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Comment by gragas | Hacker News Reader

>Millennials have spent almost their entire working lives in a labor market that is loose—with too many job seekers and too few jobs—and where private-sector labor unions are almost entirely absent. Certainly, monetary policy that promotes employment while making it easier for workers to form unions would help Millennials make up lost ground.

The issue I have with this is it promotes a certain ideology—that job-seekers have the right to hold jobs even when there are too few. This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers.

I'm not trying to argue for one ideology or the other, I just think it's absurd to ignore the existence of one or the other.

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I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job.

While it sounds like a good idea in principle, it ignores the fact that without a job many people simply won't have the resources to make themselves more valuable.

It creates a catch 22 situation, and the people it effects the most also happen to be the people who will struggle the most to break out of that situation.

>I always take issue with the idea that people should just make themselves more "valuable" to get a job.

In America the market dictates your self worth.

No. No. No. The "value" her is not about self worth. It's about how much someone will pay for your labor. That's a big difference.

In America, to, I don't know, probably half of our country, and historically even more, if you don't get paid much you aren't worth a damn.

When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being.

>When society doesn't value you as a human being, you don't value yourself as a human being.

There are many cultures that don't value people based on how much they earn. I think valuing people based on economic success is largely tied to Indian and Asian culture. As a white person from a white family in the middle of the US, no one that I care about values me based on my salary. Some cultures seem to be more obsessed with economic status than others. To me, it's repulsive.

> As a white person from a white family in the middle of the US, no one that I care about values me based on my salary.

As someone of the same background and also from the middle of nowhere mid-US, I can say this is certainly true. It seems a bit different on the coasts.

That said, even my family doesn't think too highly of the unemployed, which seems a bit inconsistent.

>There are many cultures that don't value people based on how much they earn.

But how many cultures value people regardless of who or what they are? Even if it isn't tied to financials, it is tied to something and there are the haves and the have nots. You can even artificially create such values among children if you give them information to suggest that some arbitrary characteristic is a have and competing arbitrary characteristics are have nots.

>As a white person from a white family in the middle of the US, no one that I care about values me based on my salary.

I cannot say the same.

Unfortunately, there are far too many people who confuse self worth with market worth/salary/net worth, etc. I have in the past worked many more hours in higher-stress jobs in order to make more money. I choose now to work fewer hours in a lower-stress job for somewhat less money. The market is free to assign more monetary value to jobs of the former type. I don't consider my worth as a person to be tied to how the market values my job.

>In America the market dictates your self worth.

As it does everywhere in certain factors.

If you aren't attractive to a life partner, you don't get a life partner. Why should a work partner or an employer be different?

> If you aren't attractive to a life partner, you don't get a life partner. Why should a work partner or an employer be different?

Because you don't necessarily die of starvation or become a burden to the state if you don't get a life partner, unlike what happens if you don't have any source of income?

Lack of touch will kill babies. The research wasn't extended any further because it is too harmful for ethics boards to allow. And loneliness is very harmful to one's own health which has been verified by research as well. Compare this to all the forms of welfare that do more than give the basic necessities to not die because they significantly improve qualify of life. We are social creatures, yet when we discuss needs we deserve to have met, people seem to forget that.

Sure, lots of things affect your quality of life, some slightly and some greatly.

However, the job market is qualitatively different, which is why it should be held to different standards. Loneliness is definitely harmful, but still many people don't want sexual/life partners. However, everyone needs to eat and have some sort of shelter and access to health services. If you lack money for this, you either die or become a burden to someone else, possibly the state.

Coming back to what I believe was the parent's point when they said "in America the market determines your self worth", your worth as a person isn't -- shouldn't be! -- how much money you make or even whether you have a job. That simply doesn't seem right to me.

>but still many people don't want sexual/life partners. However, everyone needs to eat and have some sort of shelter and access to health services.

First, only eating is really required, and it requires far less than a healthy diet. The rest of that you can find people who forgo. Also, there are some who choose to not eat and a subset of them do hold this choice until they die (which tends to be soon after and caused by not eating). Consider some monks who mummified themselves through strict control of their diet as one extreme example.

