Say Hello to Full Employment • Hacker News Board

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#101

Post by canada_dry » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #65

saudioger wrote: post #7

We're also 9 years away from the end of the last recession. The longest we've gone without a recession in the past 100 years is 10 years.

Goes to show that Obama did much better than he was often given credit for. While Obamacare fell fall short of the medicare for all that is needed by business - imagine not having to worry about covering healthcare for employees for your startup - his overall job of captaining the ship through incredibly hard times was very successful.

This.

Sadly, it's highly likely that the current administration will - of course take credit - but more importantly - reap all the rewards (i.e. votes) in the next federal election.

I still am amazed at how Obama pulled the US from the brink of utter financial collapse shortly after taking office. Hopefully the next incoming administration will be as lucky.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#102

Post by throwawaymath » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:35 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #90

throwawaymath wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is a reasonable indicator. In the absence of superior evidence, it is better to intelligently work from past data than it is to throw darts.

No, it isn't. Throwing darts is probably actually a better way to make predictions about a stochastic process than naive chartism.

I'm not going to rehash the finer points of a debate that stubbornly refuses to die among armchair economists online. But for the benefit of everyone else reading this thread:

1. The market, and the macroeconomic system in general, is not a purely stochastic process. This is a meme.

2. If by "naive chartism" you mean technical analysis, then sure, I agree. But if you're attempting to reduce the entirety of academic and industrial economic theory and practice to "naive chartism", then your middle brow dismissal here is both incorrect and breathtakingly arrogant.

Our entire economic system is predicated on the idea that there exist inefficiencies that can be profitably capitalized on through cause and effect. No one professionally or academically familiar with this idea claims it's a guarantee, but they also don't dismiss the concept of past data being a useful but imperfect measurement for the future state of things.

Even Fama walked back from the strong EMH, and to claim that we can derive no insight about the future from the past is to utterly dismantle everything we know about the credit debt cycle and market macrostructure. If you'd like to believe that then more power to you, but implicit in that belief is a fair amount of hubris.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#103

Post by HillaryBriss » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

lainga wrote: post #28

wgerard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The openings seem to be largely in trades or nonskilled labor: > Competition for workers has gone crazy, Joe McConville, who co-owns a popular chain of made-from-scratch pizza restaurants, told me. “At almost every restaurant that I’ve worked at, you always had a stack of applications waiting,” he said. “You’d call somebody up and half the time they're still looking for an extra job. That’s not happening anymore.” >…

The last sentence is the big problem. I feel like a lot of industries didn't just make the best of the advantageous labour market in the last 10 years, they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it (i.e., on cheap and easily-replaced human capital). Now that labour's tight again, they're finding that they've worked themselves into a hole they can't get out of.

yes. i often think that, too. from the article itself:

Yet the experience of towns like Ames and Des Moines show that such “labor shortages” might be due to insufficient wages and crummy working conditions — not an unwillingness of workers to switch industries or improve their skills for a job.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#104

Post by TACIXAT » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #37

crb002 wrote: post #32

Des Moines resident. "Full" just means that the number of minimum wage jobs exceed the number of those unemployed. Software industry here is total crap. Only large tech employers are Principal, Wells Fargo, DuPont, John Deere. Principal will tank when the market drops (company almost tracks large index funds), they have already hearded most employees into shared community desks like cattle with draconian policies aga…

> Only large tech employers are Principal, Wells Fargo, DuPont, John Deere. Those are pretty impressive honestly. Wells Fargo is 2008 Bank of America. They will do everything they can to improve their image -- good time to join actually, IMO. DuPont will be fine. JD can become a dinosaur and still live another 50+ years on name alone.

I've heard John Deere has a lot of self-driving / automation for their farm equipment. That sounds like it would be interesting.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#105

Post by TimTheTinker » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #82

spir wrote: post #47

This article seems to use the terms "unemployed" and "jobless" interchangeably. People who stop searching for jobs (eg. due to despondence or poor health) are excluded from the official unemployment rate, yet they are jobless. On a recent EconTalk, Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, said, in their recent sample, 11.9% of U.S. men aged 25-55 have been jobless for over 12 mont…

Does that take into account the incarcerated? From Wikipedia: > In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the U.S. resident population. It's very difficult to find work with a criminal record in the US.

