Some of them talk about how unfair it seems to artificially reward people who made "bad choices" and didn't go to college or pursue post graduate studies in technology, trades, or the arts.
What about the idea of a "rising tide lifts all boats?"
You would think that the bad job market means that our economy is bad overall and that productivity is down. Not so. You might suppose that the poor "job creators" simply can't afford to pay their workers better. Again, not so. The pie has gotten bigger, but the piece for more than 80% of us has shrunk. Please check this graphic from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sunday-review/americas-productivity-climbs-but-wages-stagnate.html?_r=0
You can see that productivity has grown over 38% between 1995 and 2011. As stated in the article, "Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, found that the top 1 percent of households garnered 65 percent of all the nation’s income growth from 2002 to 2007, when the recession hit. Another study found that one-third of the overall increase in income going to the richest 1 percent has resulted from the surge in corporate profits."
Some of that productivity comes from automation and some comes from off shoring of jobs. In both cases it means that the job market for the average worker has become more competitive. Some skills are no longer relevant in today's US market.
People talk about bringing back "good paying jobs" like those in manufacturing. Exactly what is it that a factory worker does that is more "skilled" than people in retail or food services? While there may be some programmable machine operators who deserve to be paid better than assemblers, the jobs are generally repetitive and not very pleasant.
Why do we feel comfortable paying a factory worker $15 or $25/hour (a wage that is quickly dropping, btw), but judge that someone assembling a cheeseburger at McDonald's is only entitled to minimum wage? Why do we pay our 70K computer engineers a median $47.50/hour http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/computer-hardware-engineers.htm with a Bachelor's degree, but our 650K Social Workers earn only $20.42 per hour http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Community-and-Social-Service/Social-workers.htm and generally require at least an MS for the higher paying clinical positions?
Our 420K licensed plumbers can expect to earn $22.43/hr http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Construction-and-Extraction/Plumbers-pipefitters-and-steamfitters.htm, while one of the 1.5 Million Certified Nurses Aide can expect to earn only $11.54 per hour http://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/nursing-assistants.htm.
Does that mean that the more people we have in a profession, the lower the salary? No, because the 2.7 Million Registered Nurses earn a median of $33.23/hour http://www.bls.gov/oes/2011/may/oes291111.htm. (Still quite a bit less than a computer engineer, though!)
So, sometimes the "bad choices" we make are to do work that is meaningful to us and very much needed, but not valued monetarily. The theme that emerges for me is that jobs that were traditionally filled by women (snacks/meals prior to fast food, daycare, healthcare aides, social work, teaching) tend to pay poorly or not at all, no matter how much education is required.
The difference for the nurses and teachers has been the unions and the fact that, for the most part, these jobs can't be easily "off-shored."
I don't think of the corporations as "evil" for shipping jobs overseas or for suppressing wages or for not sharing the gains in productivity with their workers. I think of them as fighting for competitive advantage and reveling in the profits to their shareholders. If we change the playing field for EVERYONE, prices might go up, and dividends might go down, but taxes for welfare (SNAP, Fuel Assistance, School Lunch, etc) programs will go down too. The big corporations are paying the lowest effective taxes (not the tax rate, but the actual taxes paid after all the loopholes they've written into the tax code) since the days of the Robber Barons. They don't want to pay their workers more because they have to remain competitive with others in the industry. They are not evil, they are amoral. If we raise the minimum wage (perhaps using the Australian model that has exceptions for teenage workers http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/19/the-u-s-has-a-7-25-minimum-wage-australias-is-16-88/) for everyone, the playing field stays level and the corporations will adjust. Offering tax credits to small business owners to help reduce the sting of increased business expense makes more sense to me than offering subsidies to factory farms and oil companies.
So, what would that mean for people in higher paying occupations? Will their relative income advantage disappear? No. Chances are, their incomes will also increase.
This is anecdotal, but serves to make a point. When I was an engineering manager, I helped recruit two PhDs from MIT. If I wanted to hire them I had to offer a higher salary than I was earning as their manager. I did it anyway, without any resentment, because I gambled that doing it to attract the right talent would impress my bosses more than my thinking "small" and offering them less than I was making. I was right. I got a $10K pay increase that year. In effect, the highest pay of my new hire acted as a "minimum wage" for me. The new minimum wage can be a springboard for a discussion about increases because of skills and education.
Can we afford it? Won't it just cause spiraling inflation? Again, no. Australia has an inflation rate of 2.2%, while the US inflation rate is 1.2%.
Let's talk about inflation. Food, housing, and clothing prices are somewhat stable...for the moment. As energy prices increase, everything will become more expensive. Education and healthcare costs have skyrocketed. Education has priced itself to the point where some degrees will never pay you back, at least monetarily, for your investment.
