What problems could there be if every person that can legally work in the USA does have a job? (percentage, unemployed)

[Eumaois]

Let's say that every person in the USA that is legally-allowed to work here* does have a job. Their pay is a bit above the minimum pay typical of that job. Be it part- or full-time, they earn enough to meet their basic needs, including meeting rent on time. OK, since all those people are now employed, what possible negativities would there be beyond job search and staffing companies making less money from job scouting? I could see something like experienced Person A getting angry they put in more hours than inexperienced Person B but Person B earns more.

*as in, all immigrants have at least a work visa or green card)

[Hemlock140]

That would result in chaos for every business, especially the larger ones. The source of candidates for new positions or new businesses opening up would be inexperienced college (or high school) graduates, or poaching from other companies. That means a lot more time and money spent with higher pay too attract the best from other places, more training, slowed production, and as a result higher prices. Staffing companies would actually make more because they would have to work harder to find people. The system actually depends on a certain, hopefully small percentage of unemployed people, and of course, your idea is impossible, since there is always a gap between the jobs available and skills to do them. There are also people that prefer not to work, and somehow manage to exist on whatever they can get panhandling or on government assistance.

[Lekrii]

Given how theoretical and unrealistic that is, I'm not sure it's worth thinking about.

[Thoreau424]

It's a nice concept. But if anyone's position is downgraded to make it work overall, then the concept falls through (to me at least).

It's silly though asking for problems with this, when enacting such an plan is close to impossible as we see it currently.

[treemoni]

This is totally possible, but capitalism requires an underclass, so it'll never happen.

[bobdog357]

Actually if everyone got paid the same exact salary whether its the janitor or the CEO, this could technically work. Also you would have to get rid of the stock and bond markets and prevent companies from accessing the capital markets to raise money and grow and all that. This will cut out the pressure from board of directors, activist investors, and other rich greedy majority shareholder types who just want their stock holdings to go up and force the companies to do layoffs and such basically so they can improve quarterly earnings and force the stock to be a growth stock. So we'd basically get rid of modern capitalism and turn into some kind of socialist state where industries are regulated by the government along with every other utility that is available in society such as medical care (another highly fawked up industry wrought with greed and self interest), education (yet another highly fawked up "industry" wrought with greed in the form of tuition hikes and the degree bubble), social security, transportation, and food.

But of course this will never happen because people will likely not work as a surgeon when they could make the same amount as a janitor or a parking lot valet.

But it's a great idea. In a utopian world everyone has access to education, jobs, housing, everyone gets paid the same amount, and when we are done with school we could go into like 10 year rotations of certain job fields. For example 10 years as janitor, then 10 years as robotics engineer, then 10 years as a funeral director or embalmer or cremation operator.

If everyone didn't mind not being richer than others, not driving a better car than others, not living in a bigger house than others, this could work and we'd eliminate most of poverty, a lot of crime, perhaps world hunger. We'd probably overpopulate like motherfawkers but maybe science can create another earth or space colonies or a solution to stop the proliferation of CO2 gases so that the icebergs stop melting and NYC is underwater in 20 years.

But of course human nature and its inherent need to feed its vanity and greed will never allow this to happen. So we will continue to have poverty, continue to have world hunger, wars, human strife, mass suffering, genocide, artificial intelligence uprisings, no talent artists like Justin Bieber, and stupid millenial fawkers posting their ass on instagram on a jet ski in the maldives.