IIRC, Matt Yglesias and Paul Krugman have both been arguing that an inflation target of 4% to 5% instead of the current 2% or so, and perhaps also another round of Congress passing an economic stimulus package, would help a lot with the overall economic demand.
But I've never been convinced that there's really a good solution to the problems that Michael Moore's Roger and Me discussed, where good paying factory jobs get replaced with automation. pg has suggested that overpaying for labor was something that only worked for the Big Three while they were in startup mode, until foreign cars became popular. It would be fascinating to watch pg discuss this with Michael Moore, because Moore seems to feel entitled to something being sustained that pg seems to argue was clearly unsustainable. And I think I've seen an article that seemed to imply that the Tesla Factory hasn't employed very many former NUMMI workers because Tesla wants more skilled folks than NUMMI needed.
Maybe you want to convince Whole Foods to come to Santa Clara. (Although recent experience in Massachusetts tells me that there are benefits in terms of team member competence to going to a store that's been open for a while instead of a new store.)
>pg has suggested that overpaying for labor was something that only worked for the Big Three while they were in startup mode, until foreign cars became popular.
Eh, I think that we see that as a 'golden age' of good-paying unskilled labor, but that's the thing; factory work, at that time, wasn't unskilled. It didn't require a degree, but it certainly required skill. I would actually compare working in manufacturing during that 'golden age' to working in the computer industry, now; It was a new industry, and demand was so high that they didn't have the option of requiring a college education.
(I mean, I think you require different base attributes to write CRUD apps vs. be a machinist; but still, being a machinist took a significant amount of skill. And just like in the computer industry, yeah, there were jobs that most people, once adequately trained, could do. There were other jobs, just like the computer industry, which required attributes only present in a small portion of the population.)
That was part of why I went into my own story in my post; when demand for labor is really high (as it was in the computer industry in the late '90s) it makes sense for companies to hire and train; Not everyone is going to make it through the training process, and those that do are going to be able to demand a higher wage.
I am arguing that the problem now is not a lack of good-paying unskilled labor, but an overall lack of demand for labor. (Some would argue that this is instead an oversupply of labor; we've got a larger percentage of our population that expects to work outside the home for decent wages now than we did then. Personally, I would not feel okay taking that position.)
That was part of why I went into my own story in my post; when demand for labor is really high (as it was in the computer industry win the late '90s) it makes sense for companies to hire and train. When demand for labor is low compared to the number of folks who can do the job, well, you might as well take someone proven.
>It would be fascinating to watch pg discuss this with Michael Moore, because Moore seems to feel entitled to something being sustained that pg seems to argue was clearly unsustainable.
Eh, 'entitled' is... kinda putting a negative slant on it. (I mean, I think it does describe Moore's emotional approach to the problem, but I don't think it's /useful/) I think that most all of us would benefit from a higher demand for our own labor (as most of us make most of our money from labor, rather than from rented labor)
I mean, as folks in a growing, high-demand industry, we're further up the labor food chain, and you could say we have an interest in maintaining a wage differential, but the massive levels of unemployment are good for... very few of us.
But I've never been convinced that there's really a good solution to the problems that Michael Moore's Roger and Me discussed, where good paying factory jobs get replaced with automation. pg has suggested that overpaying for labor was something that only worked for the Big Three while they were in startup mode, until foreign cars became popular. It would be fascinating to watch pg discuss this with Michael Moore, because Moore seems to feel entitled to something being sustained that pg seems to argue was clearly unsustainable. And I think I've seen an article that seemed to imply that the Tesla Factory hasn't employed very many former NUMMI workers because Tesla wants more skilled folks than NUMMI needed.
Maybe you want to convince Whole Foods to come to Santa Clara. (Although recent experience in Massachusetts tells me that there are benefits in terms of team member competence to going to a store that's been open for a while instead of a new store.)