4 ms·

Jobless and Staying That Way

19 points by startuprules 16y ago

bugsy 16y ago
The article briefly touches on the fact that this is a Depression and not a recession. More should be said about this obvious fact as awareness of this should drive decisions made. The article says that the solution is "more training" in institutions (and thus more debt for the unemployed) because "their jobs are not coming back". More training in WHAT? The lost jobs were not making buggy whips, a pointless task for which there is simply no demand any longer because horse drawn carriages are obsolete. The lost jobs have been in manufacturing which has been shipped overseas to countries with no enforced labor wage or environmental laws with which we, a country with enforced labor, wage, and environmental laws, can not possibly compete. The jobs did not become obsolete, they were shipped to a location where they can be done cheaper because they can be done without regard to human rights or the cost to the environment of dumping toxins straight into rivers and oceans. These jobs are not gone because they are not needed. They are gone because they are being done by slave labor. Paid labor with benefits and a living wage costs more than slave labor and will always cost more, no matter how much "training" is done. Slave labor being cheaper is not a problem that putting people further into debt through "training" will solve. But it does have the effect of wasting time and effort, enslaving our own population through further debt, increasing government power as they get to control, regulate, tax and fund it all, and increase the income and power of bankers benefiting from no risk guaranteed student loans.
- ja27 16y ago
  It's not just manufacturing jobs. I know people that have lost service sector jobs, including teachers, law enforcement, and firefighters. The hardest hit though have been construction-related. Those jobs aren't going overseas.
  - bugsy 16y ago
    Sure, but manufacturing and farming, making things, is the actual financial foundation of an economy. Service sector depends on the existence of sound economical functioning of the jobs that produce things in order to function. If no one is making anything, real income is not being produced, and it is inevitable that the service sector must then collapse as it depends on the former for its health.
    - hga 16y ago
      True ... but why draw lines at the semi-artificial boundaries of countries? Can you properly refer to e.g. the US as "an economy" or "part of the world's economy"? You're also, I think, focusing too much on the labor input into manufacturing and farming. We're doing very well in those sectors, but not with a whole lot of labor. In fact, fantastically decreasing the labor in farming was thought to be a good thing, and from the viewpoints of my parents, who were born in the early to mid '30s and who grew up on farms, I can assure that's largely true on the micro scale....
      - bugsy 16y ago
        Sure we're doing well using imported oil to run equipment, using natural gas to manufacture fertilizer (this runs out in less than 10 years according to reserve divided by newly built 'clean gas plant' consumption), and latin slave labor to do what remains of the stoop labor. It's not the existence of backbreaking labor that makes creating things valuable, it's the fact that things are being created which have value and which can be sold. Ultimately sold to people with oil and gas perhaps. There's only so many banking services they need for their petrodollars. Involving ordinary people in manufacturing endeavors keeps them from committing crimes during the hours they are awake, and provides them with an income which supports industries such as services which are greatly dependent on volume of services provided. Services mentioned like firefighting and police and teachers depend on taxes which depend on income of the general populace, only a few of which are CEOs who live in ivory towers with gilded gates; or depend on volume such as tax preparation and retail sales. In either case you need the general population to be employed doing something. That something can be productive or not. If not productive, the economy collapses on itself as it finds itself unable to import things it needs because it has nothing of value to trade. The gentleman made a comment that services jobs are being lost as well. Yes, but that is a direct consequence of the loss of manufacturing jobs which create actual goods of value using many people, who then are able to direct some of the income generated from goods creation to support these other secondary dependent industries.
  - hga 16y ago
    However, how many of those who held those jobs were in them because they had been forced out of manufacturing labor, which was indeed shipped overseas in significant numbers? (Not entirely relevant, but don't forget that we're still manufacturing a lot of stuff with no particular decline in the sector (or at least until the Great Recession), just with much less labor.)
- lsc 16y ago
  eh, I think more of those jobs than you think have been automated away. Manufacturing technology (and thus manufacturing output per worker[1]) is growing by leaps and bounds. [1]http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/manufacturing-output-per-worker-hits.html http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/manufacturing-output-per...
