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from the suppresion-of-the-proletariat dept.
Analysis of a study (PDF) carried by UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education shows that isn't the poor people won't work but the work they do can't sustain them. As a blog on WaPo puts it:
We often make assumptions about people on public assistance, about the woman in the checkout line with an EBT card, or the family who lives in public housing. [...] We assume, at our most skeptical, that poor people need help above all because they haven't tried to help themselves — they haven't bothered to find work.
The reality, though, is that a tremendous share of people who rely on government programs designed for the poor in fact work — they just don't make enough at it to cover their basic living expenses. According to the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 73 percent of people who benefit from major public assistance programs in the U.S. live in a working family where at least one adult earns the household some money.
This picture casts the culprit in a different light: Taxpayers are spending a lot of money subsidizing not people who won't work, but industries that don't pay their workers a living wage. Through these four programs alone [food stamps, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, income supports through welfare], federal and state governments spend about $150 billion a year aiding working families, according to the analysis (the authors define people who are working here as those who worked at least 10 hours a week, at least half the year).
The workers relying the most on social programs: Fast Food (52%), Home Care (48%), Child Care (46%) and Part-time college students (25%).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 15 2015, @11:59AM
I remember reading an analysis on the subject of minimum wage and poverty. The takeaway from the article was: it's not really about the hourly pay, it's about the hours. Many, if not most of the poor with jobs are earning more than minimum wage, but they can only find part-time work. If you are only working 15 hours a week, then the problem isn't so much the salary, as the fact that you need more hours. So the question is: why can these people not find jobs that offer them more hours? Is it lack of skills? Because the economy sucks? Something else?
In any case, back to TFA. The article really twists itself into a pretzel, in order to claim that food stamps, Medicaid, etc. are subsidizing industries. If you were to take those programs away, there is no reason to suppose that the companies would pay their workers more. All it would do is make the workers more desperate.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:12PM
Another worthwhile point is the difficulty and loss incurred when working two or more part-time jobs. There is extra overhead in commute time and expense. Any time between jobs is functionally lost time as winding down or personal productivity that requires an unknown time investment is not an option. If there are any paltry benefits (such as employee paid discount insurance) both will try to deny them because of the other's availability. Nevermind that just one conflicting schedule could get you fired.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:22PM
Pretty much the standard operating procedure in these industries is hire two part timers for every one full-time job. That way those people will be forced to take a second part time job, so there is no shortage of labor, but you do not have to provide them with full-time benefits and never pay overtime. It's pretty fuckin scummy, but that's what it is. There is no way to fix it short of outlawing part-time labor. Once one company does this, all others must in order to compete because they have an advantage.
(Score: 2) by snick on Wednesday April 15 2015, @01:31PM
... except the OTHER standard operating procedure is t not provide any sort of stability or flexibility in which hours are offered. "These are your hours this week (which are different from your hours last week), and I (the employer) will feel free to change your hours as the week proceeds."
Just try to hold 2 part time jobs under those terms.
(Score: 1) by albert on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:17PM
Ditch the laws that make full-time workers and overtime cost more. It's a better deal for everybody to have a worker doing 72 hours at one place than to do 72 hours spread across 3 or 4 places. That can't happen as long as the for-your-own-good labor laws are in place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:12PM
Now there's a genius idea, make it so companies can make their employees work 100+ hours per week without any kind of disincentive! The reason overtime is required to cost is so that companies which need overtime will instead hire more people. If your company needs an employee to work more than 40 hours per week, its clear that you need more employees.
Another genius idea! Employees don't need benefits or health insurance or retirement funds! All that shit is just a meaningless drain on profits! Those uppity, entitled welfare queens need to just accept the fact that they're slaves and enjoy their slave labor jobs working 100+ hours per week and still not being able to support themselves.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @07:47AM
Another genius idea! Employees don't need benefits or health insurance or retirement funds! All that shit is just a meaningless drain on profits! Those uppity, entitled welfare queens need to just accept the fact that they're slaves and enjoy their slave labor jobs working 100+ hours per week and still not being able to support themselves.
First, my society doesn't need employees to have those things. There is a dishonest equating of personal wants with societal wants.
Second, there is a continuing disconnect between cause and effect. Why is it better to force people to work multiple jobs with all the sacrifice and suffering that entails than one job without overtime? Why is it better to have people who don't work and thus, are unable to provide for their own wants than people who do? We have a half a century of history indicating that there is something deeply wrong with the developed world approach to disincentivizing employment of developed world workers. My view is that you need to give employers a fair playing field even though they are a small portion of the human population because they are the most important part of employment. It is far harder a problem to create a job than to work that job. I favor as a consequence such things as eliminating or severely reducing minimum wage, mandatory benefits for employees, overhead from regulation and social safety net programs, and a lot of the restrictions on when employees can be hired and fired.
When you throw a bunch of penalties, restrictions, and such on one side of a trade, you discourage the trade. When the trade is as important as employment is, you are harming directly the structure of society, particularly its ability to deliver the things you want. I think it more important that societies allow for the free and productive employment of people than the provision of the fairy dust entitlements you cite above because you can't have the latter without the former. This is the cause and effect that gets consistently ignored.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:50PM
Ditch the laws that make full-time workers and overtime cost more.
