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Economics
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>Sure, til some oligarch like Putin steals the wealth of the nation and then you have no laws and you can all be at the rise and fall of revolution and corruption
So you think a law setting a "maximum salary", concentrating that kind of power in the hands of government, will prevent something like Putin stealing wealth... That's cute.
You don't steal wealth when you're getting paid by someone else, no matter how much they pay you.
> If we can't even fine companies to affect their behavior effectively
Is a completely different issue than a federal "maximum wage"... You're using the idea of reasonable oversight and enforcement to sell an unreasonable idea.
> The US government has kept a war on drugs for fifty years
You're all over the place here... Again, this has \*nothing\* to do with setting a maximum wage. Also, I'm not fond of the WOD and the way we fight it....
You don't seem to want to be a citizen, you want to be a serf..
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Economics
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You do realize that these workers in other nations are human too, and require identical inputs in order to produce their labor? The minimum wage is largely focused on luxury services too, a guy isn't going to wash your car from india or deliver you a pizza from bolivia.
Blame the currency exchange rates if you need to, but not the simple observation that humans need to consume calories of energy in order to exert calories of energy.
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Economics
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1) I'm pretty sure he didnt think a kid selling newspapers on the corner should by law be making the same as a coal miner or industrial worker supporting a family. Do you have any evidence he thought every single job should pay enough to support an entire family.
2) He was also against public sector unions.... So are you picking and choosing when to back him based on electoral results?
" All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. " -- FDR
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Economics
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“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” (1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act)
“Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.” (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act that instituted the federal minimum wage)
“All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.” (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
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Economics
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> No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
Let's read the whole thing... okay..
"by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls"
No boys selling papers, flipping burgers? Why did you edit that part out? eh?
And do you agree with FDR on public sector unions?
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Economics
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Work on personal projects, make a website that highlights them in a portfolio/blog setting. Make them pop. Eventually you'll find someone who will like your initiative and style and hire you, depending on which field you are looking at.
This is coming from someone who graduated in 2014 (M.A.) and worked at a small, niche company where I didn't really learn anything. When I was looking for other work the last 4 months I finally found a place that was into me for my brain and skills rather than industry experience. The projects showed creativity and initiative, which opened doors that wouldn't have been there otherwise.
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Economics
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What school did you go to? Where state do you live? Are you willing to move for a position? I had a lot of friends have a problem finding a position just out of college from 2009 - 2012, but since then they have been able to start their careers. I'm just wondering what else could be the problem. The economy is strong, you should be able to find a position in your field.
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Economics
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Econ alone can be a bit rough without a Master's or PhD or some other skill.
You really gotta network and move to a place like Chicago or DC to put that degree to work. Then, the pedigree gets raised because of the demand for higher education levels. Getting an Economist position with just a Bachelor's is pretty tough because of the sheer competition. You're probably better off looking at financial analyst roles and, even then, it's a little bit of underemployment in my opinion.
\- MS in Economics but, somehow, work as a Software Engineer but could probably fit into any analytical/research architecture role pretty well.
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Economics
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Employed Econ Major here. From an extremely small school.
Where are you applying and what you are applying for?
Unless you are in DC, NY, or near one of the Federal Reserve branches, you are going to have trouble getting a job that is just pure economics. Economics can be molded into many different career fields. Finance, Marketing, Data Analytics, etc etc. Even if your goal is to work purely in a policy environment, there's plenty of benefit in a corporate environment.
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Economics
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You should look into moving to Sacramento and work for the state government or NYC or D.C. There are lot of jobs in the these locations for people with economics degrees. You also might find something that isn't necessarily pure economics but is just related. Also, make sure that your resume is well written and formatted. If you don't have people around you who can read and edit your resume, then hire a good professional resume writer. Go to networking events. Use Linkedin to network and have coffee with hiring managers. There is so much that you can do to put that extra effort in to get the job you want and deserve. Good luck.
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Economics
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That’s such bullshit. Bullshit jobs do not look good on a resume and only bullshit employers consider you if your resume is tainted with bullshit jobs. I graduated with a masters in stats 8 years ago and worked in retail during the recession. I still make 30k a year. Those jobs did nothing for my resume besides discredit my education. Good employers don’t take me seriously anymore. Never EVER take a shit job. They only lead to other shit jobs,
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Economics
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> Not sure if you knew this but that figure includes everyone 15 years old and over. Teenagers aren't earning wages to support themselves.
They damn well should be building that nest egg. Not only do they have no assets (car, house, passive income etc), but once they hit the workforce, they are still going to be lumped into that "work for a loss so you can gain experience" category, even though they have experience; and they are going to get hosed on everything (rent, insurance, healthcare etc).
> You probably want to look at median household income which is 61k. Big difference.
Thats two working adults, each earning 30k...
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Economics
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If you say you're right, you must be right. I'm sorry for ever doubting you. You are the real economics genius here, after all you're a mathematician! 60k / 2 obviously equals 30k. Silly me. Next time I design the bridge you drive over every day, I'll just tell my boss that it's okay to divide by two in the designs when we reduce the amount of traffic by half - it's totally safe because a guy on reddit told me so!
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Economics
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Jack Ma himself has said,
"When trade stops, war begins."
In the past, the West's international policy was to control trade WITH war. Hence imperialism in the past and whats going on in the Middle East recently with trying to control oil. Today while America has shifted to a "promote war and stop trade" model with Trump and his band of idiots. China is in Africa producing a "start massive amounts of trade and don't promote war at all" model.
Remember, China used to be run by a fascist dictator as well, with a nation in complete disarray. But they have since pulled a 180 and China can't even come up in conversation without being followed by "next superpower?" They didnt this through war but through trade. Today they want to bring the same process to Africa. Promote trade, commerce, and technology and know that as people see the benefits of trade, they will naturally push out ideas promoting fascism and their leaders will have to change to reflect that. Just like China did in the 1980s. [Kigali is a great example of this change in action.](https://youtu.be/FFGtGfLUP4o)
China is looking for new places for resources, to import goods from, and to export labor to because China knows manufacturing for the world has ruined their environment. Just like it did to the US in our industrial revolution before we exported our labor to China. So now they want to also export their labor to a country that has more nature than money instead of more money than nature.
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Economics
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In America the prevailing opinion is Mao was a tyrant. But a lot of westerners right now also think Xi is a tyrant which is something you can get a feel for on Reddit. Especially after the term limits elimination. I disagree with this opinion on Xi, myself.
If you feel different about Mao, you may know better. I'm an American. But you have to admit, in the 1970s China was pretty bad place to be place compared to America at the time.
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Economics
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Where are all you people in other threads on China. Americans and a lot of westerners consider China fascists and dictators simply because they are communists and Americans are brainwashed to see communists that way. I literally have tens of thousands of dollars invested in Chinese companies that trade on US exchanges like Alibaba and JD because I noticed how skewed the US's view of China is and how cheap those stocks are because they're being underestimated because Americans think
*"These companies HAVE TO be scams and hiding something. How can a communist state possibly innovate better than us exceptional Americans."*
Every thread is full of the kind of people who are convinced China's 30 years of development and Trillions in products are only because they wholesale stole from us great Americans and how the documentary "The China Hustle" is basically what all of China must be like. Then I come here and make an off hand comment about the exact thing Reddit screams about and you're coming out the woodwork to be offended.
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Economics
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I think many in these particular discussion find your categorization of PRC being a fascist state quite odd. Since I am an American I understand there is odd tendencies in the state to link communism automatically to fascist, but there is really not a whole lot of evidence for it in post revolution China. Let's not forget, this is a country with 56 officially recognized ethnicities and thousands years of ethnic exchanges (sometimes violent, often times in relative harmony). And they were just coming out of hundreds years of imperial rule under a minority ethnicity over the dominate Han.
