They can drive a truck over to Home Depot and fifty-eleven migrants will jump in the back, all capable of shoveling fries. They won't even have to be able to speak English. For ninety days out of the year, they can hire juveniles to shovel fries. As long as they don't touch a cash-register, they don't even have to go through a bonding process. Or, someone can install an automagic robotic fry-shoveler and then nobody will have to get paid to shovel fries. Heck, the only reason shoveling fries exists as a "job" is because installing a robot to do that would outrage too many people. There are, after all, fast-food restaurants that are almost entirely robitically operated.
Not disparaging anything anyone does in order to make ends meet, just pointing out that reality is what it is.
We do so love to organize stuffs... We love org charts and "Departments" and "Managers." We like to be able to point at that one person and ask "So, what have your 100 hundred underlings been up to, this week."The thing is some management layers have no real impact on the business anymore they have created an own spehre of existing for the sake of existing without creating any value to the company. BUT they have alot of time telling everyone and the world how they are crucial and so everyone believes it and let them keep going. And since this layer is cycling between companies this layer will not be gone because it's people of that layer hiring people of that layer. if you ever have been in a bigger company and attended in these meetings where they meet and say a lot but actually no value is generated than having ist together talked without generatign any result, then you would know what I mean.
Meetings may not generate a whole lot of real "management." But, the devil is in the details - The managers manage people, not meetings. That doesn't mean a lot of middle-layer management isn't useless. It just means that the format we expect performance to be demonstrated is not always the best format to judge it. But, if we don't have that meeting? Well, golly, we must not be justifying our paychecks this week!
But, notice - I was talking about the value of the labor. This wasn't about "the job." Critical jobs are critical, but it's the value of the human labor being put into them that I was judging. For instance, the thing about "Telephone Operators." They used to be a thing, used to have buildings full of them, used to have retirement plans and even <gasp> pensions involved with them. That's how "important" and "critical" that job was. Today? Meh, it's all robotics, switches, and a few live operators in third-world countries where that labor IS valued. In the US? It's dead as Adam's housecat... That doesn't mean that "Call Centers" and "Customer Service Centers" aren't valued labor, but they're all going the same way - Automated processes and third-world countries where that labor still has great value. (Or, the measly pay is still very lucrative in that market.)The value a job has is defined by damage done if the job isn't done. And I am pretty sure the loss of management for half a year would not have such a big impact than the loss of every cleaning personal. In fact the later oen would probably cause more issues if we start havign health issues due to the lack of proper cleaning.
Look what you wrote. Even after I made it a point to write that we should never judge anyone's worth by their economic contribution... Nowhere did I ever mention "important" in any other bit than to say how important it is that we not judge a person's value based on their job.Just because a job is not complex or complicated does not mean it is less worth or less important.
It's not the "job" I'm concerned about. It's the fact that we are starting to have to force ourselves to overpay for labor that is not actually worth the economic contribution. Wouldn't it be better if everyone shoveling fries at McDonald's had, instead, a "better job?" I think so. I also heartily believe that if someone wants to do that for a living that's OK to, but there's a ceiling that they're going to hit one day that may not be affordable for the rest of the economy to subsidize.
It's not about the person. It's not about a "critical job." Critical and important jobs that the society need to be filled will always be filled, no matter how distasteful they may be. And, society is willing to pay very good money for people to do those jobs. A skilled ditchdigger, once the robotic revolution takes over, will still be able to find a ditchdigging job if they're better than all the other applicants. Society will still need a human with a shovel for a very long time. But, there won't be as many of those jobs and they're only ever going to be paid "just so much." It's an admirable thing to devote oneself to physical labor, but anyone who is capable of it, just like with other types of labor, can do it. And, it's a lot easier to get into the bottom floor of a ditchdigging company than it is to be a rocket surgeon.But in the world where everyone tries to compete with each other we are trained to make many othersbelieve that.
The $100,000 garbage worker
That is what a "critical job that people are willing to pay for" looks like. Even in small areas, most can still make a living. Where I live, the drivers can make around $90k. That's close to a friggin six-figure income. They couldn't make that shoveling fries because we don't value that labor very much. And, we value the garbage truck driver's labor because we consider it distasteful... Heck, the drivers here don't have to get out of the truck because there's an automated robotic arm that picks up the cans. At least one that was in the paper recently is making over $100k a year... True, he's been working for that company for a very long time, but I have to salute him. He's probably got a darn nice house, a retirement plan and his kid's college tuition ready to go!
But, again, it's not about the "job" and it certainly isn't about valuing human beings based upon what job they do. It's about how we want to value labor and the danger of overinflating the value of what is actually low-value labor as far as the rest of the economy is concerned.
We should be pushing hard for much higher value labor in sectors where the competition is much less fierce. Should we be competing for world-wide ditchdigging jobs? No! A bajillion third-world countries are competing for those jobs, why waste our time on them when the pay couldn't even pay for a month of Netflix? We should be doing all we can to move our workforce into high-value jobs. Today, that's STEM professions and, specificaly, IT and Data services. That's the kind of job market that can dramatically help to expand opportunities for everyone. Everyone.
PS - I have never once looked down an anyone due to what sort of job they have. I don't do it. Everyone is a human being, just like me, right off the bat. (If they prove themselves to be a jerk, though... )