So what do we consider a need? If you'll live 40 years on gruel but 50 years on a balanced diet, is the balanced diet a need? What if the difference is 5 years and 15 years respectively? What if it is 3 months and 10 years and 3 months respectively?

>your worth as a person isn't -- shouldn't be! -- how much money you make or even whether you have a job

Then what should be? And what ever criteria you do choose to determine your worth to others, what of people who lack that criteria through no fault of their own?

In principle. Have you ever met anyone who got a "good" job through connections?

A lot of people go to college for just that reason--to make themselves more valuable to get a job.

Mostly white upper+middle class privileged people do that -- those that can afford it.

So non-white poor people go to college for a liberal arts education?

No, they usually don't go to college at all.

Intrestingly its mostly White upper+middle class privileged women - those that can afford it and get the majority of non stem degrees.

For the majority, college isn't about an education or job opportunity. It's an extension of the white female youth and self actualization.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006084.pdf

What is your solution?

Personally I don't feel it is difficult to make yourself valuable enough to get "a" job. Maybe not "the" job, but "a" job. Which gives you enough resources to get "the next" job. Which you repeat until you get "the" job. It's the ladder and we climb it.

It really boils down to it is the law of the jungle out there and you want something so it is up to you to figure out how to get it.

And this is coming from someone that was homeless in the winters of Minnesota. I've been there.

If there are too few jobs, it's just a game of musical chairs. The number of jobs is not a natural phenomena, but a varying outcome of the parameters of our economic system of managed market capitalism. It's very natural for citizens demand better management of the economy to create more jobs when there are too few.

Indeed the right to work is a part of the universal declaration of human rights[1].

(Whether we should continue the system of unemployment post-material-scarcity is a whole another question, but a replacement system doesn't seem quick to arrive).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work

If there aren't enough chairs for you, and you think you can provide value, then go into business for yourself. You don't have to rely on a pre-existing employer to give you work.

I wonder why all the unemployed people don't do it? Surely anyone can produce a little value.

Assuming this is a serious question it is because working for yourself is not that easy. It requires sales and marketing to get your value out there to the people that are willing to pay for it.

Working for someone else is easy because there is an established system to connect you to the people that are willing to pay for your value. That channel doesn't exist for everyone, especially people with skills in areas that do not commonly hire contractors, like IT.

Because value is a combination of human labor AND the means of production and the means of production aren't owned by working people. I can start making cheeseburgers but McDonald's owns the efficient equipment, the marketing, the good locations to sell them, etc. such that I can't possibly make profit outside their system. So I'm forced to essentially rent space in their kitchen in order to be compensated.

Too few compared to what?

- To the _number of people who want/demand a job_ because the system they've grown into told them that they had to study to get a good job to have a good life(and that they will get a job if they get a good degree)?

- To the need for more jobs for the economy to work?

- To a wild guess disguised as a "this is how the economy should work" by people who got a degree or an office so now what they say is supposed to be right?

- To something else?

There's a difference between having a right to work (that is, not being prevented from working re: discrimination) and demanding a work (notwithstanding with: is there something one could do?).

If it's a game of chairs, unless you abide "the state/system", there's no one but you to get a chair or build a new one for you. Or for you and some others. Or someone else to step in and build a chair for you. But that's not a given.

Don't rely on the state.

In my view the economic system exists to serve the people instead of the other around, so I will pick the first option. But taken broadly, so accommodating necessary compromises to maintain the capacity of the economy (keep producing jobs and valuable output and so on). Like I said in my original comment, whether we want to maintain a system with the concept of unemployment is a whole another discussion.

Also,

> There's a difference between having a right to work (that is, not being prevented from working re: discrimination) and demanding a work (notwithstanding with: is there something one could do?).

The concept as discussed in the universal declaration of human rights does include the supply of jobs: "just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment"

I totally agree with your view (the system is built/exists to serve the people).

But the supply of jobs must not be void of meaningful/useful jobs; and the State/system is very, very unqualified to create such jobs - it tends to build on the jobs necessary to self-sustain (on the practical and political planes), and not much more.

