Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Forty Two]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

[Forty Two]

You should be required to split off from the rest of your family and travel the country all year chasing jobs. Anything less than that you are a Marxist and deserve everything you get.

By the same token, seasonal apple pickers should all make six-figure salaries, because, you know, they work just as hard as doctors and lawyers (probably harder), and they are entitled to equal dignity. Just because they're unskilled seasonal workers doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to take month-long vacations to Majorca. Just because someone is poor ought not mean they shouldn't have "access to" fancy houses in upscale neighborhoods, shop at Ethan Allen for furniture, and drive new sports cars.

[pErvinalia]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

That doesn't make sense, actually. The number of available jobs is not controlled by the number of people living.

It's certainly going to be strongly correlated. With less consumers you need less jobs to service them.

[Forty Two]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

That doesn't make sense, actually. The number of available jobs is not controlled by the number of people living.

It's certainly going to be strongly correlated. With less consumers you need less jobs to service them.

The number of available workers to available jobs is a figure that varies due to factors unrelated to population. If it varied due to population, then the ratio wouldn't change, but it does.

A vibrant, competitive, relatively free market in labor will tend to have more workers employed and a lower number of unemployed workers to number of jobs. As the cost and regulatory burden of employing someone increases, the rate of employment drops and the unemployed worker to available jobs ratio increases. Similarly, as the economy booms and the number of jobs needed to be filled increases, then the worker to jobs ratio declines.

The demand for labor, though, is not directly proportional to the population. Places with lower populations may have full employment with low unemployed workers to jobs ratios, and places with lots of population could have boatloads of unemployed and very few jobs.

[pErvinalia]

That's a non-sequitur. Introducing other factors in and then pointing out ratio changes is fallacious. All other factors the same you would expect correlation between total population and number of jobs.

[Forty Two]

That's a non-sequitur. Introducing other factors in and then pointing out ratio changes is fallacious. All other factors the same you would expect correlation between total population and number of jobs.

That's different than a correlation between total population and the ratio of unemployed workers to number of available jobs.

You'd also see a correlation between total population and number of people available to work. However, that's not the same as a correlation between total population and the ratio of available workers to jobs available.

[pErvinalia]

Well I've lost the thread of the argument. I believe PS was making the point that a smaller population *wouldn't* change the ratio. Seth thought that (figuratively) removing unemployed people from the population would improve (i.e. change) the vacancy to job seeker ratio.

[Forty Two]

Well I've lost the thread of the argument. I believe he was making the point that a smaller population *wouldn't* change that ratio. Seth thought that (figuratively) removing unemployed people from the population would improve the vacancy to job seeker ratio.

It would -- but, a better example would be to line up unemployed people and shoot them. That's like if the price of corn plummets, and then the government buys up millions of bushels of corn and burns them or lets them spoil, that will drive the price of corn up because the supply of corn is down. If you reduce the supply of labor, the price of labor goes up. Just like if you increase the amount of labor demanded, it will put upward pressure on price of labor.

That's the main reason certain professions or jobs pay more in a free market.

That's why whether you can command a higher salary has way more to do with how easy it is for an employer to replace you than it does with marginal differences in performance.

[pErvinalia]

I don't think you're following the argument. This has nothing to do with wages. It has to do with demand for products and services. Less people wanting stuff, less jobs required to service that demand.

[Seth]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

That doesn't make sense, actually. The number of available jobs is not controlled by the number of people living.

Well, indirectly it does because each living person has certain minimum requirements that commerce must meet, so the more people, the more need for goods and therefore the more need for jobs. But there's a limit to that balance of course, as in Somalia, where there is nothing with which to produce anything anyway.

Then again, in the socialist "gimmee money because..." model the problem is that it's not the people who want the goods who work to earn the money to purchase them, it's the people who work to produce the goods who then have to pay to provide them to the dependent class, which is rather like taking in each others washing and then doing it twice, just because.

Free market doesn't mean free stuff.

[Seth]

Now I know that someone like Seth will trot out the well-worn canard about "farmers desperate for fruit and vegetable pickers". Often, these jobs are poorly paid, thousands of km away, and involve back-breaking physical labour that simply is not an option for many.

