#econposting

[regina-bithyniae]

Not quite. Political science is political, and is in some cases scientific. Graded 0.5/2.

> "political science"

> look inside

> unscientific

[regina-bithyniae]

Research focused academic jobs should answer under "other" rather than education.

Please reblog for sample size!

[regina-bithyniae]

doomed country lmfao

[regina-bithyniae]

Truly the type of post I follow Robin for

[regina-bithyniae]

Americans don't take agriculture jobs because the work is hard and labor productivity in these is tiny compared to anywhere else you could work in the economy, meaning equally low wages.

Trying to regulate these jobs will just make them disappear.

kill the rhetoric that americans are so lazy that they won't take farm jobs. americans take labor intensive jobs all the time. the reason no americans will take farm jobs is because agricultural work is exempt from the vast majority of labor laws and labor protections, including the use of child labor. so only immigrants - people who have little to no protection from the law or other options for work - take most of these jobs. we have created a permanent underclass of labor and then say that americans are just lazy for not volunteering to be part of the underclass.

there are actually good discussions to be had about how alienated many americans are from food production (hi hello that's what my only popular post is about), but the real solution to this problem is to protect agricultural workers, citizens or not. ban child labor in its entirety. punish corporations and farm owners that abuse and poison their workers. reform the immigration process so that these people aren't barred from legal protection and recourse.

agricultural workers have been exploited since the dawn of civilization, but the US in specific has been doing this since slavery, and it evolved in the 30s when FDR's labor laws excluded them specifically because most agricultural workers at the time were black. now it's mostly latino immigrants.

food doesn't fucking pick or slaughter itself. but citizens aren't going to take these jobs when the entire industry is rife with abuse - both legal and illegal - and horrific wages and working conditions.

[regina-bithyniae]

Fire Them All, Non-Maliciously

I'll admit that I have been silently cheering for DOGE on the grounds you can probably fire most [edit: maybe more like 50%] government workers and society will be better off on net after a year or two of labor market adjustment.

My team when I worked in government were a bunch of smart, high conscientiousnes people working surprisingly hard on making and updating data scripts, publications, surveys, and dashboards that basically nobody ever read, about a declining economic sector with bad pay and working conditions. They were great people, but what we did was borderline worthless, and these were probably as smart and hard-working as government employees get outside of the central bank and techier places in the military/intelligence.

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For government bureaucrats to be beneficial on net, it's not about whether:

Good Things They Do > Bad Things They Do

It's actually:

Good Things They Do - Compensation > Bad Things They Do

Good Things We Did and Bad Things We Did were pretty minimal (G > B, slightly), with Compensation being dominant in making our jobs net-negative. Since being laid off I've found a position in a nonprofit, but one where I think my work actually fulfills [G - C > B], making my path a sort of success story here.

[regina-bithyniae]

> if [most famously unsuccessful economic policy in history] works

[regina-bithyniae]

I don’t think it can reasonably be assumed that “the price sector will get more value out of [high performing employees]”.

The private sector will encourage them to work more hours. However, depending on the field, a profit motive can create a very perverse incentive with respect to actually solving problems or delivering a service.

I was, for a time, on Medicaid. (Pandemic related, I have a degree and job skills and so on). I had better service and better interactions with the Medicaid system than I’ve ever had with any for-profit insurance company. Things just got done. The only thing that was worse was dental, the Medicaid dentist didn’t pay their hygienists enough, or something, and so they were always quitting and my cleanings would get rescheduled.

I’ve worked in private companies, for universities, and for small business.

The private sector sometimes gets more done per [number of days of the year] but mainly because people work more overtime hours, often haphazardly scheduled overtime, and have significantly fewer labor protections.

Small businesses are great, but only if your boss personally likes you, otherwise they’ll frequently make your life hell. It’s also very easy to end up with a situation where one person is a critical hingepoint for the entire store and the whole operation just collapses because Martha got sick for a week.

Personally, I think it’d be much better for society at large if big private sector companies were more like public sector jobs, rather than the reverse. I think we have to seriously consider that some of the problems in current America are downstream of people working too many hours and feeling too much financial or class precarity to form sustainable relationships and communities. If you’re grinding away 70 hours a week, when are you going to date?

Same thing in Japan, although they’ve got it worse than we do, and with different aspects.

I really doubt many people are clocking 70 hour work weeks, just right off the bat.

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My main point was that I think public sector work is seriously misaligned from actually providing value to society, even before you argue about productivity or laziness. I don't think people seriously addressed this part, particularly once it leaked out to general population and tumblr commie-ism became the main analysis method.

