I completely agree with Jacob Silverman’s observation at The New Republic, pithily captured in the piece’s title: “Low Wages and Crappy Jobs Gave Us the Labor ‘Shortage'”. Where I disagree with him is in his conclusion:
Americans don’t need undue government coercion to go back to work. They need good jobs, better wages (including a higher minimum wage), health care, childcare, and support for sick family members. They need government investment in infrastructure, strengthened unions, and better protections in case they get sick or disabled on the job. They need the kind of dignity and support that were all too illusory in the American workplace even before the pandemic.
because I think there’s a mismatch between his means and his stated ends. Each of his means has issues. Is a higher minimum wage more conducive to higher wages or to greater unemployment? Is our problem that government isn’t paying enough for health care or that it’s paying too much? Should the primary responsibility for childcare be on the government or the family? Where should the responsibility for supporting “sick family members” reside? Will the deadweight loss produced by “government investment in infrastructure” exceed the benefits? Is there a straight line relationship between strong unions and good jobs or higher wages or the reverse?
Keep in mind that the countries with the sort of “cradle to grave” welfare systems he apparently envisions tend to be much more ethnically and culturally homogeneous than the U. S. has ever been and even they have been abandoning them in recent years under the pressure of increasing immigration. Sweden is on the cusp of electing an anti-immigrant right wing government for the first time in a century.
And why in the world should we be eager to bring more people into the country to take “low wages and crappy jobs”?
Rather than subsidizing “low wages and crappy jobs” shouldn’t we be trying to create better jobs that pay higher wages? What means would accomplish that? I think it would require a rededication to primary and secondary production which at least to me suggests a very different government strategy.
Why would I want to risk getting the most deadly disease since the plague? Honestly, this thing is so transmissible that you can get it with a vaccine, wearing a mask, and over the internet. If President Biden can catch COVID on a Zoom call with Putin, I am never leaving my house.
“I think it would require a rededication to primary and secondary production which at least to me suggests a very different government strategy.”
The environmentalist put a big dent in that. And government caters to them.
And something people don’t want to admit, but our schools are failing miserably in educating. Critical race theory doesn’t help produce quality process engineers. And we all know where Uncle Joe stands on that.