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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

The current gridlock in Congress is a blessing.

If they actually manage to pass either stimulus things are going to get really bad. There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill.

If they actually pass it, given the way government runs, they'll overpay for everything to get supply, which costs extra, but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people.

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>There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill.

Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor.

>but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people.

Isn't that a desirable trait? Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them? Why can't we let the "market" handle this?

Prices are only allowed to go down, it’s what the gods of consumerism have promised.

If consumerism is considered bad why aren't people working less instead of buying meaningless gadgets?

> Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor.

That would imply there are people sitting around doing nothing waiting for higher wages. But that's not the case, there simply are not enough employees right now.

> Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them?

You just need to give the economy some time to catch up, and let supply catch up to demand.

> Why can't we let the "market" handle this?

Because the government is not the regular market. They are able to outbid others, and cause shortages that don't help anyone.

I should have made this clearer: I'm not saying never pass this funding, rather, just wait a little for the supply chain to catch up.

>But that's not the case, there simply are not enough employees right now.

Anecdotally a few of my neighbors have quit their minimum wage jobs for higher paying ones. There are enough employees at those wages. I know two people who have quit the job market and are living with their employed SOs/parents. Raise wages and people will sign up.[0]

[0]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

   The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job declined by 835,000 in August to 5.7 million but remains higher than the level in February 2020 (5.0 million). These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks or were unavailable to take a job. (See table A-1.)

I had a big argument with my friend who runs a small sales agency and complaining that he was not finding any sales people for minimum/commission wages. He was losing them to agencies that were paying a $15/hourly and was arguing with me that $15 was too much when you included commissions. SMH. Funny how "market rates" only work one way.

Is that the main reasoning for the republicans sitting out on it?

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