In a private sector company, at least most of the time they are producing a product people want to buy. If they do that they're adding value. But government economists updating the quarterly report on a small and declining economic sector, which nobody reads anyways? Hard to make that argument. If there was serious demand for it then you could end the government department and interested firms might just commission their own researchers.

I do see a role for government to collect and publish data of general interest but not put a ton of work into doing much with it.

Choosing healthcare is a bit of a cherry-pick. The US system is a perfect worst case of extremely generous plans for some (medicare, medicaid) and nothing for others, subject to profit-seeking and competition-protected hospitals, with highly protective pharmaceutical IP laws that act as an implicit subsidy to the ungrateful rest of the world, applies to an extremely fat, sedentary, unhealthy and wealthy population. Hard to think of how it could be more wasteful! Oh and they had a moratorium on new medical schools being created for a good while, too.

[regina-bithyniae]

Probably actually worse for goods transportation. Sea travel is and almost always has been cheaper, so the further the distance is to the sea on average the more expensive shipping will be.

Pangaea was wasted on the dinosaurs. Imagine the railway network.

[regina-bithyniae]

or does it prove that to the vast majority of people a professional violinist playing a $3.5m violin sounds basically as good as some guy in the subway?

[regina-bithyniae]

[regina-bithyniae]

Market Analysis: Knockoff Warhammer 40,00 Model 3D Printing

[regina-bithyniae]

Pretty standard case of jobs where the fantasy of being a disney adult forever is basically part of your compensation. General case being most creative jobs, where so many people would do the thing as a hobbey they barely have to pay to get it done as a job.

If you love Disney, its parks, its media, and its merch, listen up.

So I work for Disneyland, and we are talking about striking very soon. So soon, in fact, that we've been hosting rallies just outside of the parks. Yesterday was the 69th birthday of Disneyland Anaheim... it was also a monumental rally.

I haven't seen anyone on tumblr talking about the impending strikes against Disney. Not even going through the Disney tags or searching tumblr for "Disneyland Strike."

Let's talk about why we're striking:

Cost of living in the immediate SoCal region is nearly 2x as much as we are getting paid.

Cast members that have worked for the company for long periods of time are still paid as mucha s new hires.

Disney has showed up to union negotiations with insulting offers, including at 25 cent raise. Most cast members make $19.90

Disney rarely schedules you. In some areas and departments, you are fighting with your fellow cast members for hours. I have heard of cast members who are only scheduled for 1 4-hour shift per week. Many of those cast members have upwards of an hour commute to and from work.

Disney Admin has told attractions castmembers [so: rides, rollercoasters, and anything fun you get to do and see at the parks] that we are losing them money, which is why they refuse to schedule us and pay us. In the words of my partner, who also works at the parks, Disney without attractions is an over glorified mall and a food court. Disney needs us, and they know it, but they do not respect us.

Disney has an unfair attendance policy. It can be very difficult to get a needed day off, even when it has been requested weeks or months in advance. When you do take a day off [with-out accrued sick or vacation time] it counts against you. You can have 3 a month, 6 in 90 days, 9 in 180 days, or 12 in a year. How do you accrue sick/vacation? Hours worked, which can be impossible with the scheduling practices mentioned above. (Most cast members trade shifts among themselves to get around this.)

Cast members feel unsafe and unsupported in the parks. Many cast members have felt threatened by entitled guests upset that they are following policy. Disney Leads and Managers have to say yes to these guests and make things happen, though. [Which only makes this behavior worse and more dangerous for cast members who are only doing their job.]

Cast members also report feeling threatened, or even being literally threatened, by management in the parks. Especially cast members who have a second job. Especially cast members who know their rights.

Further, cast members work in hazardous conditions with pay that does not reflect that. Many cast members report losses of hearing, sore throats, and severe back and shoulder pain. Cast members are also exposed to infectious diseases at a much higher rate.

https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/union-button-contract-dispute-19515296.php?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2u5o_mvU3i6jpIyHxBUZpEzD2GRSKFf5Pem4uRXqa6vKWDgZuffvINd1g_aem_AA1L0fI1phugJIluYMcDSw

[thenot-so-polite-canadian]

[regina-bithyniae]

In the poorest 1% of zip codes that have lottery retailers, the average American adult spends around $600 a year, or nearly 5% of their income, on tickets. That compares with just $150, or 0.15%, for those in the richest 1% of zip codes. In other words, the poorest households spend roughly 30 times more on lotteries than richer ones, as a share of income. The pandemic appears to have made things worse. In 2021 the poorest 1% of households—flush with stimulus cheques—spent $100 more on lotteries than they did in 2019. The richest 1% spent just $10 more.

!!!!!

Lottery spending, basically just a proxy for how stupid you are?

[regina-bithyniae]

when oomfies says some real shit