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I'm seeing lots of "help wanted" signs. In fast food places. This isn't progress.

by badbug 8y ago

mc32 8y ago
Maybe that’s a proxy for people being hired away into higher paying jobs?
- badbug 8y ago
  Read the article "Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent" This isn't progress
themaninthedark 8y ago
...What do you think progress looks like? Who works in fast food and why? Mostly people who are either don't have any skills to work anywhere else or people who can't work anywhere else. When there is high unemployment, high skill workers will be more willing to take a less desirable job in order to survive. As unemployment drops, the high skill workers leave the undesirable job and find better work(more pay, better hours, etc.). Fast food places then have to either raise wages or higher less skilled workers to replace those who have left. This is progress.
- mjevans 8y ago
  I think progress in this domain would be requiring equal benefits for equal work (and pro-rated benefits for pro-rated work). The easiest way of doing /that/ is to make social benefits (retirement, vacation time, healthcare) public pools and 'single payer' (but with competition for benefits that provide services like healthcare).
- badbug 8y ago
  Did you read the article? This isn't progress "Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent"
otakucode 8y ago
My worst fear, the Worst Case Scenario that I see as being depressingly possible, is that the spread of automation will result in nonsense jobs. That our society is so completely wedded to the idea that everything of value must be gained through suffering and that this is the right and proper course of the universe that companies will be compelled to employ certain numbers of human workers despite there not being any actual need. 'Having a job' is not a natural, or necessarily fundamentally desired, state. Not for the individual, or for wider society. It was a purely utilitarian solution arrived at in the past when pressures were different. When pressures change, social practices have to change too, or the result is always bad. Concentrating on making sure everyone has a job while arduously fighting to ensure that workers are paid as little as possible can get us back to the era before the New Deal. I see nothing that would prevent that. Entire families, youth included (though likely not children, but certainly adolescents), working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and barely being able to feed themselves. When all of society is willing to say "they don't deserve more pay, the machines are doing all the work" including the workers themselves, and 'being employed' is seen as some sort of moral imperative that is more meaningful than a paycheck and totally detached from actually producing value... things can get bad. We should always remember history, and that those people were not fundamentally different from us. They were willing to bear it. We will be too. And while they didn't have a century of fighting against 'socialist' policies so were willing to discuss the New Deal, we are in a different situation on that count. Such a solution would not be discussed seriously, much less attempted. (But, I don't fear this too much. The fact is technology is cheap and has made people so productive that its far more likely they will realize that companies no longer provide any tangible benefit compared to working directly for customers online, especially once the software is there to facilitate it.)

I'm seeing lots of "help wanted" signs. In fast food places. This isn't progress.

by badbug 8y ago

I'm seeing lots of "help wanted" signs. In fast food places. This isn't progress.

mc32 8y ago

Maybe that’s a proxy for people being hired away into higher paying jobs?

badbug 8y ago
Read the article "Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent" This isn't progress

themaninthedark 8y ago

...What do you think progress looks like? Who works in fast food and why? Mostly people who are either don't have any skills to work anywhere else or people who can't work anywhere else. When there is high unemployment, high skill workers will be more willing to take a less desirable job in order to survive. As unemployment drops, the high skill workers leave the undesirable job and find better work(more pay, better hours, etc.). Fast food places then have to either raise wages or higher less skilled workers to replace those who have left. This is progress.

mjevans 8y ago
I think progress in this domain would be requiring equal benefits for equal work (and pro-rated benefits for pro-rated work). The easiest way of doing /that/ is to make social benefits (retirement, vacation time, healthcare) public pools and 'single payer' (but with competition for benefits that provide services like healthcare).
badbug 8y ago
Did you read the article? This isn't progress "Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job. The trucking industry is instructive here: Trade groups have argued that it is facing a shortfall of 51,000 workers, yet businesses have not yet shown much willingness to cut hours, boost pay, and improve conditions to lure workers in. Indeed, across the economy, companies have shown a remarkable unwillingness to boost wages, with growth barely keeping pace with inflation even as the unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent"

otakucode 8y ago

My worst fear, the Worst Case Scenario that I see as being depressingly possible, is that the spread of automation will result in nonsense jobs. That our society is so completely wedded to the idea that everything of value must be gained through suffering and that this is the right and proper course of the universe that companies will be compelled to employ certain numbers of human workers despite there not being any actual need. 'Having a job' is not a natural, or necessarily fundamentally desired, state. Not for the individual, or for wider society. It was a purely utilitarian solution arrived at in the past when pressures were different. When pressures change, social practices have to change too, or the result is always bad. Concentrating on making sure everyone has a job while arduously fighting to ensure that workers are paid as little as possible can get us back to the era before the New Deal. I see nothing that would prevent that. Entire families, youth included (though likely not children, but certainly adolescents), working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and barely being able to feed themselves. When all of society is willing to say "they don't deserve more pay, the machines are doing all the work" including the workers themselves, and 'being employed' is seen as some sort of moral imperative that is more meaningful than a paycheck and totally detached from actually producing value... things can get bad. We should always remember history, and that those people were not fundamentally different from us. They were willing to bear it. We will be too. And while they didn't have a century of fighting against 'socialist' policies so were willing to discuss the New Deal, we are in a different situation on that count. Such a solution would not be discussed seriously, much less attempted. (But, I don't fear this too much. The fact is technology is cheap and has made people so productive that its far more likely they will realize that companies no longer provide any tangible benefit compared to working directly for customers online, especially once the software is there to facilitate it.)