5 ms·

Why are the jobs "low value", and why don't those who do them deserve to make ends meet?

SoftTalker 4y ago
Not all work is worth a living wage, and not all workers are in need of that. If you try to force that, the work will either just not get done or it will be automated, and more people will be unemployed. Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers is valuable even if the work itself requires little skill.
- falcolas 4y ago
  > Not all work is worth a living wage. And there we have it. "I don't view your work as being valuable enough to justify you being able to obtain basic needs for yourself (like food and shelter), let alone a family. Now give me my frappe." Funny how we will still call such employees "essential" when it's time to force them to work in shitty and potentially dangerous conditions.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Sweeping the floor at a factory is just not a high value job. Anyone can do it, and if you demand that they pay $40/hr with full benefits they will just buy industrial Roombas and deprive someone of a job he may have been happy to have as a first job or for supplemental income.
    - ssnistfajen 4y ago
      >if you demand that they pay $40/hr with full benefits >a job he may have been happy to have as a first job or for supplemental income You are contradicting yourself here. Those two conditions don't occur at the same time.
      - SoftTalker 4y ago
        did you overlook the "or" in my sentence?
        ssnistfajen 4y ago
        No. Someone who's happy to have a first job OR as supplemental income is not going to demand $40/hr with full benefits in those sectors. You are using a completely hypothetical scenario to justify exploiting children.
        SoftTalker 4y ago
        Ok I misread your conment. I was responding to those who seem to think that any job should be able to support a family, or should not be permitted to exist. Not supporting exploitation of children, dont know where that came from.
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    A significant chunk of the userbase here work in jobs that use <flavour of the month> frameworks "reinventing" the <flavour of the year> stack because it will totally "disrupt" some completely saturated market, in companies averaging less than 12 months inbetween pivots and still earning less than 60¢ in revenue per $1 cost, more than five years after founding because they hire Stanford grads to write CRUD apps at a per person cost of starting entire small businesses. Of course they feel the need to validate the existence of their own jobs by shitting on "low skill" jobs that have actually been essential to keep our society functioning especially over the last 3 years.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Speak for yourself, my first jobs were flipping burgers and making pizza. Both "low skill" and paid accordingly. I could not have supported a family on those jobs but I was not trying to and they gave me experience and references as to my work ethic and character that were helpful in gaining higher skill, higher paying jobs.
      - ssnistfajen 4y ago
        >my first jobs were flipping burgers and making pizza. Can you read the article first before typing out your next comment? Those jobs have always hired teens without these imminent changes to child labour laws. You are defending something that hasn't changed, and isn't relevant to what people are concerned about as reported in the article link in this thread.
- watwut 4y ago
  If the work is not worth a living wage, then it does not need to be done. Simple as that. Except, obviously, this work is worth kicking wage, because we want to eat meat.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  >Not all work is worth a living wage They are not, that's why minimum wage has lagged behind livable wage standards in the United States and Canada for decades, because minimum wages aren't livable wagges. >the work will either just not get done or it will be automated But I thought the free market runs itself? If an employee is bad they'd be gone in an eyeblink, so if a job is bad, why should it be allowed continued existence? Unemployment is at historical lows which is part of the reason why these awful jobs with awful pay can't be filled. >Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers There are plenty of adults who work in """high value jobs""" failing all of that every, single, day. Some of them are here in this very thread advocating for child labour despite not having a single minute of experience working in any of these jobs that are about to exploit children.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  > Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers is valuable even if the work itself requires little skill. You can learn this anywhere... in fact, I think there's a place where children can go that they're supposed to be on time, listen to staff, follow instructions, and get along with others. It's called school, dummy.
  - stcroixx 4y ago
    I can always tell when I’ve hired someone who did not grow up working actual jobs when they were young. School is not an adequate substitute for what you learn punching a clock.
giantg2 4y ago
'Why are the jobs "low value"' Could be several different reasons that all boil down to supply/demand and leverage. In the article, it's claimed that many businesses can't afford to pay more, which is fairly believable for small businesses and for industries with global price pressures. The workers can't find better jobs, so they take whatever they can get. "why don't those who do them deserve to make ends meet?" They do, but society can't get it together to balance interests in a way that works for everyone (if that's even possible). Also, $15/hr should be fairly doable in a rural area.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  > businesses can't afford to pay more That's what we should call a "Low value" business, which is actually what many businesses and entire industries are in the real world. Restaurants say they can't find workers, when the truth is pay and work conditions cannot attract workers. They say they can't afford to pay higher salaries, the response is "then raise prices". They say "then we'll lose our customers". Good! The business is not valuable enough and that means customers have to do without. There is absolutely no need to continue with low value economic activity.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    You seem to be missing the supply/demand and leverage part. Workers take the low value positions because they don't have an alternative. Not to mention the consumer culture of racing to the bottom. You'd have to fix those for the low value businesses to go under. Of course stuff like farm work and grocery stores are low paying, so it's not like they're just going to disappear.
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      > Workers take the low value positions because they don't have an alternative. I'd like to correct that with "they believe they don't have an alternative." Almost all of them can get a better job, and that's why they are leaving bad employers and bad industries. Information is traveling faster than ever right now, and people are waking up. Gone are the generations of older people recommending a young person to take a shit job. Instead they are getting advice from the middle generations who have already been burned to stay far away from these jobs. Even people at the bottom have mobility and will go where better opportunities are found. > Of course stuff like farm work and grocery stores are low paying, so it's not like they're just going to disappear. Farm work has been massively automated with tractors and harvesters, those jobs have mostly disappeared. Today but a tiny percentage of the work force are employed in farming, when before it was the majority of the population. Grocery stores have changed as well. When before there were clerks handing goods over the counter, now people grab their products from shelves.

