bumby

35 ms·

721.
by bumby 2y ago
> If you think that unskilled workers should be paid more then how much exactly? Please be specific. This is one of those pushbacks you see on social media that is used like a gotcha but it’s fairly useless because you and I know it can
722.
by bumby 2y ago
Not necessarily. Just because they are (somewhat) proportional does not mean they are equal, or even easy to measure. Clergy, for example, don’t usually contribute much to the economy in raw terms, but they are paid because of what they add
723.
by bumby 2y ago
> they give up just as much time to be there for an hour as the CEO does. I think this misunderstands a fundamental economic idea: people aren’t paid commensurate to their time or sweat invested; they are paid (in theory) with their dif
724.
by bumby 2y ago
> But it doesn't do that, in fact it requires the employers to raise their wages. Is there evidence to this claim? Even the most recent UBI studies seem to run contrary to this point. This otherwise borders on a bad-faith post. Yes
725.
by bumby 2y ago
If it wasn't clear, my point was that it allows employers to arbitrarily lower their wage rate where the business is viable. Example: -Employee needs $15/hour to 'afford life'. -Business is only profit-positive if it pay
726.
by bumby 2y ago
> If we apply market logic to that this would just mean that employers have to offer better deals. I'm not sure this follows. By this logic, do you think UBI would cause employers to increase wages? I think (given sufficient UBI),
727.
by bumby 2y ago
> are those issues worse than the current issues? That's what I consider the correct way to think about this. So do you have thought on what metrics you'd use to measure the net effect? One of the nagging facts that bothers me
728.
by bumby 2y ago
> If the labor market functioned correctly See my previous comment about theory breaking down in practice. There are all kinds of asymmetries that make economies not function correctly in a theoretical sense and we (as a society) develo
729.
by bumby 2y ago
> It's stepping backwards for short term comfort. Hmmm...can you elaborate? Because I've always thought the "right to work" (ie, not be forced to join a union in a unionized industry) is an example of sacrificing sho
730.
by bumby 2y ago
I don't think that adds much to the conversation. That says nothing of the existing (and profitable) restaurants that exist and still pay people wages that qualify them for taxpayer subsidies. You can easily reword my point to say &quo
731.
by bumby 2y ago
> wage for a job is too low to afford life This also simplifies the scenario to assume that wages are the only income. It would be like building a mental model around people who live at home with their parents and concluding whatever mo
732.
by bumby 2y ago
OpenResearch's recent UBI example didn't appear to be a resounding success. While people receiving the higher income appeared to have more interest in starting a business or continuing education, it didn't actually significan
733.
by bumby 2y ago
I mean, there are ways to go about this without being an employee. You can start an LLC and contract yourself out if you really want to. I'm just not sure keeping that option open as an employee is a net-positive given all the downside
734.
by bumby 2y ago
To the GP point, though, if it's unilaterally applied there may be unintentional consequences. Their example was working as a teenager; relatively high minimum wages may end up cutting most teenagers out of the workforce. If an employe
735.
by bumby 2y ago
> It's not an either / or. If the US were to invest more in education and developing the economy everywhere, there would be more jobs beyond low paid "unskilled" labour. I don't know how far this extends, though
736.
by bumby 2y ago
I have a slightly different take: if your business is only profitable by the taxpayer subsidizing a relatively large number of employees wages with welfare benefits, you should be capped on how profitable your business is. In other words, y
737.
by bumby 2y ago
That’s part of the plan though. With high risk nascent industries, the govt is often the only customer who can bear that risk. It was the same dynamic that ushered in aerospace; it was mainly just a hobby industry until the Army offered a l
738.
by bumby 2y ago
I’m sorry, I don’t follow. Can you elaborate? Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I think sub-contacting is heavily related to political risk mitigation, as it’s a method of spreading project money across many political districts. IMO NASA has
739.
by bumby 2y ago
This is just my opinion, but I think a lot of it has to do with requirements. NASA is first and foremost about prestige (even above science IMO. This is also - again my opinion - why NASA hasn't been back to the moon in 50 years. There
740.
by bumby 2y ago
Not to make a nitpick in your point because it's a good one, but it made me wonder: How different would the height measure be if it were standardized like IQ? E.g., how likely would someone who is in the 90% percentile in 6th grade be
741.
by bumby 2y ago
It's simply a claim about heritability of intelligence. In other words, "Intelligence isn't inheritable like height" according to the author. There are certainly plenty of people who claim that genetics explains a large
742.
by bumby 2y ago
Yeah, I’m not disputing that housing prices are out of whack, my qualm was with the author using SV as an example to show they are 10x their “normal” price of the past. I think there are better, more accurate ways to make the comparison.
743.
by bumby 2y ago
That’s not my claim, but it would seemingly follow with your hypothesis (along with a range of other asset classes). The tough part is actually showing good data of the causal relationship.
744.
by bumby 2y ago
> Not so for student loans, though. I don't think we disagree on this. Students, by the nature of generally have no/limited assets, are able to get loans because they are backed by the government. > As far as I can see it s
745.
by bumby 2y ago
I'm not implying there is no value. I'm drawing a distinction with high-PE industries, like tech, where the market value is highly biased to future (unrealized) potential. Previous generations, where hardware manufacturing was the
746.
by bumby 2y ago
> you can narrow your focus down considerably to just the post-2000 era This gets back to my original point. My claim is that most of the post-2000s (or a specific location) is not normal from historical perspective, but we’re treating
747.
by bumby 2y ago
> strong tech industry creating things that are real I don't think this is as clear of a claim as, say, the manufacturing economy of previous generations. Tech creates a lot of speculative value which sometimes turns into something
748.
by bumby 2y ago
I would like to see it as a proportion of overall necessities (e.g., compared to percentage of income for food, healthcare, etc.) and controlled for relevant variables like size. E.g., if housing in 1960 was 25% of median household income a
749.
by bumby 2y ago
Right, so that's part of my original point. Size is increasing because of preference, and cost is (at least in part) a function of size.
750.
by bumby 2y ago
So what do you think has changed that our predecessors didn't have to deal with? I tend to think it's our expectations. An analogy is cars. The cost of a car has gone up considerably and I believe the average car costs more than t

More ›