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

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

#441

Post by Domenic_S » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:17 AM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #433

Domenic_S wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gre…

> It was just my opinion [... ]I have no right to put words in their mouths.

That's fine. But let's not pretend yours is a unique or unusual opinion.

> But the top investment bankers who were intentionally [...]

So here's another good example of the red herring that's been skillfully thrown your way. They could only do what they did because the system let them. Then they got slapped on the wrist a little (if at all) because the system doesn't punish itself.

And let's not forget: most of the people complicit in all that stuff were regular folks humping a boring job trying to make enough money to not go broke. By headcount, guaranteed those sub-$40k-a-year regular folks outnumber the terrible fatcats 10,000-to-1. They're responsible, too, but you don't see people demonstrating in front of their local mortgage broker's house. So when you (the global "you") talk about IBs ruining America and so forth, it rings pretty hollow to me because the system that let them do it in the first place is what you should blame. As long as you're distracted from that fact, you are no threat which is why knowing how to think is so important (colleges will try to trick you into believing that's what they're teaching, but they're not. Your first exercise is to figure out why they're not).

Tangent: my favorite example of this method of distraction is Obamacare. All this discussion about how to make it so everyone could afford an asprin at the hospital, and when it was all over nobody had bothered to ask why an asprin at the hospital should cost $15 in the first place. Why not? Because that's not a conversation the system wants you to have. $15 asprins build hospital wings and buy fancy new machines and pay administrators 8 figure salaries. We do not talk about the asprin.

Anyway, my point is that calling out the rich or the 1% or whatever is stupid, because they give back way more than their fair share (by the numbers). When someone/something says you need to direct your hate over that way, your first reaction should be to look and see what's the other way. The system that let banks go too far is the same system that's burying young people in student loan debt. Except this time you can't walk away! You and I both know this, but now we'll tab over to our editors and keep coding and making money and paying bills and moving on with our lives. This is why the system is the system, and we are not.

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

#442

Post by eitally » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:27 AM UTC

ju-st wrote: post #165

eitally wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true at all, although I can see where the stereotype comes from. The fact is, the more effort a potential applicant puts in before applying, the more likely they will be to get a job at the company they're targeting. That's not to say they'll get the job that's their first choice, but they may get another just that's equally good, or perhaps just a foot in the door. It always pays dividends to in…

I'm not convinced that more effort equals more success in this context. Actually I think the less effort you have to invest in getting a job the better the job will be.

The effort mostly lies in figuring out who has the authority to make a hiring decision about you and convincing them to do so. This is really tough for young professionals who don't yet have a professional network. For a lot of folks in the mid-30s and older, getting a new job is as easy as sending an email or picking up the phone (especially in tech, but also in many other industries).

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

#443

Post by intopieces » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:35 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #405

intopieces wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no shame in slinging coffee. The shame isn't in the work, the shame is in having no money to do anything: get a decent apartment, raise a family, go on vacation, provide for a spouse.

Expecting to provide for a spouse is outdated now that women are in the work place. They increased worker supply, driving down wages.

>They increased worker supply, driving down wages.

True, and the switch in economic focus from manufacturing to services hasn't helped much either. Makes me wonder how single people raise kids when the average wage/salary anticipates 2 earners.

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

#444

Post by vijayr » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:45 AM UTC

rinze wrote: post #438

vijayr wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In that case, all the American companies have to do is make the robots in China but have the factories that use those robots in the U.S :p

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

#445

Post by creamyhorror » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:49 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #364

roymurdock wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if people were moving up on aggregate, we would see the middle class growing as children of the poor made their way up. Instead, we see the middle class shrinking, the poor growing, and the wealth collecting to a smaller proportion of the population as families are being pushed down due to the recession.

Be careful with the word "aggregate", it obscures a lot of the complexity of what's going on. In aggregate, for example, the average person will remain...average. That's not a useful conclusion when looking at absolute wealth (which nobody really cares about anyway - the working poor today have more information available to them than a corporate CEO did 20 years ago, yet it doesn't do much good for them), nor is it a…

I like the thrust of your argument, but from my perspective in Singapore/Asia, that's not quite what I see.

Big corporates are aggressively moving to dominate technology niches, while still dominating their existing verticals.

