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from the more-or-less-getting-more-done-with-less-people dept.
Having underemployed workers can lead to two outcomes that benefit an organization—creativity and commitment to the organization—according to a new study by management experts at Rice University, Chinese University of Hong Kong at Shenzhen and Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Statistics have shown that a significant proportion of workers worldwide are underemployed or working at jobs that are below their capacity. Researchers have estimated that underemployment ranges from 17 percent to two-thirds of the workforce in Asia, Europe and North America, according to the study.
"Our results have important implications for managers," said study co-author Jing Zhou, the Houston Endowment Professor of Management at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business. "Managers should not assume that employees will always respond negatively to their perception of being underemployed. Our results suggest that managers need to be vigilant in detecting perceptions of underemployment among employees.
"When managers notice that their employees feel underemployed, they should support employees' efforts to proactively change the boundaries or formal descriptions of their work tasks, such as changing the sequencing of the tasks, increasing the number of tasks that they do or enlarging the scope of the tasks," she said. "Because the perception of underemployment may be experienced by many employees, managers should provide support to sustain positive outcomes in these situations."
Not getting enough hours to qualify for benefits is a good thing?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 22 2016, @07:48PM
So we should starve a few billion people
Billions aren't starving because they aren't working, billions are starving because the food isn't available to them.
Arbeit Macht Frei has been touted forever, and it has been a lie ever since men started "owning the land." Work keeps you busy, it doesn't make you free, or get you the things you need.
If all the poor had more money, whether they got it from working, or had it given to them, that money wouldn't help them out of poverty, it would just increase the price of the things they need. Making the resources they need available to them will help them out of poverty. Reasonably clean water, food, shelter from the elements, safety from crime, education, medical care. Given that, the poor can get past the major problems of poverty, and put more of their time and effort into providing these same things for themselves and others, rather than just surviving whatever crisis they are currently having, or about to have.
Crisis is very inefficient, people in crisis are not good members of society - they are a burden to everyone else. People who "work all the time" are more apt to end up in a crisis, and sometimes it takes more time than money to handle a crisis.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday September 22 2016, @09:48PM
If all the poor had more money, whether they got it from working, or had it given to them, that money wouldn't help them out of poverty, it would just increase the price of the things they need. Making the resources they need available to them will help them out of poverty. Reasonably clean water, food, shelter from the elements, safety from crime, education, medical care. Given that, the poor can get past the major problems of poverty, and put more of their time and effort into providing these same things for themselves and others, rather than just surviving whatever crisis they are currently having, or about to have.
No that would be false because if they're working, then their labor created things of value which money would be spent on. That's a deflationary effect. And we already have reasonably priced stuff (aside from the things that we're inflated the price of, like education and medical care, in a counterproductive attempt to make them better, more accessible, or more affordable). They're still poor.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 23 2016, @12:50PM
that would be false because if they're working, then their labor created things of value which money would be spent on. That's a deflationary effect
That type of deflationary effect is very strong in a medieval kingdom where the king is benevolent and lets the peasants farm as much land as they are willing to work, in exchange for a "fair" tax. The effect is much more limited in a favela where there are more people than there are resources to work on/with.
A lot of what needs working on in today's world is not the production of stuff, we seem to have that one nailed - awesome brand new bicycles for under $100, tools that cost less than the raw materials you use them to work on, simple foods that cost next to nothing. In the US, you can buy and maintain a decent, running, air-conditioned car (that should last for 5 or more years) for less than it costs to insure and fuel it for a year. And, of course, the storage and communication of information has already passed a singularity event... it's so cheap that people are still trying to figure out what to do with it.
The "free market" is still flailing about, assigning higher value to things that people with money want. Mostly, people with money want: more money - there's been plenty of labor devoted to making money for people who already have more of it than they need, and those pursuits aren't helping poverty, or the ecology.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday September 23 2016, @01:21PM
That type of deflationary effect is very strong in a medieval kingdom where the king is benevolent and lets the peasants farm as much land as they are willing to work, in exchange for a "fair" tax. The effect is much more limited in a favela where there are more people than there are resources to work on/with.
