Jobs, jobs everywhere, but most of them kind of suck
nymag.com
nymag.com
A word about this:
“What technology and trade have done, however, is displace millions of Americans from their middle-class jobs, and send them hurtling down the income ladder into less remunerative occupations.”
It’s not that simple. It’s not just trade and technology.
The causes of the erosion of good middle-class jobs are extremely complex. I’ll talk about just one here, since I don’t have too much time:
Tax law works to advantage higher tier workers over middle class workers. It costs much less in payroll taxes to hire a single superskilled worker at extremely high compensation than it does to hire a bunch of mid skill workers at middle class comp.
Quoting from the book:
“A simple example illustrates the special burden that the payroll tax imposes specifically on middle-class labor. If a bank deploys midcentury financial technologies to issue home mortgages using twenty mid-skilled loan officers who each earn $100,000 per year, this costs the bank and the workers, taken together, $306,000 in payroll taxes. By contrast, if the bank were to switch to the current mode of production and displace the mid-skilled loan officers with a single Wall Street trader who earns $2 million, this would cost the bank and the trader only about $90,000.
“Where two technologies of production are economically equivalent, but one requires twenty mid-skilled workers while the other requires one super-skilled worker, the mid-skilled approach currently faces an average payroll tax rate over 10 percentage points higher than the meritocratic approach, which produces an aggregate payroll tax burden over three times as great.
“The payroll tax, in other words, substantially suppresses mid-skilled employment and wages and fosters super-skilled employment and wages. (Indeed, if the super-skilled worker can get capital gains treatment for her income, by styling it as founder’s shares or carried interest, the income tax adds a further bias, on the order of 20 percentage points.)”
America has zero required vacation per year. Germany has 20 days every year for a five day working-week.
Even at a fairly cushy corporate job I don't get 20 days of vacation time.
I still do not think the government should dictate to private businesses in this area.
Try talking to people not in developer echo bubble...
Note to downvoters: FYIOTLB. And happy new year.
Also, I'd rather not work in WalMart.
The US has low unemployment, rising wages, and a robust stock market. If any of these were reversed, things would be different. At least we're on the right trajectory.
As some of the posters here note, automation could reduce job prospects in the near years ahead. I'm hoping retiring boomers (including myself) will open enough slots to compensate for this.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4280594-median-household-in...
Also, this doesn't account for coastal-vs-hinterland areas, which seems to be an issue.
I suppose we could hope that the record was set even higher, or that the trend was moving even faster in the right direction?
My point is that things really are good. We can always hope for better, but we need to understand that these are good times. (They won't always be so.)
https://www.axios.com/wage-increases-workers-2019-high-low-s...
Actually I think innumeracy is a big problem for a lot of people with low incomes. I have a relative who I suspect is innumerate and it’s both fascinating and sad when you get insight into their budgeting/estimation abilities.
In any case, your first statement is objectively wrong (they can't afford decent food), and it's incredibly insulting on both a personal and intellectual level to compare people who are unable to keep themselves from dumping hundreds of dollars on luxuries to people who are splurging on, say, a full lunch instead of the PB+J they'd have time to pack otherwise.
the wavefront of the system of global capital since agriculture has been the liquidation of peoples for whom mass codified exchanges of increasing complexity didn't compute
Even 30 minutes of prep and cooking time can be too much to expect from someone after commuting home from their two jobs.
It isn’t just the lower class, either. I know far too many people that make six figures and still complain that they live paycheck to paycheck, but meanwhile blow $500 at the bar every week, or buy a new $300 pair of shoes every month, or a new $1500 iPhone every year. There is a weird phenomenon where even people with means will prioritize luxuries and then complain that they don’t have enough money to save for a house or save for retirement. You see this on HN too, with several recent examples of posters saying that their $300k/year FAANG salary is too low and they can’t afford to live on it.
The issue I see with a lot of people in particular is spending too much on cars, food, (especially eating out) and clothes. If you make $150k+ in the Bay Area, whatever. But a lot of people with lower incomes get caught up in this. Where I’m from you can live by yourself decently on just $25k-40k a year, but you don’t have a lot of room for error.
For example, here [1] is UK by quintile: In 2017/18, the average UK household income before housing costs was:
top quintile: £52,000 second highest quintile: £34,700 middle quintile: £26,400 second lowest quintile: £20,000 bottom quintile: £13,100 The average UK household income after housing costs was:
top quintile: £47,700 second highest quintile: £30,900 middle quintile: £22,800 second lowest quintile: £16,100 bottom quintile: £9,200
Here [2] is the US, 2018 quntiles: 13,775; 37,293; 63,572 ; 101,570; 233,895
PPP Adjusted means adjusted to cost of living [3]. Adjusting the incomes above gives for the bottom 20% of US $13.7K income, for UK $13.1K.
From all the data I can see over many countries, the US poor and lower middle class are doing much better than almost any place in the world.
[1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-...
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
[3] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
You see this alot in school data. The top 90% of schools would, if averaged, put the US in top standing. However, those bottom 10% pull us down (alot). The big fight in America right now is whether we cut those bottom 10% and say EOBAD's (GOP), or work to help them catch up (Democrats).
