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> Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs don't exist and that the problem is

> Most of the comments here focus on how people aren't trying hard enough to get jobs. This article indicates that the jobs don't exist and that the problem is likely to get far worse. The reality is that BOTH are true. There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. Which is fine for a few minutes or days, it's good to vent. But at the end of the day, that won't change anything. It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. Assigning blame doesn't solve anything. That being said, I definitely agree some sort of Basic Income strategy will be necessary going forward. Perhaps soon.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
xrange 11y ago
>It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. ...sounds like: "Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy" http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-u...
- collyw 11y ago
  I don't know why everyone thinks that article is great. Its just a fairly crappy opinion pice to me with no real researc or evidence.
daenz 11y ago
> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. This is pie-in-the-sky thinking, but maybe there should be a law. Corporations have a legal duty to shareholders to make money. Why shouldn't our government have a legal duty to society to increase our resources and make things easier for each generation?
- csense 11y ago
  That kind of attitude invites a government to try communism (the government runs a bunch of businesses) or militarism (turn all the unemployed into soldiers; as for resources, use those soldiers to take them by force from your neighbors).
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I'm perfectly fine with socialism, with the government owning robotic manufacturing and software providing basic/government services.
  - nathan_f77 11y ago
    Who knows, maybe communism might actually work today. Technology and automation might be the key.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  > each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. That is clearly the trend, ups and downs aside. The current generation appears to feel they have it harder than the last few generations. Not even close.
  - icelancer 11y ago
    I wouldn't say we have it "harder," because I don't believe that at all. The opportunities globalism and the Internet provide us are almost infinite. But the long-term view doesn't look too damn good from an employment perspective. There is a real mismatch of skill development and what is actually available on the market; and the labor demand is not nearly as stable as it used to be (career opportunities are changing every 5-10 years rather than 20-40). There is a lot more variance and randomness going forward by any reasonable projection, and while that doesn't actually change the underlying resource allocation, people don't do well with unpredictability.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
roymurdock 11y ago
Speaking for myself (as a 22 year-old recent graduate) - I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy than corruption and inequality. I believed that the older generation who shape and structure society through government, industry, and academia were doing their absolute best to set future generations up for success; after all, what else could be the ultimate aim and goal of life once you marry and have children of your own? Now, I'm not so sure this is the case. It seems like there is a lot less to go around, even for the older generation. I used to see teenagers bagging groceries and working menial service jobs. Now all I see are 50-60 year olds, and I wonder "how the hell did these people end up working minimum wage, 11pm shifts at the grocery store at age 58?". I see my landlord barely getting by on social security, rent income, and a sales job, unable to retire at age 65. Ageism is real, with layoffs at major companies (IBM, HP, etc.) affecting older workers disproportionately, many of whom are not yet able to retire and who don't have the time to retrain for a rapidly-changing economy that demands dramatically different skills than it did 20-30 years ago. So ultimately, I find that many in the older generation are simply trying to make ends meet in an environment of scarcity that is new for the US, with the youth subsequently becoming disillusioned because the system seems to be set up against them. Of course, as inequality grows, the shrinking proportion of families with money are largely exempt from these worries. But you would think "they" (the nameless, faceless, despised rich) would find it in their interests to give back to society; to give back to a system that had rewarded them with comfort and prosperity. To make sure it didn't rot from the greed, sloth, misplaced violence, weak guidance, and weaker morals that did away with the mighty Roman empire. It's all a matter of perspective though: at least we're not being conscripted to go fight in Vietnam or WWIII, which is the ultimate manifestation of the old using the young for profit and self-serving agenda pushing.
- xrange 11y ago
  >I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy Interesting. Do you see this as more of a failure in your upbringing, or of a failure of society to live up to your expectations? Has this realization changed your political thinking in any ways?
beatpanda 11y ago
This is nonsense. There are, in absolute terms, more resources available, but our economic system enables and encourages the hording of those resources by fewer and fewer people who will, in all likelihood, never use them in their lifetimes.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  The "fewer and fewer" part is empirically incorrect. The millionaire+ class is growing, not consolidating. The narrative is seductive but it is a lie.
  - clusterfoo 11y ago
    A growing millionaire class is not mutually exclusive with consolidation of wealth, if growth of millionaire class is less than reduction in middle-income class.
digikata 11y ago
> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them There is no law that requires this, but looking at world economic productivity numbers and our industrial & technology base there's no physical reason that people shouldn't have it easier with more resources every generation. If there is no physical reason, that leaves economic, social, & political causes...
- bduerst 11y ago
  I don't think anyone is arguing that there are natural laws of "it gets easier with each generation". But you're right, the wealth distribution during the economic rebound from the last recession has shown that the problem is sociopolitical in nature. I feel like we're headed toward another organized labor reform sometime during the next decade, not unlike that from a century ago.
- djrogers 11y ago
