A lot of people are geographically locked, for a variety of reasons: spouse’s job, familial obligations, etc. While some regions have lots of jobs, if you are constrained to jobs in small-town Nebraska or the hollers of eastern Kentucky, you are on the wrong side of the supply/demand curve and have no leverage.
Job concentration is a thing. For example, the single largest private-sector employer in nineteen states is the same company (Wal-Mart); they have enormous power over wages in the retail sector. While most businesses in the US are classified as small, most people work for large firms: half of the private-sector workforce is employed by just 0.4 percent of businesses (cite). You can’t go elsewhere if the “elsewhere” is the same company.
Particularly in the unskilled to semi-skilled parts of the economy, automation and outsourcing means employers don’t need as many hands. If workers demand too much more money, there’s a decent chance they can be replaced by somebody in Mumbai or Manila (or by a robot).
An orange douchebag, of which you approve, you mean.
Are you denying the existence of property taxes and gasoline taxes here? I can cite them if you really do not believe in them, but I hope that that is not also something that you have missed.
You specifically said things you were in favor of, I simply pointed out the actual, real life consequences of those things. That’s not a strawman, that is, well, taking responsibility for your actions. Something relevant to this thread in that this is yet another way that conservatives wish to avoid responsibility for their actions.
Also, I did not complain about being strawmanned, Shodan admitted that he was strawmanning me, but I did not complain about it, I just observed that that was Shodan’s usual debate “tactic”, so even your snippet about that is actually a strawman of your own making.
If you advocate for lower taxes, are you not responsible for ballooning deficits? If you advocate for an aggressive foreign policy,are you not responsible for the wars that it causes? If you advocate for a zero tolerance border policy, are you not responsible for the humanitarian crisis it causes?
Unemployment is at 3.8% which is generally considered below full employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there were 6.7 million job openings but only 6.4 million available workers to fill them as of June 18. This is significant because it was the first time in history that this has ever happened.
Since than it has risen to 7.1 million job openings versus 6.2 million in October of 2018.
Right now it’s about the same (7.3 versus 6.4, iirc)
The job market is the strongest and labor is in greater demand than it has ever been.
What you are talking about is not a significant economic issue. In fact, the opposite is the actual problem. I know you are trying to make an emotional plea about the plight of the worker, but the facts make that a tough proposition.
Right. I have an advanced degree and professional credentials in the field of finance. I only minored in economics, but if you say something that confuses me, I can ask one of my economists to clarify it, so, please go ahead and answer my question. I feel confident I can grasp your concept.
I have no studies but the hard thin red line encourages you to stay on whatever assistance you can get instead of working hard (maybe 2 jobs etc) to be above it.
My personal stance is that there should be no cut off for assistance but a sliding scale to promote the person, getting the benefits to go out and find work.
Much like minimum wage, if we are going to have 1, tie it to inflation so we can stop dicking with it ever few years.
I think most people have a disconnect with people on assistance. We think to ourselves, OMG, how effing horrible it would be to be on welfare or SNAP. My anecdotal truth is that it isn’t gravy train but it isn’t necessarily hard living either (especially if you are living in section 8 housing). They still have cell phones, and cable internet, and food on the table but not vacation getaways and spa treatments.
There are definitely people out there on assistance who do not deserve to be and there are probably people out there not on it, that deserve to be. We are failing, on both ends of that spectrum.
To be honest, I surely do not have all the answers. But the fact as I see it, is that governmental assistance does breed dependence
As a business owner, no they do not pay SSN (or don’t have to if they claim 6 or so dependents) . They do pay a pittance of medicare. Do those taxes fund the assistance that is possible for them to be on?
Society doesn’t want to punish anyone. What they want to do is encourage growth. Become more valuable (if you can) so that you aren’t stuck raising a family on a salary of cooking, cleaning or taking care of the children.
So more accurately 47% of the entire American population pay LITTLE in taxes.
Of course not. You said the money for these things comes from sales and property taxes, not income tax. Federal funds derived from income tax also contribute to roads and schools.
If you say you like grapes, I can say that they require pesticide which is killing children in Costa Rica, you must like killing children.
Seems childish to me, but if you wish to make that sort of argument, go ahead.
