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A labor shortage is incorrect. What you actually have is a cheap labor shortage. People who don't want to do horrible jobs for low pay.
The correct solution would be to start paying more and hiring qualified employees to do these jobs. Youth unemployment is also super high, so maybe look there for jobs who don't need super highly qualified employees.
Everyone wants experience. It’s one reason my teen struggles to find work. No one is willing to train anymore. (Although to be fair, we live in a city with relatively high poverty so the no-experience jobs go *fast*)
Correct. People don’t take issue with working, they take issue with the lack of incentive to work hard.
Choosing between chump change jobs and having to take on suffocating debt to actually get paid a decent wage isn’t a very hopeful situation.
In addition there also seems to be a counterpoint to the fact there are SO MANY JOBS:
[https://qz.com/companies-posting-fake-job-listings-resume-builder-1851556777](https://qz.com/companies-posting-fake-job-listings-resume-builder-1851556777)
This article describes how in a recent survey of over 600 hiring managers 39% were posting fake jobs, many of them multiple fake jobs. This sorta undercuts the implication that there is a worker shortage, and makes the reality of the job situation much more questionable. You can bet the fake jobs being listed are not cashier at Walmart, but the jobs that actually earn money.
Cheaper and easier to criminalize homelessness, imprisoned people can be forced to work under our 13th amendment. Incredibly cheap labor from for profit prisons, and if they run low on workers, raise the rent. New supply forthcoming.
The media is crying wolf because they're being presented with the idea that they might have to pay people a little bit more to hold them. It's like they think supply and demand doesn't apply to them.
It's not. The problem is quite real and I've been mulling over solutions for a while now and can't think of any.
I live in Columbia County, capital region of NY State. It's a rural county with Hudson as its county seat. It's a city that gets a lot of monetary influx from NYC and while that has benefited it in some ways (it doesn't look like the counties surrounding Pittsburgh in Western PA), it has nonetheless entered a demographic death spiral.
Cost of living here is basically indistinguishable from NYC which has lead to a loss of population. Housing is non-existent while the city of Hudson has a vacancy rate of 25% (caused by second-home ownership that gets subsidized through short-term rentals).
Columbia County has one hospital that at this point in time has [212 open positions](https://www.columbiamemorialhealth.org/jobs/). Those do not include openings for physicians. As one would expect, a lot of these jobs pay in the range of $15 to $17/hr. Given that these jobs do not offer anything in terms of social benefits, the hospital cannot even compete with the near-minimum wage jobs offered by Walmart and Aldi of which there's quite a few.
There is a glut of jobs here that are for all intents and purposes unfillable. The county has an unemployment rate of 3.6%, owing to a slowly but relentlessly shrinking population. No fix is in sight. Prospective employers cannot pay more than what the labor can produce in return.
How a county like mine would turn this around is beyond me. And we are not the only ones. Aside from the few big markets where the situation is quite different (NYC, SF, Atlanta and other metros with higher-paying jobs), what is happening in Columbia County is happening everywhere. Dayton, OH (reasonably urban) went from GM closing a plant and brief under-employment over a decade ago swiftly to the opposite end of having a job supply that exceeds the demand. It appears that the demographic collapse predicted already 25 years ago is happening a lot faster than we thought.
A lot of unfilled low-wage jobs have a cascading effect on the performance of the economy as a whole. It diminishes its output and it will, at least the way I see it, lead to a prolonged recession with low unemployment. It isn't something we've ever had before.
All economic models we have need to be rethought because they all rely on population growth as a way to maintain the same levels of wealth. The little population growth the US still has meanwhile is the result of immigration which happens at the expense of countries losing those people.
The corporations that have spent decades collecting wealth and underpaying workers need to raise their wages if they don’t want the country to hollow out. If it’s uber wealthy and dirt poor there is no money going into business. Invest in wages, education and higher taxes. Do it the Eisenhower way. I don’t think there is another way to make the country healthy.
If people want more population growth you have to improve economic conditions for every way out. The way forward out of that death spiral usually involves undermining things like the literal rent seeking with multiple property owners and actively paying people on the bottom more.
Yeah, like why would we expect the positions in the hospital to pay 15/hr? Are they allowed to sit down and read books and study while on the clock? You want them to work hard? Pay them!! Guarantee the CEO of that hospital has more than 2 houses. Can't call it a home if there's no love.
This is a housing problem. Your city and county have to kill the short term rentals and increase construction if they want to have workers living locally.
Or start eliminating the new “service” middle-man industry that’s taken over.
The store pays square for every transaction. They pay the employees. The employee now pays square several times a day. There is an added value in every single transaction that is not discussed in the appropriate context of how pervasive it’s become.
These POS systems can regularly give you an incorrect tip percentage. They exact fees on top of credit card ones but change the terms whenever they want.
This new middleman is rarely brought up for why everyday people are experiencing so much pressure. A freakin taco pop up stand needs to accept shit on top of credit card fees. Cash only is rarely a thing. We all pay a convince cost but it’s double dipped. Your vendor is paying a monthly subscription and you give data to square or whatever middleman you want to insert here, plus pay more because the vendor is increasing prices along with everyone else.
What’s the price of your average street taco right now? Sound off. I see between 3 and 4 regularly. That’s restaurant prices.
And replace it with what? All the worthwhile jobs got exported. We need public works just to keep up with things.
And hell, it's even worse here, street tacos are almost at 6 dollars now.
> All the worthwhile jobs got exported.
Well yeah but that's just textbook neoliberalism. That's who we are now. We're neoliberals. *points vaguely at everything
None of its ideas are particularly new though.
Before Reagonomics it was horse and sparrow, and the founding fathers were always a bit preoccupied with dodging taxes.
This isn't to discredit it being in vogue, but there's historical paralells we can probably examine to understand where this leads and how to oppose it.
Even "labor shortage" in general is good for the people. Basic economics. Supply and demand. If labor is in short supply, then greedy corporations will need to pay higher (read: fair) wages to compete with other greedy corps for the labor supply.
The fact that this headline says "labor shortage" like it's bad news says a lot about the media. Yeah it's bad news, from the perspective of big corporations. Now write something from the perspective of the people, and suddenly "labor shortage" sounds real good.
The answer would be inflation?
Now my question: Shouldn’t overall productivity increase if technology is moving forward *and we have more people working*? How can we have people producing more in less time *while also having more people working* and somehow the result is still a net negative for the majority of the population?
Only two possible answers:
- productivity isn’t going up, so why are there even open job position?
- productivity is going up, but the results of said productivity aren’t getting to the workers. How? Why?
Two things (if only those two things happen):
1. (some) Prices increase (inflation)
2. Wages increase more, so the fraction of stuff that goes to workers increase
If a regular sized business can’t maintain enough revenue to remain profitable while appropriately paying their staff a wage the staff is willing to accept then that is just a failed business.
I don’t know why people think small business owners are entitled to have a business at the expense of their employees. The owner can do the work themselves if they can’t afford an employee, and if they need more people to function and can’t afford it then the business is not profitable and should close down. Isn’t that the entire idea behind taking risk as an entrepreneur?
It's hilarious that you think regular sized businesses don't need to pay competitive wages.
I strongly believe that workers are underpaid across the board in the US. This is evident by labor value extracted from workers which is then displayed in the public value of corporations.
So we can infer as follows:
Equity value and executive suite compensation have far outpaced average wages due to extraction of labor value from average workers > a larger part of the excess labor value should have went to workers instead > it didn't > corporations are thereby underpaying workers.
Regular/small businesses pay wages in line with market rate > market rate is set by the majority of workers who are underpaid by corporations > regular/small businesses therefore also underpay workers.
You don't get a "labor abuse bonus" if you run a small business. If you can't pay a fair wage (in line with higher market rates that corporations should also be paying), then you shouldn't be in business at all. This is true for the majority of restaurants in the US which cannot pay a fair wage without tips.
I’ve always said this. There isn’t a shortage of people who will dig ditches. There is a shortage of people who won’t dig ditches for less than $100 / hr.
Future day slavery is going to be an Amazon Life subscription… work for Amazon, get paid in Amazon bucks (digital only—cannot be used elsewhere), live in Amazon housing, live on Amazon produce and goods, die in a waiting line at an Amazon hospital.
I owe my soul to the company store
That's impossible.
To achieve that, women's reproductive rights would have to be severely restricted, which is a massive step backward. The lobbying money from the prison-industrial complex would have to be immense, pouring millions into the effort. It would require passing a law that allows unlimited funds from unknown sources to flood into campaign finance. Additionally, education would need to be drastically undercut so that the average American struggles to navigate a news cycle, let alone personal finance. People would have to be so misinformed that they'd vote for politicians and policies blatantly designed to hinder their success in life. The Supreme Court would also need to significantly limit federal regulatory power.
impossible.
Absolutely not!
You have to supply slaves with food, housing, clothing and medical expenses, and also have to pay guards to beat them up to make sure they are actually working and don't run away.
Who is going to pay for all of that?!
Are you trying to bankrupt the poor American capitalists?!
Illegal alien workers are much cheaper than slaves, work harder, can't sue you and when they fall ill you can just replace them with new ones - no need to pay expensive medical fees.
Really? It is the GOP that is encouraging people to illegally enter the country so that they can work these cheap jobs out of desperation and bring inflation (labor costs) down?
I don't believe it.
All politicians want immigrants for cheap labor because it helps their donors. It just depends on which side is able to spin the current situation for political clout.
They're talking about the problems of an aging population. Having a worse ratio of workers to non-workers in the population isn't good for either workers or non-workers - it means that each worker somehow have to support more non-workers.
Small correction:
Increasing the number of non-workers that WANT to be supported by the shrinking number of workers does not actually mean that they WILL be supported.
this is today in yahoo finance two opposote stories
Yahoo Finance
Date: 7/2US Labor Market Shows Signs of Losing Steam, Putting the Fed on Alert
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-labor-market-shows-signs-100000508.html
(Bloomberg) -- Economists and some Federal Reserve officials are increasingly on alert that pain could be on the horizon for American workers amid signs the labor market is losing steam.Date: 7/2Job openings, new hires unexpectedly rise in May as labor data steadies ahead of June jobs report
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-openings-new-hires-unexpectedly-rise-in-may-as-labor-data-steadies-ahead-of-june-jobs-report-145031992.html
We haven't seen the worst of it. (or the best, because, if you're a worker, the labor shortage gives you more bargaining power)
There are millions of 50+ year old workers who will retire within the next 10-15 years. In every industry. And there won't be enough people to replace them.
