Skilled labor = real human deserving of a fair wage.

Unskilled labor = meat machine that we need to pay by law, but we gladly wouldn’t pay them a dime if we could get away with it because they aren’t real people.

-Asshat Owners

Sure. To the economist the terms are jargon, but to the bootlicker they are sacred words. Your heresy is unwelcome.

Close, but that’s not a job. It’s no coincidence that the destructive practice of using your wealth to suck wealth out of society without adding anything beneficial is called Rent-seeking

That requires no labour though.

I think all jobs at least have the potential to be skilled labor. The issue is with many of these types of jobs the work isn’t paid well enough for someone to stick around and really develop the skills.

Obviously there are many exceptions as there are a lot of really skilled workers working jobs that still pay well below what they should but hopefully, with more awareness and union membership uptick, this is improving.

Yep most of the time they just stand there they just watch you walk by. To be fair lots of assholes on this side of town.

You’re gonna tell me catching a stray cat, butchering it correctly and making mincemeat that tastes no different from cow to average customer doesn’t require copous amountso of knowledge?

Don’t get me started on making a dead rat look like a KFC chicken nugget.

The skill is being able to endure hard labour

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Every single action can be mastered to perfection, then relearned from the basics. There’s endless depth to everything

Fruit picking can be grabbing, twisting/pulling, then putting a thing into a basket. You can do it faster and more precisely to use less energy, you can stack fruits so more fit without bruising, you can change how you walk and hold the basket to strain yourself less. You could relearn it so you toss it all in a basket still on your back, perfectly so they don’t bruise or bounce out of place. You could learn to identify how long until a fruit ripens and chart an optimal path day by day, or even learn to smell them out.

An “unskilled job” is a job where you can get someone up to basic competence quickly. It’s an effort to use people like a fungible unit of man-hours, and to make up the difference by essentially being strategically wasteful.

A better fruit picker will have more and better fruit in less time, a better fast food cook will make a better burger. By standardizing it, you can reduce the floor - you can throw out bruised, under ripe, or overripe fruits. Maybe you can even process the rejects make juice or fruit snacks from them… You can use machines to minimize the cost and chemicals to cover for inferior ingredients

But you also cap the ceiling. An amateur fruit picker or chef can make better food than McDonald’s or Dole, because capitalism doesn’t care about “better”, it incentivizes everything to be “good enough” and punishes quality control beyond that… It’s far more profitable to put more effort into marketing an inferior product than to produce something of higher quality.

And that’s why everything sucks - because it’s more profitable to lower standards than to produce better goods.

We worry about AI alignment with little reason, but we’re blind to the fact corporations are not aligned with human values

That last paragraph is miles away from the truth. Developers are not coders and you need a lot of fundamental knowledge in things like math, logic, design, etc., a degree, very strong grasp of a lot of technical skills, and plenty of practical experience to be worth six figures, much less 250k. Well paid coders are quickly being replaced by either AI, offshore resources, or a combination of both and at the best of times they made half of what you suggested.

If you were able to grind your way into 250k with only a GED and skills you taught yourself off the Internet, consider yourself a unicorn and also an artifact of the past that is basically impossible to replicate now.

You gonna pay your plumber the same as a fry cook?

Without first I don’t get water, without second I don’t get food. Yeah.

The claim was that different kinds of labor require different skills.

Do you have any substantive argument to the contrary?

One skill differs from another qualitatively.

None is higher or lower than another.

Some labor is inherently more skilled than other. I can train you in a day to flip burgers. You’ll be better in a month than you are on day one, but you don’t need hands on training after that first day.

I can’t train you in a month to operate a break press. And in my plant that’s the least skilled job.

I get that all jobs require some skill, I’m not disputing that. But when we’re talking about skilled labor, were talking about those jobs that require significant investment in time to learn, often requiring the laborer to seek that education on their own before even being considered for a job.

I’ve always assumed skilled labor referred to like, electricians and plumbers. Tradesmen kind of positions, the stuff you have to apprentice for. So if you’re a really good plumber or whatever, you can demand a premium on top of whatever your trade normally allows. Whereas this dude could be the best box packer in all of the Amazon warehouses and should never expect a cent more than any of his coworkers, because the job only takes like a week to train for.

While that’s true, it’s much easier to get someone with formal higher education to learn how to operate a cash register than to get someone without education to operate industrial equipment. In other words, we need more and better formal education for everyone.

In the past, the privileged would be mocked for their lack of capacities in practical activities.

These days, the myth of the meritocracy compels the unprivileged to identify with the values of those by whom they are devalued.

I got the joke, but I definitely see why others may have missed it

It’s not a centaur, it’s a leftaur.

Because it’s a convenient way to talk about work. The collective of all who speak the language drives the process of word creation and definition and benefits from it.

The fact that companies pay workers too little is independent from this. I also don’t think that the word itself is “weaponized” so to speak.

Some skills do take more time to learn. And sometimes, the job is safety relevant, meaning that it could cause harm to property and/or life if done poorly. If I was told that the guy who flips burgers at McDonalds had 1 month of training, I’d not be concerned. But if I was told that the surgeon about to operate on me had one month of training, I’d be freaking out.

Except some skills are much harder to learn and some skills are much more valuable to society than others. I would argue the hard to learn, more valuable to society ones are “better”. I don’t think the people performing them are better or worse, but it’s fair to elevate and celebrate certain jobs over others.

Yeah, I’m an engineer. I’ve been a server, and I’ve washed dishes. I could go back to doing either of those, your average dishwasher could do neither of the others.

Idk what takes more skills, but I sure as hell know that you won’t catch me dealing with fast food customers ever no matter how much you pay me

While I see your point that all labor has value, skills can be significantly more or less involved to learn and master. There are labor jobs that require certification or ongoing licensure to perform and those that do not. There are roles that involve the health and safety of others and those that do not.

I think the skills involved between fast food and warehouse packing are probably pretty comparable overall, but a blanket statement of “all labor is equal” really doesn’t hold true.

I don’t quite see the relevance of your question. People can do different jobs. We don’t need to fight with one another about them, when the real significant inequality is between what employees receive versus those who cream the value off the top.

I have provided labor to employers using specialized and advanced skills, though I had no formal credentials or training.

Was I an “unskilled worker”?

Is there value in characterizing certain kinds of labor as “unskilled”, and if so, who realizes the value, and who imposes the distinction?

I am only adding that it may be worth considering how particular catch phrases are utilized and become entrenched.

It’s not semantics, it’s just refusing to use an inaccurate name. Just because anyone can get a job doesn’t mean anyone can excel at it. Why are you suggesting we should all consent to the lie that unskilled labor exists?

Which are the people who are dominating culture and language, who carry the power to fulfill your prediction?

How do such distinctions and constructs originally emerge, and why do they remain entrenched?