Sorry for the late post on this but I work in retail and my hours are haphazard. In any case, it was on a Sunday News Program where I heard Congresswoman Katherine Clark say that we need more “quality jobs” in the United States of America. I don’t mean to single out Congresswoman Katherine Clark at all on this. I’ve heard countless Democrats say similar things countless times over the past 40 years, in their attempt (I would assume) to offer remedies or point to caused of the wage stagnation that the working class has suffered though for over four decades now.
Unemployment is what, under 5%? That would mean that 95% of us have jobs and I can only assume by Congresswoman Katherine Clark’s remarks that the reason our wages suck is because our work is not of a quality high to demand higher wages. We all must have “non-quality jobs”. To her, and those in her camp, we all need different jobs, quality jobs! Of course the questions in my mind regarding such a statement are many, but I will limit them to two:
1. If we all left our non-quality jobs for better paying “quality jobs”, who would do the non quality jobs that we are already doing?
2. During the government shutdown, it was revealed that many people who have jobs working for the federal government did not have wages sufficient for them to save for an emergency of this sort and it was mentioned over and over that so many Americans are living “paycheck to paycheck”. Apparently for many, working for the US government it not a “quality job”. Why is that?
A significant reason why this is happening is that, according a piece in today’s New York Times, Technology is splitting the workforce in two (emphasis mine):
Whether or not you choose at admit it, The “quality” of job has to do with things like:
– How hard is it to replace the employee
– How profitable is the job
– What is the ratio between the value of what the employee produces and what the employee costs
Demonizing people and politicians who admit this truth and who guide policy based on recognizing that some jobs are better than others (as in pay more, provide better working conditions, treat employees better, and so on) only adds to the already toxic level of hostility towards government and hostility towards plain old facts and reality.
So — in response to your explicit question — a low-quality job is a job that:
– Is marginally profitable for the employer (this is far and away the most important)
– Offers low pay
– Offers little or no job security
– Offers little or no opportunity for advancement
– Requires few or no skills or education
Let me begin by letting you and others know that your reply does not answer either question. If we are all “highly educated workers”, we will still need workers to supply us with coffee at the drive up window, wash the dishes at the restaurants we visit, teach our kids in grade school, and did I mention all the government workers?
Let me end by including this article: Technology didn’t kill middle class jobs, public policy did
A widely held view in elite circles is that the rapid rise in inequality in the United States over the last three decades is an unfortunate side-effect of technological progress. ……..This story is comforting to elites, because it means that inequality is something that happened, not something they did. They won out because they had the skills and intelligence to succeed in a dynamic economy, whereas the huge mass of workers that are falling behind did not. In this story, the best we can do for those left behind is empathy and education. We can increase opportunities to upgrade their skills in the hope that more of them may be able to join the winners.
That’s a nice story, but the evidence doesn’t support it.
The paper makes an impressive case that technology is not the main explanation for the rise in inequality that we have been seeing. In fact, even MIT economics professor David Autor, the leading proponent of the occupational shift story concedes this point. He was quoted in a New York Times column saying of the view that technology explains inequality:
“It can suck all the air out of the conversation … All economists should be pushing back against this simplistic view.”
You’ve cited an opinion piece from 2013, from The Guardian. I see precious little “evidence” there. Regarding Mr. Autor, Here is some larger context:
Nobody in the piece I cited claims that “education and technology are solely responsible for growing inequality”. I note that the piece cited in your Guardian article is itself a 2013 piece by Eduardo Porter, the same author as the 2019 piece I cited above.
It seems clear enough to me that the world is DIFFERENT in 2019 than it was a decade ago.
There is no scenario in which “we are all ‘highly educated workers'”. Not all of us can be concert pianists. Not all of us can be great poets. Not all of us can be a “highly educated worker”.
In the policy world that you so frequently advocate, those workers you describe will continue to be very much like they are today — poor, often black or Hispanic, and often female. To the extent that your relentless attacks on Democrats who advocate for making education available to all (including Ms. Warren, by the way) are successful, tens of millions of young Americans whose only obstacle to a higher education diploma is economic will remain mired in the trap of these low-quality jobs.
Finally, the question I answered in my comment is the question you titled your post with:
“what is a non – quality job?”
Like it or not, there ARE differences in job quality. Like it or not, those have “good” jobs are far more likely to have a college diploma than those who have “low-quality” jobs.
I’m not going to wage a war of exchanging websites.
Telling the working class that “a college diploma” is the answer and NOT the political will to attack the ownership class is what many Democrats have done for the past four decades.
It is a lie, as much of a lie as the Republican “trickle down” promise that tax cuts for the rich will eventually help the working class.
You subscribe to the now dominant neoliberal theory of value. I do not.
