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One disagreement I'm having with both sides in this debate is how they conceive of the labor market. The market is fixed from an individual perspective in the short-term, but flexible at the market level and in the longterm, and policy makers should keep the latter things in mind. But our supposed policy makers are only thinking and speaking from an individual perspective.
@Rov_Scam has a good summary below that points out that the disagreement is partly around a management vs employee understanding.
From the short term perspective of both an employer and an employee the labor market is mostly fixed. There are a set number of roles that need to be filled and a set number of jobs that can be found.
The problem is that in the long term the labor market is absolutely not fixed. It is very flexible. Lots of personal money and well-being, and lots of corporate money is on the line to eke as much efficiency out of the labor market as possible.
If conditions change way too quickly (like they often do when the Fed YoYos its monetary policy, or when you have big external shocks like covid) there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering in the transition. Workers are likely to suffer the brunt of this pain. It simply takes longer to train and reskill then it takes to fire someone that no longer makes monetary sense for the business. There are levers that the federal government has to lessen those burdens. They could make training expenses tax deductible. They could lower employer contributions to social security during economic shocks (though this would require the discipline to lower them once again during economic booms).
But stopping this transition from happening altogether is not a good thing. A flexible labor market is the goose that lays the golden egg in America. If you want a Western world economy with low labor market flexibility then Europe is the go to example. And I think a few decades ago when the split really became apparent and obvious it looked way better to live in Europe. But now, after a percentage point or two of higher growth in the US has had its time to work the magic, the European bargain doesn't look that great. They are about 20% poorer than the US on a per capita basis, and the labor problems became severe enough that they had to start importing large number of migrants to do the shit work. Europe raised a welfare loving underclass, and they got it good and hard. Their migrant crisis is made far worse by the fact that portions of their economy would be collapsing if not for that immigration.
Work vs Ceremony
American society, for better or worse, tends to intermix what a "job" is supposed to be. There are two definitions:
One of the major complaints about DEI in the workplace is that it turns every job into a ceremonial position, and that is just not a sustainable practice for a profit oriented company. Nearly all government jobs are ceremonial positions. Notice that all nearly all requests that teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc get paid more is because they do important things, and that we shouldn't let person doing important thing be poor. It is rarely suggested that these positions should get paid more, because they will do more work.
If you get deep enough in the bowels of the federal government and its myriad of agencies, you'll realize just about all of those jobs are ceremonial, and they contract out when actual work needs to get done. Which is why there is an absolute army of federal contractors and federal contracting businesses. It is very common for the federal government to attach ceremonial job type requirements to these contracts. They want veterans, women, or minority owned businesses to serve the contracts.
I think the "job as a ceremonial position" is a toxic idea for an individual to hold. It stagnates your skills, and makes you focus not on what you are adding to the world and to the economy, but on your personal characteristics that are often immutable.
I'd add that the whole "ceremonial work" idea works in the opposite direction, too. I first noticed it, subtly, during the early days of the fight for the $15 minimum wage. There are plenty of arguments you can make about whether the minimum wage should go up, or by how much, but I noticed a dumb line of argument that suggested that it shouldn't be $15 simply because the people working at these places didn't deserve $15. It was usually along the lines of:
After COVID, when labor shortages caused these places to raise their wages close to $15 without any prompting from the government, the argument morphed into something more along the lines of:
More recently, I've seen this among those in the building trades:
These guys usually express a sense of entitlement themselves—they started carrying when they were 15 for 3 bucks an hour and were glad to get it, then spent the next several decades moving up, learning the trade, investing in a business, and now some kid off the street with no experience expects you to pay him much more than your 40 years of experience says he's worth. Every time I hear a small business owner say "no one wants to work anymore" I always think "well, not at what you're paying them, anyway".
A hundred years ago there were a lot of men with minimal skills who had nothing to offer but their labor. as the economy boomed after World War II and people had more educational opportunities, the labor pool was less of an end and more of where you started, hoping to work your way up to a skilled position. But in an economy where people aren't simply taking whatever work they can get, where apprenticeships for skilled trades are available immediately without years of playing kiss-ass to a union boss, and you can walk into any gas station and get $15/hour to push cash registers, basic day labor has become a specialty occupation you have to attract people to do.
The thing about a lot of unskilled jobs that is lost on some people is that they also suck. When I was in high school I worked at a grocery store, and while the conditions weren't bad, I had to wear a uniform to work, I had to work nights and weekends, I had to deal with bitchy customers, there was a lot of standing around staring into space, etc. Now I work as a lawyer and have lots of expensive education and training and a hard-to-obtain license and I make exponentially more now than I did as a cashier. But would I go back if I could make my current salary? Hell no. Yes, part of why I became a lawyer was so I could make more money but part of it also was so I didn't have to work in a grocery store. The same thing is true with labor. I did construction labor when I was in college and it sucks. Eventually they let me on to the painting crew and, though it paid more, I would have done it for less since I wouldn't have to sling buckets all day.
Have you considered how much of the upset about basic laborers making $20-$25/hr is driven by skilled laborers upset that they haven't received equivalent payraises?
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