Direct money comparaisons doesn't explain everything unfortunately, and if you just look at that the US is clearly ahead..
Do you mean pre-college? In which case the US spends more per pupil than OECD average by quite a bit.
If you mean college, then most OECD countries have nowhere the number of people in college as the US. And there are ample cheap local colleges in the US - people choose more costly ones because they can.
>healthcare
Yep, I stated that one. We're about twice the per capita cost as OECD countries. That cost is spread through the system, including doctor and nurse salaries being quite a bit higher. This is likely due to Baumol's Cost Disease, since almost all higher skilled jobs in the US pay about twice OECD countries. So to drive our cost to OECD levels, you'd need to mandate locally low salaries for doctors and nurses, which would result in lower quality care.
I'm not sure what a solution is here, but it's highly nontrivial.
>transportation
Gas far cheaper in the US than OECD average, and likely cheaper than most if not all OECD countries. Or did you mean in city busses? In which case ours are similar. Or did you mean metro tickets? Again, same cost. Or are you talking about intra-city routes, in which case again we're similar costs.
Please clarify with data.
>not to mention bad public services...
All depends on where you live. To compare the US (by area and population) to somewhere else, you'd need to include the entire EU, or all of OECD, in which case you're adding places with terrible services.
If you want to pick small, nice countries, then pick small, nice states, and again, very similar.
The bureaucracy of billing in the US is something magical that somehow manages to be worse in outcome and number of people involved than French bureaucracy (and the bar is high in terms of badness)
A 1 bedroom in my immediate are rents for @1800/month. Go 5 miles down the road and the same space rents for $1000-1200/month. Differences? "Desirability" "newness" "better schools (which makes no sense if you don't have kids" "atmosphere (I read everyone looks like me)"
You can go into some older areas of the city and find rents below $800/month.
Let's consider why older housing is so much cheaper for a second.. Property tax isn't recalculated until you update the building or rebuild on the property. So it's a huge disincentive to ever change any buildings, split lots, etc.
Perhaps because “you” value morals other than “make the most money I possibly can”? Or you want to provide housing that’s affordable by those who do the blue collar, nearly-minimum-wage work that powers our modern cities?
Profit isn’t everything. I’ll even go so far as to say that the current expectation to get “maximum profits at any cost” is a (“The”?) driving factor in the problems we lament in our society.
$800/m is still precarious for roughly twice minimum wage. Food is also more expensive and harder to get to in less upscale areas of most cities.
Suffice it to say, these situations are far more common in cities than the ones you've described.
* Many jobs provide poor opportunities for advancement if desired.
* Many jobs provide poor compensation relative to cost of living.
* Many jobs lack stability, either in pay, hours, or continued employment.
* Many jobs provide limited agency to improve working conditions or business practices.
The last one is something that even I, a holder of a cushy tech job, grapple with. Most of my job is fine, but it's painful to deal with boneheaded and poorly thought out management decisions that management neither cares to justify nor is willing to accept feedback on.
There's a lot of "I'm in charge, so we're doing it my way, which I know is perfect because I decided it was" in American corporate culture, with little avenue to course-correct, as the most frequent response seems to be retaliation for bruising someone's ego.
"pollster asked 6,600 U.S. workers what they saw as the defining characteristics of a “good” job, then used their answers to construct a “job-quality index.”
The survey link, but you have to register to read the whole thing: https://www.gallup.com/education/267590/great-jobs-lumina-ga...
And for what it's worth, there is indeed "jobs" in this country that are objectively as bad as slavery. Most Americans do not work them, but they do help shape the market most Americans work in; and, in some cases, they are outright competing with them.
In the "land of the free" nonetheless!
But I simply guess the comment was about the lack of a common baseline when making comparisons.
Of course most people, being less talented than us, are lesser humans, and so deserve to have crappier jobs, hours, pay, and lives. (Well, not really, but probably many think that way. They might not say the "lesser humans" part out loud, but they're OK with people having lesser jobs and worse conditions for them and their kids, even if they work harder than them -let them eat cake and work smarter, they'd say-. They're OK as long as its not them of course).
The pay does not match up to inflation, healthcare costs and cost of living. Put the cost of higher education into that mix and it just adds to the problem. So many are stuck paying off high students loans to only be able to get mediocre paying jobs.
"only 40 percent of Americans currently have 'good' jobs."
Meaning head of household jobs. That is a problem!
Margins need to be as razor-thin as possible in order to complete, and payroll is often one of the largest expenses.
As a result there will be a significant group of jobs by which little experience is required and turnover may be high - but since the jobs don’t require a lot of skill, the high turnover rate is not an issue.
For this job group, there is no reason to improve the working conditions, as, from the outset - these workers are never expected to stay for long.
An individual like a Junior Software Developer working on a large codebase that‘s existed for time, gets more valuable to the employer over the years, as their knowledge of that company’s particular codebase grows, and how the workflow of their company functions.
A Junior developer, then, has a career path - as they demonstrate their knowledge in the codebase they move from Junior to Intermediate to Senior and thusly by the time they may reach management they have demonstrated an aptitude in it.