You seem to say (correct me if I am in error) that people without these skills that you mention do not deserve a wage that will
1. Afford them medical care.
2. Pay a mortgage or rent for living quarters.
3. Allow them to save for a comfortable retirement.
4, Permit them to have a small family of four with one stay-at-home parent.
Why? Is your cheap cup of coffee at the drive up window or your inexpensive steak bomb with fries for lunch more important that any of that?
We’ve been through all this before.
I haven’t said any of the things you allege, you’re just lying about me (again).
In particular, the language about “deserving” is entirely your own creation and has nothing to do with anything I’ve ever written here.
This has nothing to do with who deserves what.
It is precisely because society owes our least fortunate members the things you enumerate that we must discard the lie that ANY job will provide these for the overwhelming majority of those without higher education.
A “job” is not the answer. “Education” is not the answer for those who for whatever reason lack the ability to finish college. Lying about those of us who attempt to provide a different approach is not the answer.
Your last paragraph is simply a personal attack.
I wish you stop lying about me, and I wish you’d stop attacking me.
Tom,
We agree that “a job” is not the answer. We agree (do we?) that education is not the answer.
What is the answer?
To me, it’s electing individuals to government who are willing to attack the status quo, a status quo that you seem to embrace.
That’s the problem.
I’ve been saying here — for years — that we should:
1. Aggressively tax the very wealthy in order to share that wealth more equitably, including:
a: Tax wealth, as per Ms. Warren’s proposal
b. Dramatically raise the estate and gift tax, far more than the weak tea from Mr. Sanders
c. Dramatically increase the top rate for capital gains
d. Remove the distinction between long- and short-term capital gains, and treat ALL capital gains as ordinary income
2. Establish a UBI for every resident
3. Use eminent domain to seize equity from large companies and distribute that equity among every resident
4. Replace “labor” as way of distributing wealth with mechanisms more like 2 and 3 above.
This is hardly an embrace of the status quo.
Your accusation that I “seem to embrace” the status quo is an example of the distortion I object to in your commentary.
Access to higher education is a vital part of creating a sustainable 21st century American society. We Democrats have long supported public schools through high school — I suggest that this should extend through college, including graduate school. Access to quality health care is equally important.
These last two are vital — and have nothing to do with wealth concentration. You are quite correct that increasing the share of people with college degrees will not affect the wealth concentration issue. Neither will making quality health care accessible.
Health care and education are two separate issues, neither of which has anything to do with wealth concentration.
Even if we have single-payer government-sponsored health care for every resident of America, and even if we have solved the wealth concentration issue so that every American resident can live without fear of hunger, disease, or homelessness, those without an education will STILL live far more difficult lives than those with an education.
That reality is why Democrats have ALWAYS worked to remove unfair barriers that stop otherwise capable people from getting an education beyond high school. We have worked to remove gender barriers, religious barriers, and racial barriers. We now work to remove financial barriers.
I passionately disagree with your relentless efforts to attack this work.
I doubt your #3 will pass constitutional muster and frankly my gut reaction is it sounds a little communist.
How is taking equity (in exchange for its current fair market value) different from taking real estate?
I’m not proposing to simply seize it, that’s never been how eminent domain works.
Much of what we do today “sounds a little communist” by the standards of the 1950s. Perhaps a little communism might be better than what we have now.
I wasn’t suggesting it was different from real estate. My understanding is that eminent domain is for the purpose of public use rather than redistribute to private individuals, though now that I think about it when you’re talking money it seems you use the tax code. Maybe communist wasn’t precise, but it does seem capriciously confiscatory to just seize assets from a company you decide has grown to large. Maybe feudal? In that system a sovereign would seize a lord’s land just cuz.
@capriciously confiscatory:
It isn’t that I disagree with you, exactly.
Instead, I want to observe the bias built in to our economic system. When the very wealthy capriciously confiscate our wealth, it’s “just business”. When the inverse happens, it’s a big no-no.
I envision the government setting guidelines based on size, GINI coefficient, and so on, so that the rules are the same for all companies (something like the the too-big-to-fail guidelines). The takings would be in accordance with those guidelines.
I would also change the civil penalties so that various fines paid by these entities are paid in equity rather than cash.
The goal of this is to broaden ownership and give working-class people a voice in corporate decisions — even when those working-class people DON’T have the financial means to buy stock.
In my view, it is no worse to take wealth and back from big business than it is for big business to take wealth and equity from us.
@ public use:
These takings WOULD be for public use. I argue that there is very real public use served by avoiding the enormously extreme concentration of wealth happening today. Very similar arguments were once made to restrict monopolies — until government was bought by the big-business.
Can you be more precise about what you mean by businesses taking wealth from us? I’m pretty sure no corporation has ever come to me and said, “We’re going to come in and seize $1000 from your checking account today because we feel like it.”
