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No it doesn't. Growth in the economy has to increase real wages, and real wages need to keep pace with housing, food, healthcare, etc increases in order to be m

No it doesn't. Growth in the economy has to increase real wages, and real wages need to keep pace with housing, food, healthcare, etc increases in order to be meaningful. More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage.

Alupis 3y ago
> More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage. This is false if you spend even a few seconds thinking about it. Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of. Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level positions support a comfortable lifestyle. You're supposed to graduate out of entry level work after you acquire skills, training, and/or education. Why are people not "moving up" is the real problem...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Supermancho 3y ago
  > Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. This is some soft language hiding some bad assumptions. "supposed to be" - what does this mean? because it's a lot more interesting...low skilled jobs, are probably what we're going to be talking about. However, it's not the 1950s anymore. eg Staffing a movie theater is not a part-time job (which you would know if you have ever worked one), even post-covid. Targeting for graduates (or current students) is reserved for economies like college towns, historically. Those places have also experienced wages rising noticeably over, at least, the last 2 decades. Industrial and metropolitan areas don't have enough "school labor" to staff all the unskilled positions, regardless. > Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive^. The main issue is that places with fulltime positions open to unskilled labor, have living costs that outpace the minimum wage...all the way out to the most rural of US towns. The financial guidelines for employees from McDonalds, Wallmart, etc are telling. ^Claiming that jobs that pay minimum wage and only allow working 30 hours a week, aren't intended to "live" off of, is cherry picking exploitative employers. This is not compelling, nor the common case, so we can focus the discussion on the issues that the majority of the economy deal with.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    > If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive This is the issue - the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. If someone can be trained to replace you in a few minutes (i.e. unskilled labor), then the truth is your labor is not worth a lot. We need more people moving up into skilled labor. It's really hard to imagine someone working 30+ years at a job and not developing skills... yet that is what's happening more often today than ever before. Highschool and College kids don't need a living wage. They need flexible hours, and schedules that fit their available time (night shift, swing shift, whatever...).
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      > Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. The only way for that to work is to have a slave population, because why should a living and breathing human being waste their time and their life with work that doesn't even sustain them? The concept of "unskilled labour" is a lie. Otherwise you could hire dead people from the graveyard. > Highschool and College kids don't need a living wage. Do you have any good arguments as to why you should be allowed to have a living wage?
    - klardotsh 3y ago
      Your entire argument is predicated on the idea that anyone should be incapable of paying rent, which you might find is not a universally-agreed upon opinion, or even an opinion some find worth the keystrokes it was written with.
    - FpUser 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      > We need more people moving up into skilled labor. Need? No. Would it be better for society? Maybe. This is not really something that people disagree with. Dispensing with the repetition will save the distraction. > the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage - back to 1604, or earlier or later; what does it matter? > Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. Why? Arguing the economic consequences are not a reasoning. There will always be humans who are incapable of skilled labor (of any note) beyond newly educated students. eg The Calculator profession and other forms of industrial collapse as well as immigrants (legal or otherwise) and the disabled. It's not clear what you think is the obvious way to keep these people alive. Welfare/socialism or pretending they don't exist, relegating them to a slave class, or exile?
- OGWhales 3y ago
  > The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level positions support a comfortable lifestyle. That doesn’t sound right. To me it seems obvious the problem is these jobs used to provide more purchasing power than they do today. The increased grievance would be because of this drop in purchasing power, not because people are suddenly demanding a “comfortable” (<- loaded word) lifestyle out of the blue.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  > Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time Did McDonalds used to be closed during weekdays when all their cooks and register staff were in school? I don't remember that.
- notfromhere 3y ago
  You are fundamentally asking someone else to subsidize the cost of that labor.
slibhb 3y ago
I don't agree: having more stuff makes people's lives better even if that doesn't show up in terms of real wages.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Not if they can't afford the basics, though. Another way of framing the problem GP is pointing out is: necessities are getting increasingly expensive relative to trinkets and niceties.
- midasuni 3y ago
  No it doesn’t. If I spend $100 on takeout because I don’t have time to cook a fresh meal that increases gdp but makes my life worse.
- smolder 3y ago
  It very much depends on what stuff you're talking about. Consumption and QoL are only loosely correlated. If we have a culture that values status signalling, everyone may might work harder to afford status signalling without any real benefit to their quality of life. Efficiency of consumption matters. The relationship between dollars spent to degree of life improvement is nowhere close to 1:1. Some purchases pay dividends in that sense while others come with hidden costs and fleeting benefits.

