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9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

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Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#151

Post by chernevik »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #122
chernevik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is training, and a passivity-inducing misconception of "entrepreneurship". And the solution is: 1) A flood of government equity, distributed by those ever-so-entrepreneurial bureaucrats. There is, of course, no chance that the same people who brought us ethanol subsidies ("so stupid not even the Soviets tried it"), the Fannie Mae housing bubble and the $3000 hammer won't screw it up. 2) A no-cost-to-go…

"1) A flood of government equity, distributed by those ever-so-entrepreneurial bureaucrats. There is, of course, no chance that the same people who brought us ethanol subsidies ("so stupid not even the Soviets tried it"), the Fannie Mae housing bubble and the $3000 hammer won't screw it up." It would be put into a trust, disbursed and managed as a credit union by participant states and guaranteed by the NCUA, not cen…

You know, your own response raises the elaborated problems to your proposals. But you're so committed to your preferred end-state that you've flipped the obvious answers. State bureaucrats will be smarter than federal? because they're "decentralized"? Healthy people will pay premium for a program that will take them at any time? C'mon man, really?

This stuff doesn't even link up with your first explanation of the problem.

You can see the details enough to see the problems, but you see the implications and don't like them. So you find ways to overlook them without even noticing what you've done. You are outsmarting yourself. It's precisely because you are so smart that you have driven yourself to positions that make no sense.

THAT is the problem. I could pose mathematical proofs of a contrary approach and you'd still fight it.

Because you are smart enough to see that going after the real problems in education would touch some fundamental and touchy subjects: parental responsibility, what "equality" and "fairness" really mean, whether we _can_ educate _everyone_, whether "teachers" as currently organized as a benevolent as they claim. And so on. Lord only knows what the final answers would be, but even talking about this stuff would be enough to blow the Progressive Coalition into a thousand tiny pieces. So we don't go for the central, systemic problems of the main program, we write scads of bug-catching programs to sit atop them and intercept the bugs. That would never work in code, and it won't work for government.

THAT is the offer. You are going about the problem all wrong -- your approach goes against everything you (meaning "you" as a stereotyped smart, problem-solving, elegance-seeking, Hacker News ur-type) do so well, day in and day out.

Now, I apologize for the grandiose generalizations and stereotyping and the reckless assumptions about goals and mental state. I just don't understand why such brilliant people are so routinely taken with "solutions" of a pattern they wouldn't tolerate for 15 seconds in their work. Go ahead, downvote this too, I suppose it deserves it -- but holy mackerel, I just don't get it.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#152

Post by protomyth »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #141
gaius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the same years experience, and putting the same hours in, I'd be earning as much as a plumber today as I am as a database administrator, I am certain of it. Maybe even more, for fewer hours. It's all about supply and demand, plumbing is something I'm sure more people could learn than could learn to be a DBA, just no-one wants to, yet we all still need our pipes seen to...

This is all very true, but you are leaving out the part about dealing with human feces.

Truthfully, a lot of plumbers never see that type of stuff. New construction and other industries. Although, those willing to deal with it had an hourly rate that makes many programmers envious.

Although, as a programmer, I had to remove a dead rat from a track (rail) after the cart (electrified, motor model size) carrying medical samples hit it. It was quite the shock climbing the ladder, opening the false ceiling, and then doing the horror-movie-style 180 with the flashlight.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#153

Post by jimbokun »

jshen wrote: post #124
gaius wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the use of the word "real". You got to come out of the other side of whatever theoretical or practical education you choose with something that makes you an asset. Education is supposed to transform you from a consumer into a producer. That's what "real" is. Tangible. I've never been to Canada but I love Eastern Europe, there's a buzz there, an energy that drove these kids to learn English and travel to where th…

"Education is supposed to transform you from a consumer into a producer" What the ....? I'm guessing there are many reasons to get an education, but isn't the primary reason to understand the world better than before?

"I'm guessing there are many reasons to get an education, but isn't the primary reason to understand the world better than before?"

Surely that's rhetorical?

Do you honestly think most people pursue education primarily to understand the world better, and not to increase their earning potential?

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#155

Post by eru »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #110
iqster wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is theory and there is practice. Before suggesting any additional funds for SBA loans, I would suggest you read David Einhorn's book "Fooling Some Of The People All of the Time". In short, when the govt. guarantees loans, loan standards go down and fraud goes up. Yes, there are checks and balances in place but motivated parties find ways to scam the system. It is a travesty how much wastage there is in the proc…

Perhaps if it were a national system that is centrally-controlled and disbursed end-to-end, fraud could be rampant; but if it were placed in a credit union-type "trusts" managed by each participating states, it would cut down alot more on the inherent single-point-of-fraud scenarios you envision, or at the very least contain it to the few fraudulent areas.

Just stick to the simplified health care, and leave out the credit idea.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#156

Post by gregpilling »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #141
gaius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the same years experience, and putting the same hours in, I'd be earning as much as a plumber today as I am as a database administrator, I am certain of it. Maybe even more, for fewer hours. It's all about supply and demand, plumbing is something I'm sure more people could learn than could learn to be a DBA, just no-one wants to, yet we all still need our pipes seen to...

