This wouldn't be a problem with UBI.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
113 points (99.1% liked)
politics
26064 readers
2925 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Because making it so the youth, especially young men (they're suddenly finding themselves at a higher jobless rate than young women for the first time) cannot find jobs has never gone poorly for the wealthy elite who made those conditions happen before ...
Worked out pretty fucking well for them the last, maybe even last two, times.
It's basically a fire sale for the uber-wealthy.
I can tell you why the “kids coming out of college and younger people, minorities, are having a hard time finding jobs.”
Climbs onto soapbox
Leadership at most businesses have decided it is easier to hire experienced workers rather than grow and develop the next generation workforce. I hear things from leaders like "I don't have time to train anyone new." It's lazy, fucked up, and wrong. AND ensures that we as a society will have a generational skill gap problem.
Utilities have one of the most glaring examples - the impending loss of irreplaceable institutional knowledge and critical skills as large numbers of workers retire, which could have been prevented with programs to bring in and develop early-in-career team members.
AI exasperates that problem because you need both an expert in how to setup and manage the Agents/supporting tools, and an expert who can review/adjust what is s coming out of the AI machine. They need to be the same person because you have to know the job well to effectively design the AI Agents for it. People entering the workforce are at an extreme disadvantage without a training, mentorship and ongoing support. Also in 2 decades the economy will be at risk without a workforce that has been properly skilled. If you think we are living Idiocracy now... just wait.
My general opinion of business leadership is not high, but this situation really exposes the depth of their laziness and lack of forethought. If you own or lead a business, now is the time to figure out how to hire and rapidly up skill incoming team members. Young people are generally hard working, loyal, and bring a valuable fresh perspective - if you put a n the elbow grease to help them develop.
Agreed.
Also, I think it's exacerbates, not exasperates.
Yes, although I can tell you that the idiocracy is already here for some large companies. I just caught up with a friend the other day who recently started working at a certain unnamed but well-known software company, and he was horrified to discover that the "engineering" department consists almost entirely of people using AI to generate all code and automated tests iteratively until the tests pass, then AI to review the code, then merge and release. No human in the loop, including for all practical intents and purposes the "engineer." He said what might take a competent engineer 5 lines of code to accomplish and an incompetent one 10 lines is now 60 lines of barely functional garbage.
The result is frequent unreported downtime and an unmaintainable monstrosity that really doesn't "need" software engineers in the same way you don't "need" a structural engineer to inspect an addition to a house if it's never reported to any authority.
I told him this is the future and to stop getting in the way, as this is obviously by design and no one cares. The industry isn't hiring or training junior engineers, and the escalating demands of productivity from clueless execs are so outrageous that many engineers think this is the only way to survive. I advised him to make as much money as he can and escape in a few years after his kid graduates college, and while he can still look at himself in the mirror.
By the way, this isn't a screed against generative AI in software. It has its place—if the best models are used by experts. But for companies that don't use it wisely, which I suspect is most of them, it will just exacerbate the enshittification of everything.
It's because they put the bean counters in charge. Boeing is a screaming example of why you don't do that. It's sad to see that software company move away from innovation and creative problem solving.
"Institutional knowledge" is a dirty word to a lot of top managers.
It means that they would have to talk to lower level folks as equals. That they would have to rethink their plans.
It's much easier for them to do some team building exercises instead.
Totally. Good managers should be engaged enough with their team's work that they understand the team's input and be capable of covering for one of them if they are out.
Another thing.
If the new people see that the top managers don't listen to the old hands, the new people will ignore them too. Now you've got rookies teaching each other to make rookie mistakes.
Leadership at most businesses have decided it is easier to hire experienced workers rather than grow and develop the next generation workforce.
Sadly this isn't new to 2025. In 2008 I was working at an employer that said this to my face when I asked for a paid training class on a tool we were using in our production "We don't train. We hire trained workers." This was a shockingly bad admission about the corporate culture there with implications I immediately grasped. Whats more, I looked around at my coworkers that had been there for 5 or 10 years, and I saw he was right. All of them were using old skills on old out-of-date tools which I quickly realized also forced them to stay at that employer because no other employer was using those out-of-date tools anymore so they couldn't switch jobs easily. I'd like to say I quit shortly afterward, but if you see that year you'll know what was coming. I was happy to have a job during the great recession, even at an employer that had these toxic ideas.
People entering the workforce are at an extreme disadvantage without a training, mentorship and ongoing support.
I agree with this, and wanting to be part of the solution, I thought about becoming a mentor. However, the path I took (entry level, working up) is closed. I can't say I have a great suggestion for an alternative for those I would mentor. They're walking a path I didn't take. I'd be figuring it out with them, but if I gave them bad advice, it could have massive negative implications on their career. Further, they're saddled with way more debt than I was during that time in life, which means they need to be more risk averse than I was. I've done some mentoring to the younger generation, but I haven't felt as useful to them as I had hoped to be, or as mentors I had coming up, were to me.
My general opinion of business leadership is not high, but this situation really exposes the depth of their laziness and lack of forethought.
Perhaps at a megacorp perspective it might be different, but for a small employer its not nearly that simple.
Each employee you have brings a cost (paycheck, employment taxes, healthcare subsidies, HR overhead, IT support burden, etc). These costs are worth it to pay because that employee produces something that brings in revenue at or above their costs. If that new employee cannot perform work that brings in revenue, then those costs have to come from somewhere else. Most solvent companies do have a war chest of savings that could be drawn from, but those savings are also used to weather periods of poor sales to keep paying employees or possible to pay for cost overruns if there is a mistake made by an employee that the company has to pay for. The war chest is not infinitely deep.