Not all work is worth a living wage, and not all workers are in need of that. If you try to force that, the work will either just not get done or it will be automated, and more people will be unemployed. Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers is valuable even if the work itself requires little skill.

falcolas 4y ago
> Not all work is worth a living wage. And there we have it. "I don't view your work as being valuable enough to justify you being able to obtain basic needs for yourself (like food and shelter), let alone a family. Now give me my frappe." Funny how we will still call such employees "essential" when it's time to force them to work in shitty and potentially dangerous conditions.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Sweeping the floor at a factory is just not a high value job. Anyone can do it, and if you demand that they pay $40/hr with full benefits they will just buy industrial Roombas and deprive someone of a job he may have been happy to have as a first job or for supplemental income.
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    >if you demand that they pay $40/hr with full benefits >a job he may have been happy to have as a first job or for supplemental income You are contradicting yourself here. Those two conditions don't occur at the same time.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      did you overlook the "or" in my sentence?
      - ssnistfajen 4y ago
        No. Someone who's happy to have a first job OR as supplemental income is not going to demand $40/hr with full benefits in those sectors. You are using a completely hypothetical scenario to justify exploiting children.
        SoftTalker 4y ago
        Ok I misread your conment. I was responding to those who seem to think that any job should be able to support a family, or should not be permitted to exist. Not supporting exploitation of children, dont know where that came from.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  A significant chunk of the userbase here work in jobs that use <flavour of the month> frameworks "reinventing" the <flavour of the year> stack because it will totally "disrupt" some completely saturated market, in companies averaging less than 12 months inbetween pivots and still earning less than 60¢ in revenue per $1 cost, more than five years after founding because they hire Stanford grads to write CRUD apps at a per person cost of starting entire small businesses. Of course they feel the need to validate the existence of their own jobs by shitting on "low skill" jobs that have actually been essential to keep our society functioning especially over the last 3 years.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Speak for yourself, my first jobs were flipping burgers and making pizza. Both "low skill" and paid accordingly. I could not have supported a family on those jobs but I was not trying to and they gave me experience and references as to my work ethic and character that were helpful in gaining higher skill, higher paying jobs.
    - ssnistfajen 4y ago
      >my first jobs were flipping burgers and making pizza. Can you read the article first before typing out your next comment? Those jobs have always hired teens without these imminent changes to child labour laws. You are defending something that hasn't changed, and isn't relevant to what people are concerned about as reported in the article link in this thread.
watwut 4y ago
If the work is not worth a living wage, then it does not need to be done. Simple as that. Except, obviously, this work is worth kicking wage, because we want to eat meat.
ssnistfajen 4y ago
>Not all work is worth a living wage They are not, that's why minimum wage has lagged behind livable wage standards in the United States and Canada for decades, because minimum wages aren't livable wagges. >the work will either just not get done or it will be automated But I thought the free market runs itself? If an employee is bad they'd be gone in an eyeblink, so if a job is bad, why should it be allowed continued existence? Unemployment is at historical lows which is part of the reason why these awful jobs with awful pay can't be filled. >Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers There are plenty of adults who work in """high value jobs""" failing all of that every, single, day. Some of them are here in this very thread advocating for child labour despite not having a single minute of experience working in any of these jobs that are about to exploit children.
olyjohn 4y ago
> Experience showing up to work, following instructions, getting along with bosses and coworkers is valuable even if the work itself requires little skill. You can learn this anywhere... in fact, I think there's a place where children can go that they're supposed to be on time, listen to staff, follow instructions, and get along with others. It's called school, dummy.
- stcroixx 4y ago
  I can always tell when I’ve hired someone who did not grow up working actual jobs when they were young. School is not an adequate substitute for what you learn punching a clock.

giantg2 4y ago

'Why are the jobs "low value"' Could be several different reasons that all boil down to supply/demand and leverage. In the article, it's claimed that many businesses can't afford to pay more, which is fairly believable for small businesses and for industries with global price pressures. The workers can't find better jobs, so they take whatever they can get. "why don't those who do them deserve to make ends meet?" They do, but society can't get it together to balance interests in a way that works for everyone (if that's even possible). Also, $15/hr should be fairly doable in a rural area.

carlosjobim 4y ago
> businesses can't afford to pay more That's what we should call a "Low value" business, which is actually what many businesses and entire industries are in the real world. Restaurants say they can't find workers, when the truth is pay and work conditions cannot attract workers. They say they can't afford to pay higher salaries, the response is "then raise prices". They say "then we'll lose our customers". Good! The business is not valuable enough and that means customers have to do without. There is absolutely no need to continue with low value economic activity.
- giantg2 4y ago
  You seem to be missing the supply/demand and leverage part. Workers take the low value positions because they don't have an alternative. Not to mention the consumer culture of racing to the bottom. You'd have to fix those for the low value businesses to go under. Of course stuff like farm work and grocery stores are low paying, so it's not like they're just going to disappear.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    > Workers take the low value positions because they don't have an alternative. I'd like to correct that with "they believe they don't have an alternative." Almost all of them can get a better job, and that's why they are leaving bad employers and bad industries. Information is traveling faster than ever right now, and people are waking up. Gone are the generations of older people recommending a young person to take a shit job. Instead they are getting advice from the middle generations who have already been burned to stay far away from these jobs. Even people at the bottom have mobility and will go where better opportunities are found. > Of course stuff like farm work and grocery stores are low paying, so it's not like they're just going to disappear. Farm work has been massively automated with tractors and harvesters, those jobs have mostly disappeared. Today but a tiny percentage of the work force are employed in farming, when before it was the majority of the population. Grocery stores have changed as well. When before there were clerks handing goods over the counter, now people grab their products from shelves.