aprilshipper:robstmartin: wagecucks: Oh boy!! It’s a fucking mystery?? A spooky scary mystery!
aprilshipper:robstmartin: wagecucks: Oh boy!! It’s a fucking mystery?? A spooky scary mystery!! Better get fucking Sherlock Holmes on this one! It’s a big fucking mystery, with no obvious answer! This is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery. This is a Scooby-Doo mystery, where the villain is an old white guy pulling a real estate / inheritance scam. I did not read the article, but as someone who has questioned this too, it is not “where is the money” it is how come a shortage in labor supply and steady demand not driven the price of labor up? Why are the companies not forced, by maker conditions, to increase their wages, both to keep talent and to attract talent? At the very least to get people to enter the civilian workforce? Why is our unemployment so low? Why won’t people leave jobs or demand higher salary? “Rich white guys” still need employees, so why aren’t they employees demanding a higher wage? The question is not who has the money, it is why do they have the money, and if you truly believe it us because they have all colluded, you are wrong. Certain industries may allow for this but the CFL, as a whole does not work that way. Instead of asking where is the money, which everyone knows the answer to, you should be asking, what’s up with the workers. (not surprised I had to dive so far into the notes to find someone willing to acknowledge context, but still)Having read the article, that’s exactly what’s being asked here. (Link for the curious)Wages, like everything else, nominally works on supply and demand. The more demand for a thing, the higher the cost. Likewise, more supply, lower cost. The reality of Supply and Demand is never quite as simple as those curves Econ 101 presents, but it is still a thing.(For instance, you see it with my local gas station now offering over $16 for people willing to work the night shift, several dollars more than the minimum wage in my state, because they really need the employees and they have to up the incentives to get someone willing to do it)So, it’s confusing to economists how, when in late 2017 when this article was written, wages weren’t going up, even as unemployment was going down. The pool of people who didn’t have a job was dropping, thus, in theory, companies would have to offer better wages to attract people.There actually is a lot going on when it comes to the question of wages. Ultimately, yes, it’s rich assholes not wanting to pay more, but in theory, workers should be demanding (or at least ultimately receiving) higher wages, at least during times when companies are desperate for new employees. That that’s not really happening as much as it should - even now - is the big mystery this article is about.So yes, marinate and even eat the rich, but that can’t happen if we can’t even be motivated or empowered to demand better wages when our labor is in higher demand. -- source link
#economics