If you work two low-paid jobs, you are time poor. My partner used to work three jobs at one point in her life, getting up at 5am, and finishing at 11pm. An alarm clock is needed due to sleep deprivation.
Perhaps a different framing is "kill low-wage jobs"? I'm being facetious but alarm clocks are not inherently bad, low-wages and long hours are.
The problem is not alarm clocks, the whole system is broken if you need to work 12+ hours a day just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.
Edit: I think "get a better job" is a better argument than "I am such a victim, there is nothing I can do, everybody else is at fault". What else than getting a better job can you do? Seriously? And you don't need better education or stuff like that. If you work three jobs, maybe you can replace them with a normal job in a factory line or whatever. Just because you don't immediately get bestowed with your ideal job, doesn't mean that everything is hopeless and society is exploiting you. Most people don't start out with their ideal job.
Jobs don't fall from the sky. And nobody owes you a job. If there are no jobs in your area, you should move to someplace where there are jobs (maybe because a new Amazon warehouse opens or whatever). Yes, there can be circumstances where you can't move, like perhaps having to take care of sick relatives. But those are also temporary.
If this it not possible, the system itself is broken, either rent/food is too expensive, wages are too low or both.
And, what if everyone followed your advice to abandon low wage jobs and just get better ones?
- People need a living wage to, well, live.
- Therefore, all people should get better jobs so that they have living wages (instead of working 3 jobs or relying on welfare)
- As a result, there are no workers for low wage jobs.
- But everyone relies on these jobs constantly for the menial tasks we don’t like to do ourselves (like cooking or cleaning or farming or building things)
- So we do in fact value these jobs enough for people to work them. Otherwise our lives would be less comfortable.
As a result, we should actually be bringing the wages of these jobs up (to make them living-wage jobs) rather having everyone abandon these jobs for other high paying jobs which don’t actually exist.
I want to (eventually) eat out at a restaurant, and there aren’t enough teenagers to be waiters everywhere. So do I just say to every waiter that they should “get a better job”, and eventually run out of waiters? Ridiculous. I propose that if someone cannot make a living off of the service they provide, then we should examine whether we would rather do it ourselves all the time. If we do think it’s a valuable service, I’d hope we’d be willing to compensate in a non-exploitative way.
How about "We should organize ourselves to ensure that everyone's necessities are provided for through democratic processes"?
There is no reason to accept this status quo.
OK, your account was created 13 hours ago and you're already at -19.
My main point about this article is that it's not considering why we are roped into an alarm clock culture - it's not because we want to be woken up this way, it's because sometimes it's an economic necessity.
Besides, the way the regulatory system works now, new regulations only seem to benefit large corporations who can afford to lobby and get around the regulations. They actively hurt small businesses.
Minimum wage increases?
Why not increase the minimum wage to $10,000 an hour?
Minimum wage and employee protection laws are the way forward. Everybody should be able to live comfortably, working at most 40 hours / week.
Minimum wage is bad in its own way, because it sets a "what is the least we can get away with" boundary for employers, but in the current employment climate, employers can and do get away with paying less (see the service industry where employees are expected to collect tips to stipend their wages, see the gig industry where the employer doesn't give a shit that the employee has to struggle full days to get enough work to get paid).
What if they aren’t productive enough to earn that amount of money? Where does the money come from?
You have millions of people sitting in their government provided housing, waiting for their government provided payouts, so they can avoid having to get out and work. This sound familiar yet? Then what you have to do, after production grounds to a halt, is to start to force people to work which is exactly how you get labor camps.
I'm pretty sure you may be trolling but if you're not, reading up on the western european welfare states would probably be a good idea.
At least in the UK, we have an inordinate amount of benefits cheats that live off other people's money. If you only extend benefits to people who physically cannot work -i.e. disability benefits, then you stop this happening.
...
> perceptions among the British public were that benefit fraud was high – on average people thought that 27% of the British welfare budget is claimed fraudulently; however, official UK Government figures have stated that the proportion of fraud stands at 0.7% of the total welfare budget in 2011/12
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_fraud_in_the_United_...
> Fraud: Cases where all three of the following conditions apply:
The conditions for receipt of benefit, or the rate of benefit in payment, are not being met
The claimant can reasonably be expected to be aware of the effect on entitlement
Benefit stops or reduces as a result of the review. [1] <
Firstly, the data is only from those who got caught. I would say there is probably a lot more that haven't been. Also, you can claim benefits by going to the job centre every so often, but you don't need to actually get a job.