No. The former does not require the latter. You can have low tax and fiscally responsible spending.
No. The former does not require the latter. You can speak softly and carry a big stick, be a deterrent, have a small war to head off a larger one, etc etc.
No. The former does not require the latter. The humanitarian crisis at the border exists because we have a porous border. I would in fact argue the exact opposite. Our lax border policy creates the crisis. The law if incentives suggest this is true. People tend to not flock to fish in ponds that are devoid of fish.
You seem to be missing the mismatch of job openings to available skills. The jobs that are open are not jobs that displaced factory workers can do, not without fairly extensive retraining, retraining that I might point out that is cut under the current administration.
If what you say is true, that anyone can take any of these millions of job openings, then it sounds like you are making a case for immigration.
I am making rational and economic arguments, for what is best for society, the emotional plea is when you complain that it is your hard earned money that is going to support your community.
Then you should know that talking about the simplicity of a supply/demand graph will fall well short of describing the much more complex issues of labor. Your question of “If it was not a living wage, wouldn’t they go elsewhere, thus limiting supply and driving up price?” is overly simple, and does not even pretend to address the actual issues faced by real people, that people are not a fungible commodity that can fill any job any place any time. You claim to be well versed in finance, given the known fact that people do not go elsewhere to limit supply and drive up the price, what reason would you give? Are they just stubborn, or is it a bit more complicated than you are trying to insinuate?
This is 100% incorrect. All employees pay their part of SSN, and medicare, and the number of dependants doesn’t factor into it. The only people that get out of paying SSN are people that make more than the cap.
You are correct in that I phrased that poorly in that it you could take it to say I said that they were not paid at all by income taxes, my bad. But my point still stands that the taxes that fund the bulk of these things are regressive, and that is in reply to someone trying to make the case that poor people do not pay any taxes towards their roads or schools.
That wouldn’t follow. But, if I said I liked grapes, and that I demanded more grapes at a lower cost, and the only way to get more grapes at a lower cost is to introduce harmful pesticides that kill children in Costa Rica, then yes, that is something that I would be responsible for. I will note that I was talking about responsibility, it is your strawmanning here that adds in the “must like” part. If I really want these grapes, then I can accept the responsibility that my desires cause harm, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I never said you liked the consequences of the policies that you advocate for, I only said that you refuse to take responsibility for them.
Agreed that your strawmanning of my argument is childish, but it is not my argument to advance, it is on you to decide if it is the sort of thing that you would like to continue.
You say you are into finance. If someone came to you, and said that they didn’t want to work so much anymore, would you advise them that they need to cut their spending before they quit their job?
This is what has happened, people complained that they didn’t want to pay into taxes, and, rather than decrease our spending, then decrease taxes, we just decreased taxes, driving up our debt, leaving that responsibility to future generations, rather than accepting the reality ourselves.
Right, you can do that, but that is not the foreign policy of the man that you say you like the foreign policy of.
No, the humanitarian crisis is because the people who used to be able to enter the country are no longer able to, it is the change in policy that has caused the crisis. People being separated from their families is not due to us having a porous border, it is due to the administration having a policy of deterrence to inflict pain and misery as a punishment for trying to escape the violence that we helped cause.
Did we have a lax border previously? If so, then why was there no crisis then?
Well, that is true, we could end immigration by making our country so shitty that no one wants to come here.
I will completely agree that the cliffs that are built into assistance does tend to cause dependance. I have had employees tell me that they can’t work more than a certain number of hours, or they will make too much money and lose benefits. They’d like to work more, and I’d like them to work more, but I can’t work them enough or pay them enough to make up for the lost benefits.
I lost one employee to disability. She got diagnosed with a degenerative disease while in my employ. She could have worked what she could manage, and wanted to work what she could manage, but if she did, she’d lose all her disability.
Things like education, job training, relocation assistance, childcare, and healthcare are things that make people more productive and allow people to become more independent and less reliant on assistance, but these are all things that are fought against by conservatives.
Give people the assistance to keep them from being held back, and get rid of cliffs in assistance that disincentivize promotion and growth, and we’ll solve far more of the poverty problems than just telling them to take responsibility for themselves.