Of course they don’t do it that way. Instead, the inform you (without asking) that effective on a given date, the interest rate on the average daily balance of your savings account will be whatever it will be.
It was not so long ago that the effectual annual interest rate on a standard savings account was 5%. I’m pretty sure you don’t get that today (please let me know which bank you use if so).
Business take wealth from us by changing the rules, rates, and policies for which we have no control and no recourse.
If you had $20,000 in a NOW account in 1980, you would have gotten at least $1,000 per year in interest on that account. Today, Bank of America pays 0.03% — SIX DOLLARS — on that same balance.
That’s how businesses seize your wealth.
Well, I don’t have much experience with that since all I have is a checking account that just stores my money without interest. Receiving less interest doesn’t strike me as a taking, though I suppose as with any other business if I don’t like how something is going I can take my business elsewhere. Interest isn’t earned, it just appears. I don’t consider it something to which I am entitled.
Christopher If anyone on here should be investing in and beginning to understand a brokerage account it should be you. I get the sense that most on here are “old farts” (no offence) and their economic well being is already defined. You should be buying Bank of America stock, don’t just let the money sit in a checking account.
@ all I have is a checking account:
I fear you miss my point. There IS NO “other business” to take your savings account to. Interest most certainly IS earned — it is rent that a bank pays you for the privilege of using your money while it sits otherwise idle in your account.
Your money is YOUR money. It belongs to you. You put that money in a bank because it is safer and more convenient than keeping cash under your mattress.
Your bank makes its money by borrowing your money and lending it to other parties. Your bank profits on the difference between the interest it charges those other parties and the interest it pays you.
The banking industry has made sure that there are no longer any banks where you can get a 5% rate on your savings accounts (never mind the 7.5% rate that was available from some banks in the not-too-distant past). Big business has made sure to adjust the entire economic system so that big business takes essentially all of the huge amount of new wealth being generated today versus twenty years ago.
A recent column (I don’t remember where I saw it) expressed it well — suppose you had doubled the wealth in your savings accounts and retirement funds over the past two decades. Suppose somebody came and without your knowledge, consent or approval transferred that wealth from your accounts to theirs. Wouldn’t you rightly feel violated?
That is what big business and the 0.01% have done to the rest of us over the last two decades.
If you owned a building and a squatter lived in your apartment in your building while paying you no rent, that squatter would be stealing the rent money from you (whether you admit it or not). A bank that uses your money and pays no interest does the same.
I remind you that you asked, above, how businesses take wealth from us. Even if it doesn’t bother you, I wish that you would at least admit that:
1. It IS a taking
2. It DOES bother others
There is a certain chimerical flavor to the wealth: that is to say, as quickly as it is created is as quickly as it can disappear. And it does disappear. The juggling act is for more wealth to be created elsewhere… or at least for it all to not disappear all at once… which was almost the case in 2008.
Without taking too much issue with what you’ve written… that is to say to the extent that banks and big business clearly do make the attempt to fleece the unwashed, you are correct. But the sorry little secret is that they are not very good at what they do.
A great deal of wealth creation, and subsequent wealth destruction, you see, happens outside the realm of competence. Galbraith famously said that “The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent and that is true. But just because something is inherently simple does not mean it cannot (unnecessarily) be made complicated. So it is that, unto this seemingly simple and bulletproof methodology, is bolted a complexity: and we end up with semi-literate morons using other peoples money as leverage. buying and selling instruments they don’t understand on margins they don’t have and being greatly rewarded when successful and consoled, rather than punished, when they don’t.
And, for a second time, the mind is repelled.
@petr: Agreed
I want to remind us of my comment that triggered this exchange with Christopher:
To which Christopher asked:
My point here is that the banking industry DID in fact come in and seize money from us when they gamed the system (that they control) in order to maximize their profits at our expense.
I think it’s long past time for us to reexamine our assumptions that big business (like the banking industry) can manipulate the economy at their whim to take our wealth, yet it is somehow improper for us regulate that behavior in order to ensure that a portion of that newly-created wealth remains in our pockets, wallets, and bank accounts.
@ sounds a little communist:
Heh. So one commentator accuses me of being a communist in the very same thread where another accuses me of being too quick to embrace the status quo.
I’m pretty sure that both cannot be simultaneously true. I’ll plead guilty to the “sounds a little communist” charge.
Socialism dispossesses the ordinary worker for the sake of the general good while capitalism dispossesses the ordinary worker for the sake of the monopolizing capitalist. So in effect, these are two economic models of dispossession. Phillip Blond.
Nice quote. Nobody has talked about socialism here, though.
In the spirit of Mr. Blond, it is perhaps fair to observe that in every instance where it’s been attempted at the national level, communism dispossesses the ordinary worker for the sake of the monopolizing communist. So, in effect, there are not two but THREE economic models of dispossession.