It's true that anyone can flip a burger or poor a cup of coffee, just as it's true that anyone can hunt-and-peck a command; it's something else to be able to manage a kitchen and dining room with one or two assistants during peak, 6 hours into a shift that was scheduled with only a week's notice, observing food safety practices and producing the correct order from dozens of options in a timely manner and with unflappable hospitality, as many food service jobs now require of their employees. This while people complain about the difficulty of hosting family for dinner once a year.
Class, race, and gender associations have much to do with our perceptions.
This is lazy writing at best.
"cheapest" is obvious, but why "most humiliating, dangerous"? What incentive do the latter serve?
"Humiliating" is also good for employers, when they can get away with it. If you make your employees put up with undignified conditions - long hours, short breaks, arbitrary rules, embarrassing or onerous security policies - you appropriate their focus or attention either directly or through the stress of having to put up with those circumstances. That's less time and cognitive power to organize, budget properly, find another job, or really plan for the future in any way.
Your job as an employer is to squeeze as much work out of your employees as possible. That means doing everything legal to keep them from leaving (have to make back that training investment), or to have the option to quickly dismiss them if they're sub-optimal or causing problems.
I'm working from the perspective of having worked in retail and supply chain, but HN's main demographic should listen up: crunch is a solved problem. Think about what your employers have to gain from not implementing those known solutions.
If one accepts this point, both "dangerous" and "humilating" are counterproductive for the employer, since these properties of jobs provide a good incentive for an employee to leave as soon as he/she can afford it.
Dangerous? See cog. And cheapest.
If you're a business owner running any kind of business that requires physical labor, then you've probably got five things in your favor automatically over your employees: money, a lawyer on retainer, experience dealing with litigation, a system that has been designed to favor you, and insurance.
Most poorly paid employees don't know their legal rights and they don't really expect the system to work for them, either, so in the event that a serious injury occurs, they will usually just sit there and take it. If you drive in the cities of Harahan and Gretna near New Orleans, you will find billboards of maritime injury lawyers all over the place. Why? Because ships are huge business, working around them is extremely dangerous, they are insanely profitable, people get hurt working on them all the time, and employees don't know their rights because there's zero legal incentive to educate them past the bare minimum HR deems necessary.
"Humiliating" can be inherent to the structure of a job (it can feel humiliating to be obligated to do unpleasant tasks, or even simply to be stripped of personal agency), or it can be a source of pleasure for the employer. Some people enjoy dominating and belittling others, and subordinates without alternative jobs available are a ripe target.
I suspect that's partly behind the preference for foreign workers who are tied to their employers for visas: they'll accept a lot more abuse than somebody who can just pick up and find another job tomorrow.
If you're among the lucky, then maybe try some empathy?
Not to mention the article is about bad paying, abusing, no opportunity jobs, not about "fun vs work".
Not to mention that it's not true that "someone has to be a garbage man" (anymore so than a woman must "clean the dishes" in a household). People could be responsible for cleaning up their own shit, or take turns to do it.
The same way Japanese schoolchildren are made to clean their own school (toilets etc) - and in many armies, soldiers do that for their units too. So, no some specific person relegated to clean up others' shit is not "required".
Well, you are conveniently not a garbage man.
Note for example, that GDP PPP per capita is at an all time high https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-per-capita-pp...
Note that per IMF data, the US is higher on GDP PPP per capita than the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, ... that is, the countries often put on a pedestal by people on Twitter or Reddit: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/profile/OEMDC/WEO
Also poverty rate is dropping, food insecurity is dropping, and more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/president-trumps-policie... (Original data/reports at https://census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.ht...)
You're attacking a strawman, nobody has called for any of these things.
> poverty rate is dropping, food insecurity is dropping
there should be almost none of either of these problems in the richest country on this planet
> What’s more, the jobs that our “blockbuster” economy is creating aren’t just lackluster in monetary terms, but in other measures of job quality, as well. A recent Gallup survey illuminates this point. To assemble a more fine-grained portrait of American working life than federal wage and employment data can provide, the pollster asked 6,600 U.S. workers what they saw as the defining characteristics of a “good” job, then used their answers to construct a “job-quality index.” The resulting metric reflects not only a given job’s level of wages and benefits but also whether it offers career-advancement opportunities, stable hours, a sense of purpose, the ability to change unsatisfying aspects of one’s employment, and job security, among other things.
The article seems bent on making this point. Earlier on the article, it notes the following in even more vague terms:
> For the median job-seeker in Trump’s America, the odds may be good, but the good jobs are an oddity.
To me I feel this is textbook entitlement, expecting everything to be perfect, and expecting work to be more than a voluntary two-party exchange of goods and services that participants undertake in search of utility. Isn’t this just greed and seeking luxury in a different veil? It is possible to have jobs that provide in all these dimensions but I think because everyone would want those conditions, the competition would be fierce and would diminish some qualities (like pay) as a result. If one desires extraordinary workplace circumstances they must differentiate themselves through talent or hard work. It can’t be something everyone gets for “free”.
The late 90's is the most recent time when you could argue employee/candidate entitlement.