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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

This was the most striking part to me: "According to The Seattle Times, the starting rate at the Airbus plant, about $16.50 per hour, is comparable to the starting wages at Boeing’s passenger-plane plant in Renton, Wash. But the Airbus pay scale tops out at $23 an hour, while experienced Boeing workers can earn $45."

We now have so much surplus labor that even this relatively skilled job only pays $16.50 an hour.

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The cost of living matters just as much as your wage in quality of life.

Here's[0] a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home for 170k within 4 miles of the plant

and here's[1] an even less expensive one under 5 miles from the plant

If you look at the rental market, you can get apartments and small single family homes from around $300 per bedroom

[0]https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/307-Michigan-Ave-Mobile-A... [1]https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/210-Mohawk-St-Mobile-AL-3...

You're overestimating both the level of skill required to start and the cost of living in Alabama.

Alabama is CHEAP, and taxes are very low.

8th lowest CoL in the USA and a pretty great place to live. Glad to call Birmingham my home.

Jasper here, even cheaper. A neat little town not too far from the Ham.

Currently two miles from work with dirt-cheap rent while I build up my nest egg. Late twenties, single and enjoying the convenient nightlife. I'll gladly move when it's time to though (better school systems and all those family-life-community benefits).

Unions. Alabama doesn't have effective unions. You'll see similar differences in top-end pay in other Right to Work states compared to states like Washington with more effective unions and greater ability of employees to participate in collective bargaining.

The person who makes $16.50 an hour probably costs near $25 an hour. Cash payroll doesn't include employee benefits, including medical, dental, other insurance, paid time off, bonuses, and company share of payroll taxes. It's not unreasonable to estimate the entry level jobs pay about $26,000 a year in cash, and another $10,000 a year in benefits, for a total of around $36,000 a year. In Alabama.

You can't have a discussion about pay levels without accounting for total compensation. These are good jobs that pay well given it's an employer trained position that unskilled laborers could get.

The COL and tax difference isn't 2x. Alabama doesn't have unions, so they can't bargain collectively. That's the whole reason manufacturing has been moving south

> Alabama doesn't have unions

Alabama disagrees: https://labor.alabama.gov/inspections/unions.aspx

Alabama is a right-to-work state, unions aren't as effective and there's significant action by local politics to suppress labor activism and organization

That's true and important, but it's very different than "Alabama doesn't have unions", is all I'm saying. (It's kind of like saying "C doesn't have static types" just because it's type system is far less powerful than, say, Haskell's.)

You get what you pay for to some extent too... as Mercedes found out, German Engineering is no match for Alabama manufacturing....

Mercedes reliability has always been a joke, as any consumer reports study will tell you. They are more a tribute to German marketing than engineering.

In any case, there are plenty of high end manufacturers in the american south. BMW and Boeing in SC, just off the top of my head, for example. Stereotypes are wrong, sometimes.

They are hiring unskilled people who are paid during their training.

And we are all talking about globalization being the culprit which to me is a huge distraction from the actual problem: automation. I wonder if it's not a bigger part of the national debate because it would require politics to say that currently unemployed likely will remain not needed and call for something like basic income guarantee which is in essence a gateway to something very similar to communism.

> a gateway to something very similar to communism.

At least it would be explicit. Western economies tend to have income redistribution in various forms anyway. It just gets mixed up in tax rates, tax credits, service subsidies and entitlements. People have little idea what the flows of money really look like.

If you haven't done so already, I think you'd very much enjoy the Econtalk episode with John Cochrane: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/09/john_cochrane_o.htm...

He argues in favor of decluttering the policy tools you listed. Sounds excellent to me.

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