Anecdotally, my mate's dad does this. He has been living off of benefits for 10+ years, even though he is more than able to work. If someone can get away with it for that long, how is the system not broken?
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-...
You can definitely manufacture an umbrella or a car cheaper in China or Serbia than in the U.S.
This means that there is a natural ceiling on wages in some sectors, unless people start "Buy American" even if the price of the product is considerably higher. Which, in turn, will lower their own purchasing power.
As seen in practice, most customers would rather purchase cheaper stuff made abroad by cheaper workforce. The E.U. has a lot of protective measures in various sectors precisely because they know that the same would happen if the restrictions were lifted.
What happens time and time again if the working class has it too rough in a country with a sizable 'aristocratic' class just below the ruling class?
What do you want to do, keep raising it every year? The market will outrun the government. This kind of thinking is how you end up with a welfare state, where the only way people can live is with their pitiful stimulus check from the government. People want to earn their own money not freeload of other taxpayers whilst sitting on the couch.
I am not going to be that guy that points out a problem and doesn't propose a solution though. The solution is cut back corporation tax and regulation and make it easier for companies to hire people. This of course is what made the west as great as it is today.
I've never understood why people continue to make this argument when there are easily demonstrable counter-examples to the "But you won't be able to afford anything!!!" line of thought.
Look at countries like Switzerland, or even in the US there is Washington DC where minimum wage is $15, and society isn't collapsing.
No society wouldn't collapse with a minimum wage, that is not my argument. Logic would dictate that if everyone in a town was making $15 an hour then prices would naturally increase. How can you not see this?
Yes, I live in Switzerland.
Is it more expensive to go to a restaurant than in America? Yes, sure, but at least the people working there can have a good quality of life and don't rely on tips to pay rent. Prices of things that involve service are higher, true, but wages are good enough here that you can still live really well.
Maybe the average person can't afford to eat out every day of the week, but should they be able to? I feel like this is only possible if you underpay service staff.
Or do you mean to apply this rule only to large, profitable corporations and spare the mom-and-pop shops and other small businesses that are already having trouble staying open?
Low wage jobs are already being replaced by high wage jobs, but not 1:1. There are already higher wage jobs programming the machines that automate away a dozen low wage jobs. I'm guessing that wasn't what you meant by "turn into" though.
Increase minimum wage = no poverty
When in reality, for some people it would be: Increase minimum wage = they get fired and can't find a job, end up homeless.
They don't have to; it should be a factor of the overall company's revenue. If you take an infamous company like Amazon, they have 1.3 million employees worldwide generating 386 billion in revenue; that's nearly $300K per employee of revenue generated. Surely there's room there to pay people more.
Companies rarely exist to give employees more money; their goal is to increase the wealth of their owners.
Good. We should automate away more jobs. More automation means people can work less hours, get more sleep, and pursue things that do not provide direct financial rewards but still enrich society. This is what we should be working towards.
The only problem with that is if the value of that automation only enriches a few people at the top. But that is not an inherent problem. The solution is simple: progressive income and wealth taxes. These can pay for universal basic income and other safety nets that provide for the people whose jobs have been replaced with automation.
And after that what? Continue taxing the highly productive people, while letting those whose jobs were automated away, live the rest of their lives doing nothing?
That's still close to $120,000 per employee, so plenty of room to pay people more.
The next step would be to look at the segmented results, to see whether there is a significant difference in net income per employee across the company (It's fine if a high margin operation inside of Amazon ends up supporting a lower margin operation, but you wouldn't want to build economic policy on the assumption that businesses would do that).
If economic survival requires depletion of your sleep (which is so important), it's highlighting an imbalance in the overall system.
If someone is not highly skilled and works low end jobs, he could be left jobless if minimum wage increases. Some businesses already have low profitability and they can't absorb an increase in minimum wage.
I know where you are getting from but I don't see a simple solution. UBI might help but from my perspective the cost of UBI is too large to pull off in any normal economy (petro states in the gulf can probably pull it off).
Social safety nets is another thing that needs to be improved though. I don't believe in UBI myself, I think (and I'm not an economist) that the cost of living will just go up by an equal amount, negating the whole thing. It seems to work on a small scale, but cost of living is not changed significantly if only a small section of a country receives UBI.
Anyway, back to unemployment, in theory automation causes unemployment too, but in practice, while people lose jobs over automation, the overall unemployment rate is not significantly affected. Or in other words, there's always more work to be done.
