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What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

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Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#91

Post by lastyearman »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #58
welanes wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody pays them "to remain unemployed". But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work. You could have them go break large rocks into smaller rocks if you have an ideological bent against people being unemployed but unless those rocks can be sold to somebody for more than what unemployment benefit is there's no incentive. Edit: Agree with the comments below. Rather than being idle…

But not the money to pay for these jobs....But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work. See the contradiction here? We could put these people to work engaging in labor that is valuable, but not as valuable as the cost of their welfare. I.e. pay them $7.25/hour to do $5/hour worth of labor (net cost to society = $2.25/hour). Yet we don't. Instead we pay them to play video games (net cost to soc…

So you would like government to compete in private markets with tax payers money?

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#93

Post by astazangasta »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #14
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…

> Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy. And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.

>And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.

The period in which the American economy was growing most was when it was also most organized. The post-war consensus was about scientific management of industry and the economy, not about free markets and profit maximization; that dogma only took hold in the 80s (both in business schools and in politics), and it has been a steady downhill since then from the relatively sunnier period of high-level management. The American economy was heavily planned through most of that period (mostly through the military), and the beleaguered stump remains in the form of public funds for research and development flowing into private industry (the Internet, biomedical research, semiconductors, defense, etc).

What short-term profit mostly succeeded at doing was producing the largest and most rapid accumulation of private wealth and power the world has seen in a century.

http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/upl...

Non-sequitur, I also found this, one of the coolest figures I've seen in a while: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#94

Post by clock_tower »

criley2 wrote: post #4

Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.

There hasn't been infinite work for quite a while now; I've heard the theory that Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 so that they'd have something to absorb their industrial productivity -- because they were running low on domestic stuff for factory hands to manufacture.

Of course, it didn't help that wealth was very heavily centralized in Japan -- the eight zaibatsu families, the Cho:shu and Satsuma fiefdoms (the army and navy respectively), and the imperial family owned probably a majority of the country's wealth, and the common people were too poor to buy very much or stimulate the economy...

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#95

Post by beatpanda »

njharman wrote: post #83

Honest question: Is it not widely accepted that 1) Eventually, and probably pretty soon (within 100years), that there obviously won't be jobs for everyone. Automation, progress(efficiency gains) and increasing population makes it inevitable. 2) That a general "goal" of society is do away with jobs. In any traditional sense. To me we've been approaching that ever since agriculture provided ability to support specialis…

If 2 is true our politics (at least in the U.S.) haven't caught up. We have to be comfortable with the idea of simply giving money away to people who are not earning it, or giving them more than the market would otherwise bear.

One of the ways we could do that is by making university tuition free, to say "well, if you can't get a job, you can always spend your time thinking instead." Instead we're restricting access to univerisities more and more based on the idea that a university education is only about getting a job and you should have to have "skin in the game".

We've been making it harder, not easier, for people who aren't working to access the collective product of society, and we're all poorer for that.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#96

Post by david927 »

maxharris wrote: post #78

First, there are plenty of jobs, but not enough people that have decided to develop themselves enough to have the skills to do them. For example (a real life one, unfortunately for me): I need a biopsy of a mass near my heart, but the current waiting time for this procedure here in Seattle (at both major hospitals) is two months. What we do have is plenty of regulations that constrain the supply of physicians, servic…

That's like saying there's plenty of room for musicians if you're Mozart.

The amount of investment required to develop yourself for a target field has grown astronomically, but that's been coupled with a push down in wages. I know lawyers who spent a fortune for their degree, passed the Bar, and make barely more than minimum wage.

Regulation isn't causing this; automation is causing this.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#98

Post by lastyearman »

njharman wrote: post #83

Honest question: Is it not widely accepted that 1) Eventually, and probably pretty soon (within 100years), that there obviously won't be jobs for everyone. Automation, progress(efficiency gains) and increasing population makes it inevitable. 2) That a general "goal" of society is do away with jobs. In any traditional sense. To me we've been approaching that ever since agriculture provided ability to support specialis…

1) The problem is between now and then. I don't see many willing to cut back on their lifestyle to help those whose skills are no longer valuable.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#99

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

pixie_ wrote: post #8

I feel like ancient civilizations a lot of times turned to art once their societies leveled off. Large structures, pots, roads, figures, clothing, etc.. I believe art is unlimited resource and we could have an economy running purely on art. Isn't a large portion of the economy already running off of art? Movies, games, tv, media, events. I actually feel there even a lack of art right now in terms of food, furniture,…

The problem isn't the supply; it's the demand. There are many, many artists out there. You want custom furniture? Go online and you'll find people who will make it. The problem is that not enough people can afford it. Not enough demand at an appropriate price point means that the artist starves.

Hell, I used to make handmade jewelry boxes from exotic woods. Once I realized what I would have to sell them for to get any realistic value on my time, thoughts of making that my fulltime job went flying out the window. Instead it was more fun just giving them to friends and family.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#100

Post by sedachv »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6
criley2 wrote: post #4

Is the "infinite work hypothesis" finally ending?? The answer to "what happens to workers being replaced" has always been "they'll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs", what I've seen called the "infinite work hypothesis" where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.

No, the problem is misallocation of labor. There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work. It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements. They're not done because the metrics of Wall St…

> There's a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work.

Infrastructure overinvestment is extremely destructive to the environment, and at least in Japan and China has led to economic problems:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/27/jonathanwatts

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/project_syndicate/201...

Public policy should be focusing on ways to scale down infrastructure and reduce population.

> It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements.

Job training is one of those Reaganisms that has proven not to work in a capitalist economy: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010004030...

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