8 ms·

Lack of people to work should be the norm. Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everyth

Lack of people to work should be the norm. Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everything around them. The globalization and demographic trends that has undercut the value of labor in the west for decades are now reversing. Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class getting larger chunk of the pie.

criley2 4y ago
The working class will get a larger chunk of the pie only if they organize into powerful unions and directly negotiate with the wealthy to dramatically reduce corporate profits. Right now all that pie that should go to workers goes to investors. Without that dramatic shift in power, you'll just get what we have: worker pay rising half the speed of inflation. Good luck with that. Until the corporations stop posting record profits and we stop pumping the stock market to dramatic new highs every year, you're not going to see the working class better off.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Unions don’t work the way you think they do. If they are large unions they actually actively negotiate against the workers as well. Take a look at the railroad union as an example. Only smaller local unions are effective at negotiating wages and benefits
  - vincnetas 4y ago
    ok, lets go with smaller unions then.
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Using one union as a stand-in for all is pretty silly... Should we understand large corporations entirely on the basis of Enron?
    - rdtwo 4y ago
      It’s pretty systematic, look at state wide teachers strokes of nurses. Any big union
    - rdtwo 4y ago
      Ha you say that in jest but Enron is a good model for large zombie corporations. We know a lot more about the inner workings of Enron that we do about many corporations as well.
  - criley2 4y ago
    It's ironic that you mention the railworkers union to defend your claim that I don't understand unions, when the rail industry in America got everything they wanted from the workers. Your point is basically "the worst union imaginable is the same as no union". That's not the own you think it is.
    - rdtwo 4y ago
      You are misinformed. The railroad union got screwed. For one they didn’t get an actual contract. As far as I can tell they got Tentative deal that was used as a procedural trick to delay the strike till after the midterms. It’s not even clear that there was anything in this “tentative deal”. More importantly the strike wasn’t about pay as much as it was about absolutely terrible scheduling practices. Employees were on call 24/7/365 had to show up at very short notice, couldn’t take vacation or sick leave etc. There was no promise of actually fixing any of the problems in that deal. This happens a lot in union strikes, workers want better work conditions but instead the union negotiates like 1-2% more pay and the media reports it as greedy unions getting overpaid. Even though that’s not what the workers even wanted.
- Aunche 4y ago
  This is talking about the public sector. Public sector unions are a disaster, with the police unions being the the star example. Unlike the private sector, you can't capture profits from the owners because there is no profit to begin with. Instead, the money comes from the more junior employees and in the form of taxpayer debt. Thanks to unions, 40% of Chicago's education budget goes towards paying pensions. Meanwhile, younger teachers are stuck in dead-end part time roles because that's all the city has budget for.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    > Thanks to unions That's more like thanks to disinvestment in retirement funds to build capital for future payouts.
  - AJ007 4y ago
    To make the irony worse, the pension returns are dependent on allocating their capital to monopolies which are able to capture excess returns. Re-allocating profits from shareholders to workers de-funds the pensions (and retirees more broadly.)
- malandrew 4y ago
  I wish all the “record profits” reports were in real terms and not nominal terms, which are impossible to evaluate objectively, especially in a high inflation environment.
mhuffman 4y ago
>Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everything around them. I have the suspicion this will only be used to import cheaper labor, not to treat current labor better or pay them more.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  That is absolutely the plan. And if it weren’t for human-trafficked labor, we would have reached low points like this a long time ago. There are plenty more humans to traffic in the world, and the ruling elite has no problem starving them away from their families and communities then congratulating themselves as though they have done a good deed.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I was recently listening to population growth lecture from 90s Yale and among few things that really struck me was a phrase that said something to the effect of 'while the locals may object over their personal interests, we, the elite, may see it through a more wide economic lens'. It was fascinating and it helped me understand the deeply ingrained distrust in US population of the educated 'elite'. I always thought thought it was largely uninformed bias, as I keep listening to old Yale lectures, I learn that US populace is a lot smarter than most give it credit.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Without (recent) immigration the US population would be shrinking and aging trend. In addition a large part of immigration to the US is educated boosting the country even further. Immigration is not the problem' politicians selling the populace out for profits to corporations is a much bigger issue.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Maybe. Maybe not. People do respond to their current situation. It is hard to predict with a dose of certainty that X would happen as people could very easily reverse the predicted trend. It may not be THE problem, but dismissing it as just one of the culture wars items is in itself counter-productive ( if only, because perception is reality and people do vote based on their belief systems ). I do not disagree with you on the clear focus of US on the true beneficiary of this system ( corporations ).
nly 4y ago
High taxes part is interesting, since in the UK we've just had the biggest tax cuts in a generation and more seem to be in the way in the new year. Winding back the clock to stimulate growth seems to be the order of the day
faeriechangling 4y ago
More specifically, business models which expected to make money by extracting money from everyday citizens after first establishing a bunch of customers don’t actually make sense because tons of companies are doing the same thing while ignoring that everyday people don’t have any disposable income anymore and will never pay for their products and services. The continued running of the economy is practically dependant on a wealth transfer to labour so we can enable a second wealth transfer to capital.
- mycall 4y ago
  Is that because money tends to become held by people who don't need it?
  - lazide 4y ago
