US job openings top 10 million

[John Galt]

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/09/job ... -says.html

pretty amazing. this is really welcome news for every worker as it increases your options.

from the boomers dying of covid or retiring for not wanting to die from covid or not wanting to deal with the technology of working from home, to the realization in low wage jobs that those jobs are absolute garbage and no one should have to take that kind of abuse from customers, to the lack of affordable daycare options keeping women out of the workforce, we have people holding out for higher pay. if employers want to fill the jobs, they will have to pay for it. that the worker now has enhanced leverage is strange for many companies, but this is closer to how it should be than the opposite.

ending the unemployment benefits early in about half the states hasn't done what those governors claimed it would do, and the other half is set to expire in less than a month. i doubt we will see much of any change. of course we have yet to see what the eviction moratorium ending will do, but with rental assistance available, most of which has been unclaimed, and with the unemployment benefits from the last year i don't think we are facing the monumental crisis that some people allege we are facing in regards to people losing their homes. still, it's an open question if that will cause people to seek employment.

i think severing unemployment benefits from the need to continue to apply for positions and not turning positions down (like at mcdonalds when they trick you and say that minimum wage starts at 17./hr and then they offer you something at 9 to hang the sword of damacles above you for rejecting it and losing benefits) is the main thing that needs to stay. this will force companies to offer higher wages and no longer be subsidized by the taxpayer. but beyond that, i think we're okay with everything else ending. the moratorium on evictions needs to end we can't just keep punting it. and the enhanced benefits should also end -- but in its place we need to have a federal system not the hodge podge of state systems that try and force people to work for the lowest wage possible, one that does not tie benefits to not rejecting work that is offered but is far more lenient. i'm not saying that they should be on basic for their whole lives with no consequence but i am saying that we need a big rethink on the safety net so that it isn't made to subsidize giant corporations paying the lowest wages possible

[Kane]

[mjpc88]

The problem with people not accepting jobs in the labor market is social, not economic. Honest people who have been screwed over in life are conflated with lazy bums while people who screw others over are conflated with those who apply themselves to become successful. Honest people who get screwed over aren't willing to work because they know they deserve better, and those who apply themselves are getting tired of holding others accountable because they're not getting any help upholding the burden of accountability.

The longer this conflation isn't filtered out, the more the lazy bums and those who screw others over are going to dominate both sides of the dilemma until the economy totally falls apart from honest people and those who apply themselves just getting worn out. Social welfare reforms do nothing to address this.

[mjpc88]

I should be clear about something about this as well.

I'm a diamond Uber and platinum Lyft driver who brings people to and from work 6 days a week. I also pick up lazy bums who are just mooching off the system and burning through their stimulus checks. 90% of my passengers are African American to boot, and I bring plenty of them to and from Amazon/Fedex/UPS shipping centers as well as fast food joints. That might seem strange, but understand that I tend to work the day shift's rush hours, not the night shift's happy hour.

Those who care to be productive members of society are deliberately dissociating themselves from their lazy peers. They realize unequal opportunity is only a problem if and only if you have the will to take opportunities which present themselves. The same thing goes from finding a decent place to live. They deliberately know there are plenty of residences out there to inhabit and you don't have to get stuck in the projects if you don't want to.

The problem is within their community, the same exact rhetoric which progressives use to target those who challenge systemic prejudice models has become the rhetoric within their community used by lazy bums to harass others who apply themselves to become successful. Those willing to get a job are internally getting fed up with their peers for following the narrative. Yes, there's a problem with long-term depression from being preemptively convinced you don't have a chance, but the thousands of people who have riden in my car every single day admit and confess regularly how that hasn't been the case for decades now. They are sick and tired of living among others who appeal to intergenerational historical prejudice which has long been erased and is now taken as an excuse to just be lazy.

They're just sick of it. They're sick of being guilt tripped into helping their family members and neighbors who don't bother applying themselves. They're sick of living in neighborhoods where the prevailing culture is to be a manipulator which destroys trust and encourages cynicism. They're sick of having decrepit police departments, schools, and social worker services because despite community policing efforts, those staffing them know they're getting taken for granted, so they won't bother making an effort after being on the job for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years where people don't make an effort despite getting helped.

