Live data from Hacker News

The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

bloomberg.com

431–440 of 491 posts

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my opinion, you are conflating cause and effect, but per an earlier comment I made it is incorrect for anyone to believe that their passions are not shared by others. And when those others have more money than time, that is how they "help." If its okay with you, I'll go with the people with doctorates in the field over your opinion on the internet. Out of curiosity, how many academic papers would it take saying…

I am really glad you invested some time and effort into making things better, and I'm sorry it didn't work out the way you wanted it too. But it sounds a bit like you're sort of "one and done" here on trying things, is that the case? It isn't easy, and it takes a while to learn all the tricks that you have to be aware of, but anything worth doing is like that right? I hope you won't give up trying, learned helplessne…

> But it sounds a bit like you're sort of "one and done" here on trying things, is that the case?

I listed two instances and offered to go on.

I don't see a value in posting my life story on HN given I prefer to be mostly just left alone.

> It isn't easy, and it takes a while to learn all the tricks that you have to be aware of, but anything worth doing is like that right?

The problem isn't "tricks", the problem is anyone who actually stands up to anyone worth standing up to doesn't have enough money.

The only real route to "success" I have is to make $5-10 million and being willing to spend half on being elected. No one is willing to spend that money on the congressional level.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself (as a 22 year-old recent graduate) - I was brought up to respect my elders and to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity with a conscience bent more towards justice and meritocracy than corruption and inequality. I believed that the older generation who shape and structure society through government, industry, and academia were doing their absolute best to set future…

> to consider society as a mostly-altruistic, benevolent mass of humanity There is no mass of humanity in that way, just like "HN believes..." or "Reddit thinks..." is mostly impossible to say. Some folks of that generation did/do act in mostly-altruistic, benevolent ways, and some of them did/do not. The generational argument is a very clever red herring that shifts blame from a broken system to the previous generat…

It was just my opinion, I was not attempting to speak for anyone but myself, much less my generation. My upbringing was extremely different from that of millions of others in this country, and I have no right to put words in their mouths.

I'm not sure if Medicare/Social Security will exist when I'm 65.

I work for a living. I don't say "hey fuck that guy" because he's rich, I say "hey fuck that guy" because he's a greedy sociopath who is fucking up the fabric of our society, a society that I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of for the past 22 years and that I would love to raise my kids in one day.

I don't have anything against Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Michael Dell or people of their ilk - they're geniuses who excelled in bringing a fantastic product to market, and they were rewarded for that. I would love to emulate their success.

But the top investment bankers who were intentionally obfuscating the market through complex securitization and interest-rate manipulation? The CEOs of Moody's and Standard & Poor's who were intentionally misleading investors and prioritizing profits over quality and integrity? The people whose job it was to regulate these markets, stop oblivious consumers from taking on a $500k mortgage on $50k yearly income? The oblivious consumers and investors themselves? The government who set a precedent of propping up failed bets with taxpayer money? The ones who were not adequately punished for the pain and suffering they caused? Yeah, fuck all those guys.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#434
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no law stating that each generation of humans should have it easier and with more resources available to them There is no law that requires this, but looking at world economic productivity numbers and our industrial & technology base there's no physical reason that people shouldn't have it easier with more resources every generation. If there is no physical reason, that leaves economic, social, & political…

We do have it easier with more resources. I'm gen X, and I wouldn't trade my upbringing for the previous generation. And gen Y had it better than I. We have FAR more entertainment; more control over personal transport; better materials for everything from clothes to construction; better occupational health and safety; FAR better civil rights; better levels of healthcare; better public understanding of health; the job…

I'm gen X too, and graduated into the recession of the 90's and have been lucky to be employed in a high demand field. You mention the stuff that we can buy, and that's part of the modern abundance that I mention that I know our society can produce, but I don't agree with our economic quality of life as a society.

It seems to me that the overall opportunities available to Millennials even 5 years away from my age drop off substantially. The hours that are worked for people that have jobs have increased, and the off hours are encroached by availability of instant demand emails, texts, endless other notifications. Looking at overall stats, the millennial group is at lower employment than previous generations and I personally don't believe that they're less willing to work hard than previous generations.

I've worked for startups with founders (from a generation or two before me) that were able to start fairly deep businesses from their 9-5 job savings and pensions - and now new business starts have been on a decades decline. I was able to work my way through college and now college wages have little hope of paying for a degree. Err I'm not sure how you claim that civil rights have improved with the uncovering and continuation of wide-scale surveillance that wasn't physically possible in the past...

There's no hard scientific proof in economics, but it seems like our society is more capable than ever, but the benefits are distributed more narrowly, while general wages are flat to declining, the risks individualized with lesser margins in the income, those all feel like fundamental reverses in important life areas.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#435

There are a few ways to create many openings: 1. Legislate a maximum working hours (probably 2. Allow humans to undercut automation in price competition (eg abolish minimum wage) 3. Expand government to employ people for whatever, just print the money you pay them. Clearly these all come with unsatisfactory side-effects. Maybe the fix is to end our obsession with creating jobs and jobs being the form of survival we o…

#2 is probably the absolute worst possible thing to be done, and perhaps the most likely thing to be done.

Abolishing minimum wage won't cause the costs of things to come down, but it will create even more people who are given no choice but to have a job that doesn't pay them enough to live, or starve.

"Imagine if we just created 600M jobs automating all the things so that those jobs would never (or nearly never) need to be done again? The future generations would need Billions of jobs! But no one would be worse off for it."

Except for the people who aren't able to buy food or put a roof over their heads because they don't have a job.

"By automating and reducing the work that human kind has to do, we're enabling better lives all involved, including the displaced workers."

