I want a trip on one of these orbital space ships. Is there a space ship shortage?
We really need to empower all kinds of front-line workers to enforce reasonable boundaries with both customers and management.
So, not only there is no space ship shortage :) there is actually much bigger worker shortage, as I keep a billion positions open (I want slaves, of all kinds, especially with Wall Street experience) and can't fill them (I don't bother to try).
It’s a free rider problem of profitable corporations on labor of society.
It's not whining, it's a strategy, when interviewing costs relatively little. Even startups spend weeks of interviewing for a single candidate, because prevailing opinion is that it's more costly to hire a subpar employee than to do those interview rounds, even in a jurisdiction where laws allow firing with relative ease.
This also further divides people because of the consistent use of the "Welfare Queen" [1] stereotype by conservatives to vilify people on welfare.
0 - https://reason.com/2021/06/01/the-bipartisan-war-on-work/
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen#In_political_dis...
I know that sounds harsh but that's the reality that workers live with every day. Can't pay the prevailing rent? You have to sleep in the streets. Can't pay for medical insurance? You get to die from a treatable disease. Why should there be more consideration for businesses than there is for human beings?
As some businesses go out of business due to wages, that will put downward pressure on wages and keep things affordable for the remaining businesses.
Not necessarily. 1) there can be regulatory floors on wages. Half the folks in this thread are calling for higher minimum wage. 2) if cost of living outpaces wages, there may not viable business model at all for low wage employers. 3) it may be the case that in some markets working at all lowers the effective income due to welfare cliffs.
They may be able to pay an increased wage when the rest of the economy catches. So it may be optimal for the economy as a whole to support businesses temporarily.
Why would companies raise wages now when they can wait a few months to see if the situation changes?
People seem upset by this, but if you have a free market economy, you should anticipate that actors will work in their own best interest.
Changing regulations around compensation will be much more effective versus hoping that a company will act on a specific moral principle.
I don’t think it’s obvious that large numbers of people are choosing to stay home and earn $0/hour instead of getting a job working $10/hour because they really wanted $15/hour. The worker shortage is a real phenomenon of more jobs existing than people in the workforce.
On the other hand, raising wages would produce inflationary pressure on everything from housing prices to food prices, which would force more people to get jobs just to survive. Not exactly what you meant, I know.
Of course it does. My wife doesn't work because there's nothing that particularly motivates her to work rather than doing her hobbies. If you offered her more money, it might motivate her to re-enter the work force.
And if you can get 100k without a degree people who would be in college will be in the work force instead.
That’s the theory at least.
But if don't pay labor, no one is going to buy your product at the end of the day. If you pay more for labour, that's more money to spend on product and services.
There's an optimum somewhere between the two.
Presenting only one side is a polical statement.
I don't really see how any of this is a bad thing. This has to happen from time to time for the economy to remain efficient. This is the phase in the cycle where the capital owners take their lumps and workers make big career making moves.
If you zoom in a little closer you can see lots of little victories happening all the time in the boarder economy. Lots of workers moving into better positions for more pay and leaving behind employers who can only find more expensive and less able replacements, if any at all. My personal observation is workers in service industry jobs seem more casual than a year and a half ago, less hurried, perhaps less fearful of losing a job than can be replaced in a few hours.
If I create a job that pays $100,000 per hour for making me a coffee whenever I ask, I assure you that plenty of people will come off the sidelines and apply for that job.
Others have correctly pointed out that the supply curve is not flat. But even if it were, well, economics is about the allocation of scarce resources that have alternate uses (Thomas Sowell's definition). If people are scarce, and they go where they produce the most value, and places where they would produce less value don't get filled, is that a problem? Isn't that exactly what you would want to happen?