The effect has nothing to do with tax collection or medieval kingdoms though they too benefit from it. When your labor makes things that people spend money on, that creates a deflationary effect. And I disagree that it is diminished even a little by the existence of your favela. It's not a matter of resource scarcity.
The "free market" is still flailing about, assigning higher value to things that people with money want. Mostly, people with money want: more money - there's been plenty of labor devoted to making money for people who already have more of it than they need, and those pursuits aren't helping poverty, or the ecology.
So what? Your observation, the little of it which has any correlation with reality, just is irrelevant. It doesn't matter to me in the least that items rich people want are expensive. I don't go for ostentatious displays of wealth like fancy mansions or cars, for example (which incidentally are not "more money"). I certainly don't care that there's a bunch of rich people who want to get richer. And contrary to your assertion (which a key area you ignore reality here), those who enable such pursuits help both poverty and ecology (much of the latter just by virtue of the former) as well as income inequality (by pulling wealth away from those rich).
Broken economic models which find their way into public policy are a greater threat to us than rich people, and you have a great broken model here which would look magnificently ugly in law. One can't just say that wages are inflationary while ignoring that wages are payment for the creation of value which is deflationary, and generate public policy that isn't highly self-destructive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 23 2016, @01:52PM
\It doesn't matter to me in the least that items rich people want are expensive.
The point you missed there isn't "things for the rich" it's "more money for the rich." Pursuits like flash trading, reverse shell merger acquisitions, legal maneuvers which are too expensive and complex for people with limited resources, but yield huge monetary returns for the people who already have enough money to do them.
I'm all for yachts, mansions, and $24K designer dresses - if the rich want to spend their money in large quantities, that's a good thing. When the rich use their money to corner the market on money, that becomes a problem.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 23 2016, @02:27PM
The point you missed there isn't "things for the rich" it's "more money for the rich." Pursuits like flash trading, reverse shell merger acquisitions, legal maneuvers which are too expensive and complex for people with limited resources, but yield huge monetary returns for the people who already have enough money to do them.
Still don't care. We have better things to do with our society than take lollipops out of the hands of rich people.
When the rich use their money to corner the market on money, that becomes a problem.
Note that didn't happen in any example you've mentioned to date.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 23 2016, @03:55PM
When the rich use their money to corner the market on money, that becomes a problem.
Note that didn't happen in any example you've mentioned to date.
Wealth distribution in 2012:
According to the OECD in 2012 the top 0.6% of world population (consisting of adults with more than 1 million USD in assets) or the 42 million richest people in the world held 39.3% of world wealth. The next 4.4% (311 million people) held 32.3% of world wealth. The bottom 95% held 28.4% of world wealth.
Yes, this is how it has been since the times of slaves building pyramids. We can do better. As the population grows to a level that consumes more than half of all available resources, we need to do better.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 23 2016, @05:02PM
Yes, this is how it has been since the times of slaves building pyramids. We can do better. As the population grows to a level that consumes more than half of all available resources, we need to do better.
And we are doing better, but not because we supposedly care about wealth or income inequality. It turns out gainfully employing people leads to reduced income inequality globally. Who knew?
As to your rather irrelevant data about rich people owning a lot of stuff, most of that wealth is useless to you. The first thing you would probably do, if you got it would be to sell it significantly below its supposed value to one of the 0.6% for money you can use. That's the nature of the fantasy wealth that we supposedly should care about.
It also just isn't that much wealth inequality. The bottom 95% owning 25% of asset wealth is pretty high IMHO. I just don't see what the problem is supposed to be.
