Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay

This is possible but believe it or not Trump voters as a whole like GOP voters are better off than the average

 

Are people entitled to jobs?

How would you tell an AI machine that it’s obsolete?

If the solution is not (merely) robbing from the rich, what would you give up for a better society?

Serious questions.

 

1)Making people productive members of society is a self serving goal. This isn't even a capitalist v socialist debate. Are you one of those "tough on crime" voters?

2)This question makes no sense?

3)If I pay thirty percent of my income to taxes, I'd expect other people making more than me to pay at least thirty percent of what they gained. Percentages are regressive so I'd give up taxing that much on the ultra poor with work based incentives.

I'm all for grants and encouraging new business owners, but where do we stop the line on maintaining those benefits when those corporations reach full maturity and ask for more? The race to the bottom mentality is what's sucking the state governments and the people up dry

 

Making horses productive members of the transportation system is a self serving goal.

And then horses became pet food.

In ancient times, some countries forbade eating cows because it’s more useful in front of a plow.

Same goes for pigs—couldn’t eat them because they’re more useful as recycler for producing fertilizers.

So I ask again, as the OP riles against the gig economy, what should be done about the coming tsunami (besides Andrew Yang’s proposal to hand out $1000 to all and hope they don’t revolt)?

If one is not a “producer”, what is he/she “entitled” to in a just and ideal society?

 

Because horses don't riot when you leave them out to rot?

 

Exactly, only morons use that jobs number - the QUALITY of jobs matters.

This is the billionaire class telling the stupid masses that things are ok - and robbing them blind.

DD

 

"Manufacturers Increase Perks to Get New Hires to Move":

https://www.wsj.com/articles/manufa...ew-hires-to-move-11578825002?mod=hp_lead_pos6

Manufacturers Increase Perks to Get New Hires to Move
Caterpillar, Raytheon among employers offering more relocation and other benefits to lure far-flung new hires

By
Austen Hufford
Updated Jan. 12, 2020 10:43 am ET

Manufacturers are paying relocation costs and bonuses to move new hires across the country at a time of record-low unemployment and intense competition for skilled workers.

Half a million U.S. factory jobs are unfilled, the most in nearly two decades, and the unemployment rate is hovering at a 50-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. At the same time, Americans are moving around the country at the lowest rate in at least 70 years.

To entice workers to move, manufacturers are raising wages, offering signing bonuses and covering relocation costs, including for some hourly positions. They are betting that spending on higher wages and moving incentives will help them find workers to fill their backlogs of orders.

Rather than just extending these benefits as part of job offers, factories are also advertising them in postings to encourage farther-away candidates to apply. On ZipRecruiter Inc.’s job-listing site, 1.6% of manufacturing positions include a pledge to pay moving costs, up from 1% in 2017.

“We’ve had to get very aggressive with talent acquisition,” said Michael Winn, chief executive of Columbus Hydraulics Co., which makes parts for Doosan Bobcat Inc. and The Toro Co. “We are having to draw people in from distant places.”

The company since 2018 has made extra cash payments to new hires to move near its factory in Columbus, Neb., a city of about 20,000 people 90 miles west of Omaha. Charlie Shoup received $2,000 to move from Salt Lake City to near Columbus, where he runs the company’s technology systems.

“It pretty much gave me enough cash to pay for gas out here, get myself established with a solid place to live in a not-backwater part of Omaha, and then I got a couple of shirts with collars on them,” he said. Mr. Shoup, who has a degree in computer engineering, said that at Columbus he makes more than double the $13 an hour he made in Utah at an electric bicycle shop.

Manufacturers say they are particularly eager to add moving reimbursements and payments for specialists such as welders, engineers and machine programmers. More manufacturing jobs require such skills as production becomes more automated.

At Caterpillar Inc.’s CAT -0.80% engine plant in Lafayette, Ind., the company said electricians and machine maintenance staff are eligible for $5,000 in moving expenses if they lived at least 75 miles from the plant before being hired.

