LogFAQs > #956010650

streamofthesky posted...

The problem is, there aren't enough "good jobs" for everyone, or even close to it.
No one seems to want to face that reality, but there simply aren't that many skilled jobs and/or jobs that are enjoyable/rewarding.
You can't just have everyone "learn to code" and things will be fine. Heck, I'm an engineer and I remember graduating into the recession and was told by people in IEEE that the unemployment rate for engineers was 8% (usually it was 1%), and struggling to get into a career. Even really high skill jobs or jobs that require advanced degrees can be overrun if there's a glut of applicants (the recession was the opposite, a lack of demand from companies, but it works the same either way if the supply of workers increases).

Two things:

First, while there are always going to be some lower-end jobs, those can be performed by people just entering the workforce and/or by people who enjoy that kind of work (particularly in that many of those jobs tend to customer-facing; in other cases, certain individuals enjoy monotonous tasks). The idea that only "skilled labor" has value or is enjoyable is glaringly wrong. I'd known plenty of people who left high-skilled white collar professions (the kind requiring a masters degree) to work pink collar professions (including some that don't require a degree at all) because they wound up not liking that white collar job.

Second, and more importantly, you're looking at both the *current* labor market and discounting entrepreneurship. Just a few hundred years ago, somebody repeating your same claim would have been referring to a labor market with absurdly fewer opportunities. And if you go back even further, those opportunities shrink more. And a lot of the reason why the labor market looks like it does is because public education tends to discourage independent thought and punishes people for challenging norms. These are systems more concerned with teaching orthodoxy than anything else.

streamofthesky posted...

But yeah, if people don't NEED to work, they're not going to take the crappy jobs that nevertheless society needs. For some jobs like sanitation worker, they can pay an inflated salary to entice people, but that's not going to be a feasible model for stuff like groceries store cashiers or burger flippers at a fast food place, where they operate on thin margins. Eventually automation will kill most/all of those jobs, but until then we're in the awkward transition period. Which is why I say that we aren't ready for UBI today, but we should be setting things up for a smooth transition into it later on.

You've overlooking that there are people who enjoy those low-end jobs. There are many retailers in my area where employees could have chosen to retire years ago, but wanted to stay on. (And, for higher-level jobs, people tend to seek overly long tenures -- many professors have to be kicked out the door before they'll leave, for instance.)

adjl posted...

There will never be enough for everyone, no, but there could be more than there are. A major reason many jobs continue to be miserable is because owners and managers have no incentive to improve conditions

I think stream's point there was still in reference to his idea of a "good" job (ie, skilled labor), not so much a job with just good working conditions and pay. There are plenty of jobs where even if the work was made more tolerable, a lot of people might not enjoy it.

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