Further, this war chest money is also where raises come from. Any extra cost to the company has to be paid, and the raises or bonuses come from what remains. So if you bring on an untrained worker that isn't able to produce enough to cover their costs, the costs for that worker is essentially being paid through the money that would otherwise be raises for the employees that are covering their costs and generating more. You risk pissing off or discouraging your best people with lackluster raises or bonuses by trying to bring on someone that can't carry their weight. If you do that too much, your best people leave. Your company will fold shortly afterward with your talent departing. Your middle-of-the-road folks lose their jobs because the company went under.
There used to be "grunt work" that was capable of being done by new workers with little to no training. The work itself was an exercise that did partial training of the new worker. However, with automation, most of that work its gone. With repair costs being more expensive than replacement, that's another avenue for training lost. There's a "hollowing out" in the workforce ladder where you, as a new worker, might get one or two rungs up the ladder, but when you look to go higher you see dozens of rungs missing before you'd be able to climb again.
I recognize the problems, but I don't have a solution. I doesn't help that many companies war chests of funds are being eviscerated by trump tariffs or poisoning of international markets and business relations by trump's antics.
I'm the owner of a small business, so I am deeply familiar with this equation. The way we solve it is to "look for talent where no one else is looking" (actually strategy), then train the shit out of and mentor them (informal strategy). My managers are expected to be better than and train the staff to do their work - from technical skills to knowing what good looks like. Then as staff move into management they are expected to pay it forward. Is it a lot of work? Yes - but it's also how you don't end up with a knowledge gap at the top.
Edit: I hold myself to this same standard, which makes it easier to expect it if others.
I’m the owner of a small business, so I am deeply familiar with this equation. The way we solve it is to “look for talent where no one else is looking” (actually strategy)
I applaud your efforts but I'm not seeing how this addresses the problem of bringing someone on that can't generate revenue nearly immediately. In decades past, the "grunt work" a new person could do would cover some or all of their costs until they were trained up enough to be revenue positive. This system worked well until customers stopped paying for the grunt work some time ago (because of automation).
then train the shit out of and mentor them (informal strategy).
This isn't without cost though. It could take the form of formal paid training, or loss of revenue generation from your own hours because you're spending them training up someone from scratch. Where are you deciding for that to come from in the organization? What loses so the new worker wins? Is there perhaps another piece of your industry I don't know about that invalidates my question?
My managers are expected to be better than and train the staff to do their work
Up to a certainly level I agree, but especially in technical roles there are folks that are fantastic technologists, but horrible people managers. There are good people managers, that aren't good technologists. Those are two different skill sets. I'm not saying someone can't have both, but that person is generally much more rare/valuable/expensive than two people each doing their role. There's the other part that a person may be capable of both skills but doesn't like to do one of them. Making workers do work they hate is a fast way to have them quit.
Edit: I hold myself to this same standard, which makes it easier to expect it if others.
For short bursts I can see that, but that doesn't sound sustainable. How do you protect yourself from burnout? You're wearing 3 full time hats:
- delivering/producing your product or service
- training staff
- running the business tactically (day to day operations) and strategically (vision, goals, investment decisions)
These are all honest questions on my part as I'd love to find out someone has these answers I don't.
We keep costs low by doing an evening paid training "try before you buy" model - so we can see how people work and they can see how the job is with relatively low commitment. Our work culture isn't for everyone, so we want them to try it out without disrupting too much. We bring on people who are trained, like the job and ready to generate revenue. All staff are paired with a mentor and manager so they learn how to produce client-ready work.
We only promote managers that can do both technical work and people manage. In companies past, this will scale to about 300 people in our line of work. It helps that we only promote from within.
I do work lots, but I am an owner, so that seems fair. I work from home and with family, so I'm able to double up some of my work life balance. But we have also automated pretty much all business operations, so realistically it is 1-2 hours per week. Training at night is a pain in the ass, but again I'm m an owner and this seems fair to me.
Leadership at most businesses have decided it is easier to hire experienced workers rather than grow and develop the next generation workforce
Who's going to train the juniors? We've been in lost-boys mode for 20 years, now, after the post-y2k shedding of mentors and documentors. Staff has been self-learning in the way some people "roll their own encryption" with similar effects. Now we have 2 generations of people living in this dark age with no mentorship to fill in blanks they can't fill themselves.
And you're thinking to let them go to hire more noobs. Are they going to train them from the bread line? Is your one remaining senior who knows the whys and the whats going to train anything before management cans his expensive non-coding ass?
May as well: every time we say "this is bad because it breaks these important rules and we don't want risk" we get "lol boomer" anyway from the sparkle-junkies. But I love how you've taken management's trimming of staff to brutal levels to be an us-vs-them among the staff.
Managers should be engaged and skilled enough to do any direct team member's work in their absence or train any person in the role. Their team should be used to scale the capacity and capabilities. If this isn't being done, the business model is broken and eventually will cause issues - perhaps that's what you are experiencing.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
once it effects markets it will be a depression.
until a recession hits
Hate to tell ya….
Line is still going up for people who matter, so there's not a recession.
Bubble trouble.
At least I have all these social media likes. Those are a form of currency I can exchange for food and shelter, right?