Lockheed Martin Corp. has moved skilled workers such as engineers to plants in Texas and California and highlights jobs that offer relocation benefits on its website. Raytheon Co. RTN -0.95% is offering up to $5,000 in moving benefits for a $17-an-hour position as a machine operator at a factory in Arizona.

The relocation payments and other perks some manufacturers have added recently coincide with a run of difficulties for the industry overall. The U.S. factory sector contracted for the fifth consecutive month in December, according to the Institute for Supply Management. The industry shed 12,000 jobs in December from the month before, the Labor Department said.

That weakness stems in part from lower global trade and domestic energy production as well as Boeing Co. ’s decision to first slow, then halt, production of its 737 MAX. Other manufacturers say business is strong and that a shortage of skilled workers is impeding higher production.

New Way Trucks is offering a $1,000 payment to workers who move near its plant in Scranton, Iowa, as it adds dozens of positions to close its backlog and decrease turnaround times.

Companies are also raising wages. Wage growth at U.S. manufacturers reached its highest level since 2016 in December, rising 3% that month from a year earlier. The inflation rate in November was 2.1%.

G.H. Tool & Mold, an auto-industry supplier owned by Tooling Tech Group LLC, increased its starting wage to around $18 an hour last year from $15 a few years ago. The company also has paid moving expenses for workers relocating near its factory in Washington, Mo. Julie Scannell, the company’s head of human resources, posts notices on a Facebook group called “Leaving Illinois” to draw workers from that depopulating state.

“We are in an era right now that is unlike anything I’ve seen in 25 years as far as trying to recruit people,” Ms. Scannell said. “We are having to really track them down a little bit and schmooze them more than we used to.”

Lockmaker Allegion PLC flew the families of some skilled machine operators to its factory in Colorado Springs, Colo., to entice them to move to the area after it purchased some specialized equipment. The company also has started grooming employees at an Illinois plant to perform sophisticated jobs such as programming computerized machines.

“The war on talent: It’s there. It’s real,” said Brad Kendall, a human-resources executive at Allegion.

Other companies have added smaller sweeteners for new workers, according to current online job postings. John Zink, a Koch Industries Inc. manufacturing company in Tulsa, Okla., gives out free steel-toed boots; a Globus Medical Inc. plant in Audubon, Pa., provides workers with YMCA memberships; Whirlpool Corp. is paying workers at a factory in Findlay, Ohio, a $250 six-month retention bonus.

“Employers are getting creative,” said Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s labor economist.

Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
​

 

So it comes down to threat of violence? (Not that I disagree with what you’re saying.)

 

Do you see mobs threatening violence right now? Despite the inequality and these stories of underemployed, most Americans are trying to live with dignity.

I think you're missing some pieces from the human equation, especially with your animal and machine comparisons.

If your family, assuming you have one, is starving and you have no income, no jobs, and no opportunities for months or years, what would you do?

 

To answer your question, absent threat of violence, I harbor no illusions about human beings (my family, or yours) who are not producers being accorded better treatment than any other widgets that have become obsolete. That, I’m afraid, is the logical end point of market economy capitalism.

With that said, let’s go back to OP’s premise — what is it that people “deserve”? It’s easy to say gig economy doesn’t feed families. But what’s the solution? Outlaw Uber and Lyft? Universal income? Virtual reality and pot for all?

 

Interested in where this discussion goes.

These questions have remained unanswered forever because there hasn't been a coherent solution. As artificial intelligence starts taking more jobs, how does society supplement the loss of income? Will it be a much larger scale welfare system? Does the government bureaucracy grow to provide jobs? Common sense tells me the 1% should pony up to provide funding. And they probably would if they were forced to pay the same 30% that I'm required to pay. This whole, 'if you tax the large corporations they won't be able to provide as many jobs' talking point is complete ubullshish.