    To put it more simply - money tends to end up with people who earn/acquire it faster than they spend it. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    I know that wealth tends to follow a Pareto distribution historically, this is the qualitative fact. My impression is honestly that this is a function of some people being able to earn a return on money more easily than other people. The poor can make better use of fifty dollars than a millionaire, a millionaire can take better advantage of a fifty thousand dollars than a billionaire, and a billionaire can make better use of 50 million dollars than the poor or millionaires. So things eventually reach some sort of equilibrium as it's self-correcting, somebody who uses money badly gets overcome by somebody who uses it well. Right now I think that equilibrium is out of sorts because I think it's almost self-evident how much somebody poor could do with a thousand dollars, whereas a company like Berkshire Hathaway right now is at such a loss as to what to invest in that they're literally just sitting on cash when they get it. There's are exceptions but I see too much of this these days. Wealth also isn't distributed like a Pareto distribution, it's too top-sided to follow the distribution perfectly, and if history repeats itself we will see that unravel. I expect the top to fall more than I expect the bottom to rise though.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
Problem is, there's no lack of people looking for work - there's a lack of people who want to work these particular jobs. For every 300 applicants for an ez comfy remote six-figure developer position, there's 0 for a (literal shit-job) wastewater treatment plant position paying $16/hr - and it's no wonder why.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  I've seen this exact problem with home health assistants. If you have a Medicaid waiver and qualify for a home assistant, Virginia will pay $16/hr for a full-time assistant in a high COL area. The bottleneck is of course finding someone willing to accept unlivably low wages (edit: which you cannot supplement) for a very hands-on, dead-end job that entails significant liability.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    It’s physically exhausting work too. The conditions are so shitty and pay so poor that I almost question the motivations of people doing it. A lot of ‘saints’ but also a lot of theft and abuse , particularly around medication occurs in these low cost facilities and low pay home help.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  I take your point but lol at the idea of 300 applicants for a remote dev position. If we saw 30 applicants all year is would be a miracle.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    Can we see your job advert ? without seeing it, i'm going to guess: - Java developer / C++ developer - 10+ years of experience - Low end of medium wage. - Something about excitement in your advert.
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      Impressively wrong in every single aspect
lamontcg 4y ago
I sort of agree with where you think we are, but not where we're going. > Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class getting larger chunk of the pie. The Fed is clearly going to engineer a massive recession and financial crisis to throw enough people out of work to get inflation under control and make people continue to work for peanuts. They're not giving the working class a larger chunk of the pie without a massive fight (and what remains to be seen is if how far they'll go before they realize they're harming themselves in the process, and even if they capitulate before they destroy everything).
- 7speter 4y ago
  The fed’s job is to keep inflation under control, not to “engineer (a) financial crisis.” If the fed raises the interest rates and sinks us into a financial crisis, it was a mistake, as seen during the great depression. If you want working class pay to go up, go vote for people who will help working class pay up instead of assigning conspiracy theories to the fed.
  - Hermitian909 4y ago
    I think OP was using "financial crisis" in a non-technical way and was referring to the Fed's targeted plan to leave an additional 1 million people unemployed by the end of the year. If we assume this is what they meant, I think the post is reasonable. The fed is targeting labor in this way specifically to avoid a wage/price inflation spiral. Those hurt the most by such a spiral are capital holders as the relative power of their capital decreases. (all this said, I would actually prefer solutions targeting the land-holding class, over labor and capital).
    - pgwhalen 4y ago
      The fed does not have a “targeted plan to leave an additional 1 million people unemployed by the end of the year.” Please stop spreading such FUD.
      - 4y ago
z9znz 4y ago
> working class getting larger chunk of the pie I don't see this happening as a net result. There are just too many powerful (wealthy) interests working multiple angles to ensure that a vast majority of any gains go to the top. There will be faux gains or benefits which appear substantive but are either offset by some new life cost (such as inflation, but not necessarily so great and complex) or are outright new expenses.
- shakezula 4y ago
  Which is why the only real way to fix this problem is with legislation. Minimum wage laws aren’t perfect but they address core issues like this far better than most, imo.
nxmnxm99 4y ago
Like Europe, right? The continent which hasn't seen economic growth in 15 years and each subsequent generation sinks further closer to poverty?
- lossolo 4y ago
  Data shows similar growth to USA. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2021&locations=EU-US&start=2006 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2... edit: updated link to last 15 years
  - Retric 4y ago
    The favor the EU when you look at GDP per capita. USA GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 87%. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... EU GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 126% https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp...
    - nxmnxm99 4y ago
      You really believe that? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=EU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - Retric 4y ago
        Yes. Try actually doing the calculation ((Year 2022 / Year 2000) - 1) * 100% for both and you’re going to see the EU had faster growth over that time period. Though double checking my calculation the US should be 91%.
        4y ago
incomingpain 4y ago
>Lack of people to work should be the norm. Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everything around them. The reason there's a surplus is egalitarianism. Most of the developed world realized we didn't economically tap much of society because of whatever *ism. Fixing that produced a huge benefit. But it also ended up with 2 key problems. Huge surplus of low-skilled labour AND a problematic population pyramid. >The globalization and demographic trends that has undercut the value of labor in the west for decades are now reversing. Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class getting larger chunk of the pie. The problem after that im sure they'll call the 'great unretirement' where people who retired ran out of money but lots of those people wont want to work. Nobody will hire them. They will turn to crime.

