StatGuy2000 said:
Intrinsic in your statement is that the job market is somehow impervious to change by the actions of individuals and governments, which is far from the case.
You're getting warmer. It isn't
impervious to change, it is self-correcting. So when you try to change it it will make a correction and you'd better understand what that correction is going to be when making the change.
I respectfully disagree. I feel that it is everyone's responsibility to ensure that all citizens have access to a livable wage (note my term "livable wage" i.e. wages that are the minimum that people can survive on, not "decent wages"). That's why I support (in the case of the US) a $15/hour minimum wage. And why I am also open to the idea of a guaranteed minimum income (with caveats in terms of how it can be implemented).
Fair enough. You're entitled to have and support your own vision. But what you can't have is to automatically make your vision
work. It might work or it might not. And unfortunately, this vision doesn't work. Cities experimenting on it are learning that you can't ignore those "corrections" I referred to above.
I again respectfully disagree. There has been a number of studies looking at the effects of unionization in terms of the productivity of firms, and have found that, contrary to common beliefs, "a positive association [of unions on productivity] is established for the United States in general and for US manufacturing in particular".
@Mark44 expanded on my point for me. However:
That article is a red-herring: it doesn't discuss what we are discussing, probably because the authors recognize that the answer on the issue were're discussing is that unions hurt, not help. This is about pay and profit, not productivity. You [they] don't support unions because they increase productivity, you support them because they increase worker pay.
As for your example about the car industry, the problems there have little do with unions, and has almost entirely to do with poor management that failed to respond appropriately to competition from Japanese car manufacturers.
Ehem: that competition was in large part driven by lower cost of labor due to non-unionized manufacturing.
My quote was directed at
@Vanadium 50 , not to you (I was questioning how he seemed in his post was blaming students for their own underemployment, and my post was a response to him).
Well sure - that was my first post in the thread. But I'm free to respond to any post I want! That's how discussion forums work! Besides, I suspect my thoughts and his are in alignment.
What so irritates me about this issue - what so reduces my sympathy and G.A.S. factor is that the answers are so obvious and easy, but people don't want to do things that can actually help because it is more fun to reward people after the the fact for bad behavior rather than try to fix the bad behavior. But you're right: the government
can help. Not by fighting against capitalism, but by harnessing it. We've done it before:
With smoking.
Yep, that's right, liberal arts classes are like cigarettes. And here is what you (and many others) are suggesting we do:
1. Subsidize the smokers by paying them free money to use to buy cigarettes.
2. Paying to treat them and improving their quality of life.
3. Funding that by charging non-smokers a tax.
That is a sure recipe for making the problem worse.
Here's what we actually did to crush smoking/lung cancer:
1. Put giant warning labels on cigarette packs and fund aggressive anti-smoking advertising campaigns.
2. Tax cigarettes heavily to discourage smoking.
3. Use those taxes to fund their own care.
You can apply this almost literally to liberal arts:
1. Giant warning labels on applications and tests. Aggressive public advocacy campaigns warning of the dangers of liberal arts classes/degrees.
2. Tax liberal arts classes to discourage people from taking them.
3. Use the taxes to fund recovery programs for young liberal arts graduates to go back to school and gain more marketable skills.