 

Society would collapse if mass people started starving because there simply isn't work and the rich who've accumulated all the money refuse to pay taxes or participate in wealth redistribution that would support programs to keep the rest of us fed and housed.

The reason for creating a democratic government is ultimately to keep the wellbeing of all people within our society. If all money in the world ends up accumulating into Bezos hands, and people no longer are of use due to robots taking care of all of his needs, humans don't simply become pet food or discontinued AI, at least not in a world that isn't a total dystopian nightmare.

If this is the path poorly regulated capitalism is setting us on, we need to seriously start putting in some better regulations.

 

Communism sucked for people in those countries, but the way it terrified rich people in other countries was great at keeping them in line.

The stock market axiom is "the only thing stronger than greed is fear". The rich no longer have anything to fear in the post communism world.

 

A great deal of value from these startups come from disruption, which may upend traditional businesses but can also be from the lack of regulation in the digital domain.

Taxi cab drivers can sometimes be a surly and now overpriced experience, but they offered a ride with a far lower risk of sexual assault or unpayable damages from accidents.

Some fintech companies promise banking services but if you read the underlying fine print, don't technically insure customer deposits.

I don't think the gig economy is the cause of underemployment but rather the symptom of people attempting side hustles as main jobs.

On the larger point, consumer and worker protections are baked in with traditional businesses. I don't see why they can't fit these new companies. It's not like an entirely new consumer class will appear and out compete the existing ones.

The government doesn't need to enforce artificial salaries but they could enforce tighter salary fixing and other practices that depress wages that silicon valley giants have been caught before.

The other aspect will likely be to reduce work hours. One change Obama tried was to increase overtime for underpaid salaried workers for midsize larger companies. The idea was to give a true forty hour workweek because most owners would balk at overtime.

With working people becoming fat, depressed, sleep deprived and burnt out, maybe a true seven hour workday isn't a sin of sloth.

This doesn't solve the inherent problem but it gives people their time back, which could very well be time to create or produce new things, or at the very least reconnect with society and build something with it.

 

Low wages are a direct result of the job market being full of available labor. If labor is scarce, wages go up. Flooding the country with more labor for those jobs is why the wages are low. This is basic economics.

Trump is more likely to win because of what you posted. Not less likely. He is anti-illegal immigration, which is a sound economic stance to take. Also his results have been a white hot economy. He will win imo.

 

Except plenty of Americans are calling for it. I say we send them all to communist countries and take in their dissidents who wave American flags and want capitalism. We could do a swap.

 

Who is the swath of people calling for communism?

How do you lie to yourself and others so confidently?

 

I didn't lie in that post as there are people who want communism....Nothing is factually debatable because it's a proven fact that these people exist. So I am not sure what you are talking about. I think you just automatically want to argue with me because of past encounters. Hope you can overcome your anger and aggression... it's not healthy and abrasiveness will hold you back in life buddy.

 

You mean not the base but the traditional GOP voters who “comes home” to him in the end but when the topic of Trump comes up oddly none of them have the guts to admit they voted for him and the blog in support of him on sites like this??

Yes.. I agree that demographic (white upper middle class men) are doing slightly better but have been doing better since the Obama admin. Trump has done nothing on the economy other than sustain and juice up a little with unconservative stimulus, but what matters is that demographic 100% believes they are doing better... which is what matters in regards to voting more than facts.

I think the Dems would be foolish to not plan for those voters coming home to him again in November. Where the economic message should be directed to should be the lower wage workers who might look like Trumps base, but are really struggling because costs are skyrocketing while their pay continues to suck.

This is why I think Bernie is the best candidate for capturing back Michigan and Wisconsin. Bernie is not the best candidate for having a chance at Texas, Georgia, and Arizona. Florida would be out of question... but regardless of the candidate if the Dem base shows up in the other Dem base states, and the Dems have that Bernie message in the rust belt, I think 2020 is a good year for Dems. The economy isn’t what MSNBC says it is for normal working class folks.