Tempest should love this one

[Tempest]

So you or no one that you know has never changed career paths after being laid off? At their own expense or otherwise?

And you don't have to change career fields to be out of work for a time, and then get a job in the same field.

I have done both. So yes, it is a restructuring or realignment of needs thing.

 

[Gary Allan]

Tempest (sigh). I know tons of people that have had to remake themselves. I've reinvented myself a few times.

..and, if I look hard enough, I can reinvent myself to a gas jockey.

It's got nothing to do with skills or intelligence ..or motivation. If there's no need for the number of people that need employment vs. the number of people that have employment to offer ..you've got unneeded people. Your precious productivity assures that this will occur.

Please don't try and have anyone here believe that you can't conceive of this labor surplus. It's all around you.

Let me put it this way, you really wouldn't want labor surplus to be a bat ..if your head was a baseball with the learning curve.

 

[brianl703]

You only need to visit a 7-11 at around 10am here to see that we have a labor surplus.

 

[TooManyWheels]

The idea of a labor surplus has been the promised land of American life for my whole lifetime. It was going to allow all of us to live in luxury, with greatly reduced effort.

Now the surplus has happened. But we aren't living in luxury.

That is, not most of us. Those at the high end are living with unimagined wealth. They have gotten the middle class to do all their work for them, while they take the proceeds. Those at the low end are barely subsisting, because there is no work (the middle class is working longer hours, not fewer). Those in the middle are being stretched thinner and thinner because they have to pay for both the lower class, and the upper class that engineered the whole setup.

If the middle class could get rid of all the expensive, non-productive overhead above and below it could indeed enjoy it's own productivity surplus.

 

[Gary Allan]

I look at it a little differently. The upper tier merely let the floor drop out and now it's in free fall. Now everyone is clawing to grab on to as lofty a perch as possible ...and to heck with everyone else...

Quote:
If the middle class could get rid of all the expensive, non-productive overhead above and below it could indeed enjoy it's own productivity surplus.


I dunno

It would be nice, and you CAN do it ..but then you're into Tempestdytopian nightmares ...a more socialized society.

We have a shored up floor of baseline support. It's mostly dysfunctional ..and no one seems to be able to ..or want it to, change. There's apparently no future in having smarter future poorer people. We still seem to have elements that want to keep the ceiling unlimited ..regardless of the consequences. This is more disturbing to me. Not so much the propaganda version of "the individual should not be bound by ...." rah-rah stuff, but by the mechanisms that are typically employed to realize it.

There is an element that wants severe social realignment ..and will willfully throw the nation into total dysfunction/decay to see it occur.

THAT WILL TEACH 'EM!!!

There is no other way to describe this other than being dark and malevolent.

 

[Shannow]

The whole world is feeling the current situation...China with 30M unemployed.

If unemployment is market forces at work, "swishing the bucket" to redistibute skills and location to fill the needs and opportunities (as demonstrated by the skilling up of China and India)...

Where are all the jobs going, when China is underemployed ?

Who exactly pays for all of the stuff that is the GDP of everybody, and where does "the market" get the money to pay for it ?

 

[Gary Allan]

Simple! You "create wealth"!!

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
If the middle class could get rid of all the expensive, non-productive overhead above and below it could indeed enjoy it's own productivity surplus.


The catch is, labor surplus are rarely distributed evenly. When efficiency is made, it means that the use of the best talents and labors are amplified, when the less productive bunches are left behind (i.e. CNC machines run by a veteran machinists that are just as good as 20 junior machinists without CNC). Or the need for the best talents and labors are reduced by making the less productive bunches just as good (Walmart hired part timers satisfy the local grocery need just as good as the mom and pop stores with "quality services").

Due to the cost of living, the surplus labors aren't always able to find a job that can support them, and maybe they are too old to switch careers (i.e. 55 years old machinist). This is inevitable in a developed nation and 2nd/3rd world nations like China; their unemployment is very high for the older folks that used to work in a nationalized corp.

Some people believe that it is cheaper to prevent or improve productivity (union), while others think that it is cheaper to buy them out with welfare and unemployment (socialists), and then there are some that think it is better to set them aside and let them sink or swim (the capitalists).

The only thing that seems to agreed upon is when a nation is too well off, and low end jobs cannot pay enough for the living standard or reasonable living standard is too expensive for the job, these jobs will get outsourced and/or done by illegal aliens one way or the other.