Alupis 3y ago

> More jobs are only good if they actually provide a living wage. This is false if you spend even a few seconds thinking about it. Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of. Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level positions support a comfortable lifestyle. You're supposed to graduate out of entry level work after you acquire skills, training, and/or education. Why are people not "moving up" is the real problem...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Supermancho 3y ago
> Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time. This is some soft language hiding some bad assumptions. "supposed to be" - what does this mean? because it's a lot more interesting...low skilled jobs, are probably what we're going to be talking about. However, it's not the 1950s anymore. eg Staffing a movie theater is not a part-time job (which you would know if you have ever worked one), even post-covid. Targeting for graduates (or current students) is reserved for economies like college towns, historically. Those places have also experienced wages rising noticeably over, at least, the last 2 decades. Industrial and metropolitan areas don't have enough "school labor" to staff all the unskilled positions, regardless. > Not all jobs are intended to "live" off of If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive^. The main issue is that places with fulltime positions open to unskilled labor, have living costs that outpace the minimum wage...all the way out to the most rural of US towns. The financial guidelines for employees from McDonalds, Wallmart, etc are telling. ^Claiming that jobs that pay minimum wage and only allow working 30 hours a week, aren't intended to "live" off of, is cherry picking exploitative employers. This is not compelling, nor the common case, so we can focus the discussion on the issues that the majority of the economy deal with.
- Alupis 3y ago
  > If you have a fulltime job, the minimum wage is intended to allow you to survive This is the issue - the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. If someone can be trained to replace you in a few minutes (i.e. unskilled labor), then the truth is your labor is not worth a lot. We need more people moving up into skilled labor. It's really hard to imagine someone working 30+ years at a job and not developing skills... yet that is what's happening more often today than ever before. Highschool and College kids don't need a living wage. They need flexible hours, and schedules that fit their available time (night shift, swing shift, whatever...).
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. The only way for that to work is to have a slave population, because why should a living and breathing human being waste their time and their life with work that doesn't even sustain them? The concept of "unskilled labour" is a lie. Otherwise you could hire dead people from the graveyard. > Highschool and College kids don't need a living wage. Do you have any good arguments as to why you should be allowed to have a living wage?
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    Your entire argument is predicated on the idea that anyone should be incapable of paying rent, which you might find is not a universally-agreed upon opinion, or even an opinion some find worth the keystrokes it was written with.
  - FpUser 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    > We need more people moving up into skilled labor. Need? No. Would it be better for society? Maybe. This is not really something that people disagree with. Dispensing with the repetition will save the distraction. > the idea that minimum wage is supposed to be "livable" is a modern notion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage - back to 1604, or earlier or later; what does it matter? > Unskilled labor probably shouldn't be livable. Why? Arguing the economic consequences are not a reasoning. There will always be humans who are incapable of skilled labor (of any note) beyond newly educated students. eg The Calculator profession and other forms of industrial collapse as well as immigrants (legal or otherwise) and the disabled. It's not clear what you think is the obvious way to keep these people alive. Welfare/socialism or pretending they don't exist, relegating them to a slave class, or exile?
OGWhales 3y ago
> The problem is we have more and more people never graduating out of entry level positions, and today we have folks demanding those entry level positions support a comfortable lifestyle. That doesn’t sound right. To me it seems obvious the problem is these jobs used to provide more purchasing power than they do today. The increased grievance would be because of this drop in purchasing power, not because people are suddenly demanding a “comfortable” (<- loaded word) lifestyle out of the blue.
kalleboo 3y ago
> Most of your entry-level jobs were supposed to be for highschool and college kids working part time Did McDonalds used to be closed during weekdays when all their cooks and register staff were in school? I don't remember that.
notfromhere 3y ago
You are fundamentally asking someone else to subsidize the cost of that labor.

slibhb 3y ago

I don't agree: having more stuff makes people's lives better even if that doesn't show up in terms of real wages.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Not if they can't afford the basics, though. Another way of framing the problem GP is pointing out is: necessities are getting increasingly expensive relative to trinkets and niceties.
midasuni 3y ago
No it doesn’t. If I spend $100 on takeout because I don’t have time to cook a fresh meal that increases gdp but makes my life worse.
smolder 3y ago
It very much depends on what stuff you're talking about. Consumption and QoL are only loosely correlated. If we have a culture that values status signalling, everyone may might work harder to afford status signalling without any real benefit to their quality of life. Efficiency of consumption matters. The relationship between dollars spent to degree of life improvement is nowhere close to 1:1. Some purchases pay dividends in that sense while others come with hidden costs and fleeting benefits.