5 ms·

> Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't

by Drakim 5y ago

> Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire. > it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies Any studies on this?

trentnix 5y ago
> It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire. ...because the government is paying them not to work. That's the point. And that means no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics. I worked in a convenience store for minimum wage ($4.25/hour) for four years when I was younger. A little more than a decade later I owned my own retail store. Believe me, it's a long trip from stocking a drink cooler and scrubbing the toilets (what I did on my first day) to opening your own retail establishment. But that story is quite common - many dishwashers become restaurant owners, line cooks become chefs, and stockers become store managers. Your point about wages isn't really cogent. I'm a degreed Computer Scientist and software professional with decades of experience and I'll flip burgers for the right wage. But most won't be able to afford to buy them and they certainly won't find the cost-value appealing. And when the cost of those burgers goes up, UBI and whatever other creative ways we justify paying people not to work will have to go up too.
- viraptor 5y ago
  > no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics. You're saying that like people on unemployment are only those about to enter the job market. That's not going to be the case - there's lots of people with existing experience who lost jobs. And realistically only a small fragment of that group would advance so the whole missed experience is a bit sus.
  - trentnix 5y ago
    > You're saying that like people on unemployment are only those about to enter the job market. That's not going to be the case - there's lots of people with existing experience who lost jobs. Well of course, but that's not what we're talking about. There are a huge number of service industry jobs that were filled prior to the pandemic that are no longer filled. It appears those people are largely unemployed and apparently happy to stay that way. Such is the expected consequence of paying people not to work.
sonograph 5y ago
> The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering While this is accurate, it ignores OP's point that they were willing to work for those wages pre-pandemic, but now the government is paying them something equivalent to 'sit around' (per OPs point). Is it the job of the employer to raise wages or the government's job to pay people to work vs sitting? Maybe we should bring back the Civil Works Administration
- Drakim 5y ago
  When people are paid starvation wages and have to have multiple jobs, that's brushed off as "supply and demand" of labor. You get paid what the market is willing to pay for your labor, and it's your own fault if you can't offer anything more compelling to demand a higher wage. But when the situation is flipped around, and there is a shortage of labor instead? Suddenly the same rules don't apply, "supply and demand" isn't what should rule the price point for labor, instead, these companies are entitled to cheap labor. If people are unwilling to work for the wages offered, it's the people who are defect, not the wages offered.
  - sonograph 5y ago
    I don't have the 'correct' answer here, but I think I understand what you're saying. Except the shortage of labor in this case is artificially created. I agree that companies should not be entitled to cheap labor, and I do wish they are paid better though
    - Drakim 5y ago
      A fair point, but lots of market situations are "artificial", it's not like a natural disaster caused any of the recent recessions.
smaryjerry 5y ago
For unemployment at least in our state you don’t even have to show you are looking for a job. Anyone hiring can tell you how hard it was to get people back to work, we’re talking people making $25 per hour refusing to work because unemployment was 60% of their salary plus $600 a week. A person making $30,000 per year was making the equivalent of $49,000 per year instead, and didn’t have to do anything for it. Now it is that plus $300 per week and someone making $30,000 is now still making about $33,000 per year, again without actually having to work or even look. If they do come back they refuse to work more than about 15 hours per week so they can continue to claim unemployment for the rest and get their extra $300 per week.
- Drakim 5y ago
  A lot of this is because there has traditionally been an imbalance between employer and employee, where if they stop exchanging labor for money the employer suffers a mild inconvenience while getting a new person hired, while the employee faces the possibility of losing access to food, shelter and medicine for them and their family. This power imbalance means that the employee will often not complain about having wages stolen, complain about safety violations, or even be able to bargain fairly for the value of their labor. It's real hard to strike a fair business exchange with somebody who has a metaphorical gun pointed at your head. Due to these unemployment benefits, that gun is gone for a lot of people, and they can push back harder and say that "no, the terms you are offering me for my labor is not good, I will not take this job" and the industries and businesses are losing their shit over this. Economical trouble and turmoil is for the "small people" to suffer, they shouldn't have to offer better wages to navigate a shifting economical landscape, they are entitled to cheap labor.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    Businesses aren’t worried about paying better wages, they are worried about being unable to produce their goods or services. Sure they can give better wages but now what they are producing has to cost more. Have that happen across all industries and it is inflation. With inflation no one ends up better than where they started, particularly the lowest wage employees will be the hardest hit by inflation.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
> It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. There is nothing easy in just offering better wages, not least in industries where the bulk of the costs are wages and where productivity is often low.
- Drakim 5y ago
  Wages in America have actually been going down the last ten years due to inflation, while the number on the paycheck has stayed roughly the same for a huge segment of society. Yet nothing was done about this because that's just the market for you, supply and demand, and you just gotta have two jobs if one doesn't pay enough to live. All while American industry has been booming. But when the hurt happens on the industry instead? When circumstance means that they would have to pay more? That cannot be tolerated, no industry or business should ever have to be in economical turmoil because of shifting economical circumstances, that's only for the little people to deal with.