Heck, even Thai people are too expensive for their local construction projects, and they too have illegal aliens from their starving neighbors to do their dirty work.

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear


Some people believe that it is cheaper to prevent or improve productivity (union), while others think that it is cheaper to buy them out with welfare and unemployment (socialists), and then there are some that think it is better to set them aside and let them sink or swim (the capitalists).



But apparently no one sees the unemployment created by productivity as a systemic problem in need of a systemic solution, i.e. that when you modernize a labor pool away you need to create an alternate, higher tech industry to absorb them.

I have long maintained that our unemployment problems are not caused so much by outsourcing or immigration, but by a lack of progress in industry creation. As lesser developed countries develop to match the U.S., the U.S. needs to develop correspondingly to maintain employment. Whether you regard this as a private or public responsibility, obviously neither one is fullfilling it. And whichever does it (or both), you need a well-functioning training and transitioning system to support it.

I don't see either capitalists or socialists recognizing or encouraging this path. I see unions as possibly receptive to this idea, but on the whole it seems to be completely ignored.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
But apparently no one sees the unemployment created by productivity as a systemic problem in need of a systemic solution, i.e. that when you modernize a labor pool away you need to create an alternate, higher tech industry to absorb them.


Sure they do. They just don't find it a compelling problem to deal with when profits are at stake. It will always be a bite your nose to spite your face result. It depends on the range of vision and that too will have it's own set of social side effects.

We had magic that sustained us. We are driving right off a cliff ..perpetually. The magic that we had for a good long while is that as we approached the cliff, our new emerging technologies built a bridge. Or viewed another way, as our Titanic sank below the water line, the part above the water was built upwards. The unfortunate aspect to these evolutions is that the emerging technologies tend to put more money in fewer hands ..and this watershed trickle down only works well on the growth end of things where the phase relationships overlap a bit. Once the sector is fully aturated ..and some equilibrium is approached ..or a sag in economic throughput ..

If one were to solve this with higher quality of life as a goal (cough-cough- for all of your people) then you need to manage your commerce and translate your productivity into integrated utility. This we sorta see with the more socialized nations. We also see Germans who resent having to pay $30 for an oil filter so that German automotive engineers can sit back and contemplate complicating the wheel into its 248th revision for the pico decimal gains that it yields.

 

[moribundman]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
We also see Germans who resent having to pay $30 for an oil filter so that German automotive engineers can sit back and contemplate complicating the wheel into its 248th revision for the pico decimal gains that it yields.


Lawks-a-mussy, Mawster Gary! What the frock is the meaning of this? Care to explain it to me, old boy?

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
I don't see either capitalists or socialists recognizing or encouraging this path. I see unions as possibly receptive to this idea, but on the whole it seems to be completely ignored.


Like Gary Allan said, there is no profit in it, so the private sector won't do it. The public sector can't see more than 4-8 years into the future and like Tempest said (not targeting him personally) , there are people in our nations against "bail out" of a particular industry or group of people.

So what we can do is to protect those national interest that sporadically and spontaneously appear out of nowhere. We have export bans on high tech equipments and manufacturing so that the developed nations can still have an edge in terms of productivity, and China has to earn its profit with the good old honest work with low tech process/equipment and elbow grease.

Another problem with replacing obsoleted industry with new industry to absorb work force is that they too desire good labor, so it won't "fix" the problem of unemployment at a target cost. It is a dilemma that we have been struggling throughout the human civilization, and the last great experiment of Communism didn't turns out to be better than what we have currently (not that it is perfect, but at least better than the soviet style communism).

Maybe having a combination of 1 child per family, increased productivity, socialized health care, high tax, and collective/family care will one day solve our problems. But I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Shannow
The whole world is feeling the current situation...China with 30M unemployed.

If unemployment is market forces at work, "swishing the bucket" to redistibute skills and location to fill the needs and opportunities (as demonstrated by the skilling up of China and India)...

Where are all the jobs going, when China is underemployed ?

Who exactly pays for all of the stuff that is the GDP of everybody, and where does "the market" get the money to pay for it ?

Is China a free market? NO. Is the US a free market? NO. What you are seeing is the misallocation of resources from government involvement.

And the more educated you are, the more likely you are to make more per hour and have more job security.

Quote:
Washington, DC – A report released today finds that only about half (53%) of all young people in the nation’s 50 largest cities are graduating from high school on time. Cities in Crisis 2009: Closing the Graduation Gap, prepared for America’s Promise Alliance by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, shows that despite some progress made by several of these cities between 1995-2005, the average graduation rate of the 50 largest cities is well below the national average of 71 percent, and there remains an 18 percentage point urban suburban gap.