criley2 4y ago

The working class will get a larger chunk of the pie only if they organize into powerful unions and directly negotiate with the wealthy to dramatically reduce corporate profits. Right now all that pie that should go to workers goes to investors. Without that dramatic shift in power, you'll just get what we have: worker pay rising half the speed of inflation. Good luck with that. Until the corporations stop posting record profits and we stop pumping the stock market to dramatic new highs every year, you're not going to see the working class better off.

rdtwo 4y ago
Unions don’t work the way you think they do. If they are large unions they actually actively negotiate against the workers as well. Take a look at the railroad union as an example. Only smaller local unions are effective at negotiating wages and benefits
- vincnetas 4y ago
  ok, lets go with smaller unions then.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Using one union as a stand-in for all is pretty silly... Should we understand large corporations entirely on the basis of Enron?
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    It’s pretty systematic, look at state wide teachers strokes of nurses. Any big union
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    Ha you say that in jest but Enron is a good model for large zombie corporations. We know a lot more about the inner workings of Enron that we do about many corporations as well.
- criley2 4y ago
  It's ironic that you mention the railworkers union to defend your claim that I don't understand unions, when the rail industry in America got everything they wanted from the workers. Your point is basically "the worst union imaginable is the same as no union". That's not the own you think it is.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    You are misinformed. The railroad union got screwed. For one they didn’t get an actual contract. As far as I can tell they got Tentative deal that was used as a procedural trick to delay the strike till after the midterms. It’s not even clear that there was anything in this “tentative deal”. More importantly the strike wasn’t about pay as much as it was about absolutely terrible scheduling practices. Employees were on call 24/7/365 had to show up at very short notice, couldn’t take vacation or sick leave etc. There was no promise of actually fixing any of the problems in that deal. This happens a lot in union strikes, workers want better work conditions but instead the union negotiates like 1-2% more pay and the media reports it as greedy unions getting overpaid. Even though that’s not what the workers even wanted.
Aunche 4y ago
This is talking about the public sector. Public sector unions are a disaster, with the police unions being the the star example. Unlike the private sector, you can't capture profits from the owners because there is no profit to begin with. Instead, the money comes from the more junior employees and in the form of taxpayer debt. Thanks to unions, 40% of Chicago's education budget goes towards paying pensions. Meanwhile, younger teachers are stuck in dead-end part time roles because that's all the city has budget for.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  > Thanks to unions That's more like thanks to disinvestment in retirement funds to build capital for future payouts.
- AJ007 4y ago
  To make the irony worse, the pension returns are dependent on allocating their capital to monopolies which are able to capture excess returns. Re-allocating profits from shareholders to workers de-funds the pensions (and retirees more broadly.)
malandrew 4y ago
I wish all the “record profits” reports were in real terms and not nominal terms, which are impossible to evaluate objectively, especially in a high inflation environment.