  > looking at world economic productivity numbers and our industrial & technology base If we're looking at this globally, I'd bet the overall resources and opportunities available to the average person is up from 50-100 years ago. The developed/1st world is feeling some pullback from the rush of globalization, but it's benefiting the rest of the world.
- vacri 11y ago
  We do have it easier with more resources. I'm gen X, and I wouldn't trade my upbringing for the previous generation. And gen Y had it better than I. We have FAR more entertainment; more control over personal transport; better materials for everything from clothes to construction; better occupational health and safety; FAR better civil rights; better levels of healthcare; better public understanding of health; the jobs that are available are better (more office jobs, less factory work); better access to shopping times (24-hour retail is a recent thing); FAR better communications options and quality (we have the internet!); better transport for dissemination of products, including international; better travel options for international travellers... the list goes on and on and on. In the west, we don't even have significant wars anymore - after 10 years in Iraq, the US lost 4k people. 10 years! And people still complain that the toll is way too high. We absolutely, posititively, utterly have it easier right now than at any previous generation. Yet we've become so entitled that if life isn't perfect, then someone must have had it better previously.
panglott 11y ago
It's simply true that, barring disaster, the next generation will have it easier with more resources for cheaper. This is because worker productivity continues to rise. More is produced with fewer hours worked. It's beyond me why it's taken as a given that the result should be a decreasing share of the number of people employed at a constant rate and an increase in the number of people unemployed, rather than say a decline in the number of hours worked per worker. It would be much better to shift to a 35-hour work week and hope everyone would edit Wikipedia or put on free musical performances with the extra time (or 40-hour weeks in the developing world), than shift another eighth of the population into poverty.
- totalrobe 11y ago
  IMO depends on the type of job. In lower skill jobs you do see exactly what you're describing (more workers fewer hours). In knowledge industries it's probably much more efficient to have fewer numbers of high performing individuals that are leveraging experience and domain knowledge as a productivity multiplier.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    >In knowledge industries it's probably much more efficient to have fewer numbers of high performing individuals that are leveraging experience and domain knowledge as a productivity multiplier. Then you would think they could receive larger amounts of vacation time than three weeks per year. Or that they could collect such fat fees as contractors that they'd only have to work part of the year.
  - panglott 11y ago
    Hm, I think the shift to part-time workers in service and industrial jobs is mostly about evading labor regulation of full-time workers and further eroding the remuneration, economic stability, and bargaining position of lower-income workers. I would hope instead for more leisure at similar pay =/
panglott 11y ago
"Nearly eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes did the math on economic growth and concluded that within a few generations—by the time his peers' great-grandchildren came of age in, say, the 2000's—the persistent economic problem of too-scarce resources and too-few goods would no longer bedevil a substantial portion of humanity. He was right—even in the midst of our current hard times, he is right." (2009) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/we-are-live-at-the-week-our-economic-appetite.html http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/we-are-live-at-the-we...
refurb 11y ago
My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. I'm curious how you would rate the current crisis to what people have dealt with in the past. Is now worse than the stagflation of the 1970's?
Idontagree 11y ago
Uh yes, there is no law, but the statistical or perhaps just plain old truth is that in the future there will be more resources available, and the idea that fewer people can tell everybody what is done with those resources is disgusting if they are deciding to take away lives or even severely (obviously relative, but I think everyone can understand how difficult it would be to live like the poorest of the world) hinder the livelihood of whomever.
demian 11y ago
This is the same problem people faced at the turn of last century. The solution at the time was a mix between unionizing labor and adding regulation, like anti-monopoly laws, from the public side, and basically "inventing" the service, tertiary, sector and modern consumerism from the private side. The problem with this solution now is that there is no quaternary sector in sight to absorb the displaced from the automation of the tertiary sector. Some researchers are talking about an "experience" sector that would be inmune, at least for now, to automation, but the volume of the current job market doesn't seem to indicate that it could replace the "service" sector any time soon. Also the current market solution seems to be sharing economy businesses, which doesn't seem to scale from a social standpoint.
fweespeech 11y ago
> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. Which is fine for a few minutes or days, it's good to vent. But at the end of the day, that won't change anything. It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. Assigning blame doesn't solve anything. If there is only jobs for 90% of the population, 10% is fucked no matter what you do. That is the reality we are facing. It isn't "harder" to work. It has become impossible for the entire working population to be employed full time. That is a world of difference. If the solution was simply to work 48-52 hour weeks, as you imply, people would do that.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
There may be no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. But it's been a working assumption for a long time, and there does not appear to be any good reason for it to stop now. modulo the Great Depression and a handful of other such cases.
coldtea 11y ago
>There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. No, but it's an absolute shame and a complete failure that this is has not been the case during the past 30 years with the resources and technology available to us and with the total wealth (of course distributed unequally) growing up. I'm not talking about Third World either -- things might have been better there, but then again they started from a pretty low bar. I'm about the US, Western Europe, etc.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

xrange 11y ago

>It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. ...sounds like: "Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy" http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-u...