And I notice yet again that you have yet to show an example of rich people "cornering" money with money in markets, not that your babblegook has anything to do with markets or how they get used. Maybe you need to hit the market on the side a few times until an example falls out? It works for TVs and ice trays. Markets can't be that different, amirite?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 23 2016, @06:16PM
you have yet to show an example of rich people "cornering" money with money
You don't like high frequency trading as an example? Or international tax evasion? - it takes a considerable amount of wealth to make that one feasible, but once you're there, you drop your percentage tax paid considerably. Then we get right to the crux of the matter with political bribery. Enrich a politician with $100,000 under the table and you can get millions, either in grants, contracts, or favorable business regulation changes, often at the expense of the environment - not to mention protection from competition from people with less resources who can't afford to buy more influential politicians. And, whether we're talking about bribing politicians, or negotiating in the open market with kickbacks and favorable deals to big/influential business partners - whoever starts with the biggest pile of money can grow it the fastest. Productivity, employment for the masses, protection of the environment are all irrelevant in that equation.
The only "advantages" that small players have in the market is relative lack of regulatory oversight, and the agility that comes from not having a huge organization to coordinate, much of which size comes from regulatory compliance activities. Give a small player the big pile of cash and 1) they attract regulatory oversight, and 2) they tend to "scale the organization" with lots of people, damping down that agility that comes from a whole team that can have a meaningful conversation over lunch.
I "get it" that you either a) are one of the 0.6% and see nothing wrong with the way things are, or b) love to dream about you, or maybe your children, becoming one of them someday. Simply having a decent job in the U.S. usually puts you close to the top 5%, globally. Personally, I'd rather not live in a world where "loss of job" presents the opportunity to fall so far. In my experience, these great jobs we have today aren't as secure as my parent's generation's less great jobs were, and that security seems to be getting worse as the decades roll on.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 23 2016, @07:02PM
You don't like high frequency trading as an example? Or international tax evasion?
Indeed, because they aren't examples of whatever "cornering money" is supposed to be. And frankly, unless you computer trade, HFT means nothing to you. As to legal international tax avoidance, change the rules if you don't like the game. Just keep in mind that all those entitlements you get are the price you paid for going alone with the huge variety of these games. You probably will end up losing most of those as well, assuming you don't blink first.
I "get it" that you either a) are one of the 0.6% and see nothing wrong with the way things are, or b) love to dream about you, or maybe your children, becoming one of them someday. Simply having a decent job in the U.S. usually puts you close to the top 5%, globally. Personally, I'd rather not live in a world where "loss of job" presents the opportunity to fall so far. In my experience, these great jobs we have today aren't as secure as my parent's generation's less great jobs were, and that security seems to be getting worse as the decades roll on.
And we see you don't "get it". I don't care about the 0.6%. They're actually carrying their load pretty well. Your concerns are due to a temporary effect of labor competition with the developing world combined with a variety of short-sighted labor and protectionist policies in the developed world.
When the developing world gets to near parity with your society by 2050 I think, then the pressure will go away. Of course, the regulatory mess won't and that might be enough to drive your society to subpar employment and living standards. But you will no doubt continue to transfer blame elsewhere.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 23 2016, @07:19PM
Your concerns are due to a temporary effect of labor competition
No, actually, my concerns are mostly centered on my children, who are not likely to be competitive, or even capable, in the job market when they get to the age where they are "expected to work." And so they will stay home with us, until we are unable to provide a home for them, either before or maybe a few years after we die. As long as I can work, I should be able to provide a decent home for the family, and the system as it is will do O.K. for us as long as we manage our situation wisely.
Assuming 30% of our home state isn't underwater by 2050.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 23 2016, @08:06PM
No, actually, my concerns are mostly centered on my children, who are not likely to be competitive, or even capable, in the job market when they get to the age where they are "expected to work."
Sorry about your bad luck with the kids. But for parents who don't have developmentally disabled kids, they just won't have those problems in 35 years.
Assuming 30% of our home state isn't underwater by 2050.
You are speaking of 15 centimeters of sea level gain here. Sorry about your bad luck with your runt of a state. Maybe someone in your family will figure out how to move by the time it matters.
I'm sorry, but when I hear concerns like you describe, I have trouble taking them seriously. Scientists have done research on the climate and we're just not seeing the degree of melting now that would lead to significant sea level rise in a human lifetime.