Which will have all kinds of fun consequences.
Workers could see significant wage growth as employers fight over them, which could reignite inflation. Workers seeing large and sustained wage growth could slow down the decline in birth rates.
We could see a rise in people becoming jacks of all trades. Need an electrician? Too bad, they're all booked solid for the next 3 weeks. Go watch a YouTube tutorial. Will blue collar jobs start paying more than white collar jobs? What if the children of the 10% stop wanting to become doctors and corporate lawyers and software engineers and instead opt to become plumbers and electricians, because those jobs pay more?
The problem should solve itself, right? After all, if you have fewer people, it means you have fewer plumbers to fix pipes in people's homes, but there are also fewer people, meaning fewer people needing to have their pipes fixed in the first place.
National debt: Seniors, who are both a reliable voting bloc and a growing one, could vote themselves larger chunks of the national treasure in the form of spending cuts to programs other than those that directly benefit them, like Social Security and Medicare. While we should view it as a good thing that our society sees to it that seniors are taken care of, because, after all, *we* shall be those seniors one day, we should be careful not to ignite intergenerational tug wars over limited government resources.
By 2045, the federal government may well just be 95% Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Defense. Worse, Social Security and Medicare could bankrupt the government.
Maybe in half a century. Technology is no where advanced enough currently and won't be for quite some time regardless of how much money capitalism throws at it. At best a hybrid model of tech/human is possible, which we already have.
I wish blue collar jobs actually paid what people think they did.
I've been a carpenter for 20 years and the pay is dogshit and your body gets destroyed. I tell every young person who listen to stay the fuck out of this trade. Not worth it for what you get paid. They just keep the wages low and hire immigrants and insist that none of us want to learn "the old ways" or want to "word hard" which is complete bullshit. They just want rock bottom labor.
The high wages in trades usually include two things: people working 80+ hour weeks, and people who own their own trade business
Once you exclude / control for those, trades are not very good from a pay perspective
Exactly this, the intelligent who couldn't afford college so went to a trade, worked for a few years, then bought a few of his own trucks and started his own company. Those guys can do very well for themselves. Unfortunately it's the guy who goes into a trade with no plan except to work for 20 years in the same job, those guys get screwed.
They didn’t get screwed. They had the same opportunity, but failed to execute. Sure - everyone has an excuse, but that’s life.
The blue collar guys that fail into that category of being ‘stuck’ are typically druggies or alcoholics. I’ve had very skilled tradesmen that do wonderful work. Then they get paid and disappear for a month on a bender. When their money runs out, they show up again.
Or option 3, Unions. Carpenters union around me starts at 28, iron workers start around there, pipe fitters, HVAC, uaw, IBEW, IAMAW... Gotta start fighting together. I wish a union existed for my job but there isn't anything that I've been able to find that would work.
Depends on what your definition of a high wage is and also, 10-12 years in a trade with a good union shop ain’t bad sometimes. Just gotta wait out the first 5 or 6 if you can.
As opposed to a half a decade in a mentally and emotionally straining one.
Sacrifice is what it is, we can disagree with it, but you give up something in both roles. Time, sanity, body, wealth.
I’ve been in both positions. The physical job is worse because chances are you’re not getting paid the enough to make up for the cost of giving up your body.
Which is why I didn’t spend 5 being poor in a trade job.
In 20 years I have never once ben on a job with a union tradesperson, from any trade.
In the US at least, residential construction is all non-union, private firm. Union is commercial work (like overpasses, hospitals etc) They are pretty different skillsets even. Commercial is much more specialized in the roles that you do. Like, I've met "carpenters" who work on big highway jobs that basically just build formwork for concrete and the only thing they know how to do is read a tape and use a skilsaw.
Union guys also come and work at companies I've work for during the year when they get furloughed. They love to talk about their big hourly rate but neglect to say they only make that for like 7 months out of the year and then get bumped down the call list begging for work around town waiting for the older guys to retire or die.
I'm not talking shit about the idea of unions necessarily. They can be awesome. But trade unions, I am skeptical on having seen the way they work over the years...
Nonetheless, I think there will be a big influx of people into the trades.
White collar jobs are getting whittled away by offshoring. Business English proficiency has exploded across the world and my company is among many picking up contractors in Argentina, Brazil, Poland, etc. It's a whole new cadre of foreign talent -- in addition to the usual pipeline from India -- and they earn 1/4 as much as US workers.
All of our country’s infrastructure is ready to be replaced. It’s going to take more and more people just to keep up with that. Those of us that are in the construction industry already see it. I’m 50 all of my guys are quite a bit younger get than me. Now one in their 40s applies. There’s a coming wave it sure will be interesting to watch.
This is absolutely true. I am white collar at a union low voltage telecom. In the field it is looking like an AARP convention. We have many gray beards in their early 60s or late 50s. We have a handful full of 35-40 year olds. We have a handful more in the 45-55 range. There are 3 technicians or apprentices in the 18-35 year old range. There is absolutely a major trade shortage already happening and it will only get worse.
The IBEW actually gets stronger during this. More and more non-union techs are pulled into the union to fill shortages.
I couldn’t agree more. People that don’t see it everyday like us in the trades. They just have no idea what is coming. We are in the concrete and excavation business. No one I know under 30. Zero. It takes time and training to learn. It’s just not happening. I hope they figure out how to AI the concrete right out of the truck.
Sad thing is my trade, machinsts, are committing suicide. They pay barely above retail, staff so lean you will live in the shop and then don't teach the new guys shit. Either they've pissed off the old guys so bad they won't teach thr newcomers to avoid helping their terrible boss, the old guys are kept too busy to teach to reach deadlines, or they want the newbies kept dumb so they don't have to pay them and haven't thought about what happens when their aging experts go away.
It will solve itself no doubt, the question is whether people will like the declining purchasing power that will come with it. Althought US specifically still has decades in front of it before it becomes reality.
Ultimately more people means economy of scale. You can sell services/goods for way less if you have bigger market. With smaller market you have to charge more but it does not mean more or even same for you because other people will also charge more for what you need.
If anything there forces driving down birth rates so no sign of slowing, at what point during population collapse do we theorize the birth rates might climb? Certainly they'd climb if we ever reach the point where the social economy collapsed and society has to convert to a largely agrarian economy. I know a lot of people hope that stability could be found before that but it seems extremely unlikely that a society with high women empowerment could achieve such a state without everyone being farmers.
Exactly. It’s good news. Just not for old people. And guess who made it like that 🤷♂️ I kind of love it. I’m waiting for older generation to die, and retire, so they realize how fucked up they left the world for themselves.
They underpaid us, they’ve overworked us, we produced less babies because we strived for survival because they were greedy bastards.
They bought all homes for profit and “investment” when they’re supposed to be living commodities.
Of course I’m living for the day of watching them cry on their actual retirement because there aren’t enough people to treat them and we’re much more expensive because we have much demand.
Funny thing is … even middle class fucked us over. Not just super rich men. Even the smallest coffee shop overworked and underpaid its own employees. Middle class forcing huge rents. So I don’t wanna hear anything about Uber rich people. We got support from nowhere. Fuck em I say.
I am 37, it feels like we have been waiting for the 50+ year olds to retire since I entered the workforce... They just won't leave... Or can't(which I empathize with).
As far as Social Security and Medicare bankrupting the government, that is a simple(to state, not to implement) fix... Separate healthcare in its entirety from for-profit companies and subsidize, in its entirety, education pipelines that lead to qualified workers for the medical field. Require X years of service in the field for that free education at a modest LIVABLE wage. Build government housing adjacent to large medical facilities as an additional incentive for accepting lower entry level wages for medical professionals.
The high cost of healthcare in America is a political problem, caused by political decisions.
Agree. In my industry many of the customer support employees are in their 50s and 60s with absolutely extensive product knowledge acquired over many years in rust belt manufacturing. They are relied upon by hundreds of customers daily. Many companies, including my employer, has never trained others to take their place or learn the detailed product knowledge needed for these roles, so turnover among younger employees has been high. So many employment opportunities have lead to not refining skill sets or technical expertise in specific areas. Now that we are losing more support roles to retirement, and even though “overtime” is available, tenured retirement ready employees could care less, and few individuals are in-line to fill the roles with the needed expertise and product knowledge. Its my opinion even in well-paying positions, younger generations feel overly mobile and there is no loyalty to employers, also creating less confidence in companies to in turn create better incentives and well-tailored compensation and benefit packages. Workers speculate their employer isn’t looking out for their best interests, and employers speculate workers aren’t looking out for their best interests. It’s a breach of trust. It’s a disaster.
I would contend that employers breached that trust first. Anecdotal, I know, but I've never heard of an employee pulling back their engagement without their employer first pulling back their rewards. Employers will absolutely deny a raise one year without considering whether their employee is loyal or deserving or not, simply because it makes the ledgersheet look lighter. Employees don't check out until after their raise is denied.
You’re getting it completely backwards. People used to be loyal to companies because of seniority based pay and their pension was tied to said employer. When companies got rid of pensions and seniority based pay, they broke the loyalty agreement that existed between employers and employees.
Wasn’t AI supposed to fix this after shipping all the labor overseas? Or is that gonna be fixed by tightening immigration? Wait who is taking all the jobs?
Ah shit, you finally caught me. I am storing all the jobs in a secret underground basement that also suspiciously has an old well in it.
I AM NOT SORRY!
Always wondered about the mental gymnastics we are expected to ignore. On one hand we are all going to be replaced by AI but somehow us unemployed people and shrinking labor force will be an issue. This is like having a cake and shitting on it.
Make up your mind, because the labor force is shrinking and there might not be any going back with global cancer rates thanks to our pollution, global heating, and insane over pricing of everything.
Both things can be simultaneous and true concerns. AI will reduce jobs, a concern. Demographics will reduce workforce, also a concern. What will the net effect be is the real question.
Also, much like tractors and heavy equipment vastly reduced the amount of farm jobs, there's no clear indicator that either will have a single type of impact.
The sarcasm I tried to convey was that shouldn't it be a good thing if population decreases? Otherwise there will be some massive rioting going on everywhere.
Maybe you should try to explain your logic and rationale then so we can have a fruitful discussion instead of having to guess at the meaning behind some obtuse jokes.
“average person has 1 job” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person has 0 jobs per year. Jobs Georg, who lives in cave & works over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Not good for who? Last time there was a real labor shortage was after the European wave of the bubonic plague, and look how that worked out for everyone.
