4 ms·
No? There can be a shortage of anything. I̶f̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶2̶5̶%̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶e̶l̶d̶s̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶,̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶
by missedthecue 5y ago
No? There can be a shortage of anything. I̶f̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶2̶5̶%̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶e̶l̶d̶s̶ ̶n̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶,̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶n̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶a̶y̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶n̶?̶ (people can't get past the corn analogy)
What about the cost of housing? Do you call that a shortage or do you blame homebuyers for not paying enough?
In the US right now, the workforce participation rate is at all time lows. There are more than 5 million people that were working in 2019, that are not working/looking for work today. That is a lack of supply, AKA a shortage.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoThis would be a better fit if corn had free will and was against harvesting conditions.
- Aliabid94 5y agoTheoretically, the price of corn would rise until demand falls to meet it at that price. Demand falls because consumers turn to substitutes (e.g. sugar vs corn syrup)
- FalconSensei 5y agoOnly in case corn has something to substitute. Think like... doctors. If you don't have enough doctors graduating, the hospitals still need them. It's not like they can hire veterinarians or mechanics instead
- darkwizard42 5y agoYeah, but the GP comment is using corn (generally substitutable) to make a point about service/line-level food workers. That role isn't exactly specialized labor. It is pretty clear in this case that the supply exists, just not willing to enter the market at the clearing price.
- pchristensen 5y agoWith lower supply of doctors, then price goes up for patients (in wait times) and insurers ($$). Some marginal health issues will be ignored, deferred, or seen by nurse practicioners. Boom - equilibrium!
- renewiltord 5y agoThis is non-congruent with the use of the word “shortage” in economics. Under this model, the word shortage is not well-defined. This is certainly a model but it makes discussion hard when two models are using the same signifiers to represent different concepts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jacobr1 5y agoThere has been a big push to diversify supply with Nurse Practitioners and PAs. They aren't able to perform all the actions an MD can perform, but have a lower entry bar but still can treat and prescribe in a large array of cases.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoIronically the price of sugar is kept artificially high by the government to protect sugar cane growers, by means of import controls. That's why corn syrup became so popular. Its price isn't controlled. The price of corn has now been pushed higher by idiotic ethanol mandates. That's why you see a lot of "real sugar" products these days. Sugar's become more attractive in price as the price of corn products go up. Unfortunately corn prices going up has been a serious burden on Mexican households where corn is a huge part of the diet.
- soco 5y agoComing back to the topic, if there are 3 programmer jobs and 2 programmers, no matter how much you raise the pay one job will be left empty.
- dgfitz 5y agoThis doesn't add up. In "the real world" a programmer making less at a different company would take that 3rd role.
- missedthecue 5y agoImagine in the world, there are 105 million programmer jobs and 100 million programmers. Companies can raise wages, but theyre only poaching from other companies.
- dgfitz 5y agoAnd now we know why programmers make the salaries they do!
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoYes, so the most valuable 100 million jobs get done, the least valuable 5 million don't. Meanwhile, people who can't currently complete the job are incentivized to learn how to do it by rising wages so the overall supply gradually rises. That's how free markets are supposed to work.
- missedthecue 5y agoOk but to the point of our discussion, most of the jobs currently available aren't jobs that require training. There are 5 million people that just stopped working.
- dgfitz 5y agoYeah, because the pay isn't high enough
- mistrial9 5y agocorn is a uniquely terrible example, because of a) long-term, very large price subsidies by government to certain farms, and b) the completely manufactured, and enormous, corn use for glucose syrup, and its derivitive "high-fructose corn syrup", in the USA and export markets..
- kristjansson 5y agoOnly insofar as demand is elastic and sufficient substitutes are available? An exogenous shock like that (a famine/blight, a war) can obliterate the market's ability to clear over the short-run...
- renewiltord 5y agoIt’s a HN meme: Employers cannot find employees because they are simply not paying enough. There is no shortage, the bid and ask are just non-crossing. The other meme is that this argument applies to nothing else: GPUs, cars, etc. are in a shortage. The bid and ask not crossing is evidence of a shortage. There is an easy conclusion: HN users are on the ask side in the former case and the bid side on the latter case and merely attempting to propagate a meme that attempts to move things in their direction.
- supernovae 5y agoEverything is Meme if you frame it as such, so its nonsense to do so. GPU Shortage has nothing to do with Employee shortage. The GPU shortage is a symptom of clouds, crypto, consoles and more importantly Apple. Apple has so much buying power that they purchased the majority of fabrication capacity to sell you M1* chips. It doesn't matter what consumers want or do. As for Employers and wages - Individuals can actually choose to work for places that pay livable wages. There is nothing more important in a capitalist society than wages that afford you the ability to thrive in said society. If businesses can't pay those kind of wages, those businesses shouldn't exist. Workers are not socialized labor systems for private business profits.
- newbie789 5y ago> Workers are not socialized labor systems for private business profits. I love this phrasing and agree 100%. There are a lot of people in the comments to this story making convoluted partial analogies trying to argue against your point without actually saying the quiet part loud.
- missedthecue 5y ago"Individuals can actually choose to work for places that pay livable wages." This line of thinking would explain why one business with higher wages has an easier time recruiting and retaining employees than a business with lower wages, but I really don't understand this argument for a nationwide lack of hireable people. Is someone better off making $12 an hour or $0 an hour? Unless they've found someone to subsidize their life (relatives, governments, charities, etc...) earning nothing makes their life worse off than earning a lower wage than they might prefer.