Stephen Colbert testifies before Congress
It was basically for the summer. Primarily painting, replacing wood on the house, etc. Asked three unemployed people I know. Couldn’t find anyone to do the work. One says he had a “bad back,” which is news to me. The other wanted more money. The third said he was “too busy,” which is interesting because he doesn’t seem to do anything all day. As far as I can tell, each sits at home all day, playing on the computer and watching movies.
How many hours a day? How many days a week?
Hell, I don’t know. I just needed some work done. Would have been happy with 8-10 hours per day. Ended up doing much of it myself.
I have no idea how long it takes to produce a pound of berries but I do know that whatever it costs the producer, the cost if multiplied by the supply chain.
I have no idea how much it costs to produce a peck of strawberries but doesn’t it take away from your thesis if you have so much trouble filling these jobs that the jobs actually move to Chile?
I would say that for a lot of unemployed people, it’s just not worth the trouble of laboring for $11 per hour for an unknown number of hours.
Get married and you will fill the position for free.
There are lots of farms in Michigan that sell you strawberries that you go out and pick yourself. There are lots of people who do it to save money. Americans will work hard to save money or even not make a lot.
Sure, and next summer I’ll probably take my (then) five year old daughter berry picking. There’s a huge difference between doing something for an hour or two as a fun diversion and sixty hours a week as a job.
-Joe
Every fruit growing industry group is investing in robotic research. In five to ten years time, most fruit harvested in the United States will be picked robotically. Yields will be dramatically improved, quality of every individual peck of fruit will be better, the price will stay the same or rise only slightly and “productivity” (i.e. fruit harvested per person employed) will rise. And everyone currently employed picking strawberries will be out of a job.
Oh, and since this is the Pit, if you think that the tens of thousands of people employed will all get jobs fixing the robotics strawberry harvesters - fuck you right in the ear with an automatic threshing machine.
Then they don’t appear to be all that concerned about earning a living, do they? When my husband (a pilot production engineer) was unemployed in 2008, he worked for awhile at the local fair, for $8 per hour. Hours were posted weekly so while he knew how long the job would run, he didn’t know how many actual hours he would get. But for him, any work is better than no work, even tho he was still getting unemployment.
Two months later he got a job back in his field for over six figures. I’d say most of the guys that Crafter_Man are not the sort to qualify for that kind of salary so why they would turn down any job? Has to be that it’s just better to sit around and collect unemployment.
Right. And all the women who didn’t want to date you were lesbians.
Perhaps, it would depend on their individual financial circumstances.
Did he report the days that he worked to the state Department of Labor? Because if he did, he may very well have been worse off for taking the work.
Anyway, what if he had been offered $7.75 per hour to shovel manure for two hours a day with a 3 hour bus ride every day for $5 each way? Would he have taken this job netting him $5.50 per day on the theory that any work is better than no work?
Of course not. This is an extreme example, but the point is that depending on one’s individual financial circumstances, it’s not necessarily unreasonable for an unemployed person to turn down work.
He told them about it but it apparently was small enough that they didn’t take anything out of his checks.
Your two paragraphs do not go together (and they have nothing to do with your statement that it’s just not worth the trouble of laboring for $11 per hour for an unknown number of hours). There are very good reasons to turn down the job above whether one is getting unemployment or not, which have nothing to do with anyone’s individual financial circumstances. It is also a far too extreme example to explain why Crafter_Man’s offers of employment were turned down.
Damn, I keep typing Crater_Man…
That’s really strange. Which state was your husband claiming benefits in?
That was not my statement. I said that “for a lot of unemployed people, it’s just not worth the trouble of laboring for $11 per hour for an unknown number of hours.” Not for all unemployed people – it depends on one’s individual circumstances.
You seemed to be claiming that “any work is better than no work.” Or at least that was the claim for your husband. My “extreme” example shows that your claim is false.
I see your point, but what I was arguing against was the idea that if nobody will do a job for $8 an hour, then somehow the work won’t get done. The strawberries will still come to the grocery store, just not from American farms.
If we reach a state where nobody needs to do a crap job for crummy wages, won’t that be a good thing? Back in the 1940s, the United Mine Workers made a deal with the coal companies, in which the existing miners got raises, job security, etc., and in exchange the UMW promised not to fight automation, knowing it would reduce the number of jobs. I don’t have the quote, but it was something to the effect that miners didn’t want their sons to do the same jobs they were doing. The posts I linked in the OP seem to want to head in the opposite direction,
California.
OK then - Your two paragraphs do not go together (and they have nothing to do with your statement that for a lot of unemployed people it’s just not worth the trouble of laboring for $11 per hour for an unknown number of hours).
I haven’t made that claim.
So your husband never earned more than $25 per week with this $8 per hour job? i.e. He never worked a shift that was four hours or longer?
I have no idea what your point is here.
What I am arguing is that for every unemployed person, there is a threshhold below which it’s reasonable for them to turn down work. This is most easily demonstrated with an extreme example.
Here’s what you said:
Seems to me that this is clearly false. That there is some work which is worse than no work for anyone. Including your husband.
Obviously after three years I cannot tell you exactly how many hours he worked, but I’m pretty sure he worked more than that.
That the two paragraphs you wrote prior to when I said that the first time do not didn’t work together.
Since we started out with something that wasn’t even close to an extreme example, using them is approaching the use of a strawman. At what point do reasons become excuses?
Really? You know that how?