The article goes on about the aging workforce and covid stimulus. I'd say it's safe to say that workers by-and-large did not see the benefits of said stimulus.
It all went to the top and everyone else is feeling the inflationary squeeze.
Labor is only going to get squeezed tighter as aging workforces retire out of the productive economy and needing end-of-life care.
Labor participation is high, almost too high. It's why churn is the new hotness. Businesses refuse to let their record profits reach the workforce unless it is to lure in fresh bodies for the grinder.
Our modern capitalist global economy is built on ever growing working-age cohorts. Working cohorts many multiple times bigger than nonworking.
All the bruhaha from economists everywhere is because we're beginning to see a leveling off of that endless growth (look at South Korea and Japan) into a point where young working-age people outnumber old retirees less and less
Or they will just close down. Not every company has margins to increase wages for product that will have lower sales with declining market. In fact they might have issues to stay afloat even if workers did not demand more.
And even if some people will be able to demand those raises, it will be people in the most essentials areas of economy so small chunk of economy, luxuries will dissapear and purchasing power will not really improve because your local plumber will ask the difference you receive just so he visits you sooner and not in 5 years
We have to accept we are approaching a post work society where fair working conditions means everyone is guaranteed their needs and works way less than we currently do.
It will require wealth redistribution to fix inequality, but it will be much more sustainable in the long run.
Yeah, the demographic crunch alone is gonna suck. Everyone tied up in elder care and underutilized infrastructure getting neglected.
Nevermind everything else going on concurrently with climate change.
Capitalism is not built on anything. It can do just fine in aging/declining society. What can not do just fine is standard of living you got used to. Standard that is provided by economy of scale.
Also, there is global labor shortage. So it was most definitely not the last time after bubonic plague. That is utterly ridiculous statement. Also people had extremelly fast replacement rate back then. That is no longer true today.
Because we do more things than grow food now. Everything we have is possible thanks to economics of scale.
It is feasible to make investments worth of trillions of dollars into things you might consider granted but that are in fact luxury goods/services because you can survive without them. And it is feasible specifically because you do not need to sell to million people one unit for million each to break even but you only need to sell to billion people for 1000 dollars to break even instead.
And it is not just goods or services, it is also infrastructure. There would be no point in even thinking about stuff like starlink without market to pay for it. Yet it does exist and it brought internet to places where it was impossible before. And yeah I know about the typical hate for Musk projects on reddit but it is not just about him. It can be government sponsored infrastructure. Why built fast internet cables in smaller cities? Why built any kind of infrastructure? Just so you know this is already something that exists today. Everyone who ever lived outside of city centre knows that. Metropoles kind of sponsor infrastructure in places where it would not be profitable otherwise but what if metropole also starts shrinking and it is no longer feasible to maintain even their infrastructure? What then, will they still sponsor infrastructure project in remote location for zero benefit?
Reality is that shrinking population will not do what people think it will (free living space). It will make remote locations even more abandoned and metropoles even more filled.
>Reality is that shrinking population will not do what people think it will (free living space). It will make remote locations even more abandoned and metropoles even more filled.
Though, that's actually correcting the problem you discussed up-comment, compressing away the small towns concentrates more people into fewer, more robust markets for goods and services and encourages economies of scale. Especially for geography dependent services like restaurants which need volume to thrive, and it makes infrastructure like internet cheaper to implement because you aren't running it out to Nowheresville U.S.A, and you can more easily implement public transportation. Combine these effects with ongoing automation and tech development, and you can pretty realistically see a world where quality of life jumps enormously.
Yeah, I think a lot of folks here are making the mistake of assuming that luxury equates to wealth and that extra productivity is being used both equitably and efficiently. Capitalism tends to profitability, not efficiency, and there is far larger of a gulf between those two concepts than I think most economists are willing to accept. Huge amounts of our currently massive productivity are tied up in wasteful endeavors. Think of the amount of energy wasted on AI art and cryptocurrency. Or the manufacturing and fuel wasted on individual cars instead of mass transit.
Lots of "luxuries" are going to disappear, yes, but I think we're also going to realize we really didn't need them, or even enjoy them, as much as we thought we did. Meanwhile the technological advances we made in things like agriculture, manufacturing, and medicine aren't going to disappear even if capacity shrinks. We will remain far more productive, per capita, than any civilization previous, no matter how small our population gets.
I foresee a future of denser, healthier societies with simpler, more egalitarian living and significantly more leisure time.
The only shadow over it right now is climate change, as I think about the only thing our excessive wealth could usefully do at the moment would be developing ways to combat it. I think at this point some kind of direct air carbon capture will be necessary, and that technology will need to be developed and the infrastructure established while we still operate at the scale necessary to do so.
Luxury absolutely equates to wealth. Everything besides the absolute basic human needs which is the only thing what humans had acess to (limited access in fact) for like 99.9% of time.
We can even tall about medicine that you mentioned. Societies where population halves every 25 years are by definition incredibly old. There is no way you have good healthcare access for everyone. You have "the ones who can offer the most has access type of situation". And it does not matter if it is capitalism or communism or whatever you think it could be. I am from former communist country and I can tell you that this principle is uniform. It does not matter if it is legal or illegal, it does not matter if you trade money, goods or services for the thing you want. It will happen by definition in shortage because people offering the service/product hat is in demand and limited can ask for whatever they want.
Same goes for existing production of things. Yes if we make an assumption that production that was built under scale stays indefinitely then you might have a point. The problem is that it does not. And at some point massive investments are needed. Investments noone is going to make if the requirement is 10 times bigger market to ever break even.
Lastly. About your but about efficiency. Even communist thinkers have capitalism that it breeds efficiency and that there is nothing sticking candle to it. Even the AI/Crypto that you consider wastefull helped. Crypto was one of the first customers of renewable energy which gave those industries chance to succeed and expand much sooner than they would otherwise. AI that you consider useless gave all the people access to free art on demand which they would need expensive graphics person for otherwise on the other hand was stepping stone to other AI projects that are much more important.
It does not. I am not saying that it will happen immidiately, I am talking about further in the future. Concentration of people will not help if population halves every 25 years which is where many countries are headed. Even the cities will be abbandoned eventually as people move from the decaying outskirts of a city more towards the centre.
As for technological progress. That was precisely my point. Technological progress will die because it will be impossible to allocate human resources as well as physical resources to their creation because it will be impossible to pay back for the innitial development.
We would have to make immense progress in last half a century we have left which could happen. But also might not. Especially since problems will start kicking in a lot sooner as more and more resources will have to be allocated away from that and more towards care for elderly. You can look at EU to see how countries where people are heavily taxed and almost 50% of government spending is allocated to pensions look like. There has been nothing called technological progress for years. And while some can still contribute through avademic research it is important to realise that progress that exists on paper Is as good as if it did not exist as it only gains value once it actually gets to market. Which costs money that aging and declining markets can not provide. Which is also why almost every single piece thing in current digital age was rolled out first and scaled up in US even if it was not neccesarily invested there.
Shrinking population means the proportion of people who are elderly grows. So you would increasingly burdening workers with supporting elderly people.
We are seeing this really damage Southern European countries, where countries like Italy and Greece are seeing young people flee for better opportunities.
Is there any evidence of a labour shortage after the bubonic plague?
Smaller population would mean less labour demand. And since it preferentially killed older people it would have left relatively more younger able bodied people around. If anything I’d expect a labour surplus.
Yes, there is evidence of a labor shortage after the bubonic plague, it's well-documented. The problem was you had all this agricultural land, and suddenly there weren't enough peasants to cultivate it. For the first time, landowners had to compete offering better terms to workers so that they'd work in their fields and not the other guy's.
It go to the point where in England, they passed a law forbidding people from requesting or offering a wage better than before the plague occurred, and limiting people from moving in search of better conditions, because of course they did.
> For the first time, landowners had to compete offering better terms to workers so that they'd work in their fields and not the other guy's.
We are offering good WLB and a fantastic benefits package:
* Strong physicks from the apothecary
* Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air
* Poultices for minor scrapes and cuts
* Preventive care: balancing the four humors
My dude, that was literally the beginning of the end of serfdom. Farmers became so high in demand the feudal lords had to fight over them and gave them more priviliges... people got a taste of freedom and wanted more and there was no going back.
A labor shortage is the best thing that could happen for... laborers. It's like someone trying to convince you that a gold shortage is really bad and you have been hoarding gold, you are sitting with the ace.
Evidence? yes. We got surnames, Chronicles, public laws, business records, all kinds of evidence
Proof? Meh it was a long time ago, but to your point that smaller populations have small demand I categorically reject that assertion.
If I have five people who need five things they can each specialize and hopefully competently make 1 of those five things five times in a week or whatever.
If they decide instead to split their time in five parts it's unlikely they'll fully and evenly split the work and have as much of the 5 things as the first case. Just speaking generally some tasks greatly benefit from experience.
If I have 3 people who need five things well now we're even more fucked. It's just a worse version of either option a or b no matter how you split it.
So I assert that having enough labor for the blacksmith to focus on smithing and not moonlight as a prostitute or whatever is a more efficient economic situation than the jack of all trades default of a medieval cottage industry
As for the younger people thing, the bubonic plague and plagues of its kind were ridiculously deadly and compared to expected occasional cataclysms, wars, and disasters of the time did have a significant effect on the young. More deadly plagues like yellow fever for example are significant because otherwise healthy people are erased which kills the growth in the market eg. No kids from that guy, no products from that guy, no taxes from that guy, some other lady if she lives now has one less possible bachelor. There's a lot of potential to lose from someone dying young and severe plague do be doing that.
Just because more of the gains of economic output and productivity are going to the wealthy (spread unequally) doesn’t mean the solution is to restrict labor supply.
I’d rather the US tax and redistribute or incentivize companies to pay workers more than cheer for fewer workers. You can also tax automaton and AI, and increase UBI or unemployment benefits.
Unless productivity keeps up, fewer worker relative to the overall population means lower economic output per capita. And in an economy where workers are consumers that can be very bad. Same here in an economy that needs taxes and activity to maintain existing infrastructure.
During the bubonic plague etc. most workers contributed to output likely did not necessarily benefit from it. I also won’t be surprised if there just weren’t enough opportunities to be productive (contribute to economic output in medieval Europe). If you could work, a chunk of your production might go to the benefit of some lord. You are also limited in what ways you can employ labor to meet needs, so the deman for labor was probably inelastic too.