- retube 16y ago
  I think you're making something of a sweeping generalisation here. Jobs have moved overseas because labour is cheaper - true. Jobs have also been automated. So yes, some jobs have been "lost". But this is not a bad thing. This is progress. Hopefully these jobs get replaced by new jobs. 20 years ago there were no web designers - the web didn't exist. Now there's millions of web designers. How is this possible, where did these people come from? Education, training. This is vital for any advancing economy.
  - moe 16y ago
    Hopefully these jobs get replaced by new jobs. Call me negative but I hear that often and don't share the optimism. There is an upper limit to how many office workers and programmers an economy needs - and can sustain at wages enabling the living standards that we've come to expect. The only big technical revolution that I see coming in the next few decades will be the robot revolution. Now go figure how that will affect the job market. My opinion is that the current system of wealth distribution will have to be reconsidered quite fundamentally when robots begin to replace the low-wage workforce. I also think this will not go smoothly, because when have such large changes ever gone smoothly in history... Feel free to disagree, call me a "dreamer" and my robot story "absurd" - I'm used to that. But looking at what robots can do today (cf. ASIMO) I'm deeply convinced it's going to happen, and much sooner than most people expect.
    - lsc 16y ago
      I think most people agree that the trend towards automation will continue. It's not a new idea; this has been happening for far longer than either one of us has been alive. I mean, the difference between science fiction and reality is primarily that the robots we have, so far, look nothing like humans. but the part about them replacing workers, that's been true for a very long time now.
      - moe 16y ago
        It's not a new idea; this has been happening for far longer than either one of us has been alive. Yes, I'm thinking of a bigger magnitude, though. As naive as that may sound, I do believe in the "service bot" vision where households and workplaces are increasingly stuffed with robots. There's of course still a long way to go. But when I look at the individual pieces that are available today (see videos below) then I tend to, perhaps naively, expect the first robots capable of taking over simplistic jobs (outside of industrial environments) within a 15-20 year timeframe. And not long thereafter before it becomes cost effective to actually deploy them on a large scale. When that happens then it will likely be a different quality from what we've seen in industrialism before. It's not about machines reducing the workforce in certain industries. It's about machines replacing human labor as a whole in entire segments - not least in the service-sector. I'm deriving my guesstimate from the fact that what we see today is the result of the past circa 20 years of research. Add another 20yrs to that and the mind is blown, at least mine is. With regard to "not a new idea" you have a point in theory. Yet in practice, when I listen to political discussions then I don't hear anyone having it on the radar, even when they talk about the so-called "longterm". Perhaps I'm expecting too much, politicians rarely look further ahead than 10yrs anyways. I just wonder when we'll begin to seriously question the paradigm of "everyone has a job" which dominates everything today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg#t=3m32s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg#t=3m32s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiw-jbjnyzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiw-jbjnyzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyPAIpXm-nU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyPAIpXm-nU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrmrU7P-ysA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrmrU7P-ysA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhPLeIq4uY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhPLeIq4uY
- gaius 16y ago
  I'm no protectionist - I love freedom - but I don't think a tariff to compensate for lack of environmental regulations etc overseas would be amiss. Obviously not levied on imports from countries with comparable regulations.
- noelchurchill 16y ago
  The biggest reason so many jobs have been lost to China is because China keeps their currency pegged artificially low to the dollar. This keeps their citizens poor but makes it very attractive for foreign companies to move their manufacturing operations to China. To compensate the US could tariff everything imported from China to compensate for the artificially low exchange rate. The advantage to manufacture in China would be diminished. All of our material crap we buy would get more expensive too. Eventually China will let their currency float making them richer and us poorer, in terms of buying power, and stuff will be made in the US again. So the situation will correct itself. In the mean time its very hard for the people finding themselves without jobs.
coned88 16y ago
This is an article which I think sums it up nicely http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people_obsolete http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people...

