7 ms·

Because the government is "feeding the bears". When you get hundreds a week to not work, why is it any wonder that people choose not to work? When you start wo

• pirocks 5y ago
  > rewarding the lazy This comes off as unnecessarily moralistic.
  • mnouquet 5y ago
    But not anyhow less true.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • wernercd 5y ago
    I've made a couple other posts in response to how people seem to ignore the forest for the trees. The benefits for not working is a perverse incentive that stops large numbers of people from working - laziness IS the wrong word... but large numbers of people are still trapped in a system that rewards not working. https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/the-welfare-cliff-how-the-benefit-scale-discourages-work https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/the...
• digsy 5y ago
  $10 an hour isnt a livable wage in the US. Why would you advocate for people to become paupers?
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    It is a false assumption that everyone who wants to work needs a wage that will support a family of four with no other income.
    • throwaaskjdfh 5y ago
      > It is a false assumption that everyone who wants to work needs a wage that will support a family of four with no other income. Maybe, but the post at the root of this thread invokes both a $10/hour wage and the virtue of starting a family.
      • MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        It's not even "maybe." His supposition is incredibly clueless. He ignores FICA / Medicare payments, for one. That $100 in his ideal scenario? He never accounted for it. Just like he doesn't understand that most big box hourly workers don't get to defer taxes til the end of the year.
    • jwilber 5y ago
      You can’t live out of poverty in the average American city on $10/hour, even if you’re single. I see your name mentions Boise - believe me when I say Idaho, ranked 39th in state population size, is decidedly not representative of the US at large.
  • b9a2cab5 5y ago
    It may not be in rich West Coast cities with NIMBY problems where the cost of everything is 3x what it should be, but $10/h is easily livable in flyover towns. The primary cost of living is rent and rent in places with functioning city councils is low. I'm talking $500/mo for a decent sized apartment. $10/h is $1600, you're not paying taxes with that low of a wage. Add in car payments, car insurance, health insurance, and food and you've probably got $100 to spare every month. Seriously, the only reason wages need to be so high for low skill jobs in California is because the idiots governing here can't wrap their head around building more housing and every little social justice issue blocks construction approvals. If you cut the rent prices by 5x in the Bay you'd make $10/h a living wage.
• Craighead 5y ago
  Oh gosh, this tired and constantly disproven theory of laziness shows up from time to time. The government does this because its been conditioned to at the beck and call of unlimited local and foreign "donations" But, of course, leave it to the usual HN crowd to blame those with no agency who had it stolen to produce ill gotten gains for the successful
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Spartan-S63 5y ago
  Rather, the pandemic has provided an opportunity to shore up ailing unemployment insurance schemes in a time when lots of types of work were inherently unsafe. As a result, we've shown people levels of dignity that they've never seen before, but should have been granted. If nothing else, the stimulus checks were unnecessary and the UI benefits were substandard. Full stop, the reason why American workers are hard to find and hiring is difficult is because companies aren't paying enough money. Executives and shareholders have had decades of amazing wealth accumulation, but that has to end. The unwinding is happening and the gains from productivity, automation, and innovation belong to everyone and this moment in history may force government to adopt policies to make it happen.
  • 6foot4_82iq 5y ago
    > aren't paying enough money Renumeration expectations are entirely malleable and subjective. When you've been riding the gravy train, even $15/h looks a pittance. > Executives and shareholders have had decades of amazing wealth accumulation, but that has to end. The unwinding is happening and the gains from productivity, automation, and innovation belong to everyone and this moment in history may force government to adopt policies to make it happen. What does America have to offer in 2021 that would prevent said executives (at the potential behest of shareholders) from jumping ship?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • selectodude 5y ago
      >What does America have to offer in 2021 that would prevent said executives (at the potential behest of shareholders) from jumping ship? Kind of difficult to sell somebody a cheeseburger in America without hiring Americans. It's just one of those things that can't be outsourced.