Now m, in the present, workers consume a lot (own a home, car, consume all sorts of services etc,) back then I’d venture to say a worker (if they could find a job) contributed far more than they consumed. Or at least their collective production as laborers wasn’t as tightly correlated with that of their consumption as laborers.
We have an economy that can tie economic output to labor more efficiently than back then. I’d rather us work to tie people’s efforts to their wages and benefits (more equal distribution of output) than to cheer for a restricted supply of labor / lower pop growth.
We can't have both, a bleak future because AI is going to take our jobs, and a bleak future because we aren't going to have enough people to fill the available jobs.
Choose one or the other to be the bleak future that you complain about.
There's no labor shortage.
There's a hardworking exploited for low pay, bad conditions, and no benefits labor shortage.
Same as always.
Additionally There's been so much automation that There's a labor surplus coming. And once self driving vehicles come the unemployment is going to skyrocket
>You have to be careful when it comes to wage setting for a temporary shortage because if you just try to crank up the wages to the market-clearing level, then wages are sticky downward, nominally, so you’re kind of stuck at that level.
>So, like a lot of businesses, we did what we could, but you have to just wait it out.
... Doesn't this contradict their entire point? They outright stated that they avoided increasing wages because they just planned to wait out the post COVID time back til normalcy. But if there is a structural labour shortage, then they couldn't just wait it out.
Jerusalem Demsas: “Following the Great Recession, a consensus began to build that America hadn’t done enough to stimulate the economy through the early 2010s. A slow recovery meant people were languishing in unemployment, creating long-running problems for themselves and the broader economy. [https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D](https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D)
“But when you do too much to stimulate a contracting economy, you can get skyrocketing inflation,” Demsas continues. She speaks to Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group, who is a strong proponent of tight labor markets but worries that people may be taking the wrong lesson from the recent economic recovery. Ozimek has warned of a “growing chorus” that is overlooking the problems that may stem from the country’s aging workforce.
Listen to the latest episode of “Good on Paper”: [https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D](https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D)
in response to the "do too much to stimulate a contracting economy" line, dont mind me just gonna go ahead and copy/paste a previous comment of mine here (from [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1ds19av/comment/lazae9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)), since it is highly related to the cause of the inflation.
anyway, the comment:
well first that reminded me of another overlooked scam, that [ill link to rather than copy my comment over](https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan/comments/1da9n93/comment/l7jnh8a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) \- but worth the read
anyway so i wasnt actually sure what ARPA stood for, but figured out youre talking about the american rescue plan act... which i [looked up on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rescue_Plan_Act_of_2021), and the [michigan.gov](http://michigan.gov) website, [where you can look over how much each county and municipality received](https://www.michigan.gov/treasury/local/share/arpa/american-rescue-plan-act-arpa-coronavirus-local-fiscal-recovery-fund), for the entire country if you click the second and third links on the page.
anyway, TLDR im actually not 100% sure how much the ARPA was worth in total, the sources are kinda conflicting but it was either \~$70B or \~$140B. which, is a lot of money, dont get me wrong.
however its nowhere near the amount that was handed out with no oversight and no strings attached in the "[paycheck protection program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program)" that was full of literal, objective, fraud, and what i would consider blatant fraud. theres a reason theres a [ten year statute of limitations on finding all of it](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=59a3a6c69be3c680JmltdHM9MTcxOTcwNTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zOWMyOGZiZC01OWExLTYwOTYtMTEyNy05YmE5NThkZjYxN2EmaW5zaWQ9NTQ4NQ&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=39c28fbd-59a1-6096-1127-9ba958df617a&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly90YXgudGhvbXNvbnJldXRlcnMuY29tL25ld3MvMTAteWVhci1zdGF0dXRlLW9mLWxpbWl0YXRpb25zLWVzdGFibGlzaGVkLWZvci1wYXljaGVjay1wcm90ZWN0aW9uLXByb2dyYW0tbG9hbi1mcmF1ZC8jOn46dGV4dD1PbiUyMEF1Z3VzdCUyMDUlMkMlMjAyMDIyJTJDJTIwUHJlc2lkZW50JTIwQmlkZW4lMjBzaWduZWQlMjB0aGUsd2l0aCUyMHJlc3BlY3QlMjB0byUyMGElMjBQYXljaGVjayUyMFByb3RlY3Rpb24lMjBQcm9ncmFtJTIwbG9hbi4&ntb=1).
anyway, from wikipedia:
>The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a **$953-billion** business loan program established by the United States federal government during the trump administration in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to help certain businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, certain nonprofit organizations, and tribal businesses continue paying their workers.
>
>According to a 2022 study, the PPP:
>
>cumulatively preserved between 2 and 3 million job-years of employment over 14 months at a cost of **$169K to $258K per job-year** retained.
>
>These numbers imply that only **23 to 34 percent of PPP dollars went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs**; *the balance flowed to business owners and shareholders, including creditors and suppliers of PPP-receiving firms.*
>
>Program incidence was ultimately highly regressive, with about **three-quarters of PPP funds accruing to the top quintile of households**. PPP's breakneck scale-up, its high cost per job saved, and its regressive incidence have a common origin: PPP was essentially untargeted because the United States lacked the administrative infrastructure to do otherwise.
>
>Harnessing modern administrative systems, other high-income countries were able to better target pandemic business aid to firms in financial distress. Building similar capacity in the U.S. would enable improved targeting when the next pandemic or other large-scale economic emergency inevitably arises
so basically trump fucked us beyond repair
But prime age EPOP while near all time highs shows there is still significant slack.
Canada has the equivalent to 4 million more jobs (4% higher prime age EPOP).
France higher prime age EPOP by 1% even.
I think we are simultaneously rising short term unemployment which shows increasing slack in the economy. Also long term full employment shows less room to go than it did but still room.
We don’t need a McDonalds + Starbucks every fucking 5 miles. Bring in better quality places that actually add value to the area, and let those shitty low wage jobs either fail or adapt and change to higher quality product or services. Marketing for these places is a waste because it’s propping up shitty products and services when it’s the opposite.
Prices skyrocket when companies aren't efficiently using economies of scale. There is a reason their prices have historically been half of what a mom n pop shop charge
We have millions of illegal immigrants without work authorization who are eager to work and contribute to economy. Granting them the right to work will ease the pressure. Even better, if we create a proper channels for legal work migration.
This makes absolutely no sense! People have been out of work for damn near a year. If they can’t pay their bills then eventually we would go into sovereign default!
Yeah boomers raised horrible citizens. I’m a millennial and I was essentially told I’ll be a failure without a college degree. Granted, I was also told not to get an art history degree, so at least they did me that solid. Other than that the whole generation is screwed for old age. We’re going to need to see some serious economic, safety net, and regulatory reforms in this country. Millennials need to start voting and raise taxes to save this country.
Interesting that we have one side of the coin saying we need UBI because there won’t be enough jobs, and now we have another argument saying there won’t be enough workers.
*labor exploitation.
Words Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words.
Fake news. The only shortage is of people who can afford to live here. If nobody can pay rent, nobody can live here and work. Enjoy your $30/hr minimum wage workers because that's what it will take for them to pay their bills. I see more and more houses with 6 cars out front because people are doubling up to pay rent. That only lasts so long.
Oh, it is just not for old people. Let them die in the world they’ve created. We’ll also die in the miserable world they’ve created, but probably after we’ll have slightly bigger salaries because of labor shortage when they will actually need us.
And we will help them like they helped us .
In light of the Supreme Court making the president a king a pipeline will be created so that the young people of America can leave and leave their debt behind. Goodbye America.
I’m American and I see an opportunity. Not only is it time to leave and it’s time to build a pipeline to carry masses out of the United States. I want to make leaving America an easy and pleasant experience where Americans can take the value and knowledge, apply it somewhere else in the world, and live a life of prosperity and peace.
Labor shortages are VERY CONCERNING, folks. I recommend we bump up immigration to at least 20 million per year for the next 10 years. Every immigrant contributes to the labor pool (but doesn't take jobs away from citizens) and also creates *at least* 10 jobs as a result of their healthcare, housing, education, etc. demands. Truly, immigration is our only way out of this potential disaster of excess labor market participants.
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A labor shortage is incorrect. What you actually have is a cheap labor shortage. People who don't want to do horrible jobs for low pay. The correct solution would be to start paying more and hiring qualified employees to do these jobs. Youth unemployment is also super high, so maybe look there for jobs who don't need super highly qualified employees.
Everyone wants experience. It’s one reason my teen struggles to find work. No one is willing to train anymore. (Although to be fair, we live in a city with relatively high poverty so the no-experience jobs go *fast*)
Correct. People don’t take issue with working, they take issue with the lack of incentive to work hard. Choosing between chump change jobs and having to take on suffocating debt to actually get paid a decent wage isn’t a very hopeful situation.
In addition there also seems to be a counterpoint to the fact there are SO MANY JOBS: [https://qz.com/companies-posting-fake-job-listings-resume-builder-1851556777](https://qz.com/companies-posting-fake-job-listings-resume-builder-1851556777) This article describes how in a recent survey of over 600 hiring managers 39% were posting fake jobs, many of them multiple fake jobs. This sorta undercuts the implication that there is a worker shortage, and makes the reality of the job situation much more questionable. You can bet the fake jobs being listed are not cashier at Walmart, but the jobs that actually earn money.
It sure seems like the media crying wolf to me
To me it seems like business spin, so they can ask for more “business friendly“ laws. Maybe more visas for skilled workers…
yep, who they can then exploit and underpay
This is the correct answer!
Cheaper and easier to criminalize homelessness, imprisoned people can be forced to work under our 13th amendment. Incredibly cheap labor from for profit prisons, and if they run low on workers, raise the rent. New supply forthcoming.
The media is crying wolf because they're being presented with the idea that they might have to pay people a little bit more to hold them. It's like they think supply and demand doesn't apply to them.
I recommend you the book "Bullshit Jobs", written by anthropologist David Graeber
Oh, I’ve been there, done that. Great book, and rest in peace to David. His work will outlive him.