A lot of those increases can be tied back to "privatization" and "for profit" healthcare and educational institutions. For instance, there are staffing organizations out there who provide home healthcare and CNAs. The agencies charge Medicaid/hospitals/ longterm care facilities $20 to $25 for workers they pay only $10 to $15 per hour with NO or few benefits.
And, here's a reality; we don't all start out on a level playing field. I'm not just talking about good schools, parenting, healthcare and opportunities. It's a fact that half of us have IQs less than 100. You can be as ambitious as you want, but if you don't have the capacity to get high scores on admissions or licensing exams, no matter how hard you work, you may truly be limited to offering burgers with those fries. Should that condemn you to a life of poverty? Where is the justice in that?
I am SO thankful that I was gifted with a good mind. It isn't just that I can earn more money. I have also been able to pick and choose how I want to spend my time working. The best job I ever had paid more than $50 per hour and all I had to do for it was solve logic puzzles and lead product teams. It was pure heaven for me...most of the time, anyway. Even if I were paid just a "living wage," I would still count myself lucky not to be putting the same parts together over and over again.
I did not leave engineering willingly. I was forced out as manufacturing jobs went overseas and the engineering jobs followed. I did everything right. I was a good contributor. I earned patents for my company. I pursued post graduate studies. I was 41 years old when the bottom fell out of high tech back in 1991.
For my second act, I focused on finding a career that would offer a sense of purpose and allow me to make a real contribution to society. I went back to school to study nursing.
The hardest job I ever had was working as a CNA in a long term care facility for $8.00/hr while I was in nursing school in my 40s. Even though I knew I was doing valuable and necessary work, the conditions were brutal and it took a toll on me physically and psychologically.
And while my first nursing job paid over $20 per hour, it was still a much more demanding and responsible job than engineering ever was!
This essay is getting to be much too long. I need to subject it to a major rewrite and sum it all up.
For now, I will just say that I think we can do better for our workers. The contributions of workers is just as important as capital. The balance has shifted too much in favor of capital. It is up to us to move it back. It starts with a living wage for all workers.
http://ericfiskcgd.blogspot.com/2013/12/night-of-living-wage.html
ReplyDeleteYou make a lot of really good points and I have to admit that if you want to keep good employees you have to pay them enough to keep them and give them enough incentive to work harder than the employees who work for your competitor. That’s just good business sense.
Also, if you shop at places like Walmart or eat at places that pay only minimum wage with employees that are also living on food stamps and other social services than you’re part of the problem. Organizations that make record profits while paying their employees minimum wage are the source of all the problems you mentioned before; and I agree that if they want to remain competitive they need to retain their hardest workers – thus bringing us back to my original point in my first paragraph. Walmart and other businesses that notoriously underpay their employees and encourage their employees to go on public assistance have reputations that slip further into the mud and I hope they go out of business and are replaced with other franchises with a better business model for people on both sides of the counter.
But here’s where you and I part company… as I wrote on Facebook and my blogspot post.
“And, here's a reality; we don't all start out on a level playing field. I'm not just talking about good schools, parenting, healthcare and opportunities. It's a fact that half of us have IQs less than 100. You can be as ambitious as you want, but if you don't have the capacity to get high scores on admissions or licensing exams, no matter how hard you work, you may truly be limited to offering burgers with those fries. Should that condemn you to a life of poverty? Where is the justice in that?”
I don’t believe any of that for a second, If I did than I would be here. I’ve seen a lot of so called “dumb” people master a topic by obsessing over it and making it their lives – the way people do in learning sports statistics. If you really want to learn something than you will, that just means watching less TV, playing fewer video games, drinking less beer and smoking less. It’s called “discipline” and there is no excuse not to have it.
Eric, I agree that the whole science of IQ is "squishy" science at best. Moreover there is only a 25% correlation between IQ and financial success in life. There is no doubt that there are cultural biases that result in some people being falsely labeled as "dumb," but the fact remains that regardless of how hard someone works, if they can't understand the mechanism for doing Fourier Transforms, they can't become audio engineers.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, it's like saying that if you are born a midget, you can still play professional basketball if you are determined and try hard enough.
My first choice for a career was to be a ballerina. I do NOT have a dancers body. I was not gifted with the kind of athleticism and grace that are required to dance professionally. I AM a dancer though. I have made it an avocation, but I knew that I would need to find another love in order to support myself.
Have you ever considered that the people wasting their lives drinking beer and playing video games are simply trying to forget their disappointment with the hand life has dealt them?
Most important...we NEED a lot more people who are willing to serve us burgers and fries or provide home health services than become astrophysicists. Why punish them for doing the work that needs doing by paying them less than they need to survive?