And yet, without enough legitimate work opportunities, those with criminal records are strongly incentivized to resort to grey and black markets (or theft) to make a living. A vicious cycle.

We've got to get rid of the mindset that we need to "protect ourselves", both corporately and individually, from "dangerous people" (i.e. former criminals) by excluding them from our lives and our companies. "Love your neighbor as yourself" applies to them also. Love always involves risk. A noble society values redemption more than safety. Work itself is ennobling, especially when trust and responsibility can be earned.

That's not to say we should ignore background check results. But a crime (or crimes) in the past shouldn't mean they're automatically excluded.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#106

Post by HillaryBriss » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #54

lainga wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence is the big problem. I feel like a lot of industries didn't just make the best of the advantageous labour market in the last 10 years, they reshaped themselves to become dependent on it (i.e., on cheap and easily-replaced human capital). Now that labour's tight again, they're finding that they've worked themselves into a hole they can't get out of.

Business just got a massive tax cut. They can dig themselves out by spending on increasing productivity and paying higher wages. The economy needs to be run very hot for an extended period of time, instead of getting crashed by an obnoxiously over-eager Fed that likes to kick the economy into a recession to dampen wage growth for the benefit of businesses in the guise of controlling inflation. Businesses need to be m…

Run the economy as hot as we can get it for as long as we can and shove wages through the roof at the cost of business margins (which were just considerably boosted via the tax cuts).

i gotta say, this idea has some appeal. since businesses tend to use the new tax savings for stock buybacks or paying out dividends instead of hiring and expanding, force their hand a little.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#107

Post by dev_dull » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #72

spir wrote: post #47

This article seems to use the terms "unemployed" and "jobless" interchangeably. People who stop searching for jobs (eg. due to despondence or poor health) are excluded from the official unemployment rate, yet they are jobless. On a recent EconTalk, Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, said, in their recent sample, 11.9% of U.S. men aged 25-55 have been jobless for over 12 mont…

I can't help but feel the unemployment rate is so politicized that its facts and statistics will continue to be cherrypicked outside of reality.

Is it called the Wells Fargo effect now? When you optimize for a number, you'll get that number -- and it will deceive you.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#108

Post by hnlurker » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #29

hnlurker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should stop playing the lottery? Average adult American spends over $300 per year on lottery tickets[0]. I'm all out of sympathy for smokers that get lung cancer, and other self-induced disasters. [0] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/07/heres-what-americ...

Saving that $300 a year at a highly unlikely 10% interest ends up being $36k after 25 years. It's not solving any problems. To even save up that $500 minimum would take 2 years. We can't just blame it on a single straw-man.

I was just responding to the often cited claim that average Americans would be devastated by an unexpected $500 expense. They're spending $300+ on lottery tickets, and yet can't cover a $500 expense. It seems a rather simple solution to me.. don't throw away your money on lottery tickets.

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#109

Post by tastythrowaway » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #15

saudioger wrote: post #7

We're also 9 years away from the end of the last recession. The longest we've gone without a recession in the past 100 years is 10 years.

It helps that we've been at war for ~17 years straight and are still largely quantitatively easing things.

We've been in armed conflict somewhere or another for over a century straight

Re: Say Hello to Full Employment

#110

Post by User23 » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #102

User23 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. Throwing darts is probably actually a better way to make predictions about a stochastic process than naive chartism.

I'm not going to rehash the finer points of a debate that stubbornly refuses to die among armchair economists online. But for the benefit of everyone else reading this thread: 1. The market, and the macroeconomic system in general, is not a purely stochastic process. This is a meme. 2. If by "naive chartism" you mean technical analysis, then sure, I agree. But if you're attempting to reduce the entirety of academic a…

You appear to be making an effort to come off as intelligent and I thought you might like to know that your accusations of arrogance when your post drips with it seriously undermines that.

You fail to grasp a fundamental reality: data about the past can only tell us about the past. Data about the present can be useful for making predictions. Some of it is so useful that using it is criminally prosecuted by the SEC.

By "naive" I mean any approach that relies solely on trends rather than an actual understanding of underlying causal factors. Sadly there are so many of those factors that a correct analysis is virtually impossible, but that's no excuse not to try since some factors tend to dominate others and those can sometimes be found.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gurufocus_userupload/508204100.jpg