19 points by startuprules 16y ago

bugsy 16y ago

The article briefly touches on the fact that this is a Depression and not a recession. More should be said about this obvious fact as awareness of this should drive decisions made. The article says that the solution is "more training" in institutions (and thus more debt for the unemployed) because "their jobs are not coming back". More training in WHAT? The lost jobs were not making buggy whips, a pointless task for which there is simply no demand any longer because horse drawn carriages are obsolete. The lost jobs have been in manufacturing which has been shipped overseas to countries with no enforced labor wage or environmental laws with which we, a country with enforced labor, wage, and environmental laws, can not possibly compete. The jobs did not become obsolete, they were shipped to a location where they can be done cheaper because they can be done without regard to human rights or the cost to the environment of dumping toxins straight into rivers and oceans. These jobs are not gone because they are not needed. They are gone because they are being done by slave labor. Paid labor with benefits and a living wage costs more than slave labor and will always cost more, no matter how much "training" is done. Slave labor being cheaper is not a problem that putting people further into debt through "training" will solve. But it does have the effect of wasting time and effort, enslaving our own population through further debt, increasing government power as they get to control, regulate, tax and fund it all, and increase the income and power of bankers benefiting from no risk guaranteed student loans.

ja27 16y ago
It's not just manufacturing jobs. I know people that have lost service sector jobs, including teachers, law enforcement, and firefighters. The hardest hit though have been construction-related. Those jobs aren't going overseas.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Sure, but manufacturing and farming, making things, is the actual financial foundation of an economy. Service sector depends on the existence of sound economical functioning of the jobs that produce things in order to function. If no one is making anything, real income is not being produced, and it is inevitable that the service sector must then collapse as it depends on the former for its health.
  - hga 16y ago
    True ... but why draw lines at the semi-artificial boundaries of countries? Can you properly refer to e.g. the US as "an economy" or "part of the world's economy"? You're also, I think, focusing too much on the labor input into manufacturing and farming. We're doing very well in those sectors, but not with a whole lot of labor. In fact, fantastically decreasing the labor in farming was thought to be a good thing, and from the viewpoints of my parents, who were born in the early to mid '30s and who grew up on farms, I can assure that's largely true on the micro scale....
    - bugsy 16y ago
      Sure we're doing well using imported oil to run equipment, using natural gas to manufacture fertilizer (this runs out in less than 10 years according to reserve divided by newly built 'clean gas plant' consumption), and latin slave labor to do what remains of the stoop labor. It's not the existence of backbreaking labor that makes creating things valuable, it's the fact that things are being created which have value and which can be sold. Ultimately sold to people with oil and gas perhaps. There's only so many banking services they need for their petrodollars. Involving ordinary people in manufacturing endeavors keeps them from committing crimes during the hours they are awake, and provides them with an income which supports industries such as services which are greatly dependent on volume of services provided. Services mentioned like firefighting and police and teachers depend on taxes which depend on income of the general populace, only a few of which are CEOs who live in ivory towers with gilded gates; or depend on volume such as tax preparation and retail sales. In either case you need the general population to be employed doing something. That something can be productive or not. If not productive, the economy collapses on itself as it finds itself unable to import things it needs because it has nothing of value to trade. The gentleman made a comment that services jobs are being lost as well. Yes, but that is a direct consequence of the loss of manufacturing jobs which create actual goods of value using many people, who then are able to direct some of the income generated from goods creation to support these other secondary dependent industries.
- hga 16y ago
  However, how many of those who held those jobs were in them because they had been forced out of manufacturing labor, which was indeed shipped overseas in significant numbers? (Not entirely relevant, but don't forget that we're still manufacturing a lot of stuff with no particular decline in the sector (or at least until the Great Recession), just with much less labor.)
lsc 16y ago
eh, I think more of those jobs than you think have been automated away. Manufacturing technology (and thus manufacturing output per worker[1]) is growing by leaps and bounds. [1]http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/manufacturing-output-per-worker-hits.html http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/manufacturing-output-per...