mhuffman 4y ago

>Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everything around them. I have the suspicion this will only be used to import cheaper labor, not to treat current labor better or pay them more.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
That is absolutely the plan. And if it weren’t for human-trafficked labor, we would have reached low points like this a long time ago. There are plenty more humans to traffic in the world, and the ruling elite has no problem starving them away from their families and communities then congratulating themselves as though they have done a good deed.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I was recently listening to population growth lecture from 90s Yale and among few things that really struck me was a phrase that said something to the effect of 'while the locals may object over their personal interests, we, the elite, may see it through a more wide economic lens'. It was fascinating and it helped me understand the deeply ingrained distrust in US population of the educated 'elite'. I always thought thought it was largely uninformed bias, as I keep listening to old Yale lectures, I learn that US populace is a lot smarter than most give it credit.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Without (recent) immigration the US population would be shrinking and aging trend. In addition a large part of immigration to the US is educated boosting the country even further. Immigration is not the problem' politicians selling the populace out for profits to corporations is a much bigger issue.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
      Maybe. Maybe not. People do respond to their current situation. It is hard to predict with a dose of certainty that X would happen as people could very easily reverse the predicted trend. It may not be THE problem, but dismissing it as just one of the culture wars items is in itself counter-productive ( if only, because perception is reality and people do vote based on their belief systems ). I do not disagree with you on the clear focus of US on the true beneficiary of this system ( corporations ).

nly 4y ago

High taxes part is interesting, since in the UK we've just had the biggest tax cuts in a generation and more seem to be in the way in the new year. Winding back the clock to stimulate growth seems to be the order of the day

faeriechangling 4y ago

More specifically, business models which expected to make money by extracting money from everyday citizens after first establishing a bunch of customers don’t actually make sense because tons of companies are doing the same thing while ignoring that everyday people don’t have any disposable income anymore and will never pay for their products and services. The continued running of the economy is practically dependant on a wealth transfer to labour so we can enable a second wealth transfer to capital.

mycall 4y ago
Is that because money tends to become held by people who don't need it?
- lazide 4y ago
  To put it more simply - money tends to end up with people who earn/acquire it faster than they spend it. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  I know that wealth tends to follow a Pareto distribution historically, this is the qualitative fact. My impression is honestly that this is a function of some people being able to earn a return on money more easily than other people. The poor can make better use of fifty dollars than a millionaire, a millionaire can take better advantage of a fifty thousand dollars than a billionaire, and a billionaire can make better use of 50 million dollars than the poor or millionaires. So things eventually reach some sort of equilibrium as it's self-correcting, somebody who uses money badly gets overcome by somebody who uses it well. Right now I think that equilibrium is out of sorts because I think it's almost self-evident how much somebody poor could do with a thousand dollars, whereas a company like Berkshire Hathaway right now is at such a loss as to what to invest in that they're literally just sitting on cash when they get it. There's are exceptions but I see too much of this these days. Wealth also isn't distributed like a Pareto distribution, it's too top-sided to follow the distribution perfectly, and if history repeats itself we will see that unravel. I expect the top to fall more than I expect the bottom to rise though.