collyw 11y ago
I don't know why everyone thinks that article is great. Its just a fairly crappy opinion pice to me with no real researc or evidence.

daenz 11y ago

> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. This is pie-in-the-sky thinking, but maybe there should be a law. Corporations have a legal duty to shareholders to make money. Why shouldn't our government have a legal duty to society to increase our resources and make things easier for each generation?

csense 11y ago
That kind of attitude invites a government to try communism (the government runs a bunch of businesses) or militarism (turn all the unemployed into soldiers; as for resources, use those soldiers to take them by force from your neighbors).
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I'm perfectly fine with socialism, with the government owning robotic manufacturing and software providing basic/government services.
- nathan_f77 11y ago
  Who knows, maybe communism might actually work today. Technology and automation might be the key.
happyscrappy 11y ago
> each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. That is clearly the trend, ups and downs aside. The current generation appears to feel they have it harder than the last few generations. Not even close.
- icelancer 11y ago
  I wouldn't say we have it "harder," because I don't believe that at all. The opportunities globalism and the Internet provide us are almost infinite. But the long-term view doesn't look too damn good from an employment perspective. There is a real mismatch of skill development and what is actually available on the market; and the labor demand is not nearly as stable as it used to be (career opportunities are changing every 5-10 years rather than 20-40). There is a lot more variance and randomness going forward by any reasonable projection, and while that doesn't actually change the underlying resource allocation, people don't do well with unpredictability.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago

roymurdock 11y ago

Speaking for myself (as a 22 year-old recent graduate) - I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy than corruption and inequality. I believed that the older generation who shape and structure society through government, industry, and academia were doing their absolute best to set future generations up for success; after all, what else could be the ultimate aim and goal of life once you marry and have children of your own? Now, I'm not so sure this is the case. It seems like there is a lot less to go around, even for the older generation. I used to see teenagers bagging groceries and working menial service jobs. Now all I see are 50-60 year olds, and I wonder "how the hell did these people end up working minimum wage, 11pm shifts at the grocery store at age 58?". I see my landlord barely getting by on social security, rent income, and a sales job, unable to retire at age 65. Ageism is real, with layoffs at major companies (IBM, HP, etc.) affecting older workers disproportionately, many of whom are not yet able to retire and who don't have the time to retrain for a rapidly-changing economy that demands dramatically different skills than it did 20-30 years ago. So ultimately, I find that many in the older generation are simply trying to make ends meet in an environment of scarcity that is new for the US, with the youth subsequently becoming disillusioned because the system seems to be set up against them. Of course, as inequality grows, the shrinking proportion of families with money are largely exempt from these worries. But you would think "they" (the nameless, faceless, despised rich) would find it in their interests to give back to society; to give back to a system that had rewarded them with comfort and prosperity. To make sure it didn't rot from the greed, sloth, misplaced violence, weak guidance, and weaker morals that did away with the mighty Roman empire. It's all a matter of perspective though: at least we're not being conscripted to go fight in Vietnam or WWIII, which is the ultimate manifestation of the old using the young for profit and self-serving agenda pushing.

xrange 11y ago
>I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy Interesting. Do you see this as more of a failure in your upbringing, or of a failure of society to live up to your expectations? Has this realization changed your political thinking in any ways?

beatpanda 11y ago

This is nonsense. There are, in absolute terms, more resources available, but our economic system enables and encourages the hording of those resources by fewer and fewer people who will, in all likelihood, never use them in their lifetimes.

oldmanjay 11y ago
The "fewer and fewer" part is empirically incorrect. The millionaire+ class is growing, not consolidating. The narrative is seductive but it is a lie.
- clusterfoo 11y ago
  A growing millionaire class is not mutually exclusive with consolidation of wealth, if growth of millionaire class is less than reduction in middle-income class.

digikata 11y ago

> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them There is no law that requires this, but looking at world economic productivity numbers and our industrial & technology base there's no physical reason that people shouldn't have it easier with more resources every generation. If there is no physical reason, that leaves economic, social, & political causes...