Perhaps instead it would be better to ditch the laws that make part-time workers cost less.
As for overtime... as the Anonymous Coward pointed out, the whole reason that overtime exists is to encourage employers that regularly need more staff to hire more staff.
(Score: 1) by albert on Thursday April 16 2015, @04:10AM
Perhaps instead it would be better to ditch the laws that make part-time workers cost less.
No, because the laws that add expenses are pretty messed up. There is no reason why my employer should direct $25000 of my pay to a health insurance company of their choice. I'd rather pick my own health insurance.
As for overtime... as the Anonymous Coward pointed out, the whole reason that overtime exists is to encourage employers that regularly need more staff to hire more staff.
Ah, but the actual situation is backwards: the law forces employees who need more hours to get more jobs. These aren't workers who have the luxury of stopping at 40 hours. The work they perform is not valuable enough to support a family with only 40 hours. Wouldn't it be better if they could get those hours at just one employer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:26AM
Thats because they're being fucked by their employers, who are refusing to pay anything resembling a living wage. Slavery was supposed to be abolished long ago; it disgusts me to see idiots like yourself cheering for it and fighting to bring it back.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Thursday April 16 2015, @08:19AM
because the laws that add expenses are pretty messed up
Good point. At any rate, I'd be happy if employers found it easy to add more employees when their business expanded. There is already a significant cost involved in getting a new employee up to speed and I'd hate for there to be unnecessary additional barriers to employing more people. After all - isn't more employment a boon for employers, employees and society?
As for full-time verses part-time: I know that in some countries it is the norm for couples with young children to both work part-time jobs and people seem to be reasonably happy. In the USA, it appears that the primary motivation to have part-time workers is to deny employees the benefits which come from full-time status. Now, not being a US citizen, that just seems bizarre. (And horrid. Oh, so truly horrid.) So, in reference to full-time verses part-time, I'd be happy if employees and employers could agree on an arrangement that suits both and pay (cash and "benefits") on a pro-rata basis. That being said, if existing employees want more work, I thoroughly support them getting a full week's work from the employer in preference to additonal part-time staff being employed for the same job.
These aren't workers who have the luxury of stopping at 40 hours.
That's a much bigger problem.
Overtime should be a mechanism that helps the employer deal with a temporary excess of work. I've mostly worked in salaried positions (you pay me for a "day's work", and I'll work until it's done, or I'm too tired to be effective and we'll start again tomorrow), but there was one job I did where I occasionally did overtime. Every couple of months a 40 foot container needed to be unloaded. Staff were offered overtime. We (the staff) loved it - a fat bonus and all we had to do was unload a truck and go home a few hours later.
Where I live, overtime generally attracts a stiff penalty: time-and-a-half for the first couple of hours (I can't recall the exact details) and double time after that.
Wouldn't it be better if they could get those hours at just one employer?
I take your point. For an individual's situation - then yes, it would certainly be far more convenient. Looking at it from a country's perspective - there are two very relevant points to consider:
Now I'm aware that there will be people who want to earn more (so they want more hours). Fair enough. If they can get the overtime from their existing employer, all power to them. The simple truth however is that there are a limited amount of hours in a day and only so many of them can be spent working. "Forty hours" isn't a number invented out of thin air, it's a number that reasonably represents humans working at their most efficient. "Eight hours' labour, eight hours' recreation, eight hours' rest." [wikipedia.org] might be a catchy slogan but it's not far from the truth. Humans won't function very well if they try to squeeze many more working hours out of a day on a regular basis - no matter how much they need the cash.
So you are right in both of your points, I probably just have non-US-native's way of looking at it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 16 2015, @10:01AM
if employees can't earn enough at a "full-time job" to support a family, then they aren't being paid enough
Or they aren't doing enough to justify the pay they want. There's that possibility too.
people aren't effective much beyond forty hours per week.
For a particular, very imaginary job. For real jobs, forty hours can be too little or too much. For math researchers, 40 hours a week tends to be too much except for a few, particularly sturdy workhorses. For janitors, they can remain "functional" far beyond forty hours. And various workaholics have shown that 80-100 hours per week can be done by some people for years at a time. Another thing to remember here is that not everyone is equally competent, skilled, and ambitious. A really good worker who does 80 hours a week may not, even with the alleged reduced effectiveness of working that much extra, be replaceable by someone else working that additional 40 hours per week. There is no one-size-fits-all labor policy for this.
Another thing to note here is that this is a hypothetical "country's perspective". It's not reality. So we don't have, for example, a legal requirement that people are gainfully employed at or above a living wage. We just have the far weaker condition that if those people are employed legally, then their rate of pay and some other conditions are satisfied. It's quite easy, for example, for people to be unemployed or underemployed as reality has shown us. It's also quite easy for people to be employed illegally. If legal employment gets too onerous for the employer, then that becomes a viable alternative - in addition to "off shoring" or automating jobs.