Most qualified to create those new jobs/missing chairs are the people, on their own, or through the business they build. Then the (clever) support of the state or of big players is required to make those grow in their turn.

You may demand something out of a system. Which can self declare "everyone ought to get a job". But the system on its own is not capable of providing.

Note. I'm heavily biased. I'm French, living in France. And I am beyond amazed how this country is run on the economics level.

The state protects wealth. Being born now in the west is like joining a game of monopoly two hours in. All the squares are owned. Round you go.

As we get more efficient less human labour is needed for a finite amount of land/resources. If inequality is high most valuable land is owned by a few people.

The rest of us must pledge ever more labour for the right to subsist.

The rich are very much relying on the state to keep order as inequality rockets. Guess what would happen if we had no police force to enforce collection of taxes primarily from the middle classes? Or nobody to stop someone calling into question why they can't stand in a particular spot "because that land has been owned by my family for generations".

The rich very much rely on the state.

"The state protects wealth. Being born now in the west is like joining a game of monopoly two hours in. All the squares are owned. Round you go."

You've made this analogy a few times in the past few days and I think it is flawed.

It's only like a game of monopoly, joined two hours in, if in monopoly the players are periodically removed from the game (death) and have their assets divided up among new players (wealth taxes OR the dilutive effects of transfer to heirs whose number is greater than the original player).

Also: imagine 50,000 more property squares that nobody wants. Detroit Place. Haiti Way. Rural Spain Parkway.

Really, the analogy is flawed.

Inheritance tax isn't effective. It's like tag team monopoly where one older family member dies and passes over their counter to the next player.

It's not a perfect map 1:1 for the world but it's useful. Inheritance tax is necessary for a fair society.

I think you would do well to read historical accounts of families - both modern and historic - and get a wider perspective of how this actually works out in the real world.

Inheritance tax may not work as quickly as you'd like, but the avoidance that you refer to only goes so far. People multiply. They have kids. Those kids have kids. Not everyone has the intelligence and drive to produce 1%-style outcomes. The wealth dilutes. And then there is none.

In fact, even with no inheritance tax whatsoever, the old dictum "wealth never survives three generations" ("Fu bu guo san dai") absolutely asserts itself.

Of course there are edge cases. Let's not waste our time indexing all of the rothschilds and windsors and duponts.

The point is: all of the squares are not taken and the squares that are taken come up for grabs all the time:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/period-property/...

The windsors and a few other rich families own vast swathes of the UK whilst we are all paying for it.

My time is wasted, not enumerating them but slaving for them.

And Windsor is a made up name, it's Saxe-Coburg-Goth.

> Being born now in the west is like joining a game of monopoly two hours in. All the squares are owned. Round you go.

Appropriate in that Monopoly (or more precisely, the game it ripped off, The Landlord's Game) was created to demonstrate the inequality that derives from private ownership of land, and how a land-value-tax a la Henry George removes the inequality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game

Economy is not some abstract deity (believers in the "free market" like to imagine it as some kind of self-regulating mechanism that ends up in the best possible way, when it facts it's just a sum of human activity, that doesn't even play by the naive economist assumptions of people following their self-interest half of the time and that can end and does end up in all kinds of shit).

Economy is something people (not just the state, everybody) can decide upon how they want it and build it.

It's just that currently only the big players make those decisions with their law purchasing power -- instead of the people at large with representative laws.

So, "having enough jobs for everybody" could be such a decision people could make, and work towards it.

It's just that, indeed.

Big players, that, when overrun by the people or serious shakes (French Revolution, WWI, WWII, Russian Revolution), just let some room for the people to reorganize things a bit better (and they did) and then, new big players step in.

What's going to be interesting is that now, the "big players" are not going to be states only. There are companies too (as in, groups of people organizing themselves; but also as in, groups of people whose actions is hugely driven by a small number of owners). There's something brewing.

Right, I like to say that capitalism is really just a distributed algorithm, for solving interrelated questions about how to allocate your resources.

Like any algorithm, you risk Garbage-in-Garbage-out. It's the role of society (and government) to put the right framework in place. (For example, ensuring that it is not profitable to assassinate rival CEOs.)