* All the banks have strong deal/shopping apps

* Property developers are continuing to build ever larger malls while investing in Amazon-like marketplaces (see Matahari Mall)

* Every big corporate is investing in external startups or growing internal startups and innovation divisions

* Practically all the big startup successes in Singapore, Indonesia and China are owned, often quite directly, by well-connected families or the state

Everyone's aggressively responding to the tech upstarts and trying to control their own turf.

The US-educated scions of well-connected families are especially responsible for techologising their behemoth family businesses and launching modern apps. New local players will have difficulty competing with old money's new generation of leaders.

In other words, what I see here in Asia is the entrenchment of old money. The market is saturated with new entrants, but the leaders are those who are backed by old money, simply because of the firepower that those connections give them. I think this is fundamentally different from the situation in the Valley, where more disinterested VCs (rather than old money) back the new horses.

My assessment is from the gut rather than statistical, so I'd love to be given an alternative view.

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

#446

Post by learc83 » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:52 AM UTC

draw_down wrote: post #314

learc83 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For federal student loans, there isn't a life of indentured servitude. There are income based repayment plans that with fairly low costs per month. A single guy working at starbucks making 30k per year would only pay about $100 per month even with a 200k loan (if he had a wife and kid, he'd pay nothing). Then after 20 years the rest is forgiven.

A lot of the loans that people hold are not federal loans.

There's about $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loans. $1 trillion of that is in federal student loans.

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

#447

Post by verbin217 » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

raould42 wrote: post #421

verbin217 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more self-aware of them know that there is nothing good that comes out of drawing attention to their good fortune. I'm part of this trend and I hate it. I have to be careful who I tell anything to. Many people dislike me for it. The world is so weird. I spend so much time pursuing utility via automation. It's so sad to see it mostly alienate people. Just as all of this stuff is becoming so easy and accessible.…

Please do tell re: automation. The first thing that comes to mind is trading. Or cue cards a la http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wo... .

Just software development in general. I started programming to get my math homework done faster.

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

#448

Post by xrange » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:42 AM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #417

xrange wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Interesting. Do you see this as more of a failure in your upbringing, or of a failure of society to live up to your expectations? Has this realization changed your political thinking in any ways?

I think young people should always respect their elders, even though they can and will be wrong at times. Doctors, engineers, politicians, teachers, parents - they're all fallible. I don't think my upbringing was a failure - I think it's pretty normal to be extremely idealistic when you're raised in a middle class, educated bubble like I was. Most of my friends had great, successful parents and I think we all just as…

>I think it's pretty normal to be extremely idealistic when you're raised in a middle class, educated bubble like I was.

So if you have kids someday, would you hope to raise them to be "worldly" or to have lived in a protective bubble?

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

#449

Post by xrange » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 2:46 AM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #394

roymurdock wrote: post #143

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…

Peter Norvig's Economics Simulation is informative in this case. Without forced redistribution, most OECD nations will become 3rd world eventually. It's a mathematical certainty. Even with forced redistribution, the rich still get and stay rich. http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Economics...

Am I missing something? It seems like all those transactions are merely exchanges, and no wealth has actually been created (i.e. new ipads, hepatitis treatments, Taylor Swift concert tickets, food grown, etc.).

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

#450

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Oct 14, 2015, 3:15 AM UTC

DaveWalk wrote: post #323

ChuckMcM wrote: post #211

These stories are always interesting to read, both from what they say, and what they don't say. For example, do you know that world wide there is a shortage of people in various trades roles[1] ? (Welding, masonry, carpentry, electricians, etc) And why are their young people who are loading up on debt they can't afford to go to Ivy league schools when they can be just as successful going to state schools? How much pa…

> Assuming you are paying them a living wage, what economic output could [200-300 million people] accomplish that would be "worth" say 5 to 15 trillion dollars a year? A good thought experiment! My initial thought was a spiritual successor to WPA-like projects of the depression, but I'm not very well-read on the economic outcomes. My layman view at least sees the humanitarian and creative output of such projects. But…

Since the number presented was world wide, I expect just the US would be a smaller number, but it would certainly be interesting to offer young people an opportunity to participate in a service program which was not a military outfit. So you spend 2 years of service shoring up infrastructure or working to rebuild cities ravaged by flood or other disaster. In exchange you get basic clothes, room and board, and perhaps payback on any student loans you have outstanding.