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There's something seriously wrong with a society where nobody can live comfortably without a white-collar job while at the same time there's no way we would sur

There's something seriously wrong with a society where nobody can live comfortably without a white-collar job while at the same time there's no way we would survive if we were all accountants.

tibbar 5y ago
I agree. How do you see us fixing this? Maybe universal basic income? Over the last century we've eliminated many of the positions in agriculture and manufacturing that were traditionally considered good blue collar jobs. Automation on that front is only going to increase. Obviously the gig jobs - Uber, Lyft, DoorDash - are a really poor substitute...
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Here are some solutions I can think of. No telling if any would work, these are just conversation starters. 1. Socialism. I don't need to describe this because you've already heard of it. :) 2. Extremely general insurance. You don't know how successful you're going to be before you're born, so you have insurance policies for lifetime income. If we can insure against the treatment costs of cystic fibrosis (parent's insurance covers dependents, then they get their own insurance when they grow up) then we can insure against the costs incurred by being born with an IQ less than 160 in an economy that's out to get you if you so much as blink. Is having 159 IQ a pathological deficiency? Well, pathology is relative to your environment. ;) 3. By fixing our existing system. Maybe all of these pointless wars, intelligence agency black budgets and the dead weight overhead incurred by structuring government projects to allocate funding according to the influence of representative districts, adds up and costs us in a way that puts the lower income 50% underwater first. Maybe there's enough to go around, but we're wasting it.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    #1
treis 5y ago
Plenty of blue collar jobs pay enough to live comfortably
- whatshisface 5y ago
  A society consisting exclusively of highly specialized welders and accountants can't operate either. We do actually need someone to deliver packages for example. The jobs that don't pay a living wage are oftentimes more essential than some that do.
  - strken 5y ago
    Do we need someone to deliver packages? If last mile package delivery was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to walk/drive/bus to the depot. There's no point streamlining a process at a cost of e.g. $35k/year if you can pay someone $30k/year to do it.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Do we need someone to deliver packages? If last mile package delivery was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to walk/drive/bus to the depot. Do we need someone to farm food for us? If farming was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to grow their own vegetable garden.
      - tibbar 5y ago
        And then you might decide to pay some one to help you in your vegetable garden part time, and before you know it...
      - strken 5y ago
        The point here is that jobs are elastic and can be automated or shuffled around, we just choose not to do so because we don't value the time of the worker enough. When you get a package delivered for $2 instead of $3 you're implicitly putting a lower value on the time of someone else. We will always need someone to deliver packages. However, maybe we do not need someone to deliver a package of rice from Amazon for an unlivably low wage to a recipient who could have just gone to the supermarket. The same thing applies to the agricultural industry, which abuses immigrant labourers doing backbreaking work for low pay to provide you cheaper luxury goods. Maybe if strawberries reflected a livable wage you'd choose to eat more easily harvestable crops, like apples.
reducesuffering 5y ago
"It's the [housing] economy stupid" If we actually built an abundance of housing, where it would cease to be a vehicle to park stores of wealth, where there is no musical chairs competition to outcompete each other for the basic security of shelter, the deflationary cost savings that would percolate through the economy would be absolutely immense. I'm talking about even chipping away at the cost of education and healthcare immensely, because of how much of the cost goes into indirectly paying the housing of the huge amount of workers in those industry. In the world of mass housing at the cost of construction, everything is cheap, and we live with much more abundance.
- pirate787 5y ago
  Its immigration policy too-- the 50 million or so foreign born living in the US today have overwhelmed our housing production.
  - mateo411 5y ago
    Yes, that's true. But we also need them to build the housing.
    - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      Why??? Why not just pay a living wage to American citizens?
- d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
  At some point you're just hitting the raw material cost of roof+walls+insulation+labor built to code which--for a pretty basic structure--can easily be $120k no matter the location. Even if land was free this would still be unattainable for many under-homed people.
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    That's why I pointed to "mass housing at the cost of construction." $120k is the realm of minimums for SFH. For a bare necessities 432 Park Avenue[0], we should be able to do 3,000 residences within 85 stories of 800 sqft. apartments, at 50k per, amortized over 30 years and even cheaper after they're used. The Soviet Union couldn't give their people a lot but they could at least make some housing. 432 Park Ave's current prices are due to luxury amenities, Manhattan land, and inadequate housing supply. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

