[solosoyokaze]

> The rest of us are being crushed by inflation.

The top 1% are making more money than ever before. If you're holding assets impacted by inflation, you're doing quite well now.

If we take it as a given that in a modern, humane society no one should starve to death on the street and everyone should have access to the basics of survival, then the answer to the labor "shortage" is simply to shift some of the historically record breaking wealth inequality back down the org chart from the executives to the roles that need filling.

[digitaltrees]

Agreed. Not long ago there was debate about a permanent structural stagnation with permanent unemployment. The argument was that workers lacked sufficient training or desire to fill current jobs. All while some economists were screaming that it was actually the result of an insufficient fiscal stimulus response to the Great Recession that could have easily been solved had the response been $1.5T instead of $700B. Given the massive fiscal response to COVID and this current situation resulting in a rebalancing as you highlighted, I think it’s clear that it was never structural and always a result of unnecessary slack due to a financial recession easily solved by government support spending.

[AdrianB1]

How do you define the basics of survival? In parts of the world people live with 2 hamburgers a day, is that what you propose? Even $15/hour seems huge compared with basics of survival.

Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.

[solosoyokaze]

I would define the basics of survival as:

* Basic groceries

* Healthcare

* Housing

I don't think these things are easy to achieve but they seem like obvious goals to societal progress. If not, what are we even progressing towards?

> Also, there are not enough executives to take from them to give to the poor. You need 100 or 1000 times more for that, so the executives theme is a straw man.

I said if a company wants to fill a role, that they should pull from executive pay. The average CEO gets 70-1 the pay of the average employee. There is absolutely a surplus of capital to pull from to increase worker pay (thus filling the role).

https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/ceo-pay

[AnimalMuppet]

I would add transportation and communications to the "basics of survival".

[AdrianB1]

This is nowhere close to 'basics of survival'. You can survive on 2 hamburgers a day and 1 liter of drinking water, this is called survival. If you want 'basics of nice living' then call it that way, but don't redefine the dictionary. Think of 'basics of survival' what you need to continue to live if you land on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, naked and with no tools.

[solosoyokaze]

You can’t live without shelter or medical care.

[AdrianB1]

Really? Tell that to Hiroo Onoda and his 29 years in the jungle. You see, people play on the subjective nature of life and honesty is not a virtue anymore.