This is not really an issue. Farrier used to be a big thing when the world ran on horse. Progress means that their is always a transition from obsolete jobs to new industry. The job market is basically the best ever. Full employment is generally considered to exist around 6-7%. We are half that. That data tells us that people are in fact transitioning very well. You can look at the data and see that construction and manufacturing, and transportation and manufacturing are all adding jobs. You can look at the government website directly or go here:
And see that we are beyond full employment in ALL worker categories.
Absolutely. I just want them to be documented and to pay taxes, and go through the process so we get the right people. I think it’s obvious we need more immigration.
You’re really not, and I haven’t. This whole plight of the unemployed thing is not borne out by the facts.
I ask the question because your comment did not seem to reach to the level where it was cognizant of supply versus demand. I asked politely and in the form of a question.
I would be happy to go in depth with you, but frankly, I think you need to start with a 101 refresher.
Historically, they do move, once things get bad enough. Sometimes the new jobs come to them.
You are acting is if there is this great problem in this country right now where we have lots of our work people stuck in one place, unwilling or unable to find new jobs.
The fact of the matter is that this has never ever in our history as a country been less of a thing than it is now.
It is so NOT a problem, that that fact itself is actually a problem.
Things need to be really bad in certain segments of the country or specific industries to push people to move or to upgrade their skills so that there are qualified workers available in industries and areas that need them.
That is exactly what is meant by the concept of full employment, which is the theoretical optimum employment rate that still invents transition to growth.
See, economics 101, it’s not worth $49 a month to me to access that.
As do I, funny thing is, most of those who are not documented still pay taxes.
Ah, the right people. Personally, to me, the right people are people that want to come here and make a better life for themselves and their family. What is your definition of “the right people”?
Well, the president that you say that you support feels the opposite of that.
I feel that I most certainly have. I have done no emotional pleading. I do, OTOH, feel that complaining that having to pay to support those less fortunate is a very emotional argument.
It’s not just the unemployed, which, whether you believe it or not, really do exist. There are also the underemployed, those making less than a living wage. Then there is the coming crisis of automation that will make more and more low skilled jobs unavailable. We not only need to worry about what happens to the people who are currently displaced by technology, but make plans for those who will be displaced in the future.
Sure, in the long run, things will settle out. We don’t see any unemployed buggy whip makers collecting unemployment anymore, but, a quote I’m sure you know well, is that, “in the long run, we are all dead.”
No, I understand supply and demand just fine, I just do not see the labor market as being simple enough to put onto a 2 dimensional supply demand graph.
I’d be happy to go into depth too, if you could lay off the insults.
“Once things get bad enough…” exactly.
This is an issue that does need to be addressed, yes. Unemployment and underemployement are things that we should actually b concerned about.
So, you are saying that people need to suffer before some of those suffering can alleviate some of it?
Are you for or against govt assistance in retraining and relocation?
So all those jobs at Walmart, in warehouses, waiting on tables at low-priced restaurants, washing the dishes in the back room, cleaning the floors in the hospital, taking tickets at the movies, running checkout at the grocery store, changing diapers at the daycare, changing sheets at the nursing home, harvesting lettuce, packing tomatoes, and I could go on all week – all of those jobs are any minute going to start offering all of their workers full time positions with full benefits and enough pay to rent a decent and safe apartment within an hour or so’s travel from work that has room for a child or an aged mother or whoever, get clothes and food and toothpaste and bedding and so on for oneself and the dependent and maybe get the cat fed and spayed, pay for whatever transportation’s necessary to get back and forth to work and whatever care is needed for the dependent so the worker can show up at work consistently, and cover whatever healthcare the insurance doesn’t, and have enough over to save for when something comes up? Because something will come up.
Let me know when that happens. Some of the wages have gone up a bit, yes; but not that big a bit. And while you’re at it study up on the size of the shock that’ll go through the economy as a whole if wages for those jobs do go up that much. Or consider what would happen if all the people doing those jobs stopped doing them, so they could do work that pays better.
And you could buy organically-grown grapes. If you can afford to do that, but buy the pesticided ones because they’re cheaper, then yes you are in some part responsible if the pesticide is killing children. (If you have to buy the cheapest food because you’ve got no money to spare, then I don’t think it’s your fault.)