      • 6foot4_82iq 5y ago
        Giving American fast food restaurants two paths: 1. automate 2. become a charity
• MarkSweep 5y ago
  The article mentions that the unemployment benefits don't fully account for it: > In the early part of the pandemic the UI supplement was even more generous, at $600, but its expiry in the summer had “little effect on overall employment”, according to a paper published in February by Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Likewise, in the areas where the current $300 is a relatively larger boost to income, employment growth has not weakened since January, when that uplift was introduced.
• SerLava 5y ago
  Please touch grass. You are either exploiting people all day, taking the money they make and putting most of it in your own wallet, or you're being exploited and you're just experiencing Stockholm syndrome.
• BugWatch 5y ago
  I might be missing some obvious point, but I think that your premise assumes (all/majority) of people are lazy. From the greatest utility viewpoint, if being unemployed (vs "lazy") gives liveable monetary benefits vs the employment's barely-scraping-the-barrel-and-dieing-at-it unliveable one, it is only logical for one not to work, and "laziness" shouldn't really even be considered a factor. Unemployment benefits should (at least?) provide for/cover the living essentials. Therefore, the question should be "what if the (minimum) wage/pay provided (at least the same) liveable value"? [Or, rather, that is the problem.] Coupled with the potential ability to advance above the minimum wage and earn more, majority of people would choose to work. I believe that well-known USA minimum wage stagnation graph says enough. (Disclaimer: I am not a citizen of USA, but I believe I am, frankly, more familiar with its policies vs my own (EU) country's... and that has only taught me that I shouldn't even contemplate living in the USA. [Personal opinion based on an informal cost/benefit/risks analysis.])
  • Izkata 5y ago
    I don't think laziness is their premise, but rather the result - I think GP is referring to: > Therefore, the question should be "what if the (minimum) wage/pay provided (at least the same) liveable value"? [Or, rather, that is the problem.] Unemployment was boosted during the pandemic to where a large percentage of low-skilled workers had exactly that cost/benefit to consider: Unemployment paid more than the job they lost, and now employers are looking to get them back without a raise.
    • wernercd 5y ago
      It's not the premise - although there are a lot of lazy people in the world (I'm one of them without hesitation or denials). This is the brunt of it: It's not worth it to work when the benefits of being unemployed is more than a "low paying" job. Those low paying jobs aren't worth more (Flipping burgers can only generate so much money - same for stocking shelves and other low experience jobs). Raises or not the fact remains its better to be unemployed than having a number of jobs. The fact that people choose to remain on benefits instead of working is only tangentially related to "laziness". If I can be unemployed and get 50k/year in unemployment, health care, free phones, living assistance, food stamps, etc... or I can do a minimum wage job and make 30k and lose all the benefits? The math is simple... it's more "profitable" to be unemployed for most people. My original post may be phrased wrongly - people seem to be hung up on the world "lazy". It could be phrased differently but the fact remains that the US "benefits" system is broken and is a large part of the problem. We need help but we shouldn't have such large portions of the population enslaved to "handouts" with a massive benefits wall in the way of personal freedom. https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/the-welfare-cliff-how-the-benefit-scale-discourages-work https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/the... > The ‘Welfare Cliff’: How The Benefit Scale Discourages Work > ... > The dramatic rise in welfare spending has created a “welfare cliff.” As more people have become eligible for increasingly larger benefits, the “penalty” for working—lost benefits due to increased income—has steepened and been described by analysts as the “welfare cliff.” This has been especially true for workers near the poverty line who are eligible for multiple programs (e.g., food stamps, Medicaid, the EITC, TANF, and subsidized public housing), as workers reach a point where every additional dollar earned can result in a more than 50 percent reduction in benefits. > ... > For example, the CBO study found that households with incomes just above the poverty line—or between $23,000 and $29,000 for a family of four in 2012—stand to lose 60 cents of every additional dollar to either taxes or lost federal benefits. In the face of such a high penalty, many low-income people choose either not to work or, as CBO finds, “put in fewer hours or be less productive.”
• throwaway_kufu 5y ago
  How many people are you currently hiring and what’s the compensation package of each employee?