They are also seasonal. Not much happening for fruit and vegetable pickers outside autumn. You can't survive a year when most of the pittance you earn comes from three months of work.

If vegetable pickers had to be paid a year's "living wage" for 3 months work, then fucking sign me up. I'll pick bushels like wildfire. Everyone will pay $12 for a tomato, too, and then we can complain that the annual "living wage" is insufficient to allow people to eat fruits and vegetables.

Thing is, no you won't "pick bushels like wildfire." In fact, what will happen is that you will pick as few bushels as you can manage to get away with without being fired (and you can improve your chances of job retention and less work by forming a union) because you'll get a "living wage" no matter how much or how little you work. And everybody else will do exactly the same thing because it's in their evolutionary interest to input the least amount of labor (energy) to produce the maximum amount of resources needed for survival as possible.

The reason capitalism and free markets work so well is that you get what you work for. Work harder and produce more wealth, you get more pay with which to buy stuff you want or need. Don't work hard because you get a "living wage" no matter how much or little work you do and you won't work hard.

It's human nature and it's why socialism always does and always will fail both socially and economically.

[Seth]

I'm not sure on the US situation but in the rest of the western world it's common for the ratio of jobless to job vacancies to be something like 2x or 3x.

So where the hell is abortion when you really need it. Or mandatory neutering as a condition of taking welfare payments. Why the fuck do you allow them to reproduce if there's no work for them?

My god Seth do you really have such poor grasp of economics or are you being deliberately stupid here? It's not about absolute numbers of people it's about ratios. If you reduce the number of people you also reduce the number of jobs that need doing for them.

That doesn't make sense, actually. The number of available jobs is not controlled by the number of people living.

It's certainly going to be strongly correlated. With less consumers you need less jobs to service them.

Within rather narrow limits, this is true. But it doesn't support the notion that more people are always better for the economy. That's only true if they are all members of the productive class and not members of the dependent class.

[Seth]

Well I've lost the thread of the argument. I believe PS was making the point that a smaller population *wouldn't* change the ratio. Seth thought that (figuratively) removing unemployed people from the population would improve (i.e. change) the vacancy to job seeker ratio.

No, I suggested not producing more dependent-class people who consume but do not produce in order to reduce the economic burden on the productive class and I suggested that in the US a large part of the unemployment problem could be solved by sending those from other countries who are here illegally and are therefore illegally holding jobs that citizens have a right to occupy.

[Seth]

I don't think you're following the argument. This has nothing to do with wages. It has to do with demand for products and services. Less people wanting stuff, less jobs required to service that demand.

Not really. You see any reduction in demand for basic goods that would exist on account of the existence of the dependent class who rely for the satisfaction of their demands on the labor of others will be offset by increases in demand from the productive class that has been relieved of the burden of supporting the dependent class for goods and services in excess of those needed for basic survival.

An excellent analogy is the bumper sticker seen on the back of a half-million dollar RV that says "I'm spending my kid's inheritance."

When kids are at home there is demand, but where income is limited the demand is for basic goods, not luxury goods. When the kids leave, the demand shifts from basic goods to luxury goods to satisfy needs higher on the hierarchy of needs of the parents.

The same is true of the welfare state. When the individual has to work twice (or perhaps a third) harder in order to earn both his own basic needs and the basic needs of some member of the dependent class who is demanding largess, the level and amount of goods that can be purchased by either party is limited to basic survival goods, whereas when the dependent is eliminated the worker then has disposable income with which to advance beyond basic survival goods, perhaps even to the point of having actual capital to invest in increasing his spending power even more.

Your model incorrectly assumes that the offset for supporting the dependent class is 1-to-1. It's not. A reduction in dependent class expenditures for basic goods is more than offset by the corresponding increase in spendable income on the part of the productive class. This is how societies advance and become more prosperous and create higher standards of living for all...including the poor...who in the US by the way aren't all that "poor" to begin with, as compared to any third-world country on earth.

[laklak]

I say we eat 'em. I'm partial to Mexican.