Quote:
Nationwide, nearly one in three U.S. high school students fails to graduate with a diploma. In total, approximately 1.2 million students drop out each year – averaging 7,000 every school day or one every 26 seconds. Among minority students, the problem is even more severe with nearly 50 percent of African American and Hispanic students not completing high school on time.

http://www.americaspromise.org/About-the...IGH-SCHOOL.aspx
So people aren't currently taking advantage of FREE school in this country. And people actually wonder why there are people that don't do as well others.

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
And people actually wonder why there are people that don't do as well others.


Given how thoroughly we covered why some don't do as well as others, I'm amazed you would still post this.

Not to mention that you seem to be suggesting that if everyone were educated, no one would be unemployed.

I have to wonder if you see the logical fallacy, and whether you deliberately ignoring or perpetuating it.

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: moribundman
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
We also see Germans who resent having to pay $30 for an oil filter so that German automotive engineers can sit back and contemplate complicating the wheel into its 248th revision for the pico decimal gains that it yields.


Lawks-a-mussy, Mawster Gary! What the frock is the meaning of this? Care to explain it to me, old boy?


Jaja meecah tri-n maken mojo sensibossi

This was a direct (para) quote from a German national who's a member of the board. He wanted some Amsoil products and wanted to get a good price. The tariffs and whatnots involved made it a marginal difference between buying domestic products.

His comment was "why should I pay for them to sit on their arse while I'm trapped into buying overpriced goods?" (referring to the professional class - i.e. engineers that sit around thinking up ways to feel they have a purpose).

I tried to explain to him that one needs to be careful what one wishes for ..having it come true always has some unintended consequences.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
And the more educated you are, the more likely you are to make more per hour and have more job security.


Sure ..and again, make them all Einsteins. Which one is going to be cleaning your boots when you're a former copy machine salesman in Tempestdystopia???

You always conveniently leave out the necessary side effects and assured liabilities. Even if everyone had the best education, free market with high productivity will render most of them unneeded.

Riddle me that, anti-Postman??

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
Originally Posted By: Tempest
And people actually wonder why there are people that don't do as well others.


Given how thoroughly we covered why some don't do as well as others, I'm amazed you would still post this.

Not to mention that you seem to be suggesting that if everyone were educated, no one would be unemployed.

I have to wonder if you see the logical fallacy, and whether you deliberately ignoring or perpetuating it.

What logical fallacy? People do better that get education, and have less unemployment. There will always be, and always has been, unemployment...no matter what you do. My statement above is not in conflict with this.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5078

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
And the more educated you are, the more likely you are to make more per hour and have more job security.


Sure ..and again, make them all Einsteins. Which one is going to be cleaning your boots when you're a former copy machine salesman in Tempestdystopia???

You always conveniently leave out the necessary side effects and assured liabilities. Even if everyone had the best education, free market with high productivity will render most of them unneeded.

Riddle me that, anti-Postman??

If efficiency = higher unemployment, then why do countries with significantly worse efficiency than us also have significantly lower employment? How do you figure that?

 

[Shannow]

Had to LOL this morning at the radio.

Oz just raised the age at which we (anyone under 50) can access our retirement savings to 67..heard one spokesman the other days state that we "used to have 12 years of retirement, which has grown to 20, and we are simply correcting that".

Has been met with outcry from people like brickies, who simply will not last to 67.

This morning's announcement was that these people will "simply need to upskill in their early 50s, to choose an easier job leading up to retirement".

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
And the more educated you are, the more likely you are to make more per hour and have more job security.


Sure ..and again, make them all Einsteins. Which one is going to be cleaning your boots when you're a former copy machine salesman in Tempestdystopia???

You always conveniently leave out the necessary side effects and assured liabilities. Even if everyone had the best education, free market with high productivity will render most of them unneeded.

Riddle me that, anti-Postman??

If efficiency = higher unemployment, then why do countries with significantly worse efficiency than us also have significantly lower employment? How do you figure that?


Oh no Houdini ...you first. Make all of our population 200 IQ ..how many won't have room in our society for gainful employment?

You first, my slithering, slick, friend

..but if you need 5000 peasants to build roads ..and you have more peasants than heavy equipment ..then 5000 peasants will get employed out of "free market" and the lack of productivity that manual road labor produces.