If you made this argument 100 years ago I might be inclined to agree with you, but "reasonable" minimum wages (i.e.: a 40h/week job pays always enough to feed a family and a roof over your head) have been tried and tested in countries all over the world and as far as I'm aware, they're almost always a success.
The 'low skill worker' losing job opportunities because of too high minimum wages is a myth that just doesn't hold up to reality, no matter how many times conservatives afraid of losing their own bottom line or relative status repeat it.
If you take it to extreme, it's obvious it's not a myth. Imagine a 100k USD yearly minimum wage. Obviously all unskilled worked wouldn't be able to earn this much for the employed, but in places where you have to have someone do the job, they'd enjoy their new high minimum wage.
A few quotes here:
> Starting pay for the humblest burger-flipper at McDonald’s in Denmark is about $22 an hour once various pay supplements are included.
> Americans might suspect that the Danish safety net encourages laziness. But 79 percent of Danes ages 16 to 64 are in the labor force, five percentage points higher than in the United States.
But very well, let's assume it could work that way. Then you still haven't changed anything about the need for alarm clocks or work at inconvenient hours. So talking about minimum wage is really besides the point here.
Even high paid physicians have to work ungodly hours at times.
I feel this is a neglected aspect of wage discussions. It is normal that people start with lower wage jobs and work their way upwards, but age demographics are rarely reflected in the income distribution charts.
Some work unfortunately needs to be done at ungodly hours, you can not simply kill off those jobs.
Edit: since I can't post replies because of rate limiting. Sorry, but low paid jobs absolutely are stepping stones in many cases. For example people used to start while in school with delivering newspapers ("paper boy"). Many people have side jobs while completing their education. And while you work your three jobs, you can look for better jobs. You should, actually. They are stepping stones in that they help you survive until you find a better job. What jobs are the "work three jobs" variety anyway? I would expect you to be able to replace them with one "normal" job eventually, that is a normal job that pays a normal salary (even if it is a low salary). If that is not enough to sustain your lifestyle, what exactly is going on in your life? Where do the high costs come from?
Maybe the OP could explain why his wife ended up working three jobs, and how she got out of it?
As for ungodly hours, I don't think some people only working night shifts and others only day shifts is an option in general.
Edit 2: how do you find a better job? The traditional way is asking around, checking job portals, considering to move to a place that has job offers, that kind of thing. I guess most of those people also have long commutes, so I wonder how well most job boards are adapted to mobile.
You, and many others, do not understand poverty or living as the working poor, living paycheck to paycheck, etc.
Have a read into the physical and mental effects of poverty, especially on children.
Edit: also poverty is a trap, every thing is more expensive when you're poor.
New people constantly come into this world. They have to find their way in life. Not everything is set out for them right from the beginning.
Yes, everything is more expensive when you are poor. That is why most people strive and work for not being poor.
There are also different attitudes. Some people only have children when they feel they can provide for them (as in prevent them from having to work three jobs), others don't care. I'm not saying that those kids should just be left alone in their poverty, as it obviously isn't their own fault. But at the same time it is not the fault of the more responsible parents and their kids, either. The poor kids were not created by the rich people, they were created by poor people. In my opinion, it is all a bit more complicated than claiming there is so much surplus.
Rich people existing also doesn't mean there exists an unlimited amount of stuff. Jeff Bezos owning a trillion dollars does not imply he could conjure food for a billion people out of thin air. Food still needs to be farmed by somebody, which is a chore.
This is a naive take. It's not a game where if you grind enough you get experience and your level increases. If you're working multiple jobs, I doubt your performance will be good enough to be the first in line for a promotion. You also won't have time and energy for an education that allows you a better job in a different industry. Probably won't even have money to pay for courses, nor to take time off and do something different. Not to mention that those situations are taxing on your body and mental health, putting you in a competitive disadvantage with other employees.
Low wage jobs that don't pay enough to survive are not a stepping stone, they are a trap. It is also a drain on society: these jobs don't allow people to scale up the ladder, so the pool of workers in these jobs gets bigger and bigger, which in turn pushes wages further down.
> Some work unfortunately needs to be done at ungodly hours
The discussion is not about ungodly hours but about getting the necessary amount of sleep. You can work nights for 8h and have a decent sleep schedule. It's not optimal, of course, but it's very different from working two, three jobs and not having time to sleep.