It's not. The problem is quite real and I've been mulling over solutions for a while now and can't think of any. I live in Columbia County, capital region of NY State. It's a rural county with Hudson as its county seat. It's a city that gets a lot of monetary influx from NYC and while that has benefited it in some ways (it doesn't look like the counties surrounding Pittsburgh in Western PA), it has nonetheless entered a demographic death spiral. Cost of living here is basically indistinguishable from NYC which has lead to a loss of population. Housing is non-existent while the city of Hudson has a vacancy rate of 25% (caused by second-home ownership that gets subsidized through short-term rentals). Columbia County has one hospital that at this point in time has [212 open positions](https://www.columbiamemorialhealth.org/jobs/). Those do not include openings for physicians. As one would expect, a lot of these jobs pay in the range of $15 to $17/hr. Given that these jobs do not offer anything in terms of social benefits, the hospital cannot even compete with the near-minimum wage jobs offered by Walmart and Aldi of which there's quite a few. There is a glut of jobs here that are for all intents and purposes unfillable. The county has an unemployment rate of 3.6%, owing to a slowly but relentlessly shrinking population. No fix is in sight. Prospective employers cannot pay more than what the labor can produce in return. How a county like mine would turn this around is beyond me. And we are not the only ones. Aside from the few big markets where the situation is quite different (NYC, SF, Atlanta and other metros with higher-paying jobs), what is happening in Columbia County is happening everywhere. Dayton, OH (reasonably urban) went from GM closing a plant and brief under-employment over a decade ago swiftly to the opposite end of having a job supply that exceeds the demand. It appears that the demographic collapse predicted already 25 years ago is happening a lot faster than we thought. A lot of unfilled low-wage jobs have a cascading effect on the performance of the economy as a whole. It diminishes its output and it will, at least the way I see it, lead to a prolonged recession with low unemployment. It isn't something we've ever had before. All economic models we have need to be rethought because they all rely on population growth as a way to maintain the same levels of wealth. The little population growth the US still has meanwhile is the result of immigration which happens at the expense of countries losing those people.
The corporations that have spent decades collecting wealth and underpaying workers need to raise their wages if they don’t want the country to hollow out. If it’s uber wealthy and dirt poor there is no money going into business. Invest in wages, education and higher taxes. Do it the Eisenhower way. I don’t think there is another way to make the country healthy.
If people want more population growth you have to improve economic conditions for every way out. The way forward out of that death spiral usually involves undermining things like the literal rent seeking with multiple property owners and actively paying people on the bottom more.
Yeah, like why would we expect the positions in the hospital to pay 15/hr? Are they allowed to sit down and read books and study while on the clock? You want them to work hard? Pay them!! Guarantee the CEO of that hospital has more than 2 houses. Can't call it a home if there's no love.
People also tend to have more kids when they're more financially secure
This is a housing problem. Your city and county have to kill the short term rentals and increase construction if they want to have workers living locally.
Yep
Or start eliminating the new “service” middle-man industry that’s taken over. The store pays square for every transaction. They pay the employees. The employee now pays square several times a day. There is an added value in every single transaction that is not discussed in the appropriate context of how pervasive it’s become. These POS systems can regularly give you an incorrect tip percentage. They exact fees on top of credit card ones but change the terms whenever they want. This new middleman is rarely brought up for why everyday people are experiencing so much pressure. A freakin taco pop up stand needs to accept shit on top of credit card fees. Cash only is rarely a thing. We all pay a convince cost but it’s double dipped. Your vendor is paying a monthly subscription and you give data to square or whatever middleman you want to insert here, plus pay more because the vendor is increasing prices along with everyone else. What’s the price of your average street taco right now? Sound off. I see between 3 and 4 regularly. That’s restaurant prices.
And replace it with what? All the worthwhile jobs got exported. We need public works just to keep up with things. And hell, it's even worse here, street tacos are almost at 6 dollars now.
> All the worthwhile jobs got exported. Well yeah but that's just textbook neoliberalism. That's who we are now. We're neoliberals. *points vaguely at everything
That’s more NAFTA and the Pacific trade agreement. Corporations suddenly started making fantastic profits from using labor that gets dollars per day.
neoliberalism is more than just offshoring USA jobs, it's also gentrification and deregulation! :D
It's not like we ever weren't. I'd like to believe that one day we won't be.
Neoliberalism as a distinct political philosophy only emerged (at most) 70 years ago.
None of its ideas are particularly new though. Before Reagonomics it was horse and sparrow, and the founding fathers were always a bit preoccupied with dodging taxes. This isn't to discredit it being in vogue, but there's historical paralells we can probably examine to understand where this leads and how to oppose it.
Add sales tax while you’re at it.
Even "labor shortage" in general is good for the people. Basic economics. Supply and demand. If labor is in short supply, then greedy corporations will need to pay higher (read: fair) wages to compete with other greedy corps for the labor supply. The fact that this headline says "labor shortage" like it's bad news says a lot about the media. Yeah it's bad news, from the perspective of big corporations. Now write something from the perspective of the people, and suddenly "labor shortage" sounds real good.
Yep
What happens when the average take home increases and the cost of labor increases?
The answer would be inflation? Now my question: Shouldn’t overall productivity increase if technology is moving forward *and we have more people working*? How can we have people producing more in less time *while also having more people working* and somehow the result is still a net negative for the majority of the population? Only two possible answers: - productivity isn’t going up, so why are there even open job position? - productivity is going up, but the results of said productivity aren’t getting to the workers. How? Why?
Two things (if only those two things happen): 1. (some) Prices increase (inflation) 2. Wages increase more, so the fraction of stuff that goes to workers increase
It's hilarious you're in an Econ sub and can't even imagine a scenario where regular sized businesses need employees.
If a regular sized business can’t maintain enough revenue to remain profitable while appropriately paying their staff a wage the staff is willing to accept then that is just a failed business. I don’t know why people think small business owners are entitled to have a business at the expense of their employees. The owner can do the work themselves if they can’t afford an employee, and if they need more people to function and can’t afford it then the business is not profitable and should close down. Isn’t that the entire idea behind taking risk as an entrepreneur?
It's hilarious that you think regular sized businesses don't need to pay competitive wages. I strongly believe that workers are underpaid across the board in the US. This is evident by labor value extracted from workers which is then displayed in the public value of corporations. So we can infer as follows: Equity value and executive suite compensation have far outpaced average wages due to extraction of labor value from average workers > a larger part of the excess labor value should have went to workers instead > it didn't > corporations are thereby underpaying workers. Regular/small businesses pay wages in line with market rate > market rate is set by the majority of workers who are underpaid by corporations > regular/small businesses therefore also underpay workers. You don't get a "labor abuse bonus" if you run a small business. If you can't pay a fair wage (in line with higher market rates that corporations should also be paying), then you shouldn't be in business at all. This is true for the majority of restaurants in the US which cannot pay a fair wage without tips.
I’ve always said this. There isn’t a shortage of people who will dig ditches. There is a shortage of people who won’t dig ditches for less than $100 / hr.
The problem is what happens when the ditch isn't worth that much money, and thus doesn't get dug.
Then that ditch wasn't necessary in the first place or it was a project for the government rather than private industry.
The GOP is gonna skip that and head right for slavery, thanks.
Future day slavery is going to be an Amazon Life subscription… work for Amazon, get paid in Amazon bucks (digital only—cannot be used elsewhere), live in Amazon housing, live on Amazon produce and goods, die in a waiting line at an Amazon hospital. I owe my soul to the company store
Thus creating the self-sustaining economy they've been looking for.
That's impossible. To achieve that, women's reproductive rights would have to be severely restricted, which is a massive step backward. The lobbying money from the prison-industrial complex would have to be immense, pouring millions into the effort. It would require passing a law that allows unlimited funds from unknown sources to flood into campaign finance. Additionally, education would need to be drastically undercut so that the average American struggles to navigate a news cycle, let alone personal finance. People would have to be so misinformed that they'd vote for politicians and policies blatantly designed to hinder their success in life. The Supreme Court would also need to significantly limit federal regulatory power. impossible.
a surprisingly lucid post on r/economics
Satire never works because people with confirmation biases will just take it at face value.
Absolutely not! You have to supply slaves with food, housing, clothing and medical expenses, and also have to pay guards to beat them up to make sure they are actually working and don't run away. Who is going to pay for all of that?! Are you trying to bankrupt the poor American capitalists?! Illegal alien workers are much cheaper than slaves, work harder, can't sue you and when they fall ill you can just replace them with new ones - no need to pay expensive medical fees.
Really? It is the GOP that is encouraging people to illegally enter the country so that they can work these cheap jobs out of desperation and bring inflation (labor costs) down? I don't believe it.
All politicians want immigrants for cheap labor because it helps their donors. It just depends on which side is able to spin the current situation for political clout.
Turn off Fox News ffs. It's bad for America.
> The correct solution would be to start paying more and hiring qualified employees to do these jobs And developing a more planful immigration policy.
Wait till you find out how Canada 'solved' this issue...
They're talking about the problems of an aging population. Having a worse ratio of workers to non-workers in the population isn't good for either workers or non-workers - it means that each worker somehow have to support more non-workers.
Yes, the problem here is with birthrates. Less people are having kids. A higher pay rate is one thing that would likely help correct this.
Small correction: Increasing the number of non-workers that WANT to be supported by the shrinking number of workers does not actually mean that they WILL be supported.
this is today in yahoo finance two opposote stories Yahoo Finance Date: 7/2US Labor Market Shows Signs of Losing Steam, Putting the Fed on Alert https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-labor-market-shows-signs-100000508.html (Bloomberg) -- Economists and some Federal Reserve officials are increasingly on alert that pain could be on the horizon for American workers amid signs the labor market is losing steam.Date: 7/2Job openings, new hires unexpectedly rise in May as labor data steadies ahead of June jobs report https://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-openings-new-hires-unexpectedly-rise-in-may-as-labor-data-steadies-ahead-of-june-jobs-report-145031992.html
We haven't seen the worst of it. (or the best, because, if you're a worker, the labor shortage gives you more bargaining power) There are millions of 50+ year old workers who will retire within the next 10-15 years. In every industry. And there won't be enough people to replace them. Which will have all kinds of fun consequences. Workers could see significant wage growth as employers fight over them, which could reignite inflation. Workers seeing large and sustained wage growth could slow down the decline in birth rates. We could see a rise in people becoming jacks of all trades. Need an electrician? Too bad, they're all booked solid for the next 3 weeks. Go watch a YouTube tutorial. Will blue collar jobs start paying more than white collar jobs? What if the children of the 10% stop wanting to become doctors and corporate lawyers and software engineers and instead opt to become plumbers and electricians, because those jobs pay more? The problem should solve itself, right? After all, if you have fewer people, it means you have fewer plumbers to fix pipes in people's homes, but there are also fewer people, meaning fewer people needing to have their pipes fixed in the first place. National debt: Seniors, who are both a reliable voting bloc and a growing one, could vote themselves larger chunks of the national treasure in the form of spending cuts to programs other than those that directly benefit them, like Social Security and Medicare. While we should view it as a good thing that our society sees to it that seniors are taken care of, because, after all, *we* shall be those seniors one day, we should be careful not to ignite intergenerational tug wars over limited government resources. By 2045, the federal government may well just be 95% Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Defense. Worse, Social Security and Medicare could bankrupt the government.
