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Comment by peanuty1 | Hacker News Reader

We have far, far too many liberal arts graduates. There is a huge labor shortage that we need those people to fill in fields like restaurants, plumbing, nursing, construction, farming, etc.

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There's no labor shortage. There's only a wage shortage. Restaurants are a particularly egregious example, as someone with firsthand experience. Restaurants treat their employees like shit, work them to the bone, and then pay them as little as humanly possible. I got out and never looked back, because it turns out people are willing to shower you in cash if you can string together 3 lines of Python.

Healthcare as a whole baffles me. They pay well enough, sometimes, but they also just treat their employees like absolute crap. Would it really break the bank to hire 25% more staff instead of having your entire workforce getting paid overtime week after week?

+1 to no labor shortage in the construction industry. Good luck getting trained as a tradesman outside the unions. Joining a union is a practical impossibility if you're a white male. You'll be subsidizing your non-union employers with your own savings as an apprentice well into your journeyman career. You'll be sitting idle unpaid in between jobs, when it's raining or snowing, when your car doesn't start... Even when employed, you'll have no benefits, no health insurance, no paid vacation. You'll be competing for the scarce work with people who're in this country without a work permit. Guess what the going wage is for your services.

> Healthcare as a whole baffles me. They pay well enough, sometimes, but they also just treat their employees like absolute crap. Would it really break the bank to hire 25% more staff instead of having your entire workforce getting paid overtime week after week?

Them stocks gotta to up, mang.

Take a look at the Fortune 500, and look at how many healthcare companies are publicly traded and in the top 100.

I think your point is valid and worth looking into - there are also many non profit hospitals in the same situation. That being said, I'm sure it's part of the equation, but I'm not 100% convinced everything can be blamed on Wall St with this one.

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