, which I love. I've never worked harder than the summer I did at Wendy's in high school, and I've never been paid less. As for blacksmithing, yeah, the artisanship side of that would be cool. However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If that seems like fun to you, well, you still probably couldn't get that work, because there's just not very much demand for blacksmiths these days. :)
  - jimmywanger 8y ago
    > That is a very privileged point of view. What's privileged about it? He said he wanted to do something different, and these were things that interested him. > ...I've done a stint in fast food. He specifically mentioned a gourmet burger place. > However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If you're doing blacksmithing for a living, most likely you're a farrier. Demand for custom ironwork is very low.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      Oddly enough... The only farrier I know isn't a blacksmith. Actually I don't remember what her full time job is. And the only person I've ever known who did custom ironwork was a software tester. Go figure!
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    They are more likely to spend 6 months shovelling coal into a fire and sweeping the floor at a blacksmiths. Blacksmiths don't make horseshoes either, that's a farrier's job (who still buy them off the shelf and finish them by hand). Being a farrier is also not an easy job, take a 3 or 4 apprenticeship to become one. There seems to be this viewpoint I see a lot on Hacker News that blue collar jobs are unskilled jobs. Most skilled trades require a 3 or 4 year apprenticeship, you can't just learn how to be a fitter and turner, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith/farrier in a couple of weekends. It's this kind of arrogant attitude that causes the tradies to have no respect for the book-learned engineers straight out of university that think because they have a degree they know how to build a road.
ta1234567890 8y ago
Employment stats are very misleading. There are lots of people with full time jobs who can't even afford housing. Sure they have jobs, but they are still in a really bad situation.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  I am not commenting on the well-being of people working in fast food. Just on the availability of work. Whether such individuals can afford housing is totally beside the point of my comment.
  - ta1234567890 8y ago
    And I'm highlighting how that type of argument contributes to the misunderstanding that job availability and high employment rates are a good thing just by themselves. What good is for people to dedicate their lives to shitty jobs (which are the only ones they can get), just so they can scrape by and live on the streets?
    - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
      The answer to that’s isn’t more shitty jobs though. It’s adjustments to our system of capital distribution and ultimately what the minimum standards of living we are prepared to accept is as a society.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        You are right about shitty jobs not being the solution. About the last part of your statement though: society has already implicitly accepted the crappy minimum living standards (at least in the US) that it's willing to accept. That doesn't make it right for the people stuck having to live according to that minimum.
  - ende 8y ago
    Unemployment numbers also aren’t low because the economy is producing tons of new jobs; notice the record numbers of homeless on the streets? It’s the labor participation rate. People are only counted towards unemployment stats while they are actively seeking employment; after awhile they give up and drop out of the labor force completely. Of course much of that drop is also demographics; the baby boomers are starting to retire en masse. Still, the illusion of job abundance does not hold.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. It's not even close, which is why it is easy to keep burger flipping jobs find without high wages even when unemployment is relatively low. > This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment. Because “full employment” is a decreasing-over-time share of the population that is actually working (and an even smaller decreasing share actually self-sufficient from work, as a large portion of the working population is dependent on public aid.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a problem that people point to “near full employment” with advancing automation as an excuse to argue against the continued advance of social support structures necessary to make the declining share of the population working (and also the declining share self-sufficient from work) both nearly “full employment” and anywhere close to tolerate conditions.

wavefunction 8y ago

>full employment We have folks living in tent cities. 12.8% is "on disability" Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5.

adventured 8y ago
Fortunately, disability applications are declining soundly. June, 2018: "Disability Applications Plunge as the Economy Strengthens" "The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-security-applications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-s...
verylittlemeat 8y ago
How many of those people in tent cities would even take a job if you offered them one? How many are drug addicted or mentally ill to the point of being unemployable? Society shouldn't pretend these people don't exist but they're rightfully a different class of unemployed.
- jaggederest 8y ago
  Those folks don't deserve to have meaningful work, if they want it? Which percentage of society should be permanently alienated from ownership and engagement, and who decides?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    I think the point was that people who currently choose not to work are not harmed by automation of low-barrier-to-entry jobs that they are already choosing not to take. And it's a valid point! If people really are choosing not to take jobs that are readily available, then automating those jobs is a net benefit. Now, we should not ignore the fact that this is stated as a hypothetical! Are there a mass of unemployed who are choosing not to work? And would all of the people who lose their jobs due to burger flipping automation be able to find new jobs or be happy with no job? Those seem like the more relevant questions.
- ta1234567890 8y ago
  A lot of those people are actually employed but can't afford housing. This is a problem with no good solution in sight so far and it's going to get exacerbated with job automation.
  - briandear 8y ago
    Were we not making these same vapid arguments in the 1800s regarding automation and machines? The Luddites were an entire movement opposed to machines for exactly the same reasons, yet living standards are vastly higher than in those times — even the poor have air conditioners, TV and refrigerators. If we would have listened to the Luddites, we’d still be riding horses and using outhouses with a life expectancy of 45.
    - ta1234567890 8y ago
      Sure, maybe 200 years from now everyone in the world "on average" might be doing better. That still doesn't mean people whose jobs get automated today wont suffer, or that the Luddites didn't suffer when their jobs got taken away back in the day. In any case, very few technologies (relative to everything that's created) actually make living standards better, mostly just things in healthcare. Almost everything else is pretty much a rats race fueled by business and profit, not by intentions of improving people's lives.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        Seems like this comment struck a cord. To make it a bit clearer... Currently, humanity as a whole has the resources (materials, technology, etc), to provide good housing, education, food and healthcare for everyone on this planet. However, everyday we choose not to do that and do whatever else it is we do instead. This is just an observation, not a moral judgement on anyone in particular. By the way, I'm personally not doing anything to change the current state of affairs, so I can't really point any fingers. Hopefully the situation will change at some point.
asfasgasg 8y ago
Anyone with a pulse can have a job flipping burgers TODAY if they want it. Same with various other categories of work (farm labor, etc.). The folks living in tent cities who are not flipping burgers are choosing not to do that work. A reasonable choice, I'd say, depending on your circumstances, but it's a choice.
- i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
  I remember thinking this until McDonald's turned me down for a job. True story.
rory096 8y ago
>Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5. U5 is at 4.6%... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm It is also, by definition, lower than U6.

