My comments had nothing to do with a minimum wage discussion, and I doubt SpaceX employs people for even near to minimum wage. This is a company that creates rather high wage jobs. It is also doing very risky things. If the USA had stricter rules about employment protection and all that came with it, Spacex would not exist at all, and the 90% of well paid employees that remain wouldn’t have gotten these jobs.

The ability for companies to take big risks is what pushes the economy forward so that we can all have better lives for a reduced cost, and better jobs too. To “protect” jobs you would hold us all back, we’d still all be working on farms or in factories instead of on computers, increasingly from home. Is that what you want? Why are people rioting in France? Maybe because they feel poorer than their parents. Their laws protecting jobs have removed opportunity from everyone in order to provide stability for some.

France is rioting because those protections allow them to not because they are slowing down economic growth. France has a culture of rioting and civil disobedience in part because those protections give people enough breathing room to be involved in politics.

Have you ever been to Alabama? Mississippi? Florida outside of the metro areas? They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit. Every time I drive through those states, I feel like I'm in some edgy anarchist's student film about late stage capitalism. Those areas should have been rioting for decades now but US economics is set up in such a way as to deprive the constituency from any practical way of getting involved.

Yea, I used to live in central, rural Florida for a few years. It's rural. Farms and ranches. They have a lot of land to cover, a hot and humid climate that eats anything left alone for too long, and not a high density of expendable cash because it's various types of farming which has almost always been low margin. So the roads are going to not be great. But people were as fat and happy there as anywhere else. Spanish moss makes everything look dilapidated, it grows on everything including power lines. Sure it's poor compared to many other places, but I've also been to third world countries, and they are certainly not that. Not even close. So yea, the poorest areas of the USA are still not too bad, I think that says something.

> They're equivalent to third world countries with infrastructure held together by duct tape and spit

This is deeply hyperbolic.

Wage growth in the US has stalled out for many years, but just recently since the unemployment rate has gotten so low (and this is with the participation rate rising) we are seeing wage growth in excess of inflation.

Wages will not rise if the labor supply exceeds demand. You need more jobs and/or fewer people in the labor force before wages will rise.

The American approach is to provide business friendly regulations and tax policy which incentivize companies to invest and take risks. The “social contract” is not vested with the company, but rather a free flow of employees between companies based on who will hire whom, who will pay the most competitive salary and benefits, and which companies are the most attractive.

The state/Federal government then provides programs that basically provide umbrella protection for all workers like unemployment insurance, short term disability, marketplace health plans, etc.

It’s not efficient for individual companies to be providing welfare to employees they don’t want or need. It’s a drain in the entire economy because the employee is doing less valuable work than they could do elsewhere, and the company has less money to hire workers they actually need.

> That 4% number is complete crap, and you know it.

Could you explain it please?

Even U6 is below 8 percent.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

the part time part is big of course ( https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2015/05/the-many-flavors-of-... ) but that's how it was for decades since BLS started tracking it.

With regards to ethical wages, SpaceX should pay well, so people don't depend on them (they can save enough to be able to sustain themselves for at least a few months while they look for a new job). If SpaceX doesn't need that many workers they should give them prior notice (2 months or more at least, I don't know how they handled this).

Article says 8 weeks of pay minimum, so that’s two months. USA has 6 months of unemployment benefits at half pay, which the employer pays for. Not sure if the severance pay comes with an agreement to not use that...

We’ve pushed millions out of the workforce, partially with prisons, partially with welfare reform.

There’s basically two Americas. In the other one, 40-60% of adults aren’t working.

The employment to population ratio is 79.7% for people 25-54. That has only been exceeded for less than 10 years in history. The only time it has ever been exceeded by more than a point was June 1997-May 2001 during the dot-com bubble.

For some demographic groups, labor force participation is significantly lower. This is what I’m referring to.

Unemployment only factors in labor force participants.

Data: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip...

Employment to population ratio does not exclude anyone. It is the number of people divided by the number of people who are employed. It is also not 2016 anymore. The prime-age labor force participation rate has risen about a point since then.

Labor force participation rate is also not a measure of employment. It is the number of people who are employed plus the number of people who are actively looking for employment but who aren't employed. If you want strictly what portion of the population is currently working, that is employment to population ratio, which is what I posted.

That ratio varies significantly for African Americans, rural whites and African Americans and Hispanic women.

The Ford pay thing is poorly understood. The factory had ridiculously high turnover and it severely impacted productivity. Nearly half the $5 wage came from a bonus after a committee visited your home and decided you were living morally according to Henry Ford’s standards: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-stor...

That 4% number really isn't crap. By favorite restaurant close to work just cut lunchtime service because they couldn't hire enough staff and I see "Help wanted" signs all over just like I remember from back in 2000.