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Unfortunately, the issue is not so simple. The the labor market is under assault from every front. Illegal immigration and offshoring depress skilled labor wage
by FD3SA 15y ago
Unfortunately, the issue is not so simple. The the labor market is under assault from every front. Illegal immigration and offshoring depress skilled labor wages, while at the same time robotics and software progress to automate as many skilled jobs as possible. Laborers turn to college degrees, which burden them with massive student loans, only to graduate with unimproved employment prospects due to the saturation of the market with higher ed degrees. Meanwhile, businesses have strong incentive to replace labor (human) with capital(machine), as the latter is far cheaper and does not require health insurance, benefits, or pension plans. This also helps businesses improve profit margins significantly.
Thus, we have our scenario: corporate profitability increasing in tandem with structural unemployment. Consolidation of capital to a few major winners, and debt and unemployment for the losers.
There are few ways out of this mess, and none of them can occur with "business as usual" policies.
- hugh3 15y agoMaybe, but let's be realistic. We're talking about 9% unemployment rather than a "full employment" value of 5%. The US economy is perfectly capable of finding productive work for another fifteen million people, just like it was three years ago, and eventually will be again. People have been predicting the end of work ever since the first mechanized... whatever. In the past 150 years, we've managed to mechanize the hell out of agriculture and manufacturing and we've hugely increased labour force participation by encouraging women to work. And yet, at every point along the road, unemployment rates always seem to stabilize at about 5% in good times, and shoot up to 10% in bad times (Great Depression excepted, but that was due to some zany government interference).