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Diet_Coke t1_itmcdd9 wrote

Reply to comment by Detlionsfan1188 in Unsatisfied Richmond-area teachers leaving in droves by CrassostreaVirginica

Wages go up → cost of living goes up → wages go up more ... as long as it stays in balance, that's not a bad cycle! Look around, every single thing has gotten more expensive since 1979, and there are additional expenses like internet bills that didn't even exist back then. Once upon a time, one person working even a modest job like milkman could support a whole family with a car and a nice house in the suburbs. That's just not possible today. Where'd all that extra money go? Straight to the very top of the economic totem pole.

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Detlionsfan1188 t1_itmdow8 wrote

While that is very true my worry is I’m not sure if those days will ever return. I went out to short pump yesterday and every single place had a now hiring sign. How do you solve that? It’s absolutely nuts. My career alone as a tradesmen sees a lot of young guys coming in but not enough to fill the older guys both gen x and boomer. It’s going to be a hell hole when the majority of gen x retires. Gen y (millennials) while we will very soon be the largest gen on planet earth we really need to start getting our entire gen to fix this mess. I do remember my early working days even in high school where the cost of living was actually comfortable but over the years it’s gotten so bad. I don’t even know where you begin to correct it and with action the talk has got to stop the sad thing is they want us to quit because they will replace us with robots nobody seems to believe it. But when we are taken over by androids working then our very demise will be our own fault. We will be living in a shack while the android costs very little for a large company to maintain. Going to an urgent care just for a walk-in appt And get turned away because they have no staff is a huge problem.

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Diet_Coke t1_itmg2i6 wrote

There's no reason those days can't return, we would just have to make it happen. A ton of places are hiring, and a lot of it is knock-on effects from Covid. Over a million people died, that's going to leave a hole in the economy. Other people decided to go back to school and get better jobs (which was always what they were told to do when they complained about working conditions, so can we fault them?) and others realized that the expenses of child or elderly care made working just not make sense. A lot of people have left the job hunt, and not necessarily just because they're lazy.

The future you envision with automatons is not unrealistic. It's basically what happened with computers, and why productivity and wages decoupled in the 80s. What's the solution? Stronger civics and unions. Why, for example, should bringing on an automaton electrician make everyone else on the job site unemployed? The same number of people could be kept on and, with robotic assistance, earn more for the same amount of work or earn the same for less work. One single employee would never be able to negotiate that, but with everyone's power combined then it is possible.

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