Job Retraining May Fall Short

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Originally Posted By: oilyriser
Why would anyone ever want to live in a land where everyone has to work all the time?


You work in your sleep?
 
Originally Posted By: Julian
If you say so. Symmetry and chirality are not the same thing though. You mean you don't like asymmetry? You can't always make things symmetrical by pruning them. Pulling weeds, or mushrooms as it were (in reference to a quote from one of my favorite writers).


Here's your hot Symmetrical man.

symmetry.JPG
 
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I like how they have it in some of the Middle East countries, as far as employment goes. They make so much oil money they don't have to work very much. Living well without working at all is my goal.
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear


No, the problem of those who can't get a job is not because they don't want to (you'd be surprised how many wanted to work but couldn't get hired), but because they aren't suitable for employment because they are actually counter productive to the work force, yet the work they do is simple enough that has already been automated.

You can train them and give them enough support to do what they can marginally do well, at a high expense. That's what happen to our workforce in the public sector. No offense to many of our public service employee, but somehow our government end up being the nation's biggest work study, internship, co-op program.

With more automation and out-sourcing of the lower level work, I think it is going to get worse with or without illegal Aliens.


There are still plenty of non automated jobs... changing old guy diapers, sorting recyclables, picking fruit.

Do we as a society want gaggles of new people retrained for the well paying jobs? There's a career school here that must churn out 100's of crime scene investigators per year, because it looks cool on TV... when the state police probably have ten officers, total in that department.

You are right about the gov't... used to be in the 70's the post office was in the business of keeping some feeble sorts around. They bought those pens and clocks from that place (name escapes me) that kept people employed... then Congress started demanding they run the place like a business... oops, well, now there are more folks in the gutter.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
No comment on "optimum" unemployment ?

Yep, just haven't had a chance yet.

I've seen the theory before (never looked into it much) and you might very well be right about the central banks trying to use it as way to keep short term inflation down.

However, if you look at the last decade or so:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS14000000

http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historicalinflation.aspx

There doesn't seem to be the close relationship as there is supposed to be. Inflation has been low, as has unemployment (until last year). Long term, the theory doesn't seem to hold. Short term, it will.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
So we should obviously keep subsidizing the making of pens at tax payer expense...


They got "some" work out of people otherwise on welfare. Are you pro-welfare?
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Have they been on welfare since the 70's? Or maybe they got different jobs?

They could have been part of the transient 5% that Shannow is talking about.
 
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OK, in tempestopia, wherre the evil government doesn't hand out welfare, education, and health care, what happens to those 5% ?

How do they drag themselves out of the ghetto, get educated, stay clothed and healthy, and transport themselves to where the work is ?
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Have they been on welfare since the 70's? Or maybe they got different jobs?

They could have been part of the transient 5% that Shannow is talking about.


Prostitution, Gang member, Slavery, Military Bullet Sponge, High risk/death rate jobs, Begging on the street could all be considered a job when there is no welfare or artificially created jobs. I'd take Tempest propose these free market approaches.
 
I need to clarify my earlier post, most post office pens were Skilcraft made by Lighthouse for the Blind. Since most blind people are eligible for SSI disability... good on them for getting jobs and good on the post office for helping them out!!

The government recently bought antifreeze toothpaste and compromised imitation cisco routers (for classified throughput) from overseas. Is their purchasing at bottom dollar of absolute importance?
 
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OK, in tempestopia, wherre the evil government doesn't hand out welfare, education, and health care, what happens to those 5% ?

It's NOT the same 5% perpetually out of work. Even your optimum unemployment theory doesn't assume this. In fact, by the way the unemployment stats work, people that are perpetually out of work are not counted in that 5% so your very premise if flawed.

The very article I cited shows that government programs are pretty much ineffective at improving people's condition, yet you and Panda continue to support such wasteful projects.

You guys want people dependent on government for just about every aspect of their life (as you have clearly stated), yet you call me uncaring. Simply amazing.
 
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Originally Posted By: Tempest
The very article I cited shows that government programs are pretty much ineffective at improving people's condition, yet you and Panda continue to support such wasteful projects.