They're sick of being told that because they have work ethic, they're white.

People just need to stop talking about economics entirely and realize the progressive project is merely a vain appeal to absurdity and misery which has zero application to the real world of human nature at all.

"I want evidence..."

Boss, you will never get evidence about this because human nature knows you're trying to get evidence about it. It becomes two-faced in behaving politely in front of your face only to snarl behind your back when you aren't watching...

...and for those who say that's exactly what's going on in my car, you're wrong.

I regularly maintain a 4.95+ rating as a diamond Uber and platinum Lyft driver for these passengers. They aren't telling me what I want to hear just to get out of my car and think I'm a jerk deep down who they don't want to ride with ever again. They're telling me what they really believe and appreciate my sympathy.

[Kane]

True to an extent but it's important to note this hasn't been the intent of these policies or measures. Your post reads like you're dealing with some personal shit yourself - I have a small direct family (My mom and dad left the east coast for the west coast back in the 70s) and we're not conservative but we all work and help each other out.

I think people are also less inclined to care how their employer feels about them if they do take advantage of this situation because their pay has not kept up with inflation or the cost of living over the last decade. I can assure you that even in the yay area if you work outside of the tech industry pay rates don't work. I'm talking mid level white collar employment as well. There are serious housing issues and it's going to start hurting local economies - pre pandemic I had coworkers that made $250k a year leaving for Oregon/Texas/etc. Even if you have that income and you can afford housing in the area that you work everything else still costs more as well. Child care costs are astronomical.

It's a complex issue.

[mjpc88]

Employer to employee relations are a social issue over the definition of professional due diligence in the workplace, not an economic issue. At best, they deal with people's abandonment of civic responsibility before fiscal responsibility, but this is an issue going all the way to the origins of America.

George Washington was wary of people trying to deviate the economy towards their own self-interests instead of realizing the difference between economics versus business. It's one of the classic concerns he had over partisan politics taking over going back to the days of Hamilton versus Jefferson in his cabinet as to whether merchants or farmers should come first. He saw how those debates were often undermined by people engaging in deliberate abuse of process, exploiting how expensive it was for the other side to correct them, expecting them to surrender like a hostage taker saying, "Pay me or the hostage gets it."

That's why people trusted him so much to preside over the first Constitutional Convention - they knew he believed in unity no matter what at all costs. No favoritism was ever allowed no matter how inconvenient one side was in advance of an issue on the table being resolved. He didn't let people skimp out on cutting corners just because an issue was nearly covered because he knew how little things mattered over the long term in mysterious ways that you wouldn't find out about until it's too late.

The reason for this is Washington wasn't a professional lawyer. He read the law manually and applied what he read. He didn't go to a law college like William and Mary or Harvard, didn't work as a law clerk for a lawyer, and didn't work in a courthouse. He literally read the law and directly saw the problems of legal language which were tied to culture and morality which is why he believed law and religion went hand in hand - he knew the social institution of people gathering to discuss scripture was needed as a precursor to understand how rights and responsibilities worked in law.

Nobody involved in labor disputes does this, gets this, or cares about this today. They waste their time watching Tik Tok videos instead of reading the law where they live, going to town hall meetings, and having real discussions over how the law makes sense. By no surprise, labor contract culture has become an assembly line which churns turnover like no tomorrow since people just want to convert shifts to free time instead of caring about the integrity of the conversion process.

[Philly]

this was not an issue in Washington's day because wage workers were disenfranchised from any say in politics by design but ok

[mjpc88]

You realize barely anyone was a wage worker back then, right? Colonial times preceded the industrial revolution.

The industrial revolution itself was catalyzed by people not reading the law while believing literacy was good enough. They ignored the real cultural battles of how language works to persuade people that your interpretation of contracts is correct. People just wanted to work and skip the interpretation process.

[Kane]

[Kane]