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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Workers are right there, just not at the price point employers want them to be at.

At some point it’s better to not work than to work at a job that pays nothing. Personal anecdote: my friend’s wife was a host at an upscale restaurant. They decided to have a baby during the pandemic, the wife went back to work and within 2 weeks quit. Why? Because the childcare was more expensive than what she made. It was cheaper and more fulfilling than the money she was making. They got rid of a car because she no longer had to go to work and she now had the time to take care of everything in the house which brought their costs down. Eventually she started her own little shop on Etsy and makes a nice little side income. They are actually in a better place without that job than they were with it.

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The problem is what you're complaining about is not quite what you think you're complaining about. An economy is fundamentally feedback loops. I get that they're very complex, but that doesn't actually matter as much as you'd think. Simplified.

customers spend -> tax + cafe -> cafe employs -> tax + money for your wife -> wife wants childcare -> tax + childcare -> childcare employs -> tax + money for their employees -> employees go to the cafe employing your wife ("goto 10")

What you're complaining about is that money going through this cycle decreases. What MUST happen for this cycle to exist, is that the money stays constant. Now obviously I'm not arguing for zero tax, I get that tax is a valid part of this cycle. However, you must see that tax is the big parameter we can change here (and that it must go down, on the plus side, it doesn't need to go down by much). The absolute requirement for these cycles is that money must keep circulating, ideally forever, and the government is supposed to adjust that by controlling the main lever they have: tax.

(Now this ignores that there are many "tax-like" levers, like average rent in an area, bank interest, insurance costs, ... but they would have to change by a lot more than tax would. Also there's a LOT of cycles in the economy and they must all be balanced, not just one)

I think the real problem that your answer hides is that in order for money to circulate, we need to pick up the most stagnant money in the economy. That would be the wealth accumulated by billionaires, rather than the money of cafe workers.

I would argue more taxation of that money would allow better circulation of money for the rest of the economy. And would require fewer taxes for the cafe workers of the world.

Not at all, actually. Money only "counts" if it's used, only changes anything if it actually changes hands. If you took 10% of all money and buried it in a pit, nothing would change.

Strongly disagree with this. Because it's exactly what's propping up our stock market.

But the point is that billionaires take money out of circulation, whereas most of the rest of people put it into circulation. I use more of my money as a percentage of my income than a billionaire does. And I would bet that lower income earners than myself use even more of their income as a percentage than I do. If you want money to change hands, you've got to give it to more people. Especially more people who have uses for it.

the fact that local businesses have fallen by the wayside in favor of franchisees must be a major contributor. money that would stay in the community is instead shipped off to franchise owners in who-knows-where. the total money in the system gradually decreases when the top of the food chain lives in a distant land.

If you look at the feedback loop, you're right of course that profit needs to go in there too. However, profit is there in 2 locations, tax is everywhere. For every tax dollar given up to fix the situation, the private sector would need to give up 6-10 dollars in profit.

Plus, I don't think either childcare or cafes are making amounts of profit that would be transformative for employees, if divided fairly. Tax reduction however, doesn't need to be much to be transformative.

Add to that the government, the people who need to fix this, don't control profit, or spending. They only control tax.

So yes, when we have economic downturns, the conventional wisdom is there for a reason. When the government is in trouble, it needs to give up tax income, and lower taxes, while increasing spending. When the government is doing well, it needs to increase tax. The reverse of everybody else. No politician seems to have the discipline to actually do this, but that's still the intention.

At some point this may become a significant source of stress for the primary bread winner.

Dual income families enjoy a level of insulation that single income families do not. In the single income family the primary bread winner has double the stress, 1. inherent in working and 2. knowing there is no realistic replacement of income if they fall ill, get caught in a layoff or just hate their job and need a break everyone is counting on them to provide.

This might seem better in the short term but over the long term I’m not convinced it’s better.

The problem is childcare costs are enormous right now. It’s really hard for many people to make more than it costs for someone else to watch even just 2 kids.

The thing is - this stress isn’t any different than when you were single and alone. You were likely living at a standard of living that required you to keep your job. Now you’ve just got some people who are also dependent on you for it.

It’s not really that different in the scheme of things. You had to work before and you have to work now. That’s the reality of our capitalist system.

I don't agree. If the single person takes ill the consequences are limited to the individual. With dependents the consequences of the bread winner not being able to provide are significantly higher.

