4 ms·

I feel the same way whenever people & news fixate on jobs, especially with regard to jobs being lost with the closure of large factories or other big employers.

by clarry 9y ago

I feel the same way whenever people & news fixate on jobs, especially with regard to jobs being lost with the closure of large factories or other big employers. No, they do not exist to produce jobs. No, we shouldn't pour money and effort into unprofitable business just for the sake of jobs...

pjmlp 9y ago
Until it happens to be your job.
- loco5niner 9y ago
  If your job isn't producing something of value, why should you be getting paid? I realize that's harsh, but it's true.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Well, because if someone else doesn't offer a job, long term contributes to degradation of society and eventually increase in crime rates. It is easy to say to just get a job when one is young and lucky to live in prosperous regions. Outside those criterias one can spend years trying to get something, even just a couple of hours a week.
    - liberte82 9y ago
      And the people in those regions continue to vote ever more stubbornly for the people who created that situation and refuse to help.
- clarry 9y ago
  Believe me I do have sympathy for those left without a job. I'm without a job right now, and I would very much prefer not to be. But that doesn't mean I believe in work for the sake of work.
lucaspiller 9y ago
Factory jobs are usually a bit different, as a lot of them are just being moved overseas. It's not that it's unprofitable to have the factory in X western country, it's that it is more profitable to have it in Y developing country where wages and regulations are often a lot lower.
- holydude 9y ago
  It is an interesting problem for some nations / companies. With the USA and their companies China is one of the only viable markets out there to actually show any real growth (I am now excluding the domestic US market and EU). With that said China demands from the companies to set a joint ventures on its soil and produce locally. Without a trade way there is no way to keep the factory jobs in the US and sell in China.
nnq 9y ago
> just for the sake of jobs It's not fun trying to sell stuff to people without good stable jobs (or even worse, without any jobs), trust me. And if you can't sell it you're not gonna do it at all, unless you can start with the high-end version, Tesla-style. Which doesn't work for all things, or tends to not work so well if you're not Elon Musk...
holydude 9y ago
I agree and I disagree at the same time. The problem is we did not find a solution yet to cope with the challenges of the next industrial revolution and the global competition. The way the economy is interconnected is so fragile that it really scares me. Economy is really a scary game especially in the age of behemoths and we do not really know how to deal with the wealth inequality. An entire nations might find themselves in a position of not being able to compete with large international conglomerates. Smaller nations are less likely to have more than 1 or 2 large corps of their own and what happens if 1 collapses / gets out-competed / bought by the competitors. We have already seen what had happened in Finland with Nokia. Sure the situation is not that bad at first. Finland is still one of the richest nations. But it hit them really hard. Their economy is "stagnating" and the unemployment rate increased.
- clarry 9y ago
  > We have already seen what had happened in Finland with Nokia. Sure the situation is not that bad at first. Finland is still one of the richest nations. But it hit them really hard. Their economy is "stagnating" and the unemployment rate increased. I concur -- as a young, unemployed finn from a region that has scored among the nation's worst places w.r.t. youth unemployment and unemployment in general. But it's not just Nokia. That might have made a big dent on the economy as a whole but at the same time it shouldn't cause other companies in other industries to struggle (which has happened). Even as they go down, we can't fixate on jobs for the sake of jobs. Sure we could be shoveling sand from pit A to pit B, but that isn't going to help us in the global economy, even if it had some local effects.
  - holydude 9y ago
    But maybe the "problem" is the global economy itself. Is it really worth it to transport cheap chicken meat across the globe ?

by clarry 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

Until it happens to be your job.

loco5niner 9y ago
If your job isn't producing something of value, why should you be getting paid? I realize that's harsh, but it's true.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Well, because if someone else doesn't offer a job, long term contributes to degradation of society and eventually increase in crime rates. It is easy to say to just get a job when one is young and lucky to live in prosperous regions. Outside those criterias one can spend years trying to get something, even just a couple of hours a week.
  - liberte82 9y ago
    And the people in those regions continue to vote ever more stubbornly for the people who created that situation and refuse to help.
clarry 9y ago
Believe me I do have sympathy for those left without a job. I'm without a job right now, and I would very much prefer not to be. But that doesn't mean I believe in work for the sake of work.

lucaspiller 9y ago

Factory jobs are usually a bit different, as a lot of them are just being moved overseas. It's not that it's unprofitable to have the factory in X western country, it's that it is more profitable to have it in Y developing country where wages and regulations are often a lot lower.

holydude 9y ago
It is an interesting problem for some nations / companies. With the USA and their companies China is one of the only viable markets out there to actually show any real growth (I am now excluding the domestic US market and EU). With that said China demands from the companies to set a joint ventures on its soil and produce locally. Without a trade way there is no way to keep the factory jobs in the US and sell in China.

nnq 9y ago

> just for the sake of jobs It's not fun trying to sell stuff to people without good stable jobs (or even worse, without any jobs), trust me. And if you can't sell it you're not gonna do it at all, unless you can start with the high-end version, Tesla-style. Which doesn't work for all things, or tends to not work so well if you're not Elon Musk...

holydude 9y ago

I agree and I disagree at the same time. The problem is we did not find a solution yet to cope with the challenges of the next industrial revolution and the global competition. The way the economy is interconnected is so fragile that it really scares me. Economy is really a scary game especially in the age of behemoths and we do not really know how to deal with the wealth inequality. An entire nations might find themselves in a position of not being able to compete with large international conglomerates. Smaller nations are less likely to have more than 1 or 2 large corps of their own and what happens if 1 collapses / gets out-competed / bought by the competitors. We have already seen what had happened in Finland with Nokia. Sure the situation is not that bad at first. Finland is still one of the richest nations. But it hit them really hard. Their economy is "stagnating" and the unemployment rate increased.

clarry 9y ago
> We have already seen what had happened in Finland with Nokia. Sure the situation is not that bad at first. Finland is still one of the richest nations. But it hit them really hard. Their economy is "stagnating" and the unemployment rate increased. I concur -- as a young, unemployed finn from a region that has scored among the nation's worst places w.r.t. youth unemployment and unemployment in general. But it's not just Nokia. That might have made a big dent on the economy as a whole but at the same time it shouldn't cause other companies in other industries to struggle (which has happened). Even as they go down, we can't fixate on jobs for the sake of jobs. Sure we could be shoveling sand from pit A to pit B, but that isn't going to help us in the global economy, even if it had some local effects.
- holydude 9y ago
  But maybe the "problem" is the global economy itself. Is it really worth it to transport cheap chicken meat across the globe ?