Worked Up

AEI Senior Fellow Brent Orrell joins the Remnant for a cheerfully wonky exploration of the ...

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AEI Senior Fellow Brent Orrell joins the Remnant for a cheerfully wonky exploration of the modern workplace. With institutions and communities collapsing, Americans are increasingly looking to work as their main source of fulfillment, but is this a healthy development? For that matter, how does immigration alter the workforce? Will artificial intelligence have a positive or negative effect on the American economy? And what should we make of the “Great Resignation?”

Show Notes:

– Brent’s page at AEI

– Brent’s podcast, Hardly Working

– Arthur Brooks on earned success

– Brent: “The Great Resignation Shows It’s Time to Rethink Worker Dignity”

– Brent’s “Dignity at Work” report

– Brent: “How AI Is Being Transformed by ‘Foundation Models’”

– The Remnant with Jim Pethokoukis

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Wow, this was such a good episode. I wish a lot more people could hear it and take it to heart. Judging by the comments, I think a lot of listeners didn’t take well to Brent’s message.

    Man, every part of this interview I was either metaphorically nodding and going, “exactly” or thinking, “wow that’s a way of looking at it that I haven’t thought of before that really puts it in perspective” (his comments on the difference in attitudes towards white and black men who didn’t have jobs was one of the latter moments).

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  2. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Jonah’s love language is making fun of people. The more he makes jokes about Guy, the more we know he’s proud of him.

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  3. Mathew A

    What part of the tax code favors capital over labor? Capital expenses normally have to be capitalized and depreciated over time. Labor expenses are 100% expenses in the current year.

    Regarding the coming AI wave, I think be careful about looking to history for reassurance. Yes before every new technology has just created more new jobs. But this time might actually be different. AI and robotics might make whole classes of jobs obsolete.

    And more importantly, if might leave us with 10's of millions of people that simply aren't able to do the new jobs.

    Finally regarding immigration. Immigration, especially skilled immigration is great. But it needs to be at a slow enough level to allow for assimilation. Otherwise there will be huge blowback. See Trump.

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  4. Kenneth

    "Other than pitch (wacky sock day) what can employers do to improve morale?"

    Run the business you say you are running. Employees want to satisfy customers, help people meet their wants, and be told thanks and to have their product praised.

    If you have figured out how to keep people waiting or deliver something only just barely good enough, or something else to under-deliver on your customer, your employees won't get nearly enough praise about the product or thank yous. They will hear more complaints and for a person who just wants to make people happy, that is soul crushing.

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    Tracie

    This was one of the most enjoyable and relevant Remnants I've heard. Great guest.

    Was too busy working to comment the day it aired.

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  6. JAMES TYRONE

    I agree with you on AI, Jonah. And, trucking is a great example. I have a childhood friend who never attended college and earns over $100K driving a long-haul truck. He’ll retire before robotic trucks are prevalent, but many won’t. If it happened all at once and affected my buddy, his next alternative job would pay much, much less.

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    George.Skinner

    The libertarian approach to reforming the disability system might sound good on the surface, but I suspect it wouldn't be particularly effective in practice. A more hands-on approach is going to be needed.
    The first problem is that workers in their 40s and 50s in these types of low skill labor positions really *do* suffer from injuries and physical deterioration that prevents them from doing the work. If you see people in their 50s or 60s doing these jobs, you'll notice that they move much more carefully and deliberately than the young workers. They've learned to be careful to avoid injury. If you haven't done that when you're younger, joint and muscle problems will catch up to you. If you haven't looked after your health, those problems catch up to you in middle age as well.
    The second problem is that anybody who's still doing low skill labor in their 40s and 50s is lacking some fundamental qualities that would allow them to be successful in other jobs. These types of jobs are dreary, boring, and usually physically exhausting. If you've got any ambition or skill, you'll leave them behind through career advancement or education long before. Early in my career as an engineer, I started with a manufacturing company that put all of its new engineers through a couple of months working on the factory floor for orientation. It was an eye-opener for all sorts of reasons, not least interaction with the types of people who hold those jobs as a career.
    Solving the first problem means better health care, particularly occupational health and safety. Ensure good ergonomics, provide workers with tools, equipment, and procedures to avoid injury. Improving the health habits of workers would help too, but good luck serving green salads at company cafeterias and putting everybody through a round of Japanese-style calisthenics in the morning...
    The second problem is really hard. It's a habit of mind and personality, and anybody with ambition to do better tends to self-select already. You almost have to create sheltered workshops where you require these guys to work and guide them through development of enough skills to do something else.

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    Howard

    I am not sure what control The Dispatch has with the ads that roll before the podcast begins, but for me at least it was an ad for homeopathic ear drops. For an organization that prides itself with supported fact based content an ad for homeopathic ear drops that would probably not last five minutes of scrutiny by the Dispatch Fact Check crew for efficacy was disheartening.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    it is a guarantee that when Brent said "i worked in the private sector" and jonah chuckled that the stay puft marshmallow man just "popped in there" to Jonah's head and we are now all going to be destroyed by gozer the gozerian

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  10. Avatar photo
    WorkDog

    I enjoyed the bit about young men being video game slackers and needing to find real motivation to get a job. I'm about as old a millennial can be and still be a millennial, but I do enjoy some video games. But I also enjoy work and I was listening to this podcast while working on reports going into my near 5th hour of overtime today. Reminds me of an interesting conversation I had with my wife recently. She hates video games with a passion, and a large part of that has to do with seeing men sitting on couches playing video games and being listless while the woman is doing all the work. But for me, video games help motivate me to move on beyond me retail job and really do something with my life. I realized I was living vicariously through video games and movies, and instead of pretending to be a hero and difference I should go out be that in real life. And here I am, sitting in my car working on reports, coming on a very fulling decade of working in public safety.

    Anyway, I know the middle class was talked about a bit in this episode. I would be interested in hearing Jonah's thoughts on a Youtube video I watched recently - that the middle class is a very vague, impossible that is used to divide and manipulate the masses against each other, because everybody can always find someone richer and poorer than them, and society is better defined by having two classes - a working class (as in, everyone who actually works for their wealth) and a capitalist class (as in everyone who's wealth and income primarily comes from their investments and holdings). The gist of the video was who multi-millionaire and billionaire politicians (of which most politicians are at the higher levels in DC) use the term "middle class" to divide and keep the heat off them selves while they enact. Nancy Pelosi's wealth has exploded over her political career in DC, and is now worth over 100 million dollars. Her returns in her investments have apparently outperformed Warren Buffet's threefold. Then we have Donald Trump, billionaire son of a millionaire, and we have seen how this guy, who wouldn't know what a middle class life was life if it had hit him in the side of the head, use the middle class and working class to build himself a vast base of political power. Politicians tend to be rich, and the rich have great influence on them (hard to get elected without their money), and our society and our laws seem the favor the rich greatly. The rich pay far less of a percent of their salary than I do, and they have far more of it to begin with!

    I think there is some value of lower/working/middle/upper class filters in the use of understanding our society, but I'm thing the working/capitalist divide is more meaningful than the divides of classes in the "worker" class.

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