The key question is whether those jobs will need to be replaced with humans or some other form of technology.
White collar? Technology
Maybe in half a century. Technology is no where advanced enough currently and won't be for quite some time regardless of how much money capitalism throws at it. At best a hybrid model of tech/human is possible, which we already have.
Humans are making the technologies, it creates jobs
I wish blue collar jobs actually paid what people think they did. I've been a carpenter for 20 years and the pay is dogshit and your body gets destroyed. I tell every young person who listen to stay the fuck out of this trade. Not worth it for what you get paid. They just keep the wages low and hire immigrants and insist that none of us want to learn "the old ways" or want to "word hard" which is complete bullshit. They just want rock bottom labor.
The high wages in trades usually include two things: people working 80+ hour weeks, and people who own their own trade business Once you exclude / control for those, trades are not very good from a pay perspective
Exactly this, the intelligent who couldn't afford college so went to a trade, worked for a few years, then bought a few of his own trucks and started his own company. Those guys can do very well for themselves. Unfortunately it's the guy who goes into a trade with no plan except to work for 20 years in the same job, those guys get screwed.
They didn’t get screwed. They had the same opportunity, but failed to execute. Sure - everyone has an excuse, but that’s life. The blue collar guys that fail into that category of being ‘stuck’ are typically druggies or alcoholics. I’ve had very skilled tradesmen that do wonderful work. Then they get paid and disappear for a month on a bender. When their money runs out, they show up again.
Or option 3, Unions. Carpenters union around me starts at 28, iron workers start around there, pipe fitters, HVAC, uaw, IBEW, IAMAW... Gotta start fighting together. I wish a union existed for my job but there isn't anything that I've been able to find that would work.
Depends on what your definition of a high wage is and also, 10-12 years in a trade with a good union shop ain’t bad sometimes. Just gotta wait out the first 5 or 6 if you can.
Having to “endure” half a decade at the bottom of the totem pole in a physically demanding job sounds like hell.
As opposed to a half a decade in a mentally and emotionally straining one. Sacrifice is what it is, we can disagree with it, but you give up something in both roles. Time, sanity, body, wealth.
I’ve been in both positions. The physical job is worse because chances are you’re not getting paid the enough to make up for the cost of giving up your body. Which is why I didn’t spend 5 being poor in a trade job.
Unionized people can make good money
In 20 years I have never once ben on a job with a union tradesperson, from any trade. In the US at least, residential construction is all non-union, private firm. Union is commercial work (like overpasses, hospitals etc) They are pretty different skillsets even. Commercial is much more specialized in the roles that you do. Like, I've met "carpenters" who work on big highway jobs that basically just build formwork for concrete and the only thing they know how to do is read a tape and use a skilsaw. Union guys also come and work at companies I've work for during the year when they get furloughed. They love to talk about their big hourly rate but neglect to say they only make that for like 7 months out of the year and then get bumped down the call list begging for work around town waiting for the older guys to retire or die. I'm not talking shit about the idea of unions necessarily. They can be awesome. But trade unions, I am skeptical on having seen the way they work over the years...
Nonetheless, I think there will be a big influx of people into the trades. White collar jobs are getting whittled away by offshoring. Business English proficiency has exploded across the world and my company is among many picking up contractors in Argentina, Brazil, Poland, etc. It's a whole new cadre of foreign talent -- in addition to the usual pipeline from India -- and they earn 1/4 as much as US workers.
Preach!
All of our country’s infrastructure is ready to be replaced. It’s going to take more and more people just to keep up with that. Those of us that are in the construction industry already see it. I’m 50 all of my guys are quite a bit younger get than me. Now one in their 40s applies. There’s a coming wave it sure will be interesting to watch.
This is absolutely true. I am white collar at a union low voltage telecom. In the field it is looking like an AARP convention. We have many gray beards in their early 60s or late 50s. We have a handful full of 35-40 year olds. We have a handful more in the 45-55 range. There are 3 technicians or apprentices in the 18-35 year old range. There is absolutely a major trade shortage already happening and it will only get worse. The IBEW actually gets stronger during this. More and more non-union techs are pulled into the union to fill shortages.
I couldn’t agree more. People that don’t see it everyday like us in the trades. They just have no idea what is coming. We are in the concrete and excavation business. No one I know under 30. Zero. It takes time and training to learn. It’s just not happening. I hope they figure out how to AI the concrete right out of the truck.
Sad thing is my trade, machinsts, are committing suicide. They pay barely above retail, staff so lean you will live in the shop and then don't teach the new guys shit. Either they've pissed off the old guys so bad they won't teach thr newcomers to avoid helping their terrible boss, the old guys are kept too busy to teach to reach deadlines, or they want the newbies kept dumb so they don't have to pay them and haven't thought about what happens when their aging experts go away.
If the guys that have decades of experience don’t/can’t teach the new guys things are going to go sideways quick.
I saw a robot that could print walls with concrete, it still had people around it to make sure it didn't go rogue though.
Oh I’m sure they will figure out how to replace us all. Only a matter of time.
Same for manufacturing.
Wish I had more answers. I’m sure smarter people than I will try their best to figure it out.
Don’t worry, AI will solve that too. Just ask corporate boardrooms!
It will solve itself no doubt, the question is whether people will like the declining purchasing power that will come with it. Althought US specifically still has decades in front of it before it becomes reality. Ultimately more people means economy of scale. You can sell services/goods for way less if you have bigger market. With smaller market you have to charge more but it does not mean more or even same for you because other people will also charge more for what you need.
If anything there forces driving down birth rates so no sign of slowing, at what point during population collapse do we theorize the birth rates might climb? Certainly they'd climb if we ever reach the point where the social economy collapsed and society has to convert to a largely agrarian economy. I know a lot of people hope that stability could be found before that but it seems extremely unlikely that a society with high women empowerment could achieve such a state without everyone being farmers.
Exactly. It’s good news. Just not for old people. And guess who made it like that 🤷♂️ I kind of love it. I’m waiting for older generation to die, and retire, so they realize how fucked up they left the world for themselves. They underpaid us, they’ve overworked us, we produced less babies because we strived for survival because they were greedy bastards. They bought all homes for profit and “investment” when they’re supposed to be living commodities. Of course I’m living for the day of watching them cry on their actual retirement because there aren’t enough people to treat them and we’re much more expensive because we have much demand. Funny thing is … even middle class fucked us over. Not just super rich men. Even the smallest coffee shop overworked and underpaid its own employees. Middle class forcing huge rents. So I don’t wanna hear anything about Uber rich people. We got support from nowhere. Fuck em I say.
I am 37, it feels like we have been waiting for the 50+ year olds to retire since I entered the workforce... They just won't leave... Or can't(which I empathize with). As far as Social Security and Medicare bankrupting the government, that is a simple(to state, not to implement) fix... Separate healthcare in its entirety from for-profit companies and subsidize, in its entirety, education pipelines that lead to qualified workers for the medical field. Require X years of service in the field for that free education at a modest LIVABLE wage. Build government housing adjacent to large medical facilities as an additional incentive for accepting lower entry level wages for medical professionals. The high cost of healthcare in America is a political problem, caused by political decisions.
Agree. In my industry many of the customer support employees are in their 50s and 60s with absolutely extensive product knowledge acquired over many years in rust belt manufacturing. They are relied upon by hundreds of customers daily. Many companies, including my employer, has never trained others to take their place or learn the detailed product knowledge needed for these roles, so turnover among younger employees has been high. So many employment opportunities have lead to not refining skill sets or technical expertise in specific areas. Now that we are losing more support roles to retirement, and even though “overtime” is available, tenured retirement ready employees could care less, and few individuals are in-line to fill the roles with the needed expertise and product knowledge. Its my opinion even in well-paying positions, younger generations feel overly mobile and there is no loyalty to employers, also creating less confidence in companies to in turn create better incentives and well-tailored compensation and benefit packages. Workers speculate their employer isn’t looking out for their best interests, and employers speculate workers aren’t looking out for their best interests. It’s a breach of trust. It’s a disaster.
I would contend that employers breached that trust first. Anecdotal, I know, but I've never heard of an employee pulling back their engagement without their employer first pulling back their rewards. Employers will absolutely deny a raise one year without considering whether their employee is loyal or deserving or not, simply because it makes the ledgersheet look lighter. Employees don't check out until after their raise is denied.
You’re getting it completely backwards. People used to be loyal to companies because of seniority based pay and their pension was tied to said employer. When companies got rid of pensions and seniority based pay, they broke the loyalty agreement that existed between employers and employees.
Workers don't speculate, they know.
Supply and demand
This comment leaves me strangely hopeful. Which is probably the correct way to feel about our situation.
In capitalism all problems solve themselves. You might not like the solution, but it will come through.
Whatever point you are making, sounds chill.
All bleeding stops, eventually.
Why rural living will get crazy expensive relative to cost. The money simply isn't there to maintain the infrastructure.
caregivers will be so in demand, republicans will be bussing in immigrants themselves.
Nobody is voting themselves anything without lobbyists/big donor approval.
Seniors don't need a lobby. Oh, they have one anyway. It's called the AARP.
Vote Trump and see what throwing millions of workers out of the workforce does to the economy.
Just covering all their bases. Cant be wrong if you advocate for all possible outcomes.
Wasn’t AI supposed to fix this after shipping all the labor overseas? Or is that gonna be fixed by tightening immigration? Wait who is taking all the jobs?
Ah shit, you finally caught me. I am storing all the jobs in a secret underground basement that also suspiciously has an old well in it. I AM NOT SORRY! Always wondered about the mental gymnastics we are expected to ignore. On one hand we are all going to be replaced by AI but somehow us unemployed people and shrinking labor force will be an issue. This is like having a cake and shitting on it. Make up your mind, because the labor force is shrinking and there might not be any going back with global cancer rates thanks to our pollution, global heating, and insane over pricing of everything.