...that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers.

Most people do not have the opportunity to make themselves valuable.

It's generally understood that at this point in history most people shouldn't really have to work at all. The whole point of technology is to make living easier for everyone. The root of this problem, as far as I can understand it, is misallocation of capital, not of "jobs". The efficiency of the free market is telling the labor market, "hey, you don't need to do this job anymore." So why are we still forcing these people to work? They should be allocated the capital gains reaped from market efficiencies that are a result of technological innovations.

Because the US has a trauma from the cold war related to anything social this will never happen in the US. There will have to be 50%+ unemployment before anything like that happens here.

Agreed. Unfortunately, at 50% unemployment we'll more than likely have revolutions. Which is never a fun time for anyone involved.

Or people will vote for insane candidates. We saw that in 1930s Germany...

The basic problem is that this idea that people shouldn't have to work goes against centuries of religious thinking which is strongly embedded in American culture. The idea of the Protestant/Puritan work ethic is that hard work is a sign of God's grace and centrally important to the character of a person and society as a whole. Sometimes you will hear people talk about this directly, but more often it's just implied because it has become awkward to assert religious ideas on society explicitly.

Until that cultural pillar of hard work defining a person's character and place in God's kingdom goes away, we will be stuck with this idea that people are defined by their work.

?? People should be defined on the actions they take, which is generally the goals, groups (industries) they belong to and work within. Otherwise it opens the floor to losers that think they are defined by whatever mix gender color, disabilities they have. You may think I'm being harsh, but I'm starting to see that now at conferences. "I'm Tina, I'm cis-gendered disabled" It's like they want to put some kind of moral hierarchy on people based on whatever minority label sticks.

I think I'm miscommunicating here. I'm not saying that people should be defined by anything in particular, just that this idea of a work ethic tied to being evidence of being a good person blessed by God is a traditional cultural concept which started in Europe and took root in America and then many other places in the world as well.

What you're talking about is an effort by people to be more inclusive by communicating things about themselves that they want others to be aware of. I can understand how this can be awkward and annoying, but it also has positive effects of bringing out these kinds of unstated assumptions like the idea of a work ethic.

If you look at history, groups tended to be more cohesive and share cultural values. This made it easy for most people to relate to each other because they could rely on certain unstated agreements. Now that we have more of an interconnected world, it's important to figure out how we can live together despite different understandings and identities. Not everyone is on board with this kind of diversity, but it's hard to see how we can move forward without finding some way to connect to people who aren't like us, and so far one of the solutions put forward is to over-communicate.

All Good points here. I'm not sure people are hung up on traditional religious values when it comes to respecting other people for hard work. We all just innately identify and respect with people who see their roles in contributing to society. I want to meet "bob the ditch digger" more than "bob, the son of serial killer" Same Bob, but with the label he controls and moves forward society with.

It's such an old idea that it's lost most of it's religious connection, but it still gets amplified in people's minds through Sunday sermons. But interestingly, we're constantly inventing new reputation systems like the one here on Hacker News that can define people in other ways. You should read Accelerando if you're interested in a speculative fiction take on future ways of defining a person's worth.

I still believe that hard work is necessary for a civilized world to continue. When the Pilgrims first landed they needed everyone to pitch in so they said if you don't work you don't get food. We have advanced to a point where we still need that incentive, but allow people to be more creative in how they add value to society. My gripe is that people shouldn't be forced into menial tasks because they didn't have the opportunity to "make themselves valuable" earlier in life.

There still needs to be some sort of incentive to actually do work. I'm sure most of these people in the article would rather be writing novels or creating art or something better than flipping burgers or the like.

I think the best incentive is to just make work more interesting. Even sweeping floors can be interesting if you can listen to your favorite podcasts while doing it. The menial stuff can mostly be automated, and it that will only accelerate in the future, leaving the most interesting jobs. When we have an increasing population with less work to do, the main problem we run into is finding new work and making it meaningful. This is a good problem to have.

Actually, the main problem is stopping greedy individuals from capturing the majority of benefit gained from the automation, or debt-slaving their fellow humans via rent extraction. Aside from those, I agree with you completely.