So perhaps we can agree that pretty much every economic model that has been tried has ended up dispossessing the ordinary worker.
It seems to me that this is more evidence that the attempt to divide the economy into “worker” and something else is itself the problem. The moment we talk about “worker” and “working class”, we assume into existence the very system of exploitation that we seek to leave behind.
The industrial age is over. The wealth generated by today’s economy does not depend on “workers”. That isn’t to say that there aren’t still jobs to be done and people needed to perform those jobs. It is to say, instead, that — like it or not — society collectively does not value the results of those jobs. Hence, those jobs do not create wealth.
The world of 2020 is DIFFERENT from the world of 1820.
You make the point, often, that technology is behind the wealth gap and that the reason some are wealthier than others is because they have more of a tech background and therefor, a “quality job:”.
Added to that, you recommend that working class citizens, in order to remedy this wealth gap, pursue education in tech area.
That is were we disagree.
Technology is not behind the wide and widening wealth gap. Legislation that pertains to the use and ownership of technology is what is behind it and changing that legislation is the only way to attack this at its source.
Aggressively taxing the wealthy sounds like a noble cause, but a better one would be to create and support an economic system where one could not even amass that sort of wealth.
In other words, rather than take measures to limit the damages caused by the status quo, change the status quo entirely.
@”the reason some are wealthier than others is because they have more of a tech background and therefor, a “quality job:”.
Nope. That’s not what I write. Perhaps if you spend more time reading and less time writing, you might have a better understanding of my commentary.
@”Added to that, you recommend that working class citizens, in order to remedy this wealth gap, pursue education in tech area.”
Again, nope.
Jobs in technology are no safer than jobs anywhere else. It is the concept of a job itself that is obsolete.
The engineer or programmer who creates or programs a robot is still just an hourly worker. It is the owner of the resulting intellectual property who acquires the wealth that the new technology will create.
If you truly want to change the status quo, then a good start is to let go of your attachment to the industrial-era concept of a “job”.
Earlier in this thread, you posted an article that supports your notion that tech is behind the wealth gap.
Now you are saying something different.
Okay, I guess I’m done with you on this one.
Of course “tech is behind the wealth gap”.
It is your focus JOBS that is the issue. It is the TECH that is creating the wealth gap, not the men and women who create that tech.
Here, for your convenience, is your comment that I responded to, with emphasis on what I mean:
The last part of your comment, that I have emphasized, is again your own invention. I have never said anything like that!
You guys might want to check out Andrew Yang. I don’t see him as the next President, but he has some ideas worth being in the mix. I attended a meet and greet with him in Nashua yesterday and he has some interesting takes.
I don’t understand why you continue to assert that I say things I don’t say. Repetition does not change your distortions of what I say.
Technology is a huge force in creating the wealth gap. Yes.
I have never written anything like the second part of your first sentence (‘the reason some are wealthier than others is because they have more of a tech background and therefor, a “quality job:'”).
People with quality jobs are far more likely to have a four year degree — in ANY field, not just tech. A young woman working as an interior designer in an architectural firm has a quality job. She does not have a “tech background”. She has a higher income than someone without a degree working at Burger King. That doesn’t mean she is “wealthier”, it means she has a better job.
I recommend a four year degree in ANY field for anyone able to do so. How many times do I have to say that this has NOTHING TO DO with wealth concentration?
“Legislation that pertains to the use and ownership of technology is what is behind it”
What on earth are you talking about? What “legislation”?
Somebody or something will own the intellectual property that creates wealth. If not individuals or corporations, then who or what?
Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in America. Most of that wealth came from his creation of Amazon.
It sounds as though you’re arguing that we should “create and support an economic system” where Mr. Bezos could not amass his wealth.
Are you suggesting that our society would be better without Amazon? Really?
Robotic kiosks, bartenders, etc provide a consistency of service commensurate with the consumers ability to run the software program associated with the point of service exchange. Millennials are going to accelerate the transition with their embrace of technology. After initial reluctance older consumers are starting to embrace the inevitable change and millions of service workers are going to lose their jobs. Other than getting an extra olive in a martini, or some local gossip food service workers are dispensable and are going to be among the first affected
While there were gains among some workers in certain periods—college-educated men and women in urban areas from the mid-1980s through 2000, and all other workers for a few years in the late 1990s—the overwhelming trend has been one of stalled economic progress, even among the skilled in the last two decades.
https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2019/01/2.2-Pgs.-100-126-Restoring-Economic-Opportunity….pdf?_ga=2.176053282.1098965003.1549295497-93667325.1549295497
I don’t think anybody has disagreed with this.
This exemplifies why wealth concentration is different from education.