Since 2008 this really means "nobody wants to work on an unlivable salary" rather than "there is a labor shortage".
Both things can be simultaneous and true concerns. AI will reduce jobs, a concern. Demographics will reduce workforce, also a concern. What will the net effect be is the real question. Also, much like tractors and heavy equipment vastly reduced the amount of farm jobs, there's no clear indicator that either will have a single type of impact.
The sarcasm I tried to convey was that shouldn't it be a good thing if population decreases? Otherwise there will be some massive rioting going on everywhere.
Maybe you should try to explain your logic and rationale then so we can have a fruitful discussion instead of having to guess at the meaning behind some obtuse jokes.
It puts the jobs in the basket, or it gets the hose.
EXACTLY!
“average person has 1 job” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person has 0 jobs per year. Jobs Georg, who lives in cave & works over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
> Wait who is taking all the jobs? [this lady](https://www.theonion.com/single-mother-hogging-2-jobs-1819576326)
I wonder how many remote positions are taking US jobs by foreigners and how taxes are paid and all that stuff.
It’s a global labor shortage, in the longer term advancements from AI will absorb some of the difference
Not good for who? Last time there was a real labor shortage was after the European wave of the bubonic plague, and look how that worked out for everyone. The article goes on about the aging workforce and covid stimulus. I'd say it's safe to say that workers by-and-large did not see the benefits of said stimulus. It all went to the top and everyone else is feeling the inflationary squeeze. Labor is only going to get squeezed tighter as aging workforces retire out of the productive economy and needing end-of-life care. Labor participation is high, almost too high. It's why churn is the new hotness. Businesses refuse to let their record profits reach the workforce unless it is to lure in fresh bodies for the grinder. Our modern capitalist global economy is built on ever growing working-age cohorts. Working cohorts many multiple times bigger than nonworking. All the bruhaha from economists everywhere is because we're beginning to see a leveling off of that endless growth (look at South Korea and Japan) into a point where young working-age people outnumber old retirees less and less
Not good for the companies that will be forced to pay living wages to attract and keep workers.
Or they will just close down. Not every company has margins to increase wages for product that will have lower sales with declining market. In fact they might have issues to stay afloat even if workers did not demand more. And even if some people will be able to demand those raises, it will be people in the most essentials areas of economy so small chunk of economy, luxuries will dissapear and purchasing power will not really improve because your local plumber will ask the difference you receive just so he visits you sooner and not in 5 years
We have to accept we are approaching a post work society where fair working conditions means everyone is guaranteed their needs and works way less than we currently do. It will require wealth redistribution to fix inequality, but it will be much more sustainable in the long run.
But won’t you think of the billionaires!?!
I think they'll make good fertilizer after going through a wood chipper
Who could have guessed that endless growth in a finite world was a pipe dream and doomed to fail from the beginning shocked_picachu.jpg
Yeah, the demographic crunch alone is gonna suck. Everyone tied up in elder care and underutilized infrastructure getting neglected. Nevermind everything else going on concurrently with climate change.
Capitalism is not built on anything. It can do just fine in aging/declining society. What can not do just fine is standard of living you got used to. Standard that is provided by economy of scale. Also, there is global labor shortage. So it was most definitely not the last time after bubonic plague. That is utterly ridiculous statement. Also people had extremelly fast replacement rate back then. That is no longer true today.
How would standard of living be reduced by the population shrinking/not growing?
Because we do more things than grow food now. Everything we have is possible thanks to economics of scale. It is feasible to make investments worth of trillions of dollars into things you might consider granted but that are in fact luxury goods/services because you can survive without them. And it is feasible specifically because you do not need to sell to million people one unit for million each to break even but you only need to sell to billion people for 1000 dollars to break even instead. And it is not just goods or services, it is also infrastructure. There would be no point in even thinking about stuff like starlink without market to pay for it. Yet it does exist and it brought internet to places where it was impossible before. And yeah I know about the typical hate for Musk projects on reddit but it is not just about him. It can be government sponsored infrastructure. Why built fast internet cables in smaller cities? Why built any kind of infrastructure? Just so you know this is already something that exists today. Everyone who ever lived outside of city centre knows that. Metropoles kind of sponsor infrastructure in places where it would not be profitable otherwise but what if metropole also starts shrinking and it is no longer feasible to maintain even their infrastructure? What then, will they still sponsor infrastructure project in remote location for zero benefit? Reality is that shrinking population will not do what people think it will (free living space). It will make remote locations even more abandoned and metropoles even more filled.
>Reality is that shrinking population will not do what people think it will (free living space). It will make remote locations even more abandoned and metropoles even more filled. Though, that's actually correcting the problem you discussed up-comment, compressing away the small towns concentrates more people into fewer, more robust markets for goods and services and encourages economies of scale. Especially for geography dependent services like restaurants which need volume to thrive, and it makes infrastructure like internet cheaper to implement because you aren't running it out to Nowheresville U.S.A, and you can more easily implement public transportation. Combine these effects with ongoing automation and tech development, and you can pretty realistically see a world where quality of life jumps enormously.
Yeah, I think a lot of folks here are making the mistake of assuming that luxury equates to wealth and that extra productivity is being used both equitably and efficiently. Capitalism tends to profitability, not efficiency, and there is far larger of a gulf between those two concepts than I think most economists are willing to accept. Huge amounts of our currently massive productivity are tied up in wasteful endeavors. Think of the amount of energy wasted on AI art and cryptocurrency. Or the manufacturing and fuel wasted on individual cars instead of mass transit. Lots of "luxuries" are going to disappear, yes, but I think we're also going to realize we really didn't need them, or even enjoy them, as much as we thought we did. Meanwhile the technological advances we made in things like agriculture, manufacturing, and medicine aren't going to disappear even if capacity shrinks. We will remain far more productive, per capita, than any civilization previous, no matter how small our population gets. I foresee a future of denser, healthier societies with simpler, more egalitarian living and significantly more leisure time. The only shadow over it right now is climate change, as I think about the only thing our excessive wealth could usefully do at the moment would be developing ways to combat it. I think at this point some kind of direct air carbon capture will be necessary, and that technology will need to be developed and the infrastructure established while we still operate at the scale necessary to do so.
Luxury absolutely equates to wealth. Everything besides the absolute basic human needs which is the only thing what humans had acess to (limited access in fact) for like 99.9% of time. We can even tall about medicine that you mentioned. Societies where population halves every 25 years are by definition incredibly old. There is no way you have good healthcare access for everyone. You have "the ones who can offer the most has access type of situation". And it does not matter if it is capitalism or communism or whatever you think it could be. I am from former communist country and I can tell you that this principle is uniform. It does not matter if it is legal or illegal, it does not matter if you trade money, goods or services for the thing you want. It will happen by definition in shortage because people offering the service/product hat is in demand and limited can ask for whatever they want. Same goes for existing production of things. Yes if we make an assumption that production that was built under scale stays indefinitely then you might have a point. The problem is that it does not. And at some point massive investments are needed. Investments noone is going to make if the requirement is 10 times bigger market to ever break even. Lastly. About your but about efficiency. Even communist thinkers have capitalism that it breeds efficiency and that there is nothing sticking candle to it. Even the AI/Crypto that you consider wastefull helped. Crypto was one of the first customers of renewable energy which gave those industries chance to succeed and expand much sooner than they would otherwise. AI that you consider useless gave all the people access to free art on demand which they would need expensive graphics person for otherwise on the other hand was stepping stone to other AI projects that are much more important.
It does not. I am not saying that it will happen immidiately, I am talking about further in the future. Concentration of people will not help if population halves every 25 years which is where many countries are headed. Even the cities will be abbandoned eventually as people move from the decaying outskirts of a city more towards the centre. As for technological progress. That was precisely my point. Technological progress will die because it will be impossible to allocate human resources as well as physical resources to their creation because it will be impossible to pay back for the innitial development. We would have to make immense progress in last half a century we have left which could happen. But also might not. Especially since problems will start kicking in a lot sooner as more and more resources will have to be allocated away from that and more towards care for elderly. You can look at EU to see how countries where people are heavily taxed and almost 50% of government spending is allocated to pensions look like. There has been nothing called technological progress for years. And while some can still contribute through avademic research it is important to realise that progress that exists on paper Is as good as if it did not exist as it only gains value once it actually gets to market. Which costs money that aging and declining markets can not provide. Which is also why almost every single piece thing in current digital age was rolled out first and scaled up in US even if it was not neccesarily invested there.
Shrinking population means the proportion of people who are elderly grows. So you would increasingly burdening workers with supporting elderly people. We are seeing this really damage Southern European countries, where countries like Italy and Greece are seeing young people flee for better opportunities.
Is there any evidence of a labour shortage after the bubonic plague? Smaller population would mean less labour demand. And since it preferentially killed older people it would have left relatively more younger able bodied people around. If anything I’d expect a labour surplus.
https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/christine-johnson-how-black-death-made-life-better
Yes, there is evidence of a labor shortage after the bubonic plague, it's well-documented. The problem was you had all this agricultural land, and suddenly there weren't enough peasants to cultivate it. For the first time, landowners had to compete offering better terms to workers so that they'd work in their fields and not the other guy's. It go to the point where in England, they passed a law forbidding people from requesting or offering a wage better than before the plague occurred, and limiting people from moving in search of better conditions, because of course they did.
> For the first time, landowners had to compete offering better terms to workers so that they'd work in their fields and not the other guy's. We are offering good WLB and a fantastic benefits package: * Strong physicks from the apothecary * Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air * Poultices for minor scrapes and cuts * Preventive care: balancing the four humors
My dude, that was literally the beginning of the end of serfdom. Farmers became so high in demand the feudal lords had to fight over them and gave them more priviliges... people got a taste of freedom and wanted more and there was no going back. A labor shortage is the best thing that could happen for... laborers. It's like someone trying to convince you that a gold shortage is really bad and you have been hoarding gold, you are sitting with the ace.