No they aren’t. I know plenty of people who won’t go back to work at any price.

> I know plenty of people who won’t go back to work at any price

The statement you made is both badly phrased and irrelevant. What you meant is that you know people who wont go back to a previous job for any wage, which is so absurd (and baseless) that it's effectively noise.

How is that baseless? Do you know how many people work part time just for “fun money”

And sone people wouldn’t go back to a previous job at any wage. If you left Twitter and Elon Musk called you personally and offered to double your compensation, would you take him up on the offer?

A tiny fraction of the number of people that work to eat.

In the school system in particular, there are plenty of older people who work in the cafeteria, bus drivers, etc who did it because they just wanted to supplement their retirement or wanted fun money. A lot of them said forget it after Covid. Both for health reasons and lifestyle reasons.

And you didn’t answer the question - is there any amount of money you could be offered to work at Twitter?

> And you didn’t answer the question - is there any amount of money you could be offered to work at Twitter?

I'd do it for $1024/hour on a 1099 contract with guaranteed time and a half for overtime.

As for the question in the headline: my wife lost her job just before COVID. She hasn't been back to work since because I make more than enough for both of us and by not working we were able to get rid of a car, cut various expenses in half, and have more time together since I was working from home. We went from DINK to SINK: single income, no kids.

I can honestly say that I wouldn’t work for Twitter for any amount. This isn’t because I’m “rich”. But we make enough to be comfortable. Why would I subject myself to that?

Even before I fell into my current role at $BigTech, we had our big house in the burbs in “the good school system” built when I was making only 115K in 2016. Why would I be willing to suffer now that I make twice as much? Making more money wouldn’t affect my lifestyle.

Going from local enterprise dev to working remotely for $BigTech didn’t really change anything in our lifestyle

How do these people pay for their necessities? (Honest question)

- married people whose spouse makes enough where they didn’t have to work and they did it for fun money (like

- people close to retirement and who said “fuck it” I’ e got more important things to do.

How can they afford that?

- close to retirement already

- spouses who work and they didn’t need the extra money.

I have no idea why people think this is so outrageous.

I only have anecdotes but you're describing ~half of my aunts and uncles here. All retired, pushing into their 60s and 70s.

The most extreme example being an uncle who was a PhD Chemist in automotive paints his entire career spent with the same employer and who has a slightly-over 6-figure annual pension. Before COVID-19 he was a door greeter and stocked shelves at a grocery store in the city where he lives. Now? Watches television all day.

It's a tiny number of people to the point of being irrelevant to the conversation.

Tiny number?

Let me put a bit of context. At least a decade long debate about gender roles and other other related issues has been going on and only intensified, imo given the one sided politically correct stance adopted even by those who deep inside disagree with it has something to do with it.

A lot of separated, divorced couples, who remain alone, but that still leaves millions who likely are sharing a place having the option to reject employment, rely on one source of income and get by. Which may very well be a far better spot to be in than seeing oneself exhausted, poorly taken care of personal matters and still no flowery prospect anyway.

That is not a tiny numbers and is totally relevant to the discussion since the article goes on and on about some figures but provides nada convincing insight about the natures of the changes we are subtly but surely observing. The social aspects are gladly omitted to focus on numbers as if people were hungry state machines operating on dollar to effort/time spent only.

Note: not saying women better not work. Given the nature of jobs it's often perfectly interchangeable and who earns more is likely to be the determinant. At least for couples who are not well off. Those who can opt for the lower income without significant impact to their life style would likely take certain factors in such as the appeal of being able to be a house-huseband and see their partner stressed out to make bucks vs taking that chore off them in exchange of theirs. In either case that's 1 count of off the labour market that's on the table for every two people in a home sharing relationship in the united states.

I would go as far as saying that the precarity many women were put through lately made them twist their mind about singleship and turned to getting in a relationship in order to leave employment altogerher. Even this count wouldn't be so tiny to be discounted, and it's not like surveys will capture the figures.

You mean on a discussion thread about “Where have all American workers gone”?

That kind of is the discussion…

I think the point is that, while it may be empirically relevant to you, it is statistically irrelevant in general.

The overwhelming number of families do not benefit from tech incomes, and actually do require more than one person to contribute to the household income.

Census.gov seems to have a different opinion

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/did-covid-19-...

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