– and yes Kearsen1, everybody in the USA who gets wages pays SSN, it’s got nothing to do with number of dependents. I have also written paychecks.
Those who make a net positive contribution to our society.
I may be wrong, but I think he is fine with legal immigration.
I don’t think I’ve made such a complaint. It doesn’t make sense to extend benefits to non citizens, when our society does not fully meet the needs of all of its less fortunate ones though. So, I am not a fan of benefits to illegals.
Yes. Economically the country needs more.
This may surprise you, but not all jobs can or should provide a living wage.
What do you mean make plans for? This whole market economy thing works because people respond to incentives. They are capable of determining their market value, making plans and decisions for themselves as individuals better than we are.
Why not. Labor is a service like any other good or service. What is the nature of your objection to suggest that it is invalid?
I’m not insulting. To speak intelligently about this topic you either have to know certain things, or be cognizant of your ignorance. That is, to know that you don’t know. You are demonstrating neither. That’s not an insult. It’s an observation.
Yes. Why is that a problem?
Yes. The unemployment rate should be higher. Overall the fact that is not means that we are not doing as well as we could.
Unfortunately, that’s just a fact.
Not right now. Why should the government pay to train workers and move them for corporations? Especially when those corporations are desperate for workers. Why would we subsidize the Fortune 500 any more than we already are?
Because people doing the essential work of a society should get enough to live on out of it.
Nope.
I see why it doesn’t work under the current setup. That doesn’t mean it’s not desirable.
Because you said “People own their own labor and can sell it as they see fit. If it was not a living wage, wouldn’t they go elsewhere, thus limiting supply and driving up price?”
That only works (even all other issues about “going elsewhere” aside) if they can go elsewhere and get a living wage job. If there aren’t enough such to go around, then it doesn’t work that way. The economy as currently constructed only works if there aren’t enough such jobs to go around, as you just acknowledged.
You would be wrong. Trump has endorsed measures that would have cut legal immigration by 40 to 50 percent or more (such as Tom Cotton’s RAISE Act).
So what do you expect to happen to the people filling those jobs?
What if there aren’t incentives, though, to which people can respond?
Some economists see a future in which the number of actual jobs in the U.S. declines, even as the population continues to increase. If 150 million people are chasing 125 million jobs, for example, the incentives and wage structures are going to be grossly distorted.
Even today, we see an increasing bifurcation between highly-skilled and highly-paid workers, on the one hand, and the great mass of workers on the other. This latter group has generally seen their wages stagnating or only very slowly increasing, even as the smaller group surges ahead. Moreover, there’s not a lot of mobility between the groups. People who spent the early part of their career in a coal mine tend not to have many opportunities to become digital architects or marketing experts, even if they want to learn something new.
Labor isn’t a single item. A roofer and a nurse are not interchangeable, for example, even though they are both “labor,” and even with training may not be capable of doing the other’s job. Treating all workers as fungible is overly simplistic to the point of invalidity.
Not all jobs can or should pay a living wage, because some aren’t meant to and aren’t needed to. I worked in a deli after school while in High School, part time. It was a great job a high schooler could get, supplementing the two owners during peak times. If it had to pay a living wage it would likely not have been offered, to the detriment of all. Others work for experience, or to supplement an income or social security, or… because they like it. And, yes, some are working as hard as they can without making enough to live. That is bad. I agree. Can you fix it without causing more damage than you are fixing? That’s tough, likely not.
If you raise the minimum wage, some of those jobs will just go away, depriving people of work. Some of those jobs will be altered, maybe combined with more skilled jobs or requirements raising the barrier for entry. Then too, what is a living wage. It is surely a different number in a small town in Montana, than it is in San Francisco. It is also a different number for someone on SS, or a single person versus one with a family to support, or a student working part time.
Or all workers the same? Or, are some better than others? Why can’t a valuable worker command a higher price? You raise the minimum wage, you are pulling from the pool of cash which could potentially reward quality work, punishing high quality workers and rewarding the marginal.
Raising the minimum wage is making a very arrogant and dangerous statement: that you know better about what a business can afford to spend, and what their labor is worth than the business. You are also telling the worker that you know better what is good for them than they do.
It’s a dangerous thing with unintended consequences.