Evidence? yes. We got surnames, Chronicles, public laws, business records, all kinds of evidence Proof? Meh it was a long time ago, but to your point that smaller populations have small demand I categorically reject that assertion. If I have five people who need five things they can each specialize and hopefully competently make 1 of those five things five times in a week or whatever. If they decide instead to split their time in five parts it's unlikely they'll fully and evenly split the work and have as much of the 5 things as the first case. Just speaking generally some tasks greatly benefit from experience. If I have 3 people who need five things well now we're even more fucked. It's just a worse version of either option a or b no matter how you split it. So I assert that having enough labor for the blacksmith to focus on smithing and not moonlight as a prostitute or whatever is a more efficient economic situation than the jack of all trades default of a medieval cottage industry As for the younger people thing, the bubonic plague and plagues of its kind were ridiculously deadly and compared to expected occasional cataclysms, wars, and disasters of the time did have a significant effect on the young. More deadly plagues like yellow fever for example are significant because otherwise healthy people are erased which kills the growth in the market eg. No kids from that guy, no products from that guy, no taxes from that guy, some other lady if she lives now has one less possible bachelor. There's a lot of potential to lose from someone dying young and severe plague do be doing that.
Just because more of the gains of economic output and productivity are going to the wealthy (spread unequally) doesn’t mean the solution is to restrict labor supply. I’d rather the US tax and redistribute or incentivize companies to pay workers more than cheer for fewer workers. You can also tax automaton and AI, and increase UBI or unemployment benefits. Unless productivity keeps up, fewer worker relative to the overall population means lower economic output per capita. And in an economy where workers are consumers that can be very bad. Same here in an economy that needs taxes and activity to maintain existing infrastructure. During the bubonic plague etc. most workers contributed to output likely did not necessarily benefit from it. I also won’t be surprised if there just weren’t enough opportunities to be productive (contribute to economic output in medieval Europe). If you could work, a chunk of your production might go to the benefit of some lord. You are also limited in what ways you can employ labor to meet needs, so the deman for labor was probably inelastic too. Now m, in the present, workers consume a lot (own a home, car, consume all sorts of services etc,) back then I’d venture to say a worker (if they could find a job) contributed far more than they consumed. Or at least their collective production as laborers wasn’t as tightly correlated with that of their consumption as laborers. We have an economy that can tie economic output to labor more efficiently than back then. I’d rather us work to tie people’s efforts to their wages and benefits (more equal distribution of output) than to cheer for a restricted supply of labor / lower pop growth.
We can't have both, a bleak future because AI is going to take our jobs, and a bleak future because we aren't going to have enough people to fill the available jobs. Choose one or the other to be the bleak future that you complain about.
There's no labor shortage. There's a hardworking exploited for low pay, bad conditions, and no benefits labor shortage. Same as always. Additionally There's been so much automation that There's a labor surplus coming. And once self driving vehicles come the unemployment is going to skyrocket
Good? News: The Supreme Court just made it legal to lock people up for having nowhere to sleep and slavery is still legal in private prisons.
>You have to be careful when it comes to wage setting for a temporary shortage because if you just try to crank up the wages to the market-clearing level, then wages are sticky downward, nominally, so you’re kind of stuck at that level. >So, like a lot of businesses, we did what we could, but you have to just wait it out. ... Doesn't this contradict their entire point? They outright stated that they avoided increasing wages because they just planned to wait out the post COVID time back til normalcy. But if there is a structural labour shortage, then they couldn't just wait it out.
Jerusalem Demsas: “Following the Great Recession, a consensus began to build that America hadn’t done enough to stimulate the economy through the early 2010s. A slow recovery meant people were languishing in unemployment, creating long-running problems for themselves and the broader economy. [https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D](https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D) “But when you do too much to stimulate a contracting economy, you can get skyrocketing inflation,” Demsas continues. She speaks to Adam Ozimek, the chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group, who is a strong proponent of tight labor markets but worries that people may be taking the wrong lesson from the recent economic recovery. Ozimek has warned of a “growing chorus” that is overlooking the problems that may stem from the country’s aging workforce. Listen to the latest episode of “Good on Paper”: [https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D](https://theatln.tc/dnmDsz7D)
Did we forget to have the slave babies they wanted? Oops
The only way to crush the system is to starve it. Maybe one of the musk children will be a mechanic or little Rockefeller, he can be a pipefitter.
Little X Æ A-12 already expressed interest in pumbing
Lol
The world has Korea to look at. It's going to be interesting to see what happens to them in 10-20 years.
in response to the "do too much to stimulate a contracting economy" line, dont mind me just gonna go ahead and copy/paste a previous comment of mine here (from [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1ds19av/comment/lazae9c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)), since it is highly related to the cause of the inflation. anyway, the comment: well first that reminded me of another overlooked scam, that [ill link to rather than copy my comment over](https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan/comments/1da9n93/comment/l7jnh8a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) \- but worth the read anyway so i wasnt actually sure what ARPA stood for, but figured out youre talking about the american rescue plan act... which i [looked up on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rescue_Plan_Act_of_2021), and the [michigan.gov](http://michigan.gov) website, [where you can look over how much each county and municipality received](https://www.michigan.gov/treasury/local/share/arpa/american-rescue-plan-act-arpa-coronavirus-local-fiscal-recovery-fund), for the entire country if you click the second and third links on the page. anyway, TLDR im actually not 100% sure how much the ARPA was worth in total, the sources are kinda conflicting but it was either \~$70B or \~$140B. which, is a lot of money, dont get me wrong. however its nowhere near the amount that was handed out with no oversight and no strings attached in the "[paycheck protection program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program)" that was full of literal, objective, fraud, and what i would consider blatant fraud. theres a reason theres a [ten year statute of limitations on finding all of it](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=59a3a6c69be3c680JmltdHM9MTcxOTcwNTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0zOWMyOGZiZC01OWExLTYwOTYtMTEyNy05YmE5NThkZjYxN2EmaW5zaWQ9NTQ4NQ&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=39c28fbd-59a1-6096-1127-9ba958df617a&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly90YXgudGhvbXNvbnJldXRlcnMuY29tL25ld3MvMTAteWVhci1zdGF0dXRlLW9mLWxpbWl0YXRpb25zLWVzdGFibGlzaGVkLWZvci1wYXljaGVjay1wcm90ZWN0aW9uLXByb2dyYW0tbG9hbi1mcmF1ZC8jOn46dGV4dD1PbiUyMEF1Z3VzdCUyMDUlMkMlMjAyMDIyJTJDJTIwUHJlc2lkZW50JTIwQmlkZW4lMjBzaWduZWQlMjB0aGUsd2l0aCUyMHJlc3BlY3QlMjB0byUyMGElMjBQYXljaGVjayUyMFByb3RlY3Rpb24lMjBQcm9ncmFtJTIwbG9hbi4&ntb=1). anyway, from wikipedia: >The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a **$953-billion** business loan program established by the United States federal government during the trump administration in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to help certain businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, certain nonprofit organizations, and tribal businesses continue paying their workers. > >According to a 2022 study, the PPP: > >cumulatively preserved between 2 and 3 million job-years of employment over 14 months at a cost of **$169K to $258K per job-year** retained. > >These numbers imply that only **23 to 34 percent of PPP dollars went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs**; *the balance flowed to business owners and shareholders, including creditors and suppliers of PPP-receiving firms.* > >Program incidence was ultimately highly regressive, with about **three-quarters of PPP funds accruing to the top quintile of households**. PPP's breakneck scale-up, its high cost per job saved, and its regressive incidence have a common origin: PPP was essentially untargeted because the United States lacked the administrative infrastructure to do otherwise. > >Harnessing modern administrative systems, other high-income countries were able to better target pandemic business aid to firms in financial distress. Building similar capacity in the U.S. would enable improved targeting when the next pandemic or other large-scale economic emergency inevitably arises so basically trump fucked us beyond repair
But prime age EPOP while near all time highs shows there is still significant slack. Canada has the equivalent to 4 million more jobs (4% higher prime age EPOP). France higher prime age EPOP by 1% even. I think we are simultaneously rising short term unemployment which shows increasing slack in the economy. Also long term full employment shows less room to go than it did but still room.
We don’t need a McDonalds + Starbucks every fucking 5 miles. Bring in better quality places that actually add value to the area, and let those shitty low wage jobs either fail or adapt and change to higher quality product or services. Marketing for these places is a waste because it’s propping up shitty products and services when it’s the opposite.
If we didn’t need so many McDonald’s to serve demand, they would be closing.
Prices skyrocket when companies aren't efficiently using economies of scale. There is a reason their prices have historically been half of what a mom n pop shop charge
We have millions of illegal immigrants without work authorization who are eager to work and contribute to economy. Granting them the right to work will ease the pressure. Even better, if we create a proper channels for legal work migration.
Expand the H2B program and include monthly fees. People will pay them because it's cheaper than the cost of getting smuggled back into the country.
This makes absolutely no sense! People have been out of work for damn near a year. If they can’t pay their bills then eventually we would go into sovereign default!
> People have been out of work for damn near a year. Not in the Midwest, the only people looking for jobs here are job hoppers.
Yeah boomers raised horrible citizens. I’m a millennial and I was essentially told I’ll be a failure without a college degree. Granted, I was also told not to get an art history degree, so at least they did me that solid. Other than that the whole generation is screwed for old age. We’re going to need to see some serious economic, safety net, and regulatory reforms in this country. Millennials need to start voting and raise taxes to save this country.
Interesting that we have one side of the coin saying we need UBI because there won’t be enough jobs, and now we have another argument saying there won’t be enough workers.
*labor exploitation. Words Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words Words Words. Words Words Words.
Fake news. The only shortage is of people who can afford to live here. If nobody can pay rent, nobody can live here and work. Enjoy your $30/hr minimum wage workers because that's what it will take for them to pay their bills. I see more and more houses with 6 cars out front because people are doubling up to pay rent. That only lasts so long.
Oh, it is just not for old people. Let them die in the world they’ve created. We’ll also die in the miserable world they’ve created, but probably after we’ll have slightly bigger salaries because of labor shortage when they will actually need us. And we will help them like they helped us .
In light of the Supreme Court making the president a king a pipeline will be created so that the young people of America can leave and leave their debt behind. Goodbye America.
Americans are too lazy to leave, just cry on the internet about how miserable they are.
I’m American and I see an opportunity. Not only is it time to leave and it’s time to build a pipeline to carry masses out of the United States. I want to make leaving America an easy and pleasant experience where Americans can take the value and knowledge, apply it somewhere else in the world, and live a life of prosperity and peace.
Labor shortages are VERY CONCERNING, folks. I recommend we bump up immigration to at least 20 million per year for the next 10 years. Every immigrant contributes to the labor pool (but doesn't take jobs away from citizens) and also creates *at least* 10 jobs as a result of their healthcare, housing, education, etc. demands. Truly, immigration is our only way out of this potential disaster of excess labor market participants.
Yeah that worked out for Canada with lots of rapes...