Dictatorship wise, I guess there will be more people feel China is one, especially during Mao's time. And PRC had been on a single party dictatorship from then on. These may be all true, but since the alternative is not any better (KMT of the RoC fleeted to Taiwan and the first two (2nd and 3rd) presidents were father and son and both for life. It is widely speculated had not for the Chiang Ching Kou's untimely death due to eating grape fruit, the single party rule of RoC/Taiwan will continue far longer), the argument is largely just for categorization purpose, cannot directly related to economic performance of the country. What Xi did with eliminate the terms limit is worrisome. But note that being the president of PRC does not ultimately make you the commander-in-chief like in the US. The authority of military power (中央军委主席) and party lead （中央委员会总书记）has never had term limits, and in fact Mao was not the president of PRC for most of his later years but still able to have the complete control over the country. Will setting up term limits for the other two authorities better for its people? Most likely. Will slowly shifting the single party rule republic to a democratic republic better for China's future? Maybe, but at least lots people inside and outside of China is hoping for this and working on it while what Xi did can be see as a major set back. But again, it is very hard to say anything about the link of dictatorship and country's economic performance.
TL;DR: I believe most commenters only have issue with your classification of China being fascist state, not everything you said. Communist does not automatically equal fascist, nor everything bad are fascist.
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Economics
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I am not arguing the technical nor historical accuracy of the terminology or that Mao wasn't a fascist. Just that in America there is fairly large set of prevailing beliefs that China was fascist and in some cases people believe that even today China's one party, no term limits, and censored internet makes them fascist. Which is indicated by articles like these.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/world/asia/01iht-letter01.html
https://ipolitics.ca/2017/10/12/the-dawn-of-a-fascist-china-and-what-it-means-for-us/
I don't agree with it at all. I think it's American exceptionalism and bias to think just because other culture don't believe and hold dear the same metrics that you do, doesn't mean that they are evil. But it's not an uncommon belief in America. Enough that articles like this can be given credance to some degree shows it's not some opinion I made up myself. Remember that a huge section of Americans also believe that not standing for the national anthem is akin to treason. So accuracy of this opinion is not my goal. Just that it exists.
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Economics
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The only problem with your line of argument is that there are objective definitions of fascism and dictatorship. And objective categorization of political movements/structures matter. Not only because it matters in the interest of historical curiosity, but also more importantly it is very important to contemporary political behaviors and rationales.
Here is a very fine video debunking American right wing's claim that Nazism is socialist. Hopefully, through that you can see what I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUFvG4RpwJI
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Economics
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Honestly, I think this study has entered our collective unconscious, which explains why so many people believe it. The NY Times article made big waves, and now everyone accepts it as more or less true.
This may be especially true of secular people like myself who don't turn to religious authorities for life advice. Millennials are largely secular.
More and more I realize that a great deal of my life decisions have been shaped by various think pieces, TED talks, popular studies and op eds. My brain is filled with ideas like "the Mediterranean diet is best," "value experiences over possessions," and "exercise is treatment for a great number of ills."
It's not necessarily a bad thing, except I probably should reexamine those beliefs every so often. And with the replication crisis in psychology, not all of them are necessarily true.
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Economics
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Those studies don't take into account how much happier your kids are when you can pay for their whole tuition and rent, or how much happier you are for the 5 extra years of retirement that your savings bought you.
It's stupid. There's no real reason to assume that lifetime happiness and enjoyment will stop scaling beyond some arbitrary threshold of annual income, and it comes across like an attempt at placating the middle class from aspiring for more. Any study that shows these results needs to have its assumptions and methods of assessing happiness examined and validated before my perspective is going to change materially.
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Economics
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It's not just accepting a study though. I know when my income passed about 75k, life got a lot easier, and increases since then have been meh. The real difference is that you stop worrying about regular bills. They're all taken care of, and you just try not to waste money on stupid stuff.
The reason it translates to so many other people is that when you add up all the typical wants of a modest family, you end up around 75k a year. Above that point you start looking at savings and investment, which may be confusing, but not nearly as stressful as worrying about making the rent payment.
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Economics
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Aspiring for more income or for something else? Most psychologists would argue that there is an order in which needs have to be satisfied to be happy, starting with basic necessities like food and shelter. We're biologically hardwired to become extremely happy when the necessities are met and the arbitrary thresholds these studies suggest seem to be at a level where meeting basic needs isn't an issue to worry about anymore. Anything affecting happiness past that is up to the individual and what they want to accomplish.
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Economics
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Happiness has a lot to do with having something to look forward to. At $75,000 your needs are being met but there is still something to work towards. “I want to save for that trip out west.” “Once we get this much money we can pay off our house”
Once you go over $75,000 a lot of the small ambitions are no longer as exciting. Paying off a car just doesn’t have the same excitement, that extra $300 is just not as exciting as it was when you were a little bit poorer.
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Economics
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The stress I feel in my job now as a technical lead is far less than what I felt when I was broke in college and had times where I wondered how I would make rent and utilities. This is especially so when you’re splitting bills with a roommate and they can’t come through one month or your shitty college job cuts your hours for daring to ask for a day off to study for exams.
My job now can be stressful, but I like what I do. So occasionally having to really bust ass or work miracles isn’t so bad when I don’t wonder if I can pay for groceries, don’t wonder if I can afford to put gas in my car, and something like to A/C going out in my house is an expensive inconvenience rather than a crisis or just learning to live without (in the southeast US where it’s hot and humid).
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Economics
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I refinanced to a 5 year plan to get a better interest rate. It's more painful initially, but should save ~$30-40k.
But yes, "average" medical school debt is roughly $200k upon graduation, including the 30% of students who owe nothing 2/2 military or rich parents. Residency and fellowship salaries don't allow for payments that cover interest, so it's pretty common to see total loan burden of $300k on completion of training, including principal and capitalized interest.
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Economics
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You know Millennials are 22 to 37 years old now. Many of them are 10-15 years out of college with kids and a mortgage. It's not all that unrealistic to hope to make $75,000 at year at that age.
These aren't a bunch of spoiled kids anymore. These are people that are entering their prime earning period of their lives and have very large expenses with student loans, sky-high home prices and rising medical costs.
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Economics
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Ya, if they have to choose between a statistician who has been underemployed or a fresh newbie, they'll choose the fresh newbie. But why are you just passively applying to thousands of jobs. You shouldn't apply to jobs that you haven't personally talked to a recruiter about first. Even when I graduated, I found it hard to get an interview with any company I didn't have a contact with. And I have an ivy league degree.
If you are judging your worth based on sending thousands of applications online, then not only is your perception skewed, but you are misunderstanding the modern job market. Your process should be to attend a networking event every Friday and Saturday night, getting a couple dozen business cards, then monitoring those businesses for new postings. Then do it every weekend for 3-4 months until you find a good position. If you are just sending applications from home every weekend, that's not going to be successful.
Statistics even puts you in a better position to overcome your bad resume. First, remove your bad old jobs. Second, spend your free time doing open source collaboration works on Github, then put that on your resume. No one will know you were underemployed. They'll just see someone who actively spends their free time on worthy online projects.
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Economics
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It's more efficient to do it this way (this is also proven mathematically with social networking models). Employers get thousands of emails, so how else should they sort through it? Let me tell you what a recruiter at a think tank told me: "the top 100 candidates for any position we post are nearly indistinguishable. They will all perform equally well at the job. So how do I pick who to hire? It essentially becomes random."
Going the extra mile by wasting all your weekends on career development is how good firms decide on the best candidate. There's no other way. Like propose another system. Just looking at online resume applications? How will you decide between the top 100 candidates? Every candidate to Deloitte or Bain or Google has published 20 papers and almost won a Nobel Prize. You can't pick just based on the paper application. It's **inefficient**
Honestly, the real way the economy works is better for you than the way you think it works. In your version of reality, you are fucked. In real life, you get a better job by sacrificing leisure.
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Economics
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I’m saying if it takes that much effort just to get noticed by an employer, it is inefficient to keep applying. Most college grads are better off starting their own company. There’s too much competition among employees and your efforts are best spent elsewhere. At some point it is a systemic issue not a personal one. It may be efficient on the employers side, but it is incredibly inefficient on the employee side.
