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How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

theatlantic.com

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Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#21

Post by ojbyrne »

gamble wrote: post #15
ojbyrne wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial reaction to your comment is that specifically, conditions for white women with college degrees have gone from exceedingly poor to not too bad. Just saying.

Conditions for almost everyone who's not a working-class white man have improved. But it doesn't change the fact that there is a large group of people who have done very poorly and tend to vote for people who pander to their grievances. The fact that the economic crisis made things markedly worse for these people doesn't bode well for politics in the next few years, if history is any guide.

In statistics, they generally use the phrase "regression to the mean."

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#22

Post by john_lewin »

Bit of a catch-22 with harnessing the underemployed. The longer the economy maintains large numbers of underemployed, the less consumption in non-essential goods and services, and the less people buying whatever it is you sell, leading to the more underemployed, and the less consumption ... But if consumption increases, right when you can actually use all that labor they start to dissapear to proper jobs.

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#23

Post by john_lewin »

ojbyrne, you raise a great point. But still, and perhaps naively, I find myself bothered by this recession in particular. In previous recessions the backbone of America -- our immigration policy, culture of competition, education and infrastructure -- made it virtually certain that new indstries, wherever they form, would center in the US. In our present state our Universities are still the best in the world and our immigration policy, albeit under fire, is still flexible enough to attract the best and the brightest. Yet I know no less than three people (one with two successful exits and a third company in the worlds in Boudler, CO) leaving California because they want a better education for their children and the high schools are a mess. Our infrastructure is extremely old, and as to the culture of competition every year we are more protectionist in policy. It is not certain to me that we will dominate the next generation of technologies the way we did with automotive, computer, pharma and information in the past decades.

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#24

Post by ziadbc »

There must be a template article out there for journalists. When it's a slow news day you fire it up, fill in the blanks, and a few minutes later you've got an article about how 20 somethings live with their parents, have no self direction, and feel of sense of entitlement.

I think the same template has been in use for generations.

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#25

Post by ATB »

natrius wrote: post #12
ojbyrne wrote: post #4

I'm old and generally pessimistic. But I've seen enough recessions to know that when you've read the seventeenth article about the never-ending bottom (as I did during the reagan era, during the early 90s when Germany and Japan were going to destroy the US economy, and post dotcom collapse), I can't help but think it's time that the pundits will all be contradicted on the upside. Just like they were on the downside.…

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/21/business/21un... There's still a good chance that you're right, but that chance is much smaller than it would've been had you said the same thing in the 80's.

According to that graphic, the previous highest peak of long-term unemployed in the US was in the early 1980s, with around 3m unemployed. The current high peak in 2010, which looks like it may be decreasing now, is just over 6m.

According to the US census, the number of people living in the US at that point was in the low 200ish million, maybe ~230m.

As of right now, in early 2010, it's somewhere around 305-310 million. That number includes a lot of baby boomers (70+ million people, born between 1943 and 1960) who are getting very close to retirement age, especially those whose age and skill set make them unattractive to hire.

Taking into account the nearly 50% increase in US population and the rapid ageing of 70+ million people, many of whom possess skills that aren't necessarily well-suited to the information economy, the chart isn't all that shocking.

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#26

Post by hop »

If you are receiving unemployment, I can't think of a better time to start your own business. Great companies will be born out of this era that were bootstrapped all the way. I think frugality and a focus on the bottom line is a renewed theme. Even if you fail miserably you'll be light years ahead of everyone else.

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#27

Post by SapphireSun »

mbrubeck wrote: post #19

I'd love to see the ideas generated by a Y Combinator RFS for harnessing millions of unemployed/underemployed workers. Amazon Mechanical Turk is one part of the picture, and it opens up the door to more. Anything that makes it cheaper to create work, hire employees/freelancers, or find jobs is valuable in this economy. Or ways for people to earn money besides the mainstream labor economy. Or something that can genera…

That's an excellent idea. One of the things that I really would like is a way to earn money without screwing over a transitional employer by jumping ship the soon as a real job comes along.

Ideally it would be open to anyone and everyone all the time commitment free. At 3 AM, I have no idea how this magical service would work. Ask me after some sleep and coffee ;-)

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#28

Post by exit »

ojbyrne wrote: post #4

I'm old and generally pessimistic. But I've seen enough recessions to know that when you've read the seventeenth article about the never-ending bottom (as I did during the reagan era, during the early 90s when Germany and Japan were going to destroy the US economy, and post dotcom collapse), I can't help but think it's time that the pundits will all be contradicted on the upside. Just like they were on the downside.…

growth growth growth. what do we do when population growth is no longer sustainable?

Re: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America

#30

Post by pnelly »

Guys, if you really want to get a good scare, I suggest you follow Jim Rogers, and Marc Faber. These guys have been massively successful investors, because of their ability to watch the world, and they now predict a massive global upheaval. Sorry to be a downer.

http://jimrogers1.blogspot.com/ http://marcfaberchannel.blogspot.com/

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