bduerst 11y ago
I don't think anyone is arguing that there are natural laws of "it gets easier with each generation". But you're right, the wealth distribution during the economic rebound from the last recession has shown that the problem is sociopolitical in nature. I feel like we're headed toward another organized labor reform sometime during the next decade, not unlike that from a century ago.
djrogers 11y ago
> looking at world economic productivity numbers and our industrial & technology base If we're looking at this globally, I'd bet the overall resources and opportunities available to the average person is up from 50-100 years ago. The developed/1st world is feeling some pullback from the rush of globalization, but it's benefiting the rest of the world.
vacri 11y ago
We do have it easier with more resources. I'm gen X, and I wouldn't trade my upbringing for the previous generation. And gen Y had it better than I. We have FAR more entertainment; more control over personal transport; better materials for everything from clothes to construction; better occupational health and safety; FAR better civil rights; better levels of healthcare; better public understanding of health; the jobs that are available are better (more office jobs, less factory work); better access to shopping times (24-hour retail is a recent thing); FAR better communications options and quality (we have the internet!); better transport for dissemination of products, including international; better travel options for international travellers... the list goes on and on and on. In the west, we don't even have significant wars anymore - after 10 years in Iraq, the US lost 4k people. 10 years! And people still complain that the toll is way too high. We absolutely, posititively, utterly have it easier right now than at any previous generation. Yet we've become so entitled that if life isn't perfect, then someone must have had it better previously.

panglott 11y ago

It's simply true that, barring disaster, the next generation will have it easier with more resources for cheaper. This is because worker productivity continues to rise. More is produced with fewer hours worked. It's beyond me why it's taken as a given that the result should be a decreasing share of the number of people employed at a constant rate and an increase in the number of people unemployed, rather than say a decline in the number of hours worked per worker. It would be much better to shift to a 35-hour work week and hope everyone would edit Wikipedia or put on free musical performances with the extra time (or 40-hour weeks in the developing world), than shift another eighth of the population into poverty.

totalrobe 11y ago
IMO depends on the type of job. In lower skill jobs you do see exactly what you're describing (more workers fewer hours). In knowledge industries it's probably much more efficient to have fewer numbers of high performing individuals that are leveraging experience and domain knowledge as a productivity multiplier.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >In knowledge industries it's probably much more efficient to have fewer numbers of high performing individuals that are leveraging experience and domain knowledge as a productivity multiplier. Then you would think they could receive larger amounts of vacation time than three weeks per year. Or that they could collect such fat fees as contractors that they'd only have to work part of the year.
- panglott 11y ago
  Hm, I think the shift to part-time workers in service and industrial jobs is mostly about evading labor regulation of full-time workers and further eroding the remuneration, economic stability, and bargaining position of lower-income workers. I would hope instead for more leisure at similar pay =/

panglott 11y ago

"Nearly eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes did the math on economic growth and concluded that within a few generations—by the time his peers' great-grandchildren came of age in, say, the 2000's—the persistent economic problem of too-scarce resources and too-few goods would no longer bedevil a substantial portion of humanity. He was right—even in the midst of our current hard times, he is right." (2009) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/we-are-live-at-the-week-our-economic-appetite.html http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/we-are-live-at-the-we...

refurb 11y ago

My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. I'm curious how you would rate the current crisis to what people have dealt with in the past. Is now worse than the stagflation of the 1970's?

Idontagree 11y ago

Uh yes, there is no law, but the statistical or perhaps just plain old truth is that in the future there will be more resources available, and the idea that fewer people can tell everybody what is done with those resources is disgusting if they are deciding to take away lives or even severely (obviously relative, but I think everyone can understand how difficult it would be to live like the poorest of the world) hinder the livelihood of whomever.

demian 11y ago

This is the same problem people faced at the turn of last century. The solution at the time was a mix between unionizing labor and adding regulation, like anti-monopoly laws, from the public side, and basically "inventing" the service, tertiary, sector and modern consumerism from the private side. The problem with this solution now is that there is no quaternary sector in sight to absorb the displaced from the automation of the tertiary sector. Some researchers are talking about an "experience" sector that would be inmune, at least for now, to automation, but the volume of the current job market doesn't seem to indicate that it could replace the "service" sector any time soon. Also the current market solution seems to be sharing economy businesses, which doesn't seem to scale from a social standpoint.

fweespeech 11y ago

> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. My generation is facing this crisis, and the default response is to complain. Which is fine for a few minutes or days, it's good to vent. But at the end of the day, that won't change anything. It's time to get to work, even if "work" is 20-30% (random number) tougher than what our parents dealt with. Assigning blame doesn't solve anything. If there is only jobs for 90% of the population, 10% is fucked no matter what you do. That is the reality we are facing. It isn't "harder" to work. It has become impossible for the entire working population to be employed full time. That is a world of difference. If the solution was simply to work 48-52 hour weeks, as you imply, people would do that.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

There may be no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. But it's been a working assumption for a long time, and there does not appear to be any good reason for it to stop now. modulo the Great Depression and a handful of other such cases.

coldtea 11y ago

>There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them. No, but it's an absolute shame and a complete failure that this is has not been the case during the past 30 years with the resources and technology available to us and with the total wealth (of course distributed unequally) growing up. I'm not talking about Third World either -- things might have been better there, but then again they started from a pretty low bar. I'm about the US, Western Europe, etc.