You guys want people dependent on government for just about every aspect of their life (as you have clearly stated), yet you call me uncaring. Simply amazing.


Let me make my point clear, and if it is not, I'll rephrase it so it is clearer:

I do not support wasteful projects. What I merely point out is what you haven't mentioned as the consequences of removing the so called "waste" and its cost. What I mentioned above, like prostitution, war efforts with high casualties, and crime activities, have been the solutions to unemployment since the dawn of human civilizations.

What I'm trying to point out, which you accuse me of attacking you on, is your lack of insight into what would the alternative costs of your waste-less government at minimum cost would look like, if all according to your plan. You hinted that these problem would magically go away and those unemployed would magically found a job when we cutoff their lifeline.

Well, they would, as I suggested, just not into the direction you wanted or as productive to the society as you wanted them to be. They don't magically become evangelical ministers or self made millionaires, and history has shown time and time again what they are more likely to become.

Some of these "wasteful" social services are just the hidden cost of a fully functional society of high efficiency, productivity, at optimal level. Some would be unemployed, and some wouldn't make it. You can either accept the fact that we the citizens need to support some of them to a certain extend, or put them aside and let them rot to someone you prefer not to.

You always accuse people attacking you as shooting the messenger, yet I'm now the messenger that reveals what's going to happen and you accuse me of attacking you.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
You guys want people dependent on government for just about every aspect of their life (as you have clearly stated), yet you call me uncaring. Simply amazing.
I agree, completely ridiculous. Government is a choice, as they say. Cute sig... ah who cares.
 
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is your lack of insight into what would the alternative costs of your waste-less government at minimum cost would look like

The "cost" in terms of welfare recipients, is lower levels of poverty, higher levels of employment, and much lower welfare rolls and cost to tax payers.

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/news/welfare_study.htm

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_44.htm

http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/wm1183.cfm

The reforms that brought us these improvements have just been removed in recent legislation. They were too effective at reducing dependency on government.

Motivating people to work, rather than to sit at home a collect a check forced from someone else's wallet works.

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I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin - Founding Father - ~200 years ago.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest

The reforms that brought us these improvements have just been removed in recent legislation. They were too effective at reducing dependency on government.

Motivating people to work, rather than to sit at home a collect a check forced from someone else's wallet works.



Let's see your tract record so far, and see if you really are in motivating people to work, or just reduces tax dollar so that you can pay less taxes:

1) You said that job retraining is not working
2) You said that park should be closed because they are not profitable
3) You said that health care is not a right
4) You said that capping college loan for people who go into public services is not a good idea
5) You said that public school is horrible and less cost effective than private school
6) You don't support governmental job creation
7) You want fair tax based on consumption, rather than affordability or income level.
8) You said cutting welfare would automatically reduce poverty and increase employment, and duck my question about whether these employments are ethical or criminal (i.e. prostitution and gang).
9) You never answer whether it is acceptable to abandon people in need to achieve ultimate efficiency.



...and you believe you are sincerely helping the nation. Like you said, simply "amazing".

I have no problem with abandoning people that I have no feeling about, although I believe that a society that helps each other would be a better society and is more cost effective than people looking only after themselves. You can admit what you really believe in, rather than sugar coat or justify what you said.
 
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Which worker is more motivated, the one who is paid by the hour just for being there, or the one who is paid according to units produced?

Does a farmer grow food by the hour? Does a contractor get paid for *trying* to build homes or for the number of homes actually produced? How does reality reward, by the hour or by accomplishments?
 
Originally Posted By: oilyriser
Which worker is more motivated, the one who is paid by the hour just for being there, or the one who is paid according to units produced?


My folks have worked in the past and get paid by the units, and all I can say is the result is huge volume of low quality junk you see from China.

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Does a farmer grow food by the hour? Does a contractor get paid for *trying* to build homes or for the number of homes actually produced? How does reality reward, by the hour or by accomplishments?


The reality is both. You need volume but also enough quality for returning customer and reputation to attract new customer. If a good quality producer/labor is in charge, he will get paid well either way and stay in businesses either way.
 
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