Life can be cruel. People are born into situations that stack the deck against them. Some are gifted with strong spirits that enable them to rise despite their challenges. The goal of society should be to offer a hand up to those people who are challenged and to find meaningful employment for those willing to work. We don't need to let Social Darwinism crush those who have not been blessed with our gifts of intelligence, physical power, or spirit.
“Have you ever considered that the people wasting their lives drinking beer and playing video games are simply trying to forget their disappointment with the hand life has dealt them?”
ReplyDeleteHave you ever considered that I know these people better than you do because I lived and worked with them for more than a decade? Sorry to say it because they are where they are because of how they act. I have a horrible background story and I was dealt a hand that’s so cruel and unforgivable and yet somehow I climbed out of that.
Too many people waste their lives because they are lazy and they’re stoners. Not an opinion but an observation. As I said before I have little empathy for people who give up and won’t work or study as hard as I did. I was labeled as “retarded” and “Special Needs” when I was very young and they put me in all these programs and discovered that when I was working with someone one-on-one I excelled. With some further examination they discovered – “Hey, this kid needs GLASSES!” I was told that I was “retarded,” I would “never amount to anything,” and I was a bum just “just like your father.” I was demeaned, demoralized, and insulted by the same people who were supposed to be looking out for me. I wrote a lot about how I sacrificed and went without to better myself, especially after my pseudo-stepfather told me that if he ever caught me reading anything besides school books he would “break my hands” I was dealt with some horrible cards but I dealt with it.
I was being severely abused during my adolescent years, eventually being picked on and abused at home and bullied by my peers in high school for suddenly becoming too smart and believing that I could actually become a better person though education. I was actually DISCOURAGED from going to college and getting my first degree; now I’m working on my third and fourth at the same time. I’m still haunted by those negative voices. The source of these voices now want me to ‘give something back’ and take care of their problems because they are under the mistaken impression that their abuse somehow helped me to become the manic I am today.
I’m not swayed by hard-luck stories about how hard some of these people had it when it’s not a 10th as bad as I had it. You’re not willing to work as half as hard I did to get out of that cycle (work, get stoned/drunk, sleep, repeat) I really don’t have sympathy you, period. Full Stop.
“Most important...we NEED a lot more people who are willing to serve us burgers and fries or provide home health services than become astrophysicists. Why punish them for doing the work that needs doing by paying them less than they need to survive?”
ReplyDeleteUh, no… we don’t! We have more than enough people serving us burgers and fries and we don’t have enough astrophysics. We don’t have enough biologists, engineers, electricians, or astronauts. We have way, way too many people flipping burgers and not enough people working on the Unification Theory or Quantum Physics.
We need more people who work in the health care field than we do McDonald middle managers. Don’t argue cause you know I’m right.
“Life can be cruel. People are born into situations that stack the deck against them. Some are gifted with strong spirits that enable them to rise despite their challenges…” Yea, No kidding.
“The goal of society should be to offer a hand up to those people who are challenged and to find meaningful employment for those willing to work. We don't need to let Social Darwinism crush those who have not been blessed with our gifts of intelligence, physical power, or spirit.”
Yes and no. Yea, we should be focusing more on education and help people find meaningful employment for those willing to work – no argument there. But I’m not blessed with a gift of intelligence, physical power or spirit – often it’s been a curse in some situations – I made a CHOICE to be intelligent, I worked hard to build my physical and mental muscles, and I earned my own spirit. I fought, worked and learned to be who I am now.
As for Social Darwinism – a little competition is good, like Windows and Apple, like Chevy and Ford, and like Tom and Jerry. I like to compete and see who can do the best design.
We need to fight to be better people and strive for something better for ourselves. If not than we would have never have left the caves or climbed down from the trees.
Eric, I think everyone feels exactly the way you do...that they worked hard to become the people they are today. For you it was a family and school situation...for me it was society's belief that women couldn't serve effectively in the military or as engineers. I went in the Air Force in 1973 and graduated engineering school in 1978. Now it seems like no big thing, but back then there was plenty of resistance to women serving in those roles. Without the military and GI Bill, I don't see how I would have made it. So, I guess my own experience with getting a hand up makes me enthusiastic for giving people the benefit of the doubt. I am glad for anyone's success...it raises us all up. So, thank you for working so hard. I disagree with your opinion that the majority of people in tough situations are able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And, unless we are all going to start packing our own lunches, stop sending our kids to daycare, and caring for our own sick and elderly family members, we will always need more people working in those jobs than astrophysics. Most of all, I try not to judge people whose shoes I haven't walked in. Competition IS good, but cooperation is also what helped us get out of the caves. Cooperation is what makes a community. We are naturally competitive and cooperative...the trick is finding the right balance.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, Eric!