Also, “flip burgers” is a bad description of how hard it is to actually work in food service
You just know someone with a two-stall garage and boat who’s always had things handed to them came up with that shit
Why is it that the hardest workers are the lowest paid?
I think its about time to train employees and the cost of mistakes while they train.
If the cost of mistakes is low, and employees can be trained relatively quickly, employers will exploit the fuck out of people.
because if the poors could save enough money to own capital they might stop flipping our burgers.
Once you have the position to negotiate your wage you also have the ability to negotiate your workload.
That’s the magic of Exploitation!
supply and demand. flipping burgers has no gatekeepers, natural or artificial, and lots of people are overall willing to do it, so workers are easy to replace and wages can be pushed down a lot. there are low skill jobs that are actually well-paid, but they usually involve way less savory stuff that fewer people like to do.
of course, if a strong social safety net, or heavens forbid, universal basic income happened, way fewer people would be willing to flip burgers, while the demand for burgers would likely go up slightly, so people flipping burgers would get paid better, because a lot fewer people would want to flip burgers. hence the comparisons to the good half of europe where people flipping burgers get paid better.
but the point is, when a job is easier to do, it’s because it’s gatekept in a way that some harder jobs aren’t. sometimes that’s due to skill, other times it’s entirely artificial. but a gatekept job can’t be a universal “hey, do that job instead” thing, specifically because it’s gatekept.
ubi would be great because it would make it disproportionately more difficult to hire for hard jobs than for easy ones, but when the alternative is starving to death, a lot of people accept the hard job instead.
The term low-skilled labor is classist propaganda
But you are correct that this is how it’s perceived through the warped lens of capitalism
UBI is not the answer. It’s just liberals’ way of propping up an inherently exploitative system
i don’t doubt that, but in this specific context “low-skilled” is synonymous to “easy to replace” and “easy to get into”. you can’t get a job as a doctor in a week if you decide to with no prior training, even if someone would hire you instantly, but you can absolutely go from having no clue about flipping burgers to doing it as a job in a week. (granted, if you can find a job instantly, which is not realistic, but that’s its own can of worms.) similarly, if your employer doesn’t like the price you’re asking, they can replace you in a week because if they’re willing, nearly anyone would be able to do the job to a sufficient level.
“low-skilled labor” is absolutely used by some as a pejorative for both individuals and professions, and yes, that sucks. i also don’t doubt you can get extremely good at “low-skill” jobs. but even subtracting that elitism and classism, it has a meaning.
also, if UBI is not the answer, how would you resolve this instead?
The challenge here is the instructions were not very clear. All they said was go to college. They didn’t tell you what to study, and it turns out there aren’t a lot of jobs in medieval literature, gender studies, etc.
(probably not that) Hot take. But I think that not having everyone study STEM or “productive” (by capitalism’s standard) studies is a good thing for the world.
Sure, philosophy doesn’t pay. But is the world better with, or without, people who study philosophy?
Depends on the quality of the philosophy and how dire the need is for people who learned immediately useful subjects.
Sure but it doesn’t explain why teachers need to flip burgers as a second job, or why doctors and lawyers are drowning under all the debt.
How many people do you think majored in gender studies? The biggest field by far is STEM. Engineers, scientists, mathematicians/physicists, and IT still find it hard to find a job and are facing unprecedented layoffs.
Also, gender studies is obviously a field we should be supporting more, given the prevalence of sexism in society and how many people are completely ignorant about the nature of gender
2023: let’s roll back child labor laws so we can pay them slave wages to flip burgers.
1980s: You could flip burgers to help pay for the college and not be thousands in debt at graduation.
1960s: You could flip burgers during summers to entirely pay for college.
1770s: what the hell are you doing with that cow?
College costs more than a house!
Oh, I see you’ve met my parents too.
Sorry, we’re now have to pay off the equilavent of a mortgage in student loan, no we don’t want $7.25 an hour
