7 ms·

If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive, then it's an obvious choice. It's also obvious

If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive, then it's an obvious choice. It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed.

macdamaniac 5y ago
Yeah honestly it's a bit wild to me that this is a controversial take, and the proposals to "solve" this problem have largely been to cut people off from benefits.
- bluedino 5y ago
  It’s just cutting off the $600 extra from the federal government
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Business owners are still getting over their low wage entitlement complex and adapting to new market conditions.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Suddenly workers have leverage and corps don't know what to do about it. That's why I think a UBI would be a good idea. It would give leverage to individual workers without a union, now that unions are so weak.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    The moderation on HackerNews has gotten worse over the last five years. Reflexive downvoting for simple disagreement without the effort of a written response is the go-to short circuited brain-dead, ideological response I came to HN to avoid. Now down vote this as off-topic.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    You can't fund a UBI with income taxes though. It only works if you fund the UBI with taxes on regressive behavior.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  I wonder if somewhat incorrectly calling it a benefit is part of the reason it's so controversial. It's insurance, not a handout. Are people not going to call their car insurance if in a wreck? Are people not going to use their home insurance if someone breaks in and robs some expensive item? Use what you pay for, people! This goes for public utilities. Go to your library. Call your representative. Sign up for food stamps. Demand better roads. This is your stuff you pay for.
  - treis 5y ago
    Right it's supposed to protect you from an unforseen/unpreventable job loss. It's not supposed to encourage/allow you to not work.
  - chmod600 5y ago
    Did they really pay for it, though? It seems like the people that have the highest risk of unemployment payouts pay the least (in taxes or premiums), which is not how insurance works.
    - haswell 5y ago
      The difference in risk profile from other types of insurance doesn't necessarily mean it's not insurance.
      - chmod600 5y ago
        The parent wants it both ways: the connotation of entitlement in collecting a product that was paid for (by calling it "insurance"), but without actually paying for it.
    - didibus 5y ago
      They also receive the least benefits. But I think it's reasonable to assume (though I'd be interested in a study on this), that over a lifetime a person will have paid for all of its unemployment benefits. You can't be on unemployment forever, and you can't just go on it year over year, because there is a minimum amount of wage/work-hour you'll need to meet to be able to go back on unemployment if you're laid off again and have expired your allocated benefits (as I understand). That means that any worker going on unemployment can only get so much benefits per amount of time working or wages accrued. That's why I think over a lifetime, most people pay-back all of their benefits.
- ChrisLTD 5y ago
  The United States is a cruel place to live if you’re poor. Businesses think they are entitled to desperate labor at rock bottom prices, and a large part of the country’s leadership is happy to help.
  - drstewart 5y ago
    So cruel that 1.8m are living off government payments for a year while being able to turn down offers of work.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Yeah those employers managed to pull wages down so much they cant even compete with unemployment benefits.
      - drstewart 5y ago
        Government benefits are so good they're better than working for a living
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    And yet university enrollment is down 25% at my local uni. If you’re poor and have nothing to do for months and aren’t making your labor worth more by gaining skills, why should people have sympathy. Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Perhaps because the cost/benefit analysis of universities continues to go in the wrong direction?
    - imtringued 5y ago
      >Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can? If that is what the current state of society demands. Yes, absolutely. We could change it but there is a reason why things are the way they are and they have absolutely nothing to do with calm and rational thinking.
- sonotathrowaway 5y ago
  It’s harder to exploit people with options, so it’s necessary to remove those options.
dogma1138 5y ago
It doesn’t mean that the job pays less, it just means it doesn’t pay to sufficiently provide an incentive to take it. People simply might not take what is likely a physically demanding job if the compensation isn’t sufficiently high. There can be also other reasons like the fact that they might be looking for a better opportunity and not simply taking on any job. Other things like the hidden cost of having a job which can include things like commuting costs, loss of other employment opportunities like part time jobs or side gigs or added costs due to having to pay for child care can also be a good reason why one might not take a job even if it does pay above minimum wage and even above the local living wage.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive Unemployment benefits are designed to pay less than what people earned during their recent employment. Traditionally, it wouldn't make sense for someone to turn down a job offer in favor of unemployment unless the new job offer had drastically lower compensation than their previous job. The pandemic unemployment assistance change this with additional $300/week payments, but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations. This isn't really about jobs not paying people enough to survive. The survey responses included "I receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work" and a separate response for "I was not given enough money to return to work" with similar response rates.