You're gonna have to explain what's better about being evicted from your apartment because you can't pay rent.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'. The current structure presumes that the right to receive a proportion of economic goods of a society should be strongly associated with employment. But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity, the 'right to work' ethic concentrates power in the hands of the managerial classes in charge of jo…

"But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity" That's highly debatable (the word "most", specifically). I've heard the argument before, but there is a reason we have labor productivity statistics that try to quantify this. "A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'." This isn't just a fault line, this is the foundation of market econo…

> there is a reason we have labor productivity statistics that try to quantify this

Productivity measures have been pretty screwed since services became the dominant labour form. If my dog groomer decides to charge me an extra 20% then her productivity has gone up by 20% - she is now producing an extra 20% of services per hour.

> But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity

I have no proof of this at all - just an anecdotal gut feel. For every content producer where I work, we have 2 agile coaches, a LEAN coach, 2 marketing types (who are probably the really productive workers - promoting and protecting an established brand monopoly), 5 ops and dev supporters (in an unreachable call centre somewhere in the world), and then an endless pyramid of middle and upper management overseeing all this process. Within this context, no one every got a pay upgrade by volunteering to reduce the size of their empire.

And, also within this context, there is a lot of unhappiness that I put down to lack of meaningful labour output making the world a better place. Meanwhile, my leisure time productivity has exploded - I consume whatever media I want in whatever form I want whenever I want. I'm at the lower socio-economic end of my tiny middle-class ecosystem but my diet would be the envy of the kings of yesteryear.

My point being is that we already have too much stuff in the world, and the existing system of trading labour for putting food on the table just encourages more stuff. I would agree that we are far from pareto efficient and are, in fact, trapped in a scheme where scarce resources like primary goods and human time are wasted. But I have no idea what the solution might look like.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say vote FOR the madness, I said vote against it. Even if that's voting for third party candidates. A vote is a metric. Non-voting gives them no reason to care about your opinion, while a vote (even for no one) means you act. [And once you consider policies, I think it's better to vote for a less-bad option that can win, but if you disagree, by all means vote 3rd party] And I'm comparing voting in this case…

> A question I like to pose: If the US system is truly unsustainable (American-style democracies are rare and have all failed save one...so far) What possible concrete definition of "American-style democracies" is there for which this is both true and meaningful (e.g., its trivially true but clearly not meaningful if the definition is so narrow that the US is the only "American-style" democracy that has ever existed.…

(NB: All of this is my understanding, and could be completely in my head. Grains of salt recommended)

An american-style democracy (also: presidential democracy) involves the following:

* Separate executive and legislative branches

* A checks-and-balances system

I believe Chile had such a system, but collapsed because they didn't have an amendment system. Whenever the US helps set up a democracy (which we've done in both heavy-handed [Japan, Germany] and more advisory means [assorted African countries, etc]), we DON'T suggest our system, but instead a parliamentary one.

The number one issue (IMNSHO) with our system is that both the president and the legislature have equal validity, so if they have a dispute, how do we decide who legitimately represents the interests of the electorate? An example of that sort of roadblock caused The Dismissal in Australia, but we have it much worse.

As I understand the various parliamentary systems, in general, the legislature is voted in, forms a majority by agreement, appoints a Prime Minister, and seats the various Secretaries (or whatever titles). Laws are written (by and large) by the bureaucracies, not the legislators. Should the Prime Minister lose the ability to get results passed, a new election is called for. [Anyone that can correct me here, please do - it's been very hard to find what happens inside the "majority forms a government" phase]

Compared to American-style democracy, a parliamentary system has fewer roadblocks, and more empowerment to the govt agencies to suggest their own rules (subject to the requests made by legislators.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#438
post #407
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The jobs did not go to robots in America, they went to workers in China. They went to robots in China. There was a very good video documentary on this in (I think) The New York Times not long ago, but I haven't been able to find it. This is close, anyway, and provides context: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robot... > The city of Dongguan plans to finish 1,000 to 1,500 “Robot Replace Human”…

They went to robots in China. One interesting thing to watch in the next few decades would be this - if more and more robots are going to be used, then countries like China will no longer have the advantage of cheap labor. A robot in the US is more or less going to cost the same as a robot in China, so there are not many reasons to send jobs elsewhere.

> A robot in the US is more or less going to cost the same as a robot in China

I have no data to back this up, but my intuition tells me that a robot made in the US (with American workers) will still cost more to make than the same robot made in China. As I say, just a hunch (I don't know how much proportion of robotic work is involved in building a robot, though I imagine more and more every day), so let's wait and see.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'. The current structure presumes that the right to receive a proportion of economic goods of a society should be strongly associated with employment. But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity, the 'right to work' ethic concentrates power in the hands of the managerial classes in charge of jo…

"But with most jobs are already meaningless from the viewpoint of economic productivity" That's highly debatable (the word "most", specifically). I've heard the argument before, but there is a reason we have labor productivity statistics that try to quantify this. "A major fault line in the current economic system is the concept of 'right to work'." This isn't just a fault line, this is the foundation of market econo…

Modern (market/captial) economies aren't an all or nothing system; tax law, regulations, and social programs are very influential and the diversity among policies for various 1st world countries show the "market" economics is a fluid force that is channeled through the framework of rules we create and modify.

Re: The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

#440
post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised nobody has mentioned a word that has been a huge help in my career, "certification". Some certifications are stupid, but many HR folks will ignore your resume if it doesn't have the magic letters they are looking for. I highly recommend going the lower cost self study route. Also, some certs are really interesting, even fun, to prepare for.

Meh, I had a PMP for a while. I let it expire because nobody cared. Besides, once you have the certification they milk you by making you earn continuing education credits (which for the most part cost money to obtain).

Thinking more of technical or trade certs that are not a money making scheme like pmp
Post reply on HN