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Economics
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I think you are confusing efficient for easy. How is it not efficient? What would a better alternative system be?
If you think the opportunity cost of this process is too high, then start a business. But most people don't think that. There is no objective metric of where your efforts are best spent. it all depends on your utility function and expected probabilities.
You have a choice to make: continue being paid low or sacrifice leisure to get a better job. If you think its too much effort given the possible payoff of a good job, that's fine. but don't blame things that aren't to be blamed.
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Economics
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I find it funny whenever I’m in a training and the presenter goes into the “those millennials and their cell phones and iPads and selfies and social media and changing jobs if you don’t invest in them. Am I right?” or a coworker starts in on it. Then they look at me for affirmation because I’m not in my early 20s. No man - I’m 36. That makes me a millennial too. Thy usually clam up when I mention that.
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Economics
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But you cant always change reality. They never think of paring down, ever. Moving to a cheaper area, not taking on any new debt (even after taking on student loans they couldnt afford to pay back.) Buying a very small home with all that money they are "saving for retirement" sitting in their 401ks they think they need to live a life of travel and luxury when theyre old. People my age never, ever seem to consider alternatives outside of what they "dreamed." They need to wake up and learn about how the economy works, and how they fit into it. Because sometimes you cant earn more, and it happens, and that's the worst time to see things for the way they really are. Better rip off the bandaid now and find meaning outside your career because if and when that is gone, you are gonna have a bad time.
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Economics
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You’re right it’s not completely in your control. However that doesn’t mean you are helpless either. Don’t let your degree or your past experiences define you.
You having a bachelors degree alone can get you many entry level positions even if they are low paying. Use any job or position you can as a stepping stone and get to know people. Stick close to the successful ones and learn from then. Above all light a fire under your own ass and be ready to work. It may sound harsh but it’s the truth. I’m not trying to be condescending.
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Economics
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This isn't exactly true per se. (Gots me an MA in Psych).
The truth is we have found an approximate amount of money (that will change due to things like inflation/social expectancies and such) where making more money ceases to increase your happiness. However, other important factors about your job other than pay will affect overall job satisfaction. These are things like autonomy (do you make some decisions about how you finish your work, or are you completely at your bosses whims), mastery (a job can't be so difficult that you can't get good at it, BUT, it can't be so easy that it poses no challenge), and meaning (do you feel doing your job does good for the world). Further, there are aspects about your overall happiness (from a Eudaimonia perspective) that are important to think of as well. These are things like social contact/activity and health factors. Saying there is a perfect amount of money you need to be happy is an oversimplification. You can make less money and still be happy due to finding a great social circle, being fit and healthy, and finding something in your life that gives it meaning, and you can be a millionaire and also miserable.
This is all from research I read about a while ago, so I may be misremembering some things, and I will need time to dig up the sources.
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Economics
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Honestly first of all get out of social work. Seriously take any god damn job besides social work. That is not an industry built off growth and profits. It’s an industry based off dependency.
Seriously look into a trade/skilled job. Trade employers don’t give two fucks about your education or history. They just care if you can get the job done. I’d be happy to tell you about my line of work if you’re willing to listen.
Also because of your degree I’m sure you’re good with money, but the folks at r/personalfinance are great at helping you optimize your wealth and income.
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Economics
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But that number has been floated around for a while. As soon as I read the OP, I became suspicious that that may have influenced the answer given in the poll. It’s a pretty reasonable thing to search on Google, which I’m sure many of the respondents had, and more probably heard it second hand. I’m wondering if that’s truly their own assessment or if they just thought it was the right answer.
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Economics
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i think it's totally dependent on your living costs. that amount of money in mainland europe is tremendous; but in the US that is just about enough to start feeling happy (generalization, of course).
due to not having to pay back student loans and having affordable healthcare, along with (again, generally) great public transport systems in most major cities in europe, it wouldn't surprise me if the living costs are significantly lower across the pond
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Economics
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I was under the impression that's what an "investment bank" was.
...but then again, no Glass Steagall Act.
On a more serious note, "narrow banking" is the business that the Treasury is in (assuming "full faith and credit" rules apply), so it's not terribly surprising that the Fed shut them down (probably just a silly Austrian publicity stunt anyway).
Still, the bigger question for "narrow banking" is, "what exactly will they do with depositor money?" I mean, if they're just going to buy Treasuries and pass on the risk free rate, I think the "narrow bank" CEO isn't going to make very much.
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Economics
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The Treasury has a complex relationship with the Fed.
*The* primary monetary tool the Fed has at its disposal is being able to set the interest rate (the "full faith and credit" part of the Treasury's mission statement makes the the Fed's interest rate a "risk free rate of return").
Implicit in that bargain is than the Treasury doesn't go off and do something that causes interest rates to depart Fed control. Last time that happened was when Volcker was brought in to get the Fed back in control of run-away Treasury policy. The key here is to understand the Treasury bond auction price discovery mechanism. When Treasury auctions start to fail and the bonds get handed back in unpurchased, that's basically the market ("bond vigilantes" as the Fed likes to call them) telling the US government that their "full faith and credit" guarantee is going to cost a little more this week (and maybe even more the next week and even more than week after that). Left unchecked, the Fed loses control of the ability to set interest rates. That's why, **when Treasury bond auctions start to fail, the Fed always steps in and buys what the market will not**. This why the debt ceiling political show that gets put on every couple of years is such a huge fucking charade. The Fed basically produces ever increasing debt by purchasing unpurchased bonds that would otherwise allow the market to start setting interest rates. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion that **the Treasury isn't the one "printing the money"**; it's the Fed that does that work.
Fundamentally, **what the Fed does is prevent interest rates from characterizing risk**. Why does it do this? Risk in the bond world is the risk of default. A central bank's singular purpose in life (and you can forget the "dual mandate" window dressing) is to keep the debt the central bank has created intact.
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Economics
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So I looked at the report to see where the 81 billion came from. The fact that the military does things like fight pirates along oil shipping lanes in the Persian gulf really cant be described as a "subsidy to oil" can it? That's just militaries doing their jobs.
Using that logic, Bangladesh spends huge sums fighting maoist insurgents, a chief beneficiary is the fashion industry. Do you argue that Bangladesh is subsidizing the fashion industry with its military?
Hell, the NYPD spends a lot of money combating organized crime. If you own a pizza shop in New York, and the NYPD's anti organized crime initiatives stopped a gang from extorting protection money, is that the government subsidizing the pizza industry?
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Economics
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Yeah the fact that they try to tie 19 million barrels a day of oil the US imports to overseas contingency spending, when the vast majority of that comes from either internally from the US or imported from Canada means these findings can be safely ignored. At the end of the day of those 19 million barrels 9 million come from within the US, 4[ million from Canada, just under 1 million from Saudi Arabia, with only 1.7 million in total coming from the Persian gulf.](https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbblpd_a.htm) Afghanistan doesn't export anything and Iraq only exports .6 million bpd to us.
On a broader note though, securing the global commons and safeguarding worldwide trade is easily one of the most valuable services the US military provides. If you factor in the 81 billion in cost of these operations then you should also factor in the trillions of dollars in trade that occurs between the US and its partners alone, much less the tens of trillions that occur on an annual basis throughout the world in no small part due to the more secure world we live in since the soviet union went away.
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Economics
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Not in a way. This is exactly what it is. There is nothing wrong with subsidies, it has become taboo to discuss them because it gets tagged into socialism or communism. When a local government looks at the cost of building roads to a potential new development, we don't say "well isn't that just the job of the transportation department". We *should* run a cost benefit analysis and debate the merits from there.
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Economics
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This would be a compelling argument if the enforcement of shipping lane safety was uniform or performed with disregard of the region or interests it intends to protect.
Consider a scenario where the NYPD only stops crime that impacts pizza places. The US military overlooks a great deal of suffering and lawlessness in the world because it doesn’t advance the interests of the American economy.
If the US military has to perform the functions of the military of other countries solely for the benefit of cheaper oil, it seems like more like a subsidy and less like “we are just upholding the order!”
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Economics
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> $10k - $30k for an evacuation from an embassy
Interesting point ( and something I didn't know ). That sounds more like a fine than a fee, though. Then again, with private contractors...
I consider how we mainly use hydrocarbons to subsidize land use patterns to be the ugliest part of it. I mean residential land use - people are pushed out to exurbs because of land price and we don't capture land rents near where they work.
This being said, I've seen parts of the oil industry up close. People are mainly there because there's money. But the fact that hydrocarbons basically got us out of a 19th century social structure has some merit.
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Economics
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\> That's why corporate taxes are justified more so than taxes on consumption or labour.
Not really, since a) the corporations would just defend their own property-if the state lets them-and b) corporate taxes are just passed onto the consumer anyways.
So it's just the state not letting the corporation do it, then charging them for doing the thing they would do otherwise, all with pointing the same proverbial guns at each party.
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Economics
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What I'm saying is that the resource extraction from developing nations on a massive scale being conducted by oil corporations creates an environment (extreme poverty in close proximity with high-value unarmed targets in open waters) in which large scale military protection from a hegemonic state halfway across the globe is required for the business to be viable or profitable. Corporations selling internationally shipped goods (usually exploiting cheap labor from the developing world) also provide easy targets in the same way; they should be subject to the same sort of analysis imo.
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Economics
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The highest value isn’t oil, it’s manufactured goods. Sure, oil tankers might be more valuable, but the container ships are far more numerous. Some pirate lord doesn’t care about the cargo, they care about the fact that the owner of the ship is willing to pay him a couple million to release it. The ship is way too large for him to hide, and the infrastructure required to effectively collect the cargo from the ship and resell it elsewhere is too expensive for said pirate lord to construct. They’re looking for a quick buck - that means capturing the easiest target possible, phoning in the threat, collecting the cash, and getting the hell out.
So essentially, what you’re saying is, *if global trade didn’t exist, and everyone lived in poverty, piracy wouldn’t exist either*. And that’s just fucking wrong on so many levels.
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Economics
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I mean, I generally agree with you, but...
The victims of... probably most crimes are... not just innocent, but aggressively innocent. The pizza shop is just a fucking pizza shop. It's not putting itself in any risky position. It's not placing itself under a volcano. It probably didn't knowingly pick the building next to mafia home base to do business in. They have a lock on their door. They do everything they're supposed to do to operate a regular, not-unusually-risky business. Accordingly, we feel comfortable "insuring" their safety. Their taxes are their insurance premiums; the police are their policy.
And, you know, I don't wanna play the victim blame game. Of course, the police stop, or should stop, criminals when the victims are not being as safe as possible, and even when the victims are pretty evil. But I think that analogy is harder when you're talking about corporations operating in knowingly risky conditions. They're putting themselves in a position where they know that the US Government is going to have to spend billions to defend them, and is going to do it. And they're profiting from it in some vague proportion. That's different, isn't it? If we go by the insurance analogy -- isn't their behavior way too risky to insure at the usual price?
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Economics
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Take "former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. “More than half the Defense budget is for the security of Persian Gulf oil.”"
That's a tricky bit - the model in play for regimes in the region is based on the House of Saud. The primary business of the House of Saud is hospitality in and around Mecca and Medina. Those are destinations of pilgrims on The Haj.
That means they can't be "military" in an interesting way. There is a standard , based in perception amongst Muslims that giving the appearance of interfering with performing the Haj is a grave sin.
So they farm that out to us. This is by treaty and by ( otherwise independent of treaty ) policy.
The fact that it is related to oil is very nearly beside the point. Our relationship with the House of Saud is one we more or less inherited from the British as the Empire declined. That being said, security of the flow of oil is a legitimate strategic concern.
I think a better framing of a question is "well, should we be World Police at all?" Maybe not, but path dependence is just one of those things...
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Economics
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> In order to make a profit, you first need property rights and private property. Sovereign states are what's making sure of these things.
Right. Sovereign states gain their rightful authority from their enforcing of the rule of law.
> That's why corporate taxes are justified more so than taxes on consumption or labour
Huh? How does this follow? You just pointed out that everyone benefits from the protection of the state; why are taxes on some aspects of the economy more justified than others?
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Economics
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> We should run a cost benefit analysis and debate the merits from there.
Yes. But we should also have a system in place that prevents the owner/ceo of the company building that new development from bribing the local government into building that road even if it's shown to non-beneficial by independent analysis.
The economics of things political in nature do not run on a simple cost benefit analysis or in a vacuum.
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Economics
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The $81 billion in direct costs for patrolling sea lanes doesn't protect oil alone, but it's doubtful that the U.S. Navy would care as much about what goes on in the western Indian Ocean without it.
Moreover, this routine policing doesn't include the vastly costlier *wars* for control of the Middle East oil patch, which are a much more direct subsidy:
>And that’s still only direct military costs, which are just one piece of the puzzle. The economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have done [**extraordinary work**](https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FThree-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict%2Fdp%2F0393334171) attempting to tally up the full costs of the wars, including higher oil prices, debt service, obligations to returning veterans, lost wages, lost lives, and much else. They [**estimated the total**](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/estimating-costs-war-methodological-issues-applications-iraq-and-afghanistan) at somewhere between $4 and $6 trillion.
​
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Economics
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That's not the only factor though. William Lazonik writes a lot about how legislation allowing share-buybacks for executives and boardmembers has become a major culprit in increasing inequality between employees and employers.
Taxation is a mechanism of redistribution and nobody has really solved the question of how to best tax coorporations given their capability of moving capital and disguising profits as costs in their accounting (Starbucks in the UK is a great example). Look up G. Zucmann and A. Alstadsæter for more details on this.
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Economics
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Not sure why you would be “absolutely certain” about something based off of a relatively uncontroversial opinion, but part of the reason I think that is I’ve had “real jobs” in government, non profit and for profit sectors. Occasionally, I’d find those positions in the first two, and I’m not saying they don’t exist in the corporate world, just that they are relatively rare. I obviously haven’t worked in every company ever.
That said, I’ve worked with plenty of people who suck at their jobs, which I guess makes them pointless, but the role itself would be beneficial if it had an effective person in it.
Also, who cares how much experience I’ve had? It’s an empirical guess on my part and same as yours. Sounds like we’re both coloring our opinions on personal experience, no?
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Economics
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Got it. I don’t wholly agree, but get your point then. I was interpreting pointless as in “unnecessary for the operation/business,” in which case I’m sure they exist but those jobs generally tend to get phased out. This takes time so there are always a few, but if prevalent in any single business or industry, the whole thing won’t be around long.
To your point, I think there’s some truth there, but I’m not sure to the degree of it’s all entirely pointless. It doesn’t have to be life-affirming to be a marginal positive, and those marginal positives are better than negatives or nothing. Could we ideate some better way for everyone to spend their time, money and labor, I’m sure, but we’ve yet to conceive a way to effectively scale that as far as I know.
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Economics
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It probably is a good strategy, but people are too into the whole "dey took r jerbz" type hatred of blue collar workers to see it.
The mainline impression I get from this sub is that we *need* immigration because our citizens will refuse to do this kind of work, when in reality that kind of work wouldn't be considered so demeaning if undocumented and imported laborers weren't completely undercutting and suppressing wages.
The subtext here is that the middle class love their ridiculously cheap fast food, lawn care, massages, house cleaners, construction, janitors, etc, etc too much to admit that its creating a permanent underclass of immigrants. We're gonna have weird ethnic class strife... their children will grow older and realize their parents escaped abject poverty in the 3rd world only to leave them with a raw deal relative to their peers in the 1st world.
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Economics
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> I sincerely wonder what you mean by that. I think there’s a major semantic difference here over what “pointless” means in this context.
It generates no real value, it's simply adding costs and giving a more "human" feel to the transaction. Hence ordering kiosks are taking off, and counter-serve restaurants are being adopted extremely rapidly to cut out the cost of having a "human robot" do things simple machines with modern technology can do better.
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Economics
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Everyone who's ever worked in an organization knows that dead wood exists. The problem is that the claim that MOST jobs are pointless is so over the top, it's hard to take seriously. I feel like he started with the thesis and started added up job titles till he got to 50% and secures a book deal.
Stuff like saying "customer service is pointless because nobody should ever make a mistake" is not an argument made in good faith.
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Economics
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> In the private, for profit sector, pointless jobs are pretty rare.
Have worked in the private sector for 23 years. I think you're misunderstanding what "pointless" means in this case, because across the board, the private sector is riddled with them.
Every middle manager whose job is to tell local management what corporate said and tell corporate how local management is doing is a pointless job.
Virtually all cashiers are either pointless or will be soon.
I once worked on a retail team that went around to different stores in the company to... change the layout because they decided it would work better if this aisle was over there, and this vendor bought this eight foot section here. Then a few months later we'd go change it again. Epitome of pointless.
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Economics
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What does any of that have to do with allocation of resources and labor to pointless jobs? Anyone can park their own car, there’s no point in paying someone to do it. The majority of work a bank teller does can be done by an ATM but people prefer to interact with humans so it’s a job.
Your definition of meaningful work is that people are willing to pay for it therefore it’s a good way to allocate resources. It’s the most surface level analysis of work and its meaning.
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Economics
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I agree that he overstates the proliferation of useless jobs, particularly among the "duct tapers" in customer service. Almost anyone whose worked customer service has dealt with an avoidable problem and is understandably frustrated by that, especially when that problem repeats itself. However, Graeber also makes the case for UBI by arguing that if workers had a minimum guarantee of a comfortable lifestyle without having to work, they would have a greater incentive to fix repeated, avoidable problems since their livelihood is dependent on fixing those repeated problems.
All in all, Graeber is critiquing an immensely complex phenomenon and therefore his critique is almost certainly incomplete. More analysis is needed.
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Economics
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momentum + asymmetric information (you may know your job is 80% pointless, but management might not.)
" In a competitive industry at any rate—and such an industry alone can serve as a test—the task of keeping cost from rising requires constant struggle, absorbing a great part of the energy of the manager. How easy it is for an inefficient manager to dissipate the differentials on which profitability rests, and that it is possible, with the same technical facilities, to produce with a great variety of costs, are among the commonplaces of business experience which do not seem to be equally familiar in the study of the economist. The very strength of the desire, constantly voiced by producers and engineers, to be allowed to proceed untrammeled by considerations of money costs, is eloquent testimony to the extent to which these factors enter into their daily work."
Hayek
https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html
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Economics
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Middle managers are not pointless. That’s like saying the ranks between corporal and 5 star general are useless because he general can just tell the corporals what to do directly...
Advertising and product placement is not useless. It increases demand for certain products and provides additional exposure. Perhaps it’s being done poorly at that company, but it is not a pointless job.
Cashiers are not pointless. Many people prefer to use cashiers and they’re required for some types of purchases.
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Economics
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You're definitely misunderstanding what "pointless" means, then, which is fine.
People can prefer human cashiers, but they add nothing of value over automation. The world won't break when this unnecessary job is eliminated, and it has already started.
Middle managers are routinely cut by the dozens-to-hundreds at corporations, who see stock prices increase and efficiencies hold steady or grow, because these roles are often duplicating the work of others or just simply have a vague job description to justify themselves. These are easily proven pointless when the layoffs result in no change.
Advertising and product placement increase desire. This is not something that helps society function in any meaningful way. This one's just too obvious to me.
Here's some info on Bullshit Jobs: https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx
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Economics
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>People can prefer human cashiers, but they add nothing of value over automation. The world won't break when this unnecessary job is eliminated, and it has already started.
You can say the same about, well, literally anything except food and water basically. Will the world break if you don't have songs, movies, tasty food, etc? No. Do they increase human happiness? Yes. If we were going for bare-minimum survival that's one thing. But people tend to want a society that is prosperous and happy. You can say it doesn't create any real widgets either, but the point of widgets is to provide happiness as well, in some form or another.
>Middle managers are routinely cut by the dozens-to-hundreds at corporations, who see stock prices increase and efficiencies hold steady or grow, because these roles are often duplicating the work of others or just simply have a vague job description to justify themselves. These are easily proven pointless when the layoffs result in no change.
Some? Yes. All? No. It depends on the specific position. Except during major restructuring which generally happens when a company is already failing due to having pointless jobs (notably, not all companies are doing so) I don't see any of these getting cut. The market responds.
>Advertising and product placement increase desire. This is not something that helps society function in any meaningful way. This one's just too obvious to me.
Increase desire which is good for the company, okay for consumers. They also increase awareness. You can't properly let the market know what you want if you can't see what the market has to offer.
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Economics
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> There is no inherent reason why technological change should increase inequality vs decreases it. - zzzzz94
Comments consisting of mere jokes are against the rules.
In the event that you're actually serious, the material development and advances in technology in the productive forces, is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism, capitalism and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions which eventually leads to greater equality.
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Economics
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Kurt Vonnegut talked about exactly that in [Player Piano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel%29) - they created a bunch of nonsense jobs for people whose jobs had been replaced with machines, and one of them was definitely flag-waver.
*edit* If you've never read it, I highly recommend it. It's a reasonably short novel, a good read, and very prescient about our modern condition. (Albeit, of course, highly dated in terms of technology - punch cards are the storage medium of choice.)
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Economics
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> The mainline impression I get from this sub is that we need immigration because our citizens will refuse to do this kind of work
I don't think that's r/Economics point of view on it - it has nothing to do with economics. Illegal immigrants compete for jobs just as citizens do - they buy groceries from the same markets, purchase housing in the same city, etc. Making immigration illegal performs the same function as a trade tariff, and has the same results - it raises the price of a local good above what is competitive, resulting in people purchasing from other countries (outsourcing), and it creates a black market for that good (illegal immigration).
From an economic standpoint, the complaint that "these people are willing to work for less than we are" is not compelling. It's competition. (Now, of course, there's a question of who has the competitive advantage between illegal immigrants and citizens, since the illegal immigrants don't pay certain taxes but also don't receive public assistance or refundable tax credits, but that's a more complex question.)
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Economics
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Sure, that's back to data entry but those people normally do more than just book keep (though some of it certainly could be automated, that'd require each company hire an automation specialist who goes through every job to find what can be automated, which itself would probably not be worth it for many companies, and is infeasible for all of them to do)
That's still hardly a lot of jobs. Maybe like what, 5% of a typical office? These people normally also do other things that require they know the data (e.g. buyers/sellers) which while surely technically could at some point be automated it is not going to be cost effective to do so.
Also dozens of anecdotes doesn't cut it when talking about an apparently wide-spread uselessnes of jobs. Maybe a few hundred thousand.
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Economics
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> Making immigration illegal performs the same function as a trade tariff, and has the same results - it raises the price of a local good above what is competitive
This would only be the case if immigrants are primarily working in the manufacturing sector lowering the price of domestic goods relative to the global competition, but in my admittedly anecdotal experience they are primarily employed in the service sector and construction; things that you cannot "outsource" because they have to exist locally.
So our ticky tack houses and lawncare and hamburgers (things that we can't get from China) are marginally cheaper than they would be, but our lower class is staring at heavy competition and depressed wages for that low-skill work. More of our citizens getting on government assistance and giving up while undocumented people pick up the slack. It's a net drain on our society. Can you explain why I'm wrong here?
> Now, of course, there's a question of who has the competitive advantage between illegal immigrants and citizens, since the illegal immigrants don't pay certain taxes but also don't receive public assistance or refundable tax credits, but that's a more complex question.
I don't think it's all that complex, that's exactly the concern we are talking about here. They push down wages because they are A. More desperate thus work for less. B. Playing by different rules outside of the law. It's not their fault, I don't blame the undocumented for trying to improve their lives by coming to the US or wherever but that doesn't mean we can ignore the consequences or just keep hand waving it.
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Economics
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Bullshit jobs are a thing but they aren't permanent. Companies grow and refine the same way bodybuilders do: Cycles of bulking and cutting.
When your company is growing you shouldn't slash. You *should* be less discerning about expenditures because expenditures help grow revenue. But this means inefficiencies build up. Inefficiencies come in many forms, including dead wood. Then you take a year and do a burn. You try and get rid of as much inefficiency as you can while retaining as much revenue as you can, then you go back to growing.
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Economics
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> hire an automation specialist
You mean consultant. And they may not find everything.
> That's still hardly a lot of jobs. Maybe like what, 5% of a typical office? These people normally also do other things that require they know the data (e.g. buyers/sellers) which while surely technically could at some point be automated it is not going to be cost effective to do so.
Never said it was a lot of jobs (although it depends on your definition of "a lot" here; some people would consider "a few hundred thousand" as "a lot"). I just said they existed and offered a possible explanation of how they exist and some examples.
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Economics
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> This would only be the case if immigrants are primarily working in the manufacturing sector lowering the price of domestic goods
The "good" in this case is labor. And I would be very surprised if a majority of illegal immigrants are not working in agriculture and manufacturing.
>It's a net drain on our society. Can you explain why I'm wrong here?
The question would simply be why you think you're right? Why are more people working in a society a "net drain"? People contribute not just supply but demand to an economy. Pointing to "heavy competition" does not suggest that anyone is a "net drain".
>I don't think it's all that complex, that's exactly the concern we are talking about here
I'm not sure you understood the complexity here. It's not entirely clear whether illegal immigrants have a competitive advantage over citizens because of taxes or vice versa. They can't take advantage of refundable tax credits or many kinds of public assistance. And in fact many of them do pay payroll taxes and income taxes even though they can't reap many of the benefits.
>More desperate thus work for less.
Again, from an economic standpoint, the complaint that someone is willing to work for less than you is not compelling. It very much feels like you're looking for a non-economic answer to this question. From a purely economic standpoint, I'm not sure there's a particularly compelling case for limiting immigration. And certainly whether there is one or not, it has nothing to do with "taking the jobs we won't do", that's just a dumb political argument, nor does it have anything to do with "they will do the jobs for less", which is a *good* thing from an economic point of view.
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Economics
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Let’s say you are making $30k/year, and that happens to be enough to survive on, do you not still look for that next opportunity to increase your salary? “Well if I get X cert or Y title then I can push for a raise or submit a resume to Company Z”. Automation will eventually replace nearly all low level jobs (taxis, truck drivers, fast food, cashiers, etc.). Not just because it will be feasible but also because buying a automated semi will be cheaper than hiring a driver (at least for long haul stuff anyway).
Right now we rely on the idea that everyone *must* have a job to be a productive member of society. Anyone who doesn’t have a formal job is a slacker/not contributing. Well in all likelyhood that paradigm is going to have to change.
Let’s be real, how much does a cashier, fast food worker, really advance society, these are menial jobs largely that enable people to survive, but really the world would be better off if we automated them and provided a basic standard of living for everyone. Maybe some people will sit at home and eat bonbons. Which is really already the case as we have various welfare programs and these people will still show up for medical treatment which is then still paid for by society today. However, I believe that vast majority will still look for opportunities to contribute and not having to rely on a 9-5 to survive (buy food/get healthcare) will enable them to pursue other opportunities, think community service, global aid work, greater progress in typically fuzzy areas like philosophy and the arts.
TL;DR - In the future, not everyone will have to work and that’s fine as society as a whole will be enabled to grow further and faster.
Edit: People who don’t want to be productive, will find ways of being unproductive regardless, which society inevitably ends up paying for anyway (think about coworkers who have performed at the absolute bare minimum to avoid being fired but still represented a hinderance). Creating a UBI would prevent people who want to be productive, from getting trapped in dead-end, menial jobs.
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Economics
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technology can liberate people to pursue higher-value-added work if the technology itself is accessible.
Most of the innovative software and architectures in the past few decades are paywalled by EULAs, IP restrictions, lack of affordable full-featured subscriptions and the requirement for specialized proprietary training. The only reason we have so many amateur media content creators on the internet is because of how easy it is to get a pirated copy of Adobe AfterEffects.
That's why we need to fundamentally reform our intellectual property laws and support movements like Creative Commons and Open Access.
Speaking historically, the introduction of industrial technology hasn't really served employees very well. Ford or Toyota installing Kuka robots only reduces your poverty if you just happened to have been a major shareholder in Kuka or Siemens at the time. The problem is that labor is largely excluded from owning substantive amounts of the capital of their employer, which creates competing interests in which the capitalists (who are served directly by the sole decision makers of the firm, those being the C-suite executives and Board of Directors) always win out, to the expense of labor.
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Economics
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Marketing isn't about introducing people to new products, it's more about figuring out what kinds of products people are getting ready to buy anyway, and getting them to buy brand x instead of brand y. These days, that is pretty much all automated.
Companies still have marketing departments because investors equate more hiring to future earnings growth. They get their roi all the same so they're happy, but it's not *really* a function of hiring more people. That's just a number for the slide deck.
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Economics
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> The "good" in this case is labor.
Goods are consumable items, tangible property. Services are non-physical. Labor needn't necessarily produce goods. I might need some clarification here.
> And I would be very surprised if a majority of illegal immigrants are not working in agriculture and manufacturing.
Ok... and I would be very surprised if a majority of US illegal immigrants *are* in agriculture and manufacturing. It's "undocumented" by nature which is part of the issue, and hard to prove. Illegal day laborers in domestic service industries and construction is the trope, but maybe there's a ton manufacturing exportable goods for foreign consumption and keeping us competitive? Again, we are working in a information black hole.
> It's not entirely clear whether illegal immigrants have a competitive advantage over citizens because of taxes or vice versa.
They obviously have *some* type of advantage when it comes to taxation... unless you are implying that illegal immigrants are simply better day laborers than our own citizens. How else do we explain the phenomenon of a dozen hispanic men sitting outside of a home depot everyday waiting for something... and little to no white, black, or asian men?
Anecdotally, I worked with some girls from Honduras at a sandwich shop for a couple summers in high school. They admitted that they worked for a little under minimum wage, and I noticed they'd frequently work well more than 12 daily hours allowable. If they couldn't get the owner to let em stay, they would literally switch out t-shirts an walk over the adjacent burrito shop and keep working or vice versa. I would only be guessing at their taxes, but their kids all went the local schools. They were nice people; one was super proud of her first car, another showed off her kids third grade report card. This is what they came here for.
I realize that you want to just be condescending and tell me these experiences don't matter, but maybe you can actually provide information as to why I'm an idiot so I can learn.
> They can't take advantage of refundable tax credits or many kinds of public assistance. And in fact many of them do pay payroll taxes and income taxes even though they can't reap many of the benefits.
We can't know what they do or do not pay in taxes and what governmental services take advantage of *because* they are undocumented, which is part of the issue here.
> "they will do the jobs for less", which is a good thing from an economic point of view.
It's a good thing for the country's GDP, it's a bad thing for the people that don't have a job who would've otherwise. I'm more concerned with our citizens' standard of living than I am with gross growth. Can you show that illegal immigration nets us a better quality of life on a per capita basis?
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Economics
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> the wealth inequality that’s caused by it
In a zero-sum world, the rich have to take from the poor to amass wealth. In a non-zero-sum world, which is what we live in, the rich can also amass wealth by positioning themselves to take advantage of market efficiencies that only they have access to. I can be a shipping tycoon who bullies my workers into accepting less pay, thereby making myself richer, and/or I can use robotics to make my shipping more efficient but never share those efficiency gains with my employees.
Both of these behaviors need to be addressed and curtailed by a strong democratic government. We want innovation, we want competition, we want growth and prosperity, but not at the expense of allowing Robber Barrons to trample over the common man.
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Economics
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Not everyone is incentivized by maximizing overall profit, that only happens in nice perfect econ models.
In reality, there are tons of forces at play that push a company off the maximum profit line. Think about a sales team that finds its sales bonus tied to beating benchmarks which are largely set by last year's performance. You tend to see sales teams aim to \*just\* beat their annual target and then have no incentive to go beyond since it means hitting that target next year will be harder. Yet, the firm would be maximizing profit if it sold me.
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Economics
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> government building maintenance
People are so removed from trades work they think this is a made up job. Large buildings have fairly complicated automation systems and boilers and HVAC equipment and a million other things. Generally almost everything is contracted out and there is maybe one guy who has worked in the field for a long time to oversee a half dozen buildings who is "the government worker".
You ever notice sometimes escalators stop working but then they are working again later? That doesn't happen by itself.
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Economics
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You should get a portion of the value you generate. If you can pile wood twice as fast you should get paid twice as fast. If you then notice that the wood could be re-organized to save a lot of money of the year, you should get a cut of that as a bonus. Many places already have profit sharing like this. There can be individual and team based profit sharing to get different sized problems tackled as well. Just a thought.
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Economics
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Answer: we don't care about wealth inequality. For it is only a measure of envy. All we care about is whether our lot today will is better than it was yesterday. For the vast majority of humans, this is absolutely true. Wealth inequality is a relative metric, trotted out only by the left when every single absolute metric shows us that we're all better off today than we ever were, and things are getting better still for everybody.
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Economics
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>That probably vastly understates it (since they are you know undocumented by nature and hard to track)
That number sounds like it's essentially made up, but DHS, USDA, and the Census Bureau all arrive at more or less the same number. The thing about unauthorized immigrants is that they're almost *all* working. The subset that come to this country illegally and either don't work or become career criminals is small. If you can estimate the number of undocumented immigrant adults, you're pretty close to the number working.
On the other hand, how USDA got the "what industries they're working in" numbers is still a mystery to me.
> Is this OP not correct?
Possibly. It depends on the nature of each job.
For the most part, those jobs are available to American citizens *right now*. Ask any farmer, any cannery operator, any landscaping foreman whether they would have an American citizen, a migrant worker, or an undocumented immigrant working for them, they would *almost always* want the American. None of them want to take on the risk of hiring undocumented help, migrant worker visas are expensive and time consuming to get, but the problem is that American workers, by and large, [do not want those jobs for the wage that can be paid.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-landscapers-hire-american-plan-ended-with-bringing-in-mexican-workers-to-finish-the-job/2017/10/05/f4656234-9743-11e7-b569-3360011663b4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.85c81a05fbab) H2-B Visas are *expensive*, if a business owner could get an American to do the same job they would in a heartbeat.
But let's handwave that away and assume that these American workers would do these jobs for $14/hr, at that point a business owner has to look at automation as a viable alternative to hiring.
Take for example, take the push to pay fast food workers $15. Some workers will remain at $15/hour, but at that rate *some* subset of those jobs will be automated away. People at the counter are being replaced by touch-screen kiosks and change dispensers, Red Robin is cutting expediters and bus boys, etc.
On the other hand, this will in turn create some new jobs. Someone's gotta build those kiosks and maintain those robots, but the job creation won't be 1:1. 5 kiosks might take 3 people's full time low-skill jobs away, but only create one permanent high-skill position as a kiosk service technician.
>So this information implies 5% or somewhere north of 6.5 million jobs could be created by "halting illegal immigration"
Not at all. Again, these jobs are available to Americans today, but Americans don't want them. It sounds good to say "well kick out the illegals, the business will have to pay *me* a living wage", but that's not always the case. At some point there's a tipping point in pay rate where the cost of labor is greater than the revenue generated by the employee, so the employee is losing the company money. Migrant/undocumented immigrants work well below that tipping point, in general Americans don't.
EDIT: undocumented immigrants adults - > undocumented immigrant adults
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Economics
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> Again, these jobs are available to Americans today, but Americans don't want them.
Yea I agree to an extent, but American citizens used to do these jobs and I think decades of depressed wages and stigma caused by desperate illegal workers takes it's toll on American's willingness to involve themselves in certain industries. The work would still need to be done, and if you actually managed to "halt" illegal immigration the employers would have to entice domestic laborers somehow.
Is it feasible to halt immigration? Would it be positive for GDP overall? Probably no and no. But if we did manage to deport everyone it could *significantly* improve the lives of some lower quartile blue-collar middle-American families who would have more options, higher employment, and higher wages. That weird vein of hope is a big reason we ended up with Trump as our president...
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Economics
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Part of the problem will be what the new jobs are. The jobs being replaced are factory jobs other manual labor that requires no advanced education - just on the job training. The people with that those jobs probably wouldn't be able to do a lot of the 133 million new jobs because they are probably of a completely different skill set.
For example replace 5 manual works with a machine which creates 3 new jobs to have people monitor and maintain the machine but the 5 original workers simply don't have the skill set to perform that job.
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Economics
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Or by completely eliminating the pressure for change, people continue to whine about it, I agree that some social net is needed to make the transition easier and that should come with retraining, like the plan Obama supported and financed as well Hillary wanted to continue. There's plenty of social nets here in the EU, the mentality is the same, people hate changing jobs and learning a new skill. Just to make a point. Coal miners chose Trump over the retraining plan. Ergo they should be left behind.
Even though the UK offers several programs for displaced workers, example UnionLearn, only 9% feel as the government is doing "enough". 16 % of that their trade unions are taking appropriate steps; and only 27 % of employees think their employer is taking action to prepare them for changes. So apart from offering you options what should the Government do, just guarantee you a job, offer you indefinite pay?
I think ideologically it's easy to offer help but in practice people are not guaranteed to take advantage of it.
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Economics
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There's more jobs than coding and yes they would. If someone has the required skill set you hire them, nobody would care if they used to work in a factory.
Example: Coal miners going in to renewables. [This](https://www.academia.edu/26372861/Retraining_Investment_for_U.S._Transition_from_Coal_to_Solar_Photovoltaic_Employment#_blank) study shows it's possible and really not costly. If they refuse then the ships just sail on without them.
Also if they flat out refuse any training then what can we do for them? Oh no the truck drivers refuse to learn a new skill, I guess we should just slow economic output and performance for a few decades until they die. You, me and every member of the economy will technically be paying a subside due to higher prices on goods and services and we would lose the economic edge for future growth, great. And all this just because someone doesn't feel like learning new shit. Well I don't think that's fair to the rest of us. Truck drivers and factory workers aren't a protected species and I personally feel no obligations to them apart from helping them transition.
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Economics
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> I'm sorry but the world shouldn't pander to people who fight change. We can't just keep them employed untill they die.
Not disagreeing with the gist of your argument, but I'd argue there's some nuance involved.
Do you spend tens of thousand on retraining someone in their early 60s that's about to retire? Or just let them ride out the last couple of years with mediocre productivity? Or do we just fire anyone who can't pull their weight as well as your best and brightest talent?
One of the arguments made against a minimum wage is that it increases unemployment to a degree, but do we as a society accept some level of unemployment in exchange for the majority to have a livable income?
I do agree that the "make coal great again!" lunacy is a complete policy failure (and the people pushing really just want the political capital reaped from the ignorant), but there is something to be said for trying to retrain every single worker into a cutting edge field if there are minimal marginal gains to be had, if not net losses.
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Economics
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Repetitive jobs are replaced by machines. To say that factory jobs are being replaced by machines isn't entirely accurate. A recent example of this was found at the [Tesla manufacturing plant](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/musk-tips-his-tesla-cap-to-humans-after-robots-undercut-model-3). Musk had clearly subscribed to the idea that factory workers could be replaced by machines, but found out that is incorrect:
> “We had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts, and it wasn’t working, so we got rid of that whole thing,” said Musk
Analyst Max Warburton had reported his incredulity over Musk's original thesis that the factory could be heavily automated. He explained:
> “The best producers -- still the Japanese -- try to limit automation. It is expensive and is statistically inversely correlated to quality. One tenet of lean production is ‘stabilize the process, and only then automate.’ If you automate first, you get automated errors. We believe Tesla may be learning this to its cost.”
It was further explained that machines are good at repetitive tasks, but not good at identifying differentiation in those tasks and adapting. So, if the car is on the assembly line a cm behind where the previous car was, the machine will try to screw the bolts into it in the wrong place. The time it takes for a machine to identify where the bolts should go is significantly longer than a human can adapt to the situation. In fact, humans often don't realize they are adapting on the fly, which is why the idea that humans can be replaced by machines in factories is so prevalent. We just don't notice all the times we have to adapt to minor deviations.
Maybe, some day, machines will be as quick as humans at adapting. However, they are far from being capable of keeping up with humans still. There's a reason a company like Toyota has 370k employees. It isn't because they haven't bothered to replace them with machines yet. There's a reason companies like GM and Ford put plants in Mexico, where labor is cheaper. Humans remain superior to machines in many tasks in a factory.
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Economics
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I think there's also potential issues with people no longer being able to do work they are passionate about or at least enjoy. For instance, I'm in healthcare but if i were - for whatever reason - not able to get work anymore and had to switch to something like programming, I'd not only be lost, but probably depressed. People can be retrained, of course, but some people are just naturally more suited for certain areas and drawn to certain fields. It's a less serious problem than actually finding work, but I still think it's worth thinking about how society will handle dramatic shifts in professions.
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Economics
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Retraining is fine for the short term. And if you believe that AI and automation will continue to create more jobs than it eliminates **indefinitely**, then it's fine long term too. But I highly doubt that, considering that AI, automation, and computing power improve constantly over time while the human body & brain have limitations. What do you do if more and more people become completely unemployable? Or if we can automate the newly created jobs at a faster rate than the populace can benefit economically? There has got to be a backup plan for the massive income/wealth inequality that will result if the productivity gains of capital investment in automation keep applying downward pressure on the value of labor over time.
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Economics
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>Doesn't mean it's incorrect
No it doesn't, but it also doesn't mean it's nothing more than a persons opinion.
> it's one of the most accessible ways for people to learn about new ideas.
This is bad if the information they are getting is worthless.
>Nick Bostrums Superintelligence is a good one. Those most adaptable to change prosper, which includes looking at news ideas.
I am quite familiar with all of the argument about super intelligence. My colleagues have been obsessed with this stuff for decades.
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Economics
|
Firs off I can't believe how hard i rolled my eyes to this cliche response, I was hoping for a real world solution not a wild what if scenario that currently is not known on what and how many policy changes will be needed, there is no plan of action. Second negative tax income is a better and plausible version of UBI, so maybe you should read up on that instead reddit pipe dreams.
The Finnish experiment for UBI was a massive failure, let's see how the other 4 develop. I'm actually for something like negative tax income, as it scales with peoples salary as oppose to giving everyone money. Rich and middle class people don't need the same help as blue collar workers do. To quote Luke Martinelli, an economist at the University of Bath, UK. “An affordable UBI is inadequate, and an adequate UBI is unaffordable” but that's not true for NTI.
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Economics
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That's a big what if. Like what if a person can never figure out solving second order differential equations, are physicist prepared for that????? But the US, Canadian, EU governments are doing experiments with UBI and more importantly NTI.
Just saying though but the problem you're talking about isn't just around the corner. In the next 50-60 years we will not see a change where automation will take more jobs than it produces. The solutions we can think now may not be at all applicable to that society. Also there's a trend of people slowly leaving production in the hands of robots but entertainment,culture,art and science and engineering are to be the final jobs of humans.
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Economics
|
this. people seem to think it's low income workers that are going to be replaced, this is nonsensical for a number of reasons:
1. the value of automating a process corresponds directly to the earnings of that worker-the less they earn, the less value you'll find in automating their work
2. if your job is looking at a computer, corresponding through a computer and taking actions on a computer: you are already at high risk of having your job automated. making a robot that shaves a coconut is very hard, writing software that converts excel doc and does data entry is exceedingly easy.
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Economics
|
>Repetitive jobs are replaced by machines.
There's some really interesting research on this, with separate papers coming to similar conclusions.
The gist is that you can separate work into routine vs. non-routine and cognitive vs. non-cognitive resulting in 4 types of work:
* Nonroutine cognitive occupations, which include management and professional occupations
* Nonroutine manual occupations, which include service occupations related to assisting or caring for others
* Routine cognitive, which include sales and office occupations
* Routine manual, which include construction, transportation, production and repair occupations
What these papers have found is that automation is great at routine tasks whether cognitive or manual, pushing workers out of routine tasks into non-routine cognitive tasks and non-routine manual tasks.
If you look at what's being replaced - sales and office occupations and construction, transportation, production and repair occupations - are jobs that tend to make up a larger chunk of middle class/middle skill work. This leaves low skill and high skill work remaining, and so workers are being pressured into one of these resulting in the jobs polarization effects we've been seeing.
Generally speaking, nonroutine cognitive occupations are high paying jobs while nonroutine manual occupations are lower paying, and we've been similarly seeing an increase in jobs polarization as middle skill workers are being pushed into higher and lower skill work.
So it's likely that the issue with automation is less that robots will take our jobs and more that they are going to make social mobility more difficult by replacing the middle tier jobs that people could use to work their way up the ladder.
This article give a good overview but the [NBER has some more in depth papers](https://www.google.com/search?q=nber+jobs+polarization) I think are worth reading as well. [https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/may/growing-skill-divide-us-labor-market](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/may/growing-skill-divide-us-labor-market)
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Economics
|
I'm not necessarily arguing that we should resist the inevitable, but to expect that everyone is just going to smoothly transition to completely new careers is naive. It will be tough on some people - both those who simply can't do the work and those who actually do find fulfillment in their current careers.
For example, my dad is dyslexic and not tech savvy at all. He's been working in a meat packing plant for over 30 years. Not too long ago, he was offered a less physically demanding job at the plant, but it required him to punch some information into a computer. My dad kept struggling with that seemingly simple task, so he got put back in his old job. It was actually really kind of sad. I worry about people like him.
Also, when are we going to see the benefits of automation? Where I'm from, there's now an automated McDonald's. It isn't any cheaper. When I go to the store, there's less and less cashiers but plenty of self-checkouts. Groceries aren't any cheaper - in fact, they keep going up.
And the rich/big corporations will totally be cool with us taxing them more to make up for the job losses associated with automation, right?? It's going to be a difficult transition is all I'm saying.
|
Economics
|
If you have an alternate ready answer for "what else is there", why ask the rhetorical question?
UBI has advantages and disadvantages compared to a negative income tax, but ultimately they are there same answer, differing only in details.
There main reason UBI is "unaffordable" is unwillingness to heavily tax capital, not any *actual* infeasibility.
A UBI adequate to allow living, albeit unpleasantly, is possible. Whether it is phased out as you earn more is completely a nitpicking detail, the disadvantage of which is discouraging work to some degree.
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Economics
|
The McDonalds thing, the it only became economical recently to replace cashiers. So the price of a machine is only slightly lower or equal to that of cashier, no meaningful price cut can be made but prices can remain the same for longer, that + inflation = gains for economic actors.
I'm sorry about your dad. I'm curious if future research won't help him. For instance a font for dyslexic people has been made, that helps with reading. And plenty of the big corps are doing research in to helping people like your dad.
Check this out: https://www.abilitynet.org.uk/factsheets/dyslexia-and-computing
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