- PenguinCoder 5y ago
  Those jobs should have been paying more to begin with. That's the problem.
- bluedino 5y ago
  It’s $16.55/Hr in my state. About $7 more than minimum wage.
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  > but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations But that's assuming someone would be working full time, right? When I was working on a restaurant (as dishwasher), I wouldn't get more than 20 hours in a week, usually around 15 hours iirc
jeffbee 5y ago
It's not always that obvious. A lot of employers in California would get at least as much bang for their buck by building workforce housing.
missedthecue 5y ago
But it's probably worth it for a lot of people to earn ~$2500 a month working 0 hours per week vs say $3000 a month putting in 40 hours. Employers are competing with the government to buy people's time, and the government is willing and has the means to push the price to infinity.
- B4CKlash 5y ago
  This is a bit of a strawman. There are a lot of factors influencing the decision on both sides. That $2500 will leave a gap in your resume, both literally and from an experience perspective. The $3000 on the other hand ignores a ton of externalities: Cost of commuting, childcare, etc. plus the associated hours. In a real sense it could be $2500 a month raising your kids, or $1500 a month in real income after childcare/commuting for 50 hours all in. A business has a number of levers to pull if they want to suppress wages; outsourcing (nationally and internationally) is usually the primary means. How do you suggest we increase the value of people's time without the Government setting the floor? (not to say the Government is the only way - just 'A' way).
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    A lot of the jobs in question don't care about resume gaps (especially during a pandemic) and are not outsourceable. For instance, restaurant, customer service, and retail is hard-hit right now. (I am in this line of work). You cant hire someone in Bangladesh to work those jobs, and you don't care if they were unemployed last year. But it's also impossible to pay them $10k a month. It's literally not mathematically possible. It's not a case of greed. The profit margins simply aren't fat enough. Around me, they're paying $15 to $16 an hour which is pretty generous and about what I'm making right now. At the end of the day, there is a huge shortage of labor. We know this because the workforce participation rate is at multidecade record lows. You can tell employers just to pay more, but it's not going to solve the fundamental issue. That's like trying to resolve the housing crisis by telling home shoppers to simply pay more and then wringing your hands of it.
    - greedo 5y ago
jollybean 5y ago
The 'obvious choice' is to not take money from the government/community that you're not supposed to be taking. How on earth did we just just dropped all pretense at being civic? And also: "It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed." That's actually not obvious. Have you owned a small business? Like a cafe, especially through a pandemic? Do they just have magic pools of profit from which to pay people more? Some places do, but usually they're the big chains. These kinds of situations just push regular owners further downhill vis-a-vis the Starbucks down the street which some might argue is 'good for efficiency' but I'd argue that we lose in choice and authenticity quite a lot.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  If labor is 30% of your costs then you could pay 20% more by charging 6% more for your finished goods or services. For a lot of such companies you could fill those labor hours trivially by making existing staff full time drastically increasing their wages and their financial stability. Take a fake employee named Susan. Presently you pay her $12 an hour for an average of 24 hours per week. In a normal month Susan receives 4 weekly paychecks for a grand total of 1152 before taxes or deductions with which to pay per bills. Susan is serving you a plate of food for $15 Now imagine you raised her wages to $14.40 and offered her full time. Her wages are now 2304. She is making twice as much money and now the food sadly must cost... $15.90. But you say Susan doesn't want to work full time she has other responsibilities, other jobs for example! This is because you and your industry have specialized in each paying Susan to run around between her 2-3 jobs so she can afford to live so she can get enough hours to live without any of you having to pay benefits. It could also be because your industry pays too little for anyone to afford to live so you have collected workers who have lesser need because for example they are spouses of well paid workers earning supplemental income. As the cost of living rises faster than incomes this isn't a stable equilibrium. Even Sam spare time may find he needs to earn more to live and if Sam moves on to a real job, graduates college, moves out of his parents home etc you can't be sure you can replace him at your less than survival wage. The service industry isn't a benefit to America its a diseased kidney and if the entire industry as it is died not much of value would be lost.
  - 5y ago
sethammons 5y ago
Fast food in my area starts at $20/hr in a flyover state. They still cannot get employees.
- about_help 5y ago
  Liar
  - sethammons 5y ago
    Don't know what to tell ya; I wont be running into town to grab a pic for you. Local McDonald's is currently advertising on a big sign $17/hr with vacation time. My kid reported that another fast food shop in town is now to $20/hr. I was talking with a roofer a bit north of me two weeks ago. His starting pay is also $20/hr and he can't get anyone. Anyone. He is now down to just himself because he can't get folks.

macdamaniac 5y ago

Yeah honestly it's a bit wild to me that this is a controversial take, and the proposals to "solve" this problem have largely been to cut people off from benefits.