Yes, that's a huge problem. It seems like we're at the tipping point where the inequality is so huge that it's hard to ignore.

So think about this another way...

What gives you more self-worth, learning a new programming language and completing a project in it, or sitting on the couch and watching TV?

I personally believe the ancients understood this, from the usual parables. Idle hands are of the devil, and lead you to fill your time with something. Most of the easy somethings are drinking, eating and junk entertainment.

Technology may give us less to do, but at the expense of less opportunities for developing self worth. Even some of the founding computer members understood this--Wiener, a member of the "Dream Machine" crew mentioned it in the book "Cybernetics".

Perhaps I may clarify the historical background of the present situation if I say that the first industrial revolution, the revolution of the “dark satanic mills,” was the devaluation of the human arm by the competition of machinery. . . . The modern industrial revolution [i.e., the computer revolution] is similarly bound to devalue the human brain. . . . The answer, of course, is to have a society based on human values other than buying and selling. To arrive at this society, we need a good deal of planning and a good deal of struggle. . . . (Wiener, 1948, pp. 37-38, bracketed words added)

I completely agree. And there's an opportunity to get even more meaning out of work when it's your choice of what to learn and do rather than dictated by market conditions or necessity to survive.

Well, you're comparing "learning a new programming language and completing a project in it" with "sitting on the couch and watching TV". There are things you can do instead of "working" that isn't being a couch potato.

For example, learning how to play an instrument, picking up painting, attempting to master chess, or Go, are all things that you could do instead of working and are still personally enriching, if not financially enriching. They may not boost the economy directly but they will make the culture a better place nonetheless. There is a lot of untapped potential that could be explored if people have a guaranteed basic income and didn't have to work that dead-end, minimum-wage job.

Of course we still need a lot of human labour to make society run. I mean who wants to do menial labour, or plough snow at 4am so the morning commute isn't a complete disaster.

So I don't have an answer, I just think you're falsely equating "not working" with "idle hands".

"The idea of the Protestant/Puritan work ethic is that hard work is a sign of God's grace and centrally important to the character of a person and society as a whole."

I can't comment on the "God's grace" part, but hard work is indeed centrally important to the character of a person and society as a whole.

That's a fact. Ignore it at your peril.

My point wasn't to take a position on this but rather to point out that this is a deep-rooted cultural belief tied with religious values, which is the hardest kind of thing for a society to get over. It definitely has pull beyond the religious crowd, but that's how these kinds of things propogate, from sermons to unstated cultural assumptions.

Personally, I would value smart and effective work over hard work any day. If we get to the point where the most effective work is also fun and enjoyable rather than a burden, we'll be better off for it.

> Most people do not have the opportunity to make themselves valuable.

I disagree. You can make yourself valuable in many ways, not tied to any job you're prospecting to win.

Making yourself a valuable person to society is where everyone unemployed should be. That's how you win the respect of people who work. That's what it's about. Now how one does that could be in many forms. And it's not necessarily something that needs to take up more than a couple hours a day even. in fact you find that people who work not only put in their 8 hours, they follow that up with volunteering, speaking at engagements, mentoring, helping others at church, all kinds of things.

...more than a couple hours a day../

There's the heart of the issue though. When you're on food stamps you're not thinking of creative ways to make yourself valuable because you don't have time or energy. You're thinking about how to feed your children and family. You're working two menial jobs that suck up any time and affect your mental health, thus further degrading any possibility of you finding some creative avenue to make yourself valuable.

Almost anyone can go to college these days. The entire point of college is for people to gain skills.

Why are we forcing people to work? Because it cost money--ie. other people's time and energy--to feed, cloth, and take care of people.

Why are we still forcing these people to work?

Two reasons.

1. to scare people who are still required - do this or be destitute like them

2. to stop people sitting around and concluding that the system stinks, that people shouldn't be living in luxury because they inherited wealth and that we shouldn't have to pay high rent to exist

> It's generally understood that at this point in history most people shouldn't really have to work at all.

"Generally understood" - what? It is still a fringe belief. Please don't post things that are not true as facts.