ranci 8y ago

More than 37% of the country does not have a job according to labor participation rate. The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded.

rory096 8y ago
You're spouting a conspiracy theory. U6 unemployment is at historic lows and has at no point diverged from the trend in U3. Unless you plan on conscripting children, students, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and the elderly into jobs (like Steve King[0]), we're at the long run full employment rate. [0] https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104 https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104
- ranci 8y ago
  What I said is backed up by facts. How is it a conspiracy? The labor participation rate is 62.x. That means that 37% of the US is not employed. Fact, not a conspiracy. The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Again, fact, not a conspiracy.
  - rory096 8y ago
    >How is it a conspiracy? >The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded. >The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Uh huh. In any case, you might want to take a look at the 25-54 LFP. It currently sits at 82%, the same as the rate during the 2000s and two points shy of the all-time high during the height of the dot-com bubble. Prior to 1986 it had never reached this level. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

Amygaz 8y ago

Hey! Sometime I think about taking a 6 months leave to go flip burgers a the local gourmet burger place. Blacksmithing would be a close second. As for peat I wouldn't do it, because I do not see the point. Peats are very important ecosystems that we're wasting. Golf-quality front-yard aren't useful or important. And people should compost.

asfasgasg 8y ago
That is a very privileged point of view. You want to think the grass is at least more interesting on the other side, but I've done a stint in fast food. It is hard, smelly, nasty, poorly compensated labor. It is not at all like home cooking, which I love. I've never worked harder than the summer I did at Wendy's in high school, and I've never been paid less. As for blacksmithing, yeah, the artisanship side of that would be cool. However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If that seems like fun to you, well, you still probably couldn't get that work, because there's just not very much demand for blacksmiths these days. :)
- jimmywanger 8y ago
  > That is a very privileged point of view. What's privileged about it? He said he wanted to do something different, and these were things that interested him. > ...I've done a stint in fast food. He specifically mentioned a gourmet burger place. > However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If you're doing blacksmithing for a living, most likely you're a farrier. Demand for custom ironwork is very low.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    Oddly enough... The only farrier I know isn't a blacksmith. Actually I don't remember what her full time job is. And the only person I've ever known who did custom ironwork was a software tester. Go figure!
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  They are more likely to spend 6 months shovelling coal into a fire and sweeping the floor at a blacksmiths. Blacksmiths don't make horseshoes either, that's a farrier's job (who still buy them off the shelf and finish them by hand). Being a farrier is also not an easy job, take a 3 or 4 apprenticeship to become one. There seems to be this viewpoint I see a lot on Hacker News that blue collar jobs are unskilled jobs. Most skilled trades require a 3 or 4 year apprenticeship, you can't just learn how to be a fitter and turner, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith/farrier in a couple of weekends. It's this kind of arrogant attitude that causes the tradies to have no respect for the book-learned engineers straight out of university that think because they have a degree they know how to build a road.

ta1234567890 8y ago

Employment stats are very misleading. There are lots of people with full time jobs who can't even afford housing. Sure they have jobs, but they are still in a really bad situation.

asfasgasg 8y ago
I am not commenting on the well-being of people working in fast food. Just on the availability of work. Whether such individuals can afford housing is totally beside the point of my comment.
- ta1234567890 8y ago
  And I'm highlighting how that type of argument contributes to the misunderstanding that job availability and high employment rates are a good thing just by themselves. What good is for people to dedicate their lives to shitty jobs (which are the only ones they can get), just so they can scrape by and live on the streets?
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    The answer to that’s isn’t more shitty jobs though. It’s adjustments to our system of capital distribution and ultimately what the minimum standards of living we are prepared to accept is as a society.
    - ta1234567890 8y ago
      You are right about shitty jobs not being the solution. About the last part of your statement though: society has already implicitly accepted the crappy minimum living standards (at least in the US) that it's willing to accept. That doesn't make it right for the people stuck having to live according to that minimum.
- ende 8y ago
  Unemployment numbers also aren’t low because the economy is producing tons of new jobs; notice the record numbers of homeless on the streets? It’s the labor participation rate. People are only counted towards unemployment stats while they are actively seeking employment; after awhile they give up and drop out of the labor force completely. Of course much of that drop is also demographics; the baby boomers are starting to retire en masse. Still, the illusion of job abundance does not hold.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. It's not even close, which is why it is easy to keep burger flipping jobs find without high wages even when unemployment is relatively low. > This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment. Because “full employment” is a decreasing-over-time share of the population that is actually working (and an even smaller decreasing share actually self-sufficient from work, as a large portion of the working population is dependent on public aid.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a problem that people point to “near full employment” with advancing automation as an excuse to argue against the continued advance of social support structures necessary to make the declining share of the population working (and also the declining share self-sufficient from work) both nearly “full employment” and anywhere close to tolerate conditions.