bluedino 5y ago
It’s just cutting off the $600 extra from the federal government
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Business owners are still getting over their low wage entitlement complex and adapting to new market conditions.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Suddenly workers have leverage and corps don't know what to do about it. That's why I think a UBI would be a good idea. It would give leverage to individual workers without a union, now that unions are so weak.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  The moderation on HackerNews has gotten worse over the last five years. Reflexive downvoting for simple disagreement without the effort of a written response is the go-to short circuited brain-dead, ideological response I came to HN to avoid. Now down vote this as off-topic.
- imtringued 5y ago
  You can't fund a UBI with income taxes though. It only works if you fund the UBI with taxes on regressive behavior.
lapetitejort 5y ago
I wonder if somewhat incorrectly calling it a benefit is part of the reason it's so controversial. It's insurance, not a handout. Are people not going to call their car insurance if in a wreck? Are people not going to use their home insurance if someone breaks in and robs some expensive item? Use what you pay for, people! This goes for public utilities. Go to your library. Call your representative. Sign up for food stamps. Demand better roads. This is your stuff you pay for.
- treis 5y ago
  Right it's supposed to protect you from an unforseen/unpreventable job loss. It's not supposed to encourage/allow you to not work.
- chmod600 5y ago
  Did they really pay for it, though? It seems like the people that have the highest risk of unemployment payouts pay the least (in taxes or premiums), which is not how insurance works.
  - haswell 5y ago
    The difference in risk profile from other types of insurance doesn't necessarily mean it's not insurance.
    - chmod600 5y ago
      The parent wants it both ways: the connotation of entitlement in collecting a product that was paid for (by calling it "insurance"), but without actually paying for it.
  - didibus 5y ago
    They also receive the least benefits. But I think it's reasonable to assume (though I'd be interested in a study on this), that over a lifetime a person will have paid for all of its unemployment benefits. You can't be on unemployment forever, and you can't just go on it year over year, because there is a minimum amount of wage/work-hour you'll need to meet to be able to go back on unemployment if you're laid off again and have expired your allocated benefits (as I understand). That means that any worker going on unemployment can only get so much benefits per amount of time working or wages accrued. That's why I think over a lifetime, most people pay-back all of their benefits.
ChrisLTD 5y ago
The United States is a cruel place to live if you’re poor. Businesses think they are entitled to desperate labor at rock bottom prices, and a large part of the country’s leadership is happy to help.
- drstewart 5y ago
  So cruel that 1.8m are living off government payments for a year while being able to turn down offers of work.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Yeah those employers managed to pull wages down so much they cant even compete with unemployment benefits.
    - drstewart 5y ago
      Government benefits are so good they're better than working for a living
- merpnderp 5y ago
  And yet university enrollment is down 25% at my local uni. If you’re poor and have nothing to do for months and aren’t making your labor worth more by gaining skills, why should people have sympathy. Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Perhaps because the cost/benefit analysis of universities continues to go in the wrong direction?
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >Are people born entitled to live off society without contributing if they can? If that is what the current state of society demands. Yes, absolutely. We could change it but there is a reason why things are the way they are and they have absolutely nothing to do with calm and rational thinking.
sonotathrowaway 5y ago
It’s harder to exploit people with options, so it’s necessary to remove those options.

dogma1138 5y ago

It doesn’t mean that the job pays less, it just means it doesn’t pay to sufficiently provide an incentive to take it. People simply might not take what is likely a physically demanding job if the compensation isn’t sufficiently high. There can be also other reasons like the fact that they might be looking for a better opportunity and not simply taking on any job. Other things like the hidden cost of having a job which can include things like commuting costs, loss of other employment opportunities like part time jobs or side gigs or added costs due to having to pay for child care can also be a good reason why one might not take a job even if it does pay above minimum wage and even above the local living wage.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> If a job is paying less than what the government deems the minimum amount of money you need per month to survive Unemployment benefits are designed to pay less than what people earned during their recent employment. Traditionally, it wouldn't make sense for someone to turn down a job offer in favor of unemployment unless the new job offer had drastically lower compensation than their previous job. The pandemic unemployment assistance change this with additional $300/week payments, but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations. This isn't really about jobs not paying people enough to survive. The survey responses included "I receive enough money from unemployment insurance without having to work" and a separate response for "I was not given enough money to return to work" with similar response rates.

