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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Realistically, most of our 7 million unemployed are unemployed by choice. They are unwilling to do many jobs they perceive as being "below their station" and they are unwilling to move to places where the jobs are.

We need to import a better working class to pay for our leisure class since pushing our leisure class into work is considered socially unacceptable.

Here's a great first person account of this: http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/12/19/13956666/unemploy... "There have been times where I’ve wondered if I should just get a temporary service or manual labor...I would be too humiliated...a neighbor or friend [might]...see me working the cash register or pumping gas. "

See also NPR's expose on disability fraud: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

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Again a few examples that are often used to justify calling 7 million people lazy. If the visas are being used for for cash register and pumping gas jobs (how many states pump gas for you?) then this might make some sense but these are just isolated events and fit a narrative convenient to corporations to justify many practices that are mainly beneficial to the corporation.

Realistically, the only thing in support of a ridiculous statement like "most of our 7 million unemployed are unemployed by choice" is that one article, where a person, for multiple reasons not explicitly stated in the article might not want to take a certain demanding manual labor job.

I would suggest coming up with better arguments for the debunked supply side economics you're trying to push.

The last major study I saw on this showed that a large proportion of IT and STEM graduates had to move into unrelated industries due to an inability to find employment.

This meme that there are hordes of people who would choose poverty because of an unwillingness to work is disgusting.

60% of poor adults choose not to work. I'm sorry you consider reality to be "disgusting".

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Table 3 Page 21

My uncited study says that your uncited study is wrong and the authors of your study are Nazis.

> 60% of poor adults choose not to work. I'm sorry you consider reality to be "disgusting".

Which is not evidence of them being lazy. They could be acting in their own economic best interest by being in a welfare trap.

Not sure what your point is here, other than some welfare programs are poorly structured.

My point is that contra ajnc, there are hordes of people who "choose poverty because of an unwillingness to work".

Where are you getting 60%? Are you adding up the two years?

And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible to people the rest of the Western world. These are not people "choosing" to not work, they're the most decrepit, uncared-for group in the developed world.

Table 3 and division.

And I presume you're in the US, but from an external observer's perspective, 'poverty' in the US is extreme and is almost incomprehensible...

I spend about half my time in the US, half in India. So as a semi-external observer, all I can do is laugh at you. Most middle class people would love to live as well as the American poor do. Actually so would many Europeans - Bulgarian GDP/capita is about 1/2 of what the average poor American consumes.

No matter how much you might scoff and sputter, most poor American adults chose not look for work even once in the past year. That's just the basic fact of the matter.

"Table 3 and division."

Or, how about page 24:

Work Experience

In 2014, 6.9 percent of workers aged 18 to 64 were in poverty. The poverty rate for those who worked full time, year round was 3.0 percent, while the poverty rate for those working less than full time, year round was 15.9 percent. None of these rates were statistically different from the 2013 poverty rates (Table 3).

Among those who did not work at least 1 week in 2014, the poverty rate and the number in poverty were 33.7 percent and 16.4 million in 2014, not statistically different from the 2013 estimates (Table 3). Those who did not work in 2014 represented 24.7 percent of all people aged 18 to 64, compared with 61.7 percent of people aged 18 to 64 in poverty.

...which is poorly written.

I can't see what you mean in the Table. I can only see 30% of people who had no work experience in the year in question. I presume that you aren't adding up both years. And I presume that you also noticed that ~15% have a disability.

Yeah I'm sure middle class people in India would love to live "as well" as the American poor do. I was talking about the firmly developed world. Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU and they still have access to free and competent healthcare. Compare that the US where the poor people considered by that table sometimes die because of bad teeth and no immediate access to care.

Take the number of poor between 18 and 64, divide by the number of poor between 18 and 64 who did not work, and you get 61.7%

Of course, the question of whether they "choose" not to work, "choose" to be poor, or if they are "lazy" are judgements not supported by the numbers.

(More worrying is the 40% of the poor who did work.)

Oh yeah I see now, thanks. I was misinterpreting the first column.

Obviously it's impossible to glean motivations from a table, but it's telling to me that among the general population the majority of workers work full time, whereas among the poor it's the opposite, with most working part time for the entire year.

These people would probably be called the 'working poor' in my country; they're trying to work, but unfavourable economic and employment conditions make it difficult to maintain stable/consistent/quality employment. But in comparison to other developed countries, the proportion of workers (in that table) for a poor demographic is relatively high. Which would also signal to me that not only is the demographic not choosing NOT to work, but that they're choosing to work in higher numbers than in other countries despite their poverty (or maybe because of it).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Pov_crossnatl...

I still maintain that people don't choose not to work en-masse for extended periods, evidenced by the fact that the US has had full employment for many periods.

...modulo inverting the result.

Math is hard.

A large proportion of IT and STEM grads aren't qualified to do engineering tech jobs.

Surely most aren't. I know in my graduating class in the late 2000s, maybe only 10% had any experience upon graduating. My point here is that the H1B policy has put these grads into an impossible situation, whereby they're competing against people from emerging economies who do have the skills for these entry level jobs, where 10 years ago grads would be hired and get up to speed on the job.

So there isn't an undersupply of willing workers, there's an unwillingness for companies to accept that entry level workers aren't commodities that you buy, ready-packaged to go.

There is no other industry in the world where lobbyists can say "grads don't have the proprietary skills that we need, so give us more visas to issue to Indians!" and keep a straight face. Training is a normal part of every industry.

>unemployed by choice

>they are unwilling to move to places where the jobs are.

How exactly would an unemployed person move? security deposit/down payment, moving costs, etc all cost real money, and without an income, I'm not sure how you would expect someone to move across the country.

Humans are on average risk averse - and certainly no one would advise someone to move out to california on their credit card, in hopes of immediately finding a well paying job.

Its not like someone who has been unemployed for two years is so attractive that theyd be getting offers with relocation included thrown at them.

Strangely, illegal Mexicans seem to have solved this problem. In fact, they solved it so well that we plan to build a wall to keep them out.

This is why I say we need to import a better working class. Our own leisure class seems completely incapable of doing anything!

Have you ever met an illegal immigrant? been to their home? asked them about their experience coming to the US?

Its interesting to see you assume so much about illegal immigrants, when you clearly dont have even a foundational understanding of their lives here or in mexico.

Do you have a substantive argument, or merely the vague supposition that somewhere out there there must be some personal anecdote that invalidates what I said?

Could you clarify what "assume so much" refers to? I'm pretty sure that the only assumption I made is that most illegal immigrants are not non-workers collecting benefits.

Do you have a substantive argument, or is assuming that all illegal immigrants come here with 0 cash your argument?

It's possible illegal immigrants saved money - the question then arises why the Americans didn't.

sure, we can complete the circle i guess.

because they are unemployed.

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