There's also some costs per employee to consider here. For example, the US "employer mandate" for health insurance creates (in businesses with 50 or more full time people) a per head cost that provides incentives for increasing the number of hours worked per week per person (alternately, the employer could keep full time employment under 50 people, which is the primary concern for worrying that the US will increase part time underemployment). That ends up being, last I calculated at least a minimum $1 per hour cost per additional employee working exactly the current ideal 2000 hours per year. Work them more than 2000 hours in a year and the cost per hour drops (for the alternative, work them less than roughly 1500 hours in a year with no health care benefits so that you business remains under 50 full time employees, and the per hour cost drops to $0 per hour).
In summary, I see a lot of these policies as being based on delusion. Sure, we'd love everyone to work as little as possible and still get the gains of a technologically advanced society combined with shiny, happy people. But in practice, those policies don't work and create a lot of suffering.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday April 16 2015, @02:50AM
Ditch the laws that make full-time workers and overtime cost more.
They did this already, at least with overtime, and it has made things far worse. US law used to require overtime be paid for workers who made less than $69,000. In 1975, they dropped that level to $23,660. As a result, people got laid off and since then fewer and fewer people have been required to do more work without getting paid more for it. It really took off in the 80's, which is a big reason why the middle class has been shrinking. It's better for the economy and the middle class to have two people splitting 72 hours than to have one person working 72 and getting paid for 40.
I've posted this link here before, but it is worth another read: This is why the middle class can't get ahead. [pbs.org]
(Score: 1) by danaris on Wednesday April 15 2015, @02:34PM
While what you say is true, simply being above the minimum wage doesn't make the hourly rate they're making a living wage. $15/hr is, I think pretty close to what you'd need, and there's almost nowhere in the US that the minimum wage is even close to that level.
Now, to answer your question, it comes down to a few different things. One of them is employers whose expectations of scheduling time are based on having a significant proportion of school-age workers (whether they actually do at the moment or not). When half your employees have classes till 2 or 3, then sports on Wednesday or theater rehearsal on Tuesday and Thursday, you need to design your schedule so you've got a larger number of low-hour workers.
A much less friendly reason is making sure that you never have any workers reach the number of hours per week that would require you to start paying benefits or overtime, or any of that stuff that costs employers extra money for absolutely no return </sarcasm>. It also helps make sure that your workers are the type who aren't going to be asking a lot of questions or pushing for more, and that if you don't like something a particular employee does, you can just start cutting back their hours, spreading them among your other workers while you start hiring for another completely replaceable cog. Then you can let the "problem" employee quit without having to worry about troublesome things like getting in trouble for firing someone for protected reasons.
As for your second paragraph...I don't know how you could read that article and come away with the message that it's the social programs that are the problem, and getting rid of them would improve matters. It's pretty clearly saying that it's the employers who won't pay a living wage that are the problem. So you're absolutely right, ending the social programs would not help anything. Raising the minimum wage, on the other hand, would reduce the amount that American taxpayers have to pay to subsidize these companies' bottom line.
Dan Aris
(Score: 1) by albert on Wednesday April 15 2015, @03:26PM
making sure that you never have any workers reach the number of hours per week that would require you to start paying benefits or overtime, or any of that stuff that costs employers extra money for absolutely no return
This is 100% obvious.
We make full-time workers undesirable, and overtime workers even more undesirable. That was dumb/evil and the results are exactly as one ought to expect. Fix that, and we won't have people commuting to 3 or 4 jobs. These people are suffering because of do-gooders with allegedly the best intentions.
It pains me to think that some of these workers must use busses, likely costing them 2 hours each way. (really, it's that bad outside the biggest cities) Assuming an average of 2 jobs scheduled on the same day, and going direct from one to the other, that comes to 42 hours per week spent dealing with transportation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:16PM
Nobody except sociopaths think that paying the costs that come with having human workers, like health care and retirement funds, is undesirable. If your lust for money is such that you can't support the full cost of human employees, buy robots instead.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by t-3 on Wednesday April 15 2015, @06:23PM
This is a very naive statement. Nobody wants to pay the costs that come with having human workers, not even the workers themselves, which is why there are a million tricks to extend the probationary period before giving benefits is required, why so many people work 90-180 days then get fired before benefits kick in, why so many people can't get a full time that pays enough to support a family. Doing your best to guarantee the survival of self and family, even at the expense of others, is not sociopathic. If something is sociopathic about that, it's the system that forces people to act like this, not the people themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:29AM
And how, exactly, is one's survival at stake when the company they own earns billions in profit every year? Everything you describe is sociopathic penny-pinching, not poor folks trying to ensure survival; the poor folks trying to survive are the ones being fucked by not getting paid a living wage and being cheated out of benefits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @05:51PM
So the question is: why can these people not find jobs that offer them more hours? Is it lack of skills? Because the economy sucks? Something else?
Because businesses have decided that it's cheaper to hire multiple part-time workers than hire fewer full-time workers.
This leads to the suggestion the summary is suggesting, that these companies are getting subsidies due to their gaming the system.
(Score: 2) by novak on Thursday April 16 2015, @06:22AM
Because you usually have to pay certain benefits to full time employees as well. So the businesses conveniently "can't afford" any full time employees.
novak