This is all very true, but you are leaving out the part about dealing with human feces.

I have a friend with a sewage pumping business. He pays his drivers $40,000+ per year (high school education not required) and is a millionaire himself. There is money in handling 'issues' that other people don't want to handle.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#157

Post by agilebyte »

gaius wrote: post #70
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #54

IMO, the problem is much more than just automation and advancement in technology. It's actually far graver, and maybe inexorable at least in the short term. Hate the man or his policies (or both), but you can't deny President Obama's observation that training education is the real problem in the so-called "jobless recovery". America as it currently stands has a total, almost prideful disregard for education (public a…

EXACTLY the same problem in the UK. Under the last government's social engineering caper, millions of teenagers who would otherwise have learned a trade (electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc) from their fathers instead were swindled into going to hastily built "new universities" to get worthless, made-up degrees in "Media Studies" (and a mountain of debt). Now they're not only unemployed but unemployable - and all ou…

Let us not forget though, that if you see a foreign worker, then you will more likely than not have come across someone that has decided to do something different than the rest of his/her peers, often times leaving friends & family behind in their home country. The goal? To make money/open up to different opportunities, perhaps with a vision to one day return. Thus you will see people more motivated, because the ones that aren't have stayed home. As for people respecting honest work, the shortage of "traders" can be seen in Central & Eastern Europe as well and is being filled by people from beyond the region. There is not an overproduction of these skills in CEE.

Also, I see it as a great opportunity (for say the UK) to have people from the rest of the EU. I mean, you did not have to pay for 18 years of their education and health care. That is not bad for the taxpayer.

Disclaimer: I am Czech and used to work as a fruit picker during Summer months :)

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#158

Post by william42 »

gasull wrote: post #142

Unemployment happens because: 1. Producing in China is cheaper, so companies move production and jobs there. 2. China sells to the US while the US sells nothing to China but dollars. 3. This is possible because the US can print as many dollars as it pleases. 4. And that is possible because we left the gold standard in 1971 and unemployment has been growing since then, along with our trade and fiscal deficit. If we ha…

If we had gold standard: 1. There would be deflation. 2. Deflation would mean that rich investors would hoard dollars instead of spending them, meaning that very little investment would be done. 3. China wouldn't be able to produce as much, meaning that they wouldn't be able to build many factories, etc. 4. China would be a subsistence farming economy. America would be the source of computer manufacturing, but only the rich could buy them.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#159

Post by makmanalp »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #54

IMO, the problem is much more than just automation and advancement in technology. It's actually far graver, and maybe inexorable at least in the short term. Hate the man or his policies (or both), but you can't deny President Obama's observation that training education is the real problem in the so-called "jobless recovery". America as it currently stands has a total, almost prideful disregard for education (public a…

I think the example to take here is the German education system: They were proponents of the idea that college isn't the only way. They had a second option, which is vocational school. These often have no tuition.

This is the type of school you don't usually go to 5 days a week. Instead, you split that time between school and apprenticeship (i.e. internship). That way, you're forced to see the industry from day 1 and there's no situations where you graduate without being employable (as I often see in CS majors these days).

The result is that you have training as a skilled technician, and can make a good living immediately. The industry also has skilled workers to fill their gaps. It seems like a no brainer to me. You don't need a 4 year university diploma for everything.

Also, it blows my mind that industry bitches and moans about having no workers yet makes no effort in that direction either. My school, WPI, was founded back in the 1860s by industrymen as a "free school for industrial science". Where is this sensibility now? 20 odd companies and approximately 200 citizens helped build the buildings for the school. What happened to this sense of community?

Edit: Now that I think about it, on a slightly unrelated note, why don't universities have mandatory internships anymore? The more, the better.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#160

Post by Hyena »

This article seems pretty off-base. It's true that established businesses more rarely need to hire people because technology has eliminated a lot of clerical jobs, but the flip side is that there are lots of smaller companies now as well which only exist because they don't need to hire three secretaries and a file clerk.

More importantly, though, the major problem in unemployment is that only 35% or so of the population have a college education. For them, unemployment is closer to 3% right now. Most of that 9.2% is out of work because demand is weak. People's skills didn't suddenly become obsolete at the stroke of midnight sometime in 2008. They were all formerly employed doing the exact moderately skilled work they'll be doing again when-and-if demand recovers the trend.

They'll be doing it for precisely the same reason that an astrophysics Ph.D. is not in itself all the useful: most jobs are nebulous, ill-defined and require people to obtain new skills as they work. That is, the rest of the economy runs like the picture of the Valley HN likes to paint but with different skill and problem sets (and pay scales). That means an economy with lots of specialized workers, sure, but it also means lots of "office hackers" who just find ways to get things done as they come up.

They'll be employed again, to do ill-defined jobs once demand recovers enough to start needing people who can just make things happen.

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