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

Problem is, there's no lack of people looking for work - there's a lack of people who want to work these particular jobs. For every 300 applicants for an ez comfy remote six-figure developer position, there's 0 for a (literal shit-job) wastewater treatment plant position paying $16/hr - and it's no wonder why.

actionablefiber 4y ago
I've seen this exact problem with home health assistants. If you have a Medicaid waiver and qualify for a home assistant, Virginia will pay $16/hr for a full-time assistant in a high COL area. The bottleneck is of course finding someone willing to accept unlivably low wages (edit: which you cannot supplement) for a very hands-on, dead-end job that entails significant liability.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  It’s physically exhausting work too. The conditions are so shitty and pay so poor that I almost question the motivations of people doing it. A lot of ‘saints’ but also a lot of theft and abuse , particularly around medication occurs in these low cost facilities and low pay home help.
msbarnett 4y ago
I take your point but lol at the idea of 300 applicants for a remote dev position. If we saw 30 applicants all year is would be a miracle.
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  Can we see your job advert ? without seeing it, i'm going to guess: - Java developer / C++ developer - 10+ years of experience - Low end of medium wage. - Something about excitement in your advert.
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    Impressively wrong in every single aspect

lamontcg 4y ago

I sort of agree with where you think we are, but not where we're going. > Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class getting larger chunk of the pie. The Fed is clearly going to engineer a massive recession and financial crisis to throw enough people out of work to get inflation under control and make people continue to work for peanuts. They're not giving the working class a larger chunk of the pie without a massive fight (and what remains to be seen is if how far they'll go before they realize they're harming themselves in the process, and even if they capitulate before they destroy everything).

7speter 4y ago
The fed’s job is to keep inflation under control, not to “engineer (a) financial crisis.” If the fed raises the interest rates and sinks us into a financial crisis, it was a mistake, as seen during the great depression. If you want working class pay to go up, go vote for people who will help working class pay up instead of assigning conspiracy theories to the fed.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  I think OP was using "financial crisis" in a non-technical way and was referring to the Fed's targeted plan to leave an additional 1 million people unemployed by the end of the year. If we assume this is what they meant, I think the post is reasonable. The fed is targeting labor in this way specifically to avoid a wage/price inflation spiral. Those hurt the most by such a spiral are capital holders as the relative power of their capital decreases. (all this said, I would actually prefer solutions targeting the land-holding class, over labor and capital).
  - pgwhalen 4y ago
    The fed does not have a “targeted plan to leave an additional 1 million people unemployed by the end of the year.” Please stop spreading such FUD.
    - 4y ago

z9znz 4y ago

> working class getting larger chunk of the pie I don't see this happening as a net result. There are just too many powerful (wealthy) interests working multiple angles to ensure that a vast majority of any gains go to the top. There will be faux gains or benefits which appear substantive but are either offset by some new life cost (such as inflation, but not necessarily so great and complex) or are outright new expenses.

shakezula 4y ago
Which is why the only real way to fix this problem is with legislation. Minimum wage laws aren’t perfect but they address core issues like this far better than most, imo.

nxmnxm99 4y ago

Like Europe, right? The continent which hasn't seen economic growth in 15 years and each subsequent generation sinks further closer to poverty?

lossolo 4y ago
Data shows similar growth to USA. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2021&locations=EU-US&start=2006 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2... edit: updated link to last 15 years
- Retric 4y ago
  The favor the EU when you look at GDP per capita. USA GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 87%. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... EU GDP per person growth, 2000 to 2022, 126% https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EUU/european-union/gdp...
  - nxmnxm99 4y ago
    You really believe that? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=EU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 4y ago
      Yes. Try actually doing the calculation ((Year 2022 / Year 2000) - 1) * 100% for both and you’re going to see the EU had faster growth over that time period. Though double checking my calculation the US should be 91%.
      - 4y ago

incomingpain 4y ago

>Lack of people to work should be the norm. Getting enough humans to work should be the bottleneck of the system to force treating them well and optimize everything around them. The reason there's a surplus is egalitarianism. Most of the developed world realized we didn't economically tap much of society because of whatever *ism. Fixing that produced a huge benefit. But it also ended up with 2 key problems. Huge surplus of low-skilled labour AND a problematic population pyramid. >The globalization and demographic trends that has undercut the value of labor in the west for decades are now reversing. Expect inflation, financial system struggles (collapse?), higher taxes but also wage increases and the working class getting larger chunk of the pie. The problem after that im sure they'll call the 'great unretirement' where people who retired ran out of money but lots of those people wont want to work. Nobody will hire them. They will turn to crime.