retube 16y ago
I think you're making something of a sweeping generalisation here. Jobs have moved overseas because labour is cheaper - true. Jobs have also been automated. So yes, some jobs have been "lost". But this is not a bad thing. This is progress. Hopefully these jobs get replaced by new jobs. 20 years ago there were no web designers - the web didn't exist. Now there's millions of web designers. How is this possible, where did these people come from? Education, training. This is vital for any advancing economy.
- moe 16y ago
  Hopefully these jobs get replaced by new jobs. Call me negative but I hear that often and don't share the optimism. There is an upper limit to how many office workers and programmers an economy needs - and can sustain at wages enabling the living standards that we've come to expect. The only big technical revolution that I see coming in the next few decades will be the robot revolution. Now go figure how that will affect the job market. My opinion is that the current system of wealth distribution will have to be reconsidered quite fundamentally when robots begin to replace the low-wage workforce. I also think this will not go smoothly, because when have such large changes ever gone smoothly in history... Feel free to disagree, call me a "dreamer" and my robot story "absurd" - I'm used to that. But looking at what robots can do today (cf. ASIMO) I'm deeply convinced it's going to happen, and much sooner than most people expect.
  - lsc 16y ago
    I think most people agree that the trend towards automation will continue. It's not a new idea; this has been happening for far longer than either one of us has been alive. I mean, the difference between science fiction and reality is primarily that the robots we have, so far, look nothing like humans. but the part about them replacing workers, that's been true for a very long time now.
    - moe 16y ago
      It's not a new idea; this has been happening for far longer than either one of us has been alive. Yes, I'm thinking of a bigger magnitude, though. As naive as that may sound, I do believe in the "service bot" vision where households and workplaces are increasingly stuffed with robots. There's of course still a long way to go. But when I look at the individual pieces that are available today (see videos below) then I tend to, perhaps naively, expect the first robots capable of taking over simplistic jobs (outside of industrial environments) within a 15-20 year timeframe. And not long thereafter before it becomes cost effective to actually deploy them on a large scale. When that happens then it will likely be a different quality from what we've seen in industrialism before. It's not about machines reducing the workforce in certain industries. It's about machines replacing human labor as a whole in entire segments - not least in the service-sector. I'm deriving my guesstimate from the fact that what we see today is the result of the past circa 20 years of research. Add another 20yrs to that and the mind is blown, at least mine is. With regard to "not a new idea" you have a point in theory. Yet in practice, when I listen to political discussions then I don't hear anyone having it on the radar, even when they talk about the so-called "longterm". Perhaps I'm expecting too much, politicians rarely look further ahead than 10yrs anyways. I just wonder when we'll begin to seriously question the paradigm of "everyone has a job" which dominates everything today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg#t=3m32s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ByGQGiVMg#t=3m32s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiw-jbjnyzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiw-jbjnyzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyPAIpXm-nU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyPAIpXm-nU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrmrU7P-ysA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrmrU7P-ysA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhPLeIq4uY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhPLeIq4uY
gaius 16y ago
I'm no protectionist - I love freedom - but I don't think a tariff to compensate for lack of environmental regulations etc overseas would be amiss. Obviously not levied on imports from countries with comparable regulations.
noelchurchill 16y ago
The biggest reason so many jobs have been lost to China is because China keeps their currency pegged artificially low to the dollar. This keeps their citizens poor but makes it very attractive for foreign companies to move their manufacturing operations to China. To compensate the US could tariff everything imported from China to compensate for the artificially low exchange rate. The advantage to manufacture in China would be diminished. All of our material crap we buy would get more expensive too. Eventually China will let their currency float making them richer and us poorer, in terms of buying power, and stuff will be made in the US again. So the situation will correct itself. In the mean time its very hard for the people finding themselves without jobs.

coned88 16y ago

This is an article which I think sums it up nicely http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people_obsolete http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/27/american_people...