There's something seriously wrong with a society where nobody can live comfortably without a white-collar job while at the same time there's no way we would survive if we were all accountants.

tibbar 5y ago

I agree. How do you see us fixing this? Maybe universal basic income? Over the last century we've eliminated many of the positions in agriculture and manufacturing that were traditionally considered good blue collar jobs. Automation on that front is only going to increase. Obviously the gig jobs - Uber, Lyft, DoorDash - are a really poor substitute...

whatshisface 5y ago
Here are some solutions I can think of. No telling if any would work, these are just conversation starters. 1. Socialism. I don't need to describe this because you've already heard of it. :) 2. Extremely general insurance. You don't know how successful you're going to be before you're born, so you have insurance policies for lifetime income. If we can insure against the treatment costs of cystic fibrosis (parent's insurance covers dependents, then they get their own insurance when they grow up) then we can insure against the costs incurred by being born with an IQ less than 160 in an economy that's out to get you if you so much as blink. Is having 159 IQ a pathological deficiency? Well, pathology is relative to your environment. ;) 3. By fixing our existing system. Maybe all of these pointless wars, intelligence agency black budgets and the dead weight overhead incurred by structuring government projects to allocate funding according to the influence of representative districts, adds up and costs us in a way that puts the lower income 50% underwater first. Maybe there's enough to go around, but we're wasting it.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  #1

treis 5y ago

Plenty of blue collar jobs pay enough to live comfortably

whatshisface 5y ago
A society consisting exclusively of highly specialized welders and accountants can't operate either. We do actually need someone to deliver packages for example. The jobs that don't pay a living wage are oftentimes more essential than some that do.
- strken 5y ago
  Do we need someone to deliver packages? If last mile package delivery was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to walk/drive/bus to the depot. There's no point streamlining a process at a cost of e.g. $35k/year if you can pay someone $30k/year to do it.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Do we need someone to deliver packages? If last mile package delivery was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to walk/drive/bus to the depot. Do we need someone to farm food for us? If farming was a skilled profession that earned workers $200k a year, more people would choose to grow their own vegetable garden.
    - tibbar 5y ago
      And then you might decide to pay some one to help you in your vegetable garden part time, and before you know it...
    - strken 5y ago
      The point here is that jobs are elastic and can be automated or shuffled around, we just choose not to do so because we don't value the time of the worker enough. When you get a package delivered for $2 instead of $3 you're implicitly putting a lower value on the time of someone else. We will always need someone to deliver packages. However, maybe we do not need someone to deliver a package of rice from Amazon for an unlivably low wage to a recipient who could have just gone to the supermarket. The same thing applies to the agricultural industry, which abuses immigrant labourers doing backbreaking work for low pay to provide you cheaper luxury goods. Maybe if strawberries reflected a livable wage you'd choose to eat more easily harvestable crops, like apples.

reducesuffering 5y ago

"It's the [housing] economy stupid" If we actually built an abundance of housing, where it would cease to be a vehicle to park stores of wealth, where there is no musical chairs competition to outcompete each other for the basic security of shelter, the deflationary cost savings that would percolate through the economy would be absolutely immense. I'm talking about even chipping away at the cost of education and healthcare immensely, because of how much of the cost goes into indirectly paying the housing of the huge amount of workers in those industry. In the world of mass housing at the cost of construction, everything is cheap, and we live with much more abundance.

pirate787 5y ago
Its immigration policy too-- the 50 million or so foreign born living in the US today have overwhelmed our housing production.
- mateo411 5y ago
  Yes, that's true. But we also need them to build the housing.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    Why??? Why not just pay a living wage to American citizens?
d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
At some point you're just hitting the raw material cost of roof+walls+insulation+labor built to code which--for a pretty basic structure--can easily be $120k no matter the location. Even if land was free this would still be unattainable for many under-homed people.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  That's why I pointed to "mass housing at the cost of construction." $120k is the realm of minimums for SFH. For a bare necessities 432 Park Avenue[0], we should be able to do 3,000 residences within 85 stories of 800 sqft. apartments, at 50k per, amortized over 30 years and even cheaper after they're used. The Soviet Union couldn't give their people a lot but they could at least make some housing. 432 Park Ave's current prices are due to luxury amenities, Manhattan land, and inadequate housing supply. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue