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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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 Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 7:40 am Post subject: |
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Housing starts up 15%, this year. Toll Brothers very large housing construction business is hiring a lot of workers. Home depot and Lowes are reporting increased sales.
heard of 3d printers, the nest big thing I think. energy costs are dropping as the U.S. becomes an exporter of oil this year. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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The numbers are very cooked. Its the same cooked books that anyone who sits in the White House uses.
That said, the outlook looks brighter than darker as it did a few years ago. I'd love to see us really spend massively on ourselves via a huge investment (Trillions) in infrastructure.
Those are American jobs, that won't go overseas. They are needed. Desparately needed. We are crumbling internally. Thousands of shovel ready, low and working class income jobs for the masses as well as tech jobs on the other end. America isn't nearly as wired as it should be. Living in Korea shoul tell any teacher that.
High speed rail is a must and a boon to some states. Urban areas with high unemployment also have decaying infrastructure and that would be a shot in the arm to major urban centers.
Combine this with big cuts in defense. Bringing troops home. Closing costly, uneeded overseas bases. Cuts in corporate welfare as well as looking at social welfare. Do what Jack Kemp propsed years ago and give long time residents of housing projects their apartments and make them instant homeowners who in theory would ban together and take care of them to build equity instead of staying delapidated. In doing so save the federal governmen billions in keeping up unsafe residences.
take a stark hard look at K-12 education and the reasons behind high university costs. Investment in vocational training as well.
The federal goverment not opposing states who want to legalize pot, gay marriage, gambling or prostitution for tax revenue.
Make America tourist friendly instead of tourist averse due to 911 restrictions. We have the technology to keep out terrorist suspects.
All this won't happen but its needed. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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I posted an ad for $11/hour with benefits on Craigslist. Within an hour I had fifty applicants. Within a day I had 300. Take from that what you will.
That said, the quality of applicants was extremely low, and I didn't even end up hiring one of those 300. I didn't feel comfortable hiring most of these individuals for something as simple as a warehouse position, so I'm not really sure what their options would be even under the best of circumstances. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| recessiontime wrote: |
| 7.7% unemployment. Okay let's just pretend that this number is legit (it isn't). What are the QUALITY of jobs these American have? If they are all minimum wage jobs you might as well be receiving welfare. |
Right. This is the thing: not all "jobs" are created equal. Underemployment is almost as problematic as unemployment, and far more difficult to escape. This is why it's so important for all jobs to pay a living wage: if it's worth doing, the person doing it ought to be able to provide for his family, because he may well be stuck in that position (or one like it) for the foreseeable future. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
I posted an ad for $11/hour with benefits on Craigslist. Within an hour I had fifty applicants. Within a day I had 300. Take from that what you will.
That said, the quality of applicants was extremely low, and I didn't even end up hiring one of those 300. I didn't feel comfortable hiring most of these individuals for something as simple as a warehouse position, so I'm not really sure what their options would be even under the best of circumstances. |
What about these applicants was problematic? |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| northway wrote: |
I posted an ad for $11/hour with benefits on Craigslist. Within an hour I had fifty applicants. Within a day I had 300. Take from that what you will.
That said, the quality of applicants was extremely low, and I didn't even end up hiring one of those 300. I didn't feel comfortable hiring most of these individuals for something as simple as a warehouse position, so I'm not really sure what their options would be even under the best of circumstances. |
What about these applicants was problematic? |
More than half of them didn't include a cover letter when I explicitly asked for one. Many of them offered personal information that I didn't really care about. Generally speaking, there really wasn't anyone that we could trust to not screw up orders. We ended up hiring someone from a Korean job board, as the applicants we got from Craigslist were awful. |
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rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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cutting defense and using the money on education is a great idea. so if we cut back on defense that would mean tha Japan would upgrade and expand it's military, which means China and Russia would upgrade and expand their military. Europe would have to be responsible for their own defense which would send the European economies into a deeper crisis. Unemployment in Europe is about 12 and a half percent right now. Spain it is close to thirty percent
But I agree on education funding. Hi speed rail not so much.
All books are cooked to some extent, in every country. But most economist see the U.S. as doing fairly well right now. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| This is why it's so important for all jobs to pay a living wage: if it's worth doing, the person doing it ought to be able to provide for his family, because he may well be stuck in that position (or one like it) for the foreseeable future. |
And what if that person isn't capable of providing enough value to his employer/customers to justify a "living wage"? People in the lowest of the low jobs tend to be people who make bad decisions and/or screw things up very often. On top of that, they're often doing unpleasant jobs that they aren't committed to doing well, further dropping their productivity.
It's helpful that there are employers willing to work hard to establish businesses where these people can work with minimal responsibility... where minimum wage earners can leverage their basic math skills to operate a cash register or clean or stock shelves. But even under these conditions, it's naive to think that every adult on Earth can provide enough value to other people to justify a certain minimum payment in every case. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| comm wrote: |
| People in the lowest of the low jobs tend to be people who make bad decisions and/or screw things up very often. |
Oh, I thought the argument was economic; we cannot pay people a living wage because it would mean the cost of goods and services would go up. But now I see the argument is also moralistic; we cannot pay people a living wage because they don't deserve it.
Can we follow this argument to its logical conclusion? We pay bankers so much because they've done a great service to society, hell to humanity itself. We pay criminals and smugglers so much because, well, they take the necessary risk to provide us with the goods, and the illegal services, we desire. Cops and firemen in California? They get those pensions because they are just better than civil servants in the other 49. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| northway wrote: |
I posted an ad for $11/hour with benefits on Craigslist. Within an hour I had fifty applicants. Within a day I had 300. Take from that what you will.
That said, the quality of applicants was extremely low, and I didn't even end up hiring one of those 300. I didn't feel comfortable hiring most of these individuals for something as simple as a warehouse position, so I'm not really sure what their options would be even under the best of circumstances. |
What about these applicants was problematic? |
More than half of them didn't include a cover letter when I explicitly asked for one. Many of them offered personal information that I didn't really care about. Generally speaking, there really wasn't anyone that we could trust to not screw up orders. We ended up hiring someone from a Korean job board, as the applicants we got from Craigslist were awful. |
Reminds me of that guy who's youtube vids were being posted on here early this year. Out of shape. Depressed. Bedraggled. And just could not get a job.
And I was one of the first to say that there was no way I'd hire him.
I'm not looking to place all of the blame on the unemployed here, no where close to that, but a lot of them need to clean themselves up. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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| comm wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| This is why it's so important for all jobs to pay a living wage: if it's worth doing, the person doing it ought to be able to provide for his family, because he may well be stuck in that position (or one like it) for the foreseeable future. |
And what if that person isn't capable of providing enough value to his employer/customers to justify a "living wage"? |
Then capitalism-as-an-ethic has failed. Seriously, I can't emphasize enough how little respect I have for this notion. It represents a total perversion of what human life actually ought to be. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2012 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Oh, I thought the argument was economic; we cannot pay people a living wage because it would mean the cost of goods and services would go up. |
It is economic, it's based on the value you give in money vs the value they give in time. And the value that minimum wage earners give in time is generally worth very little.
| Fox wrote: |
| comm wrote: |
| And what if that person isn't capable of providing enough value to his employer/customers to justify a "living wage"? |
Then capitalism-as-an-ethic has failed. Seriously, I can't emphasize enough how little respect I have for this notion. It represents a total perversion of what human life actually ought to be. |
What you believe human life "ought to be" has little bearing on the reality of what human life is. It is (economically at least) conducted on the basis of value exchanges. If I want to clean your car for a $15 "living wage", but you don't want to blow $15 getting your car cleaned, should I just give up and starve? Should I force you to give me $15 because it's the living wage? Should I lower the price? Or should I try to find a different way to provide $15 worth of value to someone?
Increasing the minimum wage is like trying to force you to pay $15 for the car wash. It's not going to work because you're just going to stop getting your car cleaned. Or you'll find an automated system that does the job for $5. |
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recessiontime
Joined: 21 Jun 2010
Location: Got avatar privileges nyahahaha
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 12:37 am Post subject: |
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Even without considering automation, there are 7 billion people on the planet now. It makes sense to me that the more people there are, the less value the average person has, the less money they will make. Consequently, you will see a diminishing value in lifestyle despite all the technological advancements. It's amazing how we live in an age of ipads and smart phones, internet, yet people still work 40 hours a week if they are lucky. All of this serves to keep population growth in check - Western countries exhibit a negative growth rate.
For argument's sake let's imagine that wealth was redistributed so that every child in the world was provided for. What would that do to human population growth? What effect would that have on other species and the environment? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 1:28 am Post subject: |
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| comm wrote: |
What you believe human life "ought to be" has little bearing on the reality of what human life is. It is (economically at least) conducted on the basis of value exchanges. If I want to clean your car for a $15 "living wage", but you don't want to blow $15 getting your car cleaned, should I just give up and starve? Should I force you to give me $15 because it's the living wage? Should I lower the price? Or should I try to find a different way to provide $15 worth of value to someone?
Increasing the minimum wage is like trying to force you to pay $15 for the car wash. It's not going to work because you're just going to stop getting your car cleaned. Or you'll find an automated system that does the job for $5. |
You don't understand. I'm not arguing with you within the boundaries of your ethical system. I'm repudiating your ethical system (and I use the term loosely) in its entirety. What should you do, you ask? You should toss your hypothetical dilemma in the trash bin, learn about gift economies, what they imply about the natural human character, and then try to figure out how you can reach an optimal synthesis between the humanity of a gift economy and the productivity of a trade economy so as to avoid the dilemma in question in the first place. That's what you should do.
To provide well being for another without taking in return is historically very well founded all over the world, but Fates forfend pouty Americans pay a dime more than they need to for goods and services! If Mitt Romney paid a dime more in taxes than what was required, he wouldn't be qualified to be President, and if comm paid a dollar more than the lowest possible price for his car wash, it's the end of the bloody world. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:55 am Post subject: |
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| comm wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Oh, I thought the argument was economic; we cannot pay people a living wage because it would mean the cost of goods and services would go up. |
It is economic, it's based on the value you give in money vs the value they give in time. And the value that minimum wage earners give in time is generally worth very little.
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The rationale is purely economic. Thus, even the most unskilled laborer must devote an hour of his or her time to the employer. The minimum value for that time should be worth more than $7.25.
History of U.S. minimum wage increases
Morality doesn't come into it. |
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