PenguinCoder 5y ago
Those jobs should have been paying more to begin with. That's the problem.
bluedino 5y ago
It’s $16.55/Hr in my state. About $7 more than minimum wage.
FalconSensei 5y ago
> but that still adds up to less than typical entry-level wages in many locations But that's assuming someone would be working full time, right? When I was working on a restaurant (as dishwasher), I wouldn't get more than 20 hours in a week, usually around 15 hours iirc

jeffbee 5y ago

It's not always that obvious. A lot of employers in California would get at least as much bang for their buck by building workforce housing.

missedthecue 5y ago

But it's probably worth it for a lot of people to earn ~$2500 a month working 0 hours per week vs say $3000 a month putting in 40 hours. Employers are competing with the government to buy people's time, and the government is willing and has the means to push the price to infinity.

B4CKlash 5y ago
This is a bit of a strawman. There are a lot of factors influencing the decision on both sides. That $2500 will leave a gap in your resume, both literally and from an experience perspective. The $3000 on the other hand ignores a ton of externalities: Cost of commuting, childcare, etc. plus the associated hours. In a real sense it could be $2500 a month raising your kids, or $1500 a month in real income after childcare/commuting for 50 hours all in. A business has a number of levers to pull if they want to suppress wages; outsourcing (nationally and internationally) is usually the primary means. How do you suggest we increase the value of people's time without the Government setting the floor? (not to say the Government is the only way - just 'A' way).
- missedthecue 5y ago
  A lot of the jobs in question don't care about resume gaps (especially during a pandemic) and are not outsourceable. For instance, restaurant, customer service, and retail is hard-hit right now. (I am in this line of work). You cant hire someone in Bangladesh to work those jobs, and you don't care if they were unemployed last year. But it's also impossible to pay them $10k a month. It's literally not mathematically possible. It's not a case of greed. The profit margins simply aren't fat enough. Around me, they're paying $15 to $16 an hour which is pretty generous and about what I'm making right now. At the end of the day, there is a huge shortage of labor. We know this because the workforce participation rate is at multidecade record lows. You can tell employers just to pay more, but it's not going to solve the fundamental issue. That's like trying to resolve the housing crisis by telling home shoppers to simply pay more and then wringing your hands of it.
  - greedo 5y ago

jollybean 5y ago

The 'obvious choice' is to not take money from the government/community that you're not supposed to be taking. How on earth did we just just dropped all pretense at being civic? And also: "It's also obvious what employers need to do if they are short-staffed." That's actually not obvious. Have you owned a small business? Like a cafe, especially through a pandemic? Do they just have magic pools of profit from which to pay people more? Some places do, but usually they're the big chains. These kinds of situations just push regular owners further downhill vis-a-vis the Starbucks down the street which some might argue is 'good for efficiency' but I'd argue that we lose in choice and authenticity quite a lot.

michaelmrose 5y ago
If labor is 30% of your costs then you could pay 20% more by charging 6% more for your finished goods or services. For a lot of such companies you could fill those labor hours trivially by making existing staff full time drastically increasing their wages and their financial stability. Take a fake employee named Susan. Presently you pay her $12 an hour for an average of 24 hours per week. In a normal month Susan receives 4 weekly paychecks for a grand total of 1152 before taxes or deductions with which to pay per bills. Susan is serving you a plate of food for $15 Now imagine you raised her wages to $14.40 and offered her full time. Her wages are now 2304. She is making twice as much money and now the food sadly must cost... $15.90. But you say Susan doesn't want to work full time she has other responsibilities, other jobs for example! This is because you and your industry have specialized in each paying Susan to run around between her 2-3 jobs so she can afford to live so she can get enough hours to live without any of you having to pay benefits. It could also be because your industry pays too little for anyone to afford to live so you have collected workers who have lesser need because for example they are spouses of well paid workers earning supplemental income. As the cost of living rises faster than incomes this isn't a stable equilibrium. Even Sam spare time may find he needs to earn more to live and if Sam moves on to a real job, graduates college, moves out of his parents home etc you can't be sure you can replace him at your less than survival wage. The service industry isn't a benefit to America its a diseased kidney and if the entire industry as it is died not much of value would be lost.
- 5y ago

sethammons 5y ago

Fast food in my area starts at $20/hr in a flyover state. They still cannot get employees.

about_help 5y ago
Liar
- sethammons 5y ago
  Don't know what to tell ya; I wont be running into town to grab a pic for you. Local McDonald's is currently advertising on a big sign $17/hr with vacation time. My kid reported that another fast food shop in town is now to $20/hr. I was talking with a roofer a bit north of me two weeks ago. His starting pay is also $20/hr and he can't get anyone. Anyone. He is now down to just himself because he can't get folks.