by Drakim 5y ago

trentnix 5y ago

> It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire. ...because the government is paying them not to work. That's the point. And that means no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics. I worked in a convenience store for minimum wage ($4.25/hour) for four years when I was younger. A little more than a decade later I owned my own retail store. Believe me, it's a long trip from stocking a drink cooler and scrubbing the toilets (what I did on my first day) to opening your own retail establishment. But that story is quite common - many dishwashers become restaurant owners, line cooks become chefs, and stockers become store managers. Your point about wages isn't really cogent. I'm a degreed Computer Scientist and software professional with decades of experience and I'll flip burgers for the right wage. But most won't be able to afford to buy them and they certainly won't find the cost-value appealing. And when the cost of those burgers goes up, UBI and whatever other creative ways we justify paying people not to work will have to go up too.

viraptor 5y ago
> no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics. You're saying that like people on unemployment are only those about to enter the job market. That's not going to be the case - there's lots of people with existing experience who lost jobs. And realistically only a small fragment of that group would advance so the whole missed experience is a bit sus.
- trentnix 5y ago
  > You're saying that like people on unemployment are only those about to enter the job market. That's not going to be the case - there's lots of people with existing experience who lost jobs. Well of course, but that's not what we're talking about. There are a huge number of service industry jobs that were filled prior to the pandemic that are no longer filled. It appears those people are largely unemployed and apparently happy to stay that way. Such is the expected consequence of paying people not to work.

sonograph 5y ago

> The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering While this is accurate, it ignores OP's point that they were willing to work for those wages pre-pandemic, but now the government is paying them something equivalent to 'sit around' (per OPs point). Is it the job of the employer to raise wages or the government's job to pay people to work vs sitting? Maybe we should bring back the Civil Works Administration

Drakim 5y ago
When people are paid starvation wages and have to have multiple jobs, that's brushed off as "supply and demand" of labor. You get paid what the market is willing to pay for your labor, and it's your own fault if you can't offer anything more compelling to demand a higher wage. But when the situation is flipped around, and there is a shortage of labor instead? Suddenly the same rules don't apply, "supply and demand" isn't what should rule the price point for labor, instead, these companies are entitled to cheap labor. If people are unwilling to work for the wages offered, it's the people who are defect, not the wages offered.
- sonograph 5y ago
  I don't have the 'correct' answer here, but I think I understand what you're saying. Except the shortage of labor in this case is artificially created. I agree that companies should not be entitled to cheap labor, and I do wish they are paid better though
  - Drakim 5y ago
    A fair point, but lots of market situations are "artificial", it's not like a natural disaster caused any of the recent recessions.

smaryjerry 5y ago

For unemployment at least in our state you don’t even have to show you are looking for a job. Anyone hiring can tell you how hard it was to get people back to work, we’re talking people making $25 per hour refusing to work because unemployment was 60% of their salary plus $600 a week. A person making $30,000 per year was making the equivalent of $49,000 per year instead, and didn’t have to do anything for it. Now it is that plus $300 per week and someone making $30,000 is now still making about $33,000 per year, again without actually having to work or even look. If they do come back they refuse to work more than about 15 hours per week so they can continue to claim unemployment for the rest and get their extra $300 per week.

Drakim 5y ago
A lot of this is because there has traditionally been an imbalance between employer and employee, where if they stop exchanging labor for money the employer suffers a mild inconvenience while getting a new person hired, while the employee faces the possibility of losing access to food, shelter and medicine for them and their family. This power imbalance means that the employee will often not complain about having wages stolen, complain about safety violations, or even be able to bargain fairly for the value of their labor. It's real hard to strike a fair business exchange with somebody who has a metaphorical gun pointed at your head. Due to these unemployment benefits, that gun is gone for a lot of people, and they can push back harder and say that "no, the terms you are offering me for my labor is not good, I will not take this job" and the industries and businesses are losing their shit over this. Economical trouble and turmoil is for the "small people" to suffer, they shouldn't have to offer better wages to navigate a shifting economical landscape, they are entitled to cheap labor.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  Businesses aren’t worried about paying better wages, they are worried about being unable to produce their goods or services. Sure they can give better wages but now what they are producing has to cost more. Have that happen across all industries and it is inflation. With inflation no one ends up better than where they started, particularly the lowest wage employees will be the hardest hit by inflation.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

> It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. There is nothing easy in just offering better wages, not least in industries where the bulk of the costs are wages and where productivity is often low.

Drakim 5y ago
Wages in America have actually been going down the last ten years due to inflation, while the number on the paycheck has stayed roughly the same for a huge segment of society. Yet nothing was done about this because that's just the market for you, supply and demand, and you just gotta have two jobs if one doesn't pay enough to live. All while American industry has been booming. But when the hurt happens on the industry instead? When circumstance means that they would have to pay more? That cannot be tolerated, no industry or business should ever have to be in economical turmoil because of shifting economical circumstances, that's only for the little people to deal with.