How about if you don't have a job you still deserve a basic income? Ultimately that's the future.

There are going to be too few jobs for people going forward. There's no point in makework. Just give each person a basic income.

I don't buy the "too few jobs argument". We got told this 30 years ago when computers started becoming mainstream and households had one person going out to work. Certain jobs get automated but more bullshit jobs get created.

The % of total population that works has continued to drop.

However, promoting BS jobs makes society worse. EX: 80+% of all time and effort spent on medical billing is simply economic dead weight.

Medical billing reduces doctor effectiveness requiring more doctors, more people training doctors, and doctors to work longer hours doing crap work (filling out forms).

Remove bullshit jobs and only a small fraction of the population actually works. Long term we can make an endless hell where paperwork is what 98% of humanity does, or we can just chose another system.

PS: In the US over 50% of all money spent on healthcare goes to Overhead that has nothing to do with patents. In many cases it’s cheaper for people with insurance to go to private doctors who don’t accept insurance. [Think about that for a bit.]

Your example of medical admin expenses is useful. The reason why many activities are no longer viable is due to the amazing increase in efficiency of rent extraction. Same for land.

You've came from a point of view that is basically orthogonal to the way almost everybody (I've talked about, obviously) talks about the issue.

I hold the ideology that society should organize itself in a way that makes it easier to both create things that will demand new jobs, and make yourself suitable for work to some of those things.

Everywhere I look, it seems society is going the other way, making both of those activities harder.

Agreed on this one. Every time a company buys up another company just to make money from patents, they are destroying others opportunities for creating wealth and all the people who would team up and work with and for them.

This only tells one half of the story. Because rent extraction is so high in modern western economies usually people have next to no savings and are always two pay checks from ruin.

If people had more financial independence they would be able to choose to enter the labour market or not. For example now due to high land costs both parents must work. Some may like this, but many do not, yet they have no choice. This puts pressure on the labour market.

The current system sees rent rise to extract all productivity gains. Until this ends we will always see unemployment no matter how productive we become even if it's very clear that most people need not work full time to meet the needs of the country as a whole.

Millenials have spent their whole lives in a system with very efficient rent extraction.

If productivity jumps land prices will follow and back again we go to the bread line.

"This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers."

This paradigm totally ignores basic economics. If there is a greater supply of people looking for work, wages will go down for all employees across the board.

Now of course, wages vary from person to person based on skills, connections, and industry. So it's possible to improve your position relative to other potential employees. But across the population, overall wages will stay flat or go down.

That's an important point. Further, isn't it odd how we (Americans? The media? People in general?) talk about "jobs" in such a weird way. As if they exist in nature and just need to be dug up and distributed. Getting to a more accurate way of talking about 'jobs' could help so much from wage inequity, to labor negotiation, to post-scarcity problem solving.

The article is certainly not being even-handed between the human perspective and the business perspective, but can you blame it? It was written by a human, not a business, after all.

It focuses on the circumstances for young Americans now and in the past, and tries to understand why -- it notes workers have no power which is why they are worse off than how they were in the past, and suggests giving them more, which by necessity takes power away from their opponents, companies. But I don't think it's necessary that they explicitly state that, it's clear enough. In fact, the article states that it is a brief designed to make that particular argument and outline that position. It's okay for an article to present a position without trying to be "fair and balanced" or consider all points of view, in fact it's generally more insidious and dishonest when they make that attempt; let the opposition make their own, strong case. If you try to make it for them you'll inevitably make a weaker one than they deserve.

There has always been an ideology, always believable but never supported, that justifies the few damaging the many or their society as a whole for their own benefit.

You enumerated one that matches today's world view. Previous eras would justify it with some eugenics hand waving and before that would be an invocation of divine will. And just as they did, todays adherents will say that past justifications were nonsense but today's are correct.

But the result is the same; general harm done for the benefit of a few and nice story of facile ideology that justifies it.

>This article completely ignores the other paradigm, that if you don't have a job, it's up to you to make yourself valuable to employers.

A job is something people need to live and have shelter. It's not only the most "valuable" people that should have that.

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