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We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

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Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#121

Post by orangecat »

petercooper wrote: post #40
ikarous wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the long term, but you make a good point. Asimov posited that increased automation would temporarily increase unemployment but that the net benefit would always be positive. He thought that automation would allow human beings to focus on more interesting and rewarding jobs. The unspoken assumption is that these more interesting jobs are plentiful enough to support the displaced workers assuming tha…

Ok, cool, seems like we're thinking along similar lines :-) The problem I see, however, is perhaps different to the one you pose. As distasteful as this sounds, I suggest that perhaps the "average" person is ill equipped to deal with those more interesting and rewarding jobs, given that they're likely to require significant technical or creative skills. Can we bring "the masses", as it were, up to the levels of talen…

Perhaps the future is just one where more of us end up on welfare and the government keeps us going on the spoils of the extremely smart and/or powerful.

I think that's essentially correct. The non-singularity non-fiscal-collapse endgame is that everything we need and almost everything we want can be produced by a small fraction of the population, and most people don't have sufficient skills and knowledge to be economically productive. When you're trying to cure cancer or build self-driving cars, 10 brilliant PhDs beat 1000 average high school graduates.

Prediction: the idea of a universal guaranteed income (e.g. Milton Friedman's negative income tax) will steadily become more popular.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#122

Post by natmaster »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

Technology has been killing jobs for a long time. Why do you think it hasn't before? Do you find your self blacksmithing, or does a machine do that for you?

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#123

Post by CamperBob »

locopati wrote: post #108
CamperBob wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single case where wealth disparity alone has been sufficient to cause civil unrest, massive or otherwise.

Does this count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_French_Revolution

No, the French Revolution occurred because of active exploitation and abuse of the lower classes. The French people were not sitting around debating whether to spend the evening playing with their PS3s, going out for pizza, or mailing out a few more resumes. They were sitting around starving.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#124

Post by jerf »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #68
jerf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Public works DO create jobs, it's an empirical fact." No it's not. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It's never that simple. Along with the obvious broken window fallacy problems, you have to look at how you are paying for that public work. Taxing a net two median-pay jobs out of existence to create a single public works median-pay job is destroying a job, not creating one.

The definition of "public works" is building things using State money. There is no way to build roads without hiring people. This is an empirical fact. Unless you know of some way to maintain or build streets without hiring people? Again, it is an empirical fact that public works create jobs. At least public works that require hiring people. It's not hard to understand. Work needing to be done creates jobs, whether t…

Sorry, I have this truly bizarre habit of trying to account for both the benefits and the costs of a given policy.

It's a fast way to Total Political Unpopularity, believe me! But alas, I'm an engineer at heart.

Creating jobs is trivial. It's not even remotely interesting. Creating net jobs is the interesting question. And you can't prove you've created net jobs until you look on both sides of the ledger. It's a bizarre, crazy, foreign idea, I know, but it also has the virtue of corresponding to reality much better.

If more politicians (and dare I say, even economists) did this more often we'd be in a lot less trouble right now.

And yes, you seem to have totally missed my point.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#125

Post by CamperBob »

simonsarris wrote: post #119
CamperBob wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single case where wealth disparity alone has been sufficient to cause civil unrest, massive or otherwise.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was pretty much entirely caused by a loss of jobs -> massive wealth disparity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Turban_Rebellion

Like the French Revolution example, this was caused by exploitation and abuse rather than the simple fact of someone's bank account being fatter than someone else's.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#126

Post by dreamdu5t »

jerf wrote: post #124
dreamdu5t wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of "public works" is building things using State money. There is no way to build roads without hiring people. This is an empirical fact. Unless you know of some way to maintain or build streets without hiring people? Again, it is an empirical fact that public works create jobs. At least public works that require hiring people. It's not hard to understand. Work needing to be done creates jobs, whether t…

Sorry, I have this truly bizarre habit of trying to account for both the benefits and the costs of a given policy. It's a fast way to Total Political Unpopularity, believe me! But alas, I'm an engineer at heart. Creating jobs is trivial . It's not even remotely interesting. Creating net jobs is the interesting question. And you can't prove you've created net jobs until you look on both sides of the ledger. It's a biz…

I agree, but the OP's point is a false dichotomy: That investment in entrepreneurship is a net benefit, but any investment in public works is a net loss.

Using roads as an example for public works not providing a net gain isn't very convincing... considering our entire society is now predicated on their existence.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#127

Post by entangld »

achompas wrote: post #64
msluyter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One answer, and I don't know if this is the right answer, is that unlike in previous revolutions, a new class of jobs has not been created to (fully) replace the jobs that are being displaced. In the industrial revolution, farmers could move to the city and get a job in the factory. In the (first) information revolution, factory workers could become telephone operators. But as Tyler Cowen notes in "The Great Stagnati…

IAAE, so I'll address this: jobs are not being "displaced" or permanently "eliminated" right now. There's a simple, plausible explanation for all of this: 1. Businesses are hesitant to invest in capital. 2. The housing market is terrible right now--especially housing starts. 3. Jobs related to #2 and #3 generally go to lower-skilled workers. They're the ones who are struggling right now (with something like 16% unemp…

Isn't a very large proportion of American labor unskilled? Real unemployment is always worse than the figure they give (when you account for people who stopped looking).

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#128

Post by thisuser »

ken_railey wrote: post #47
dreamdu5t wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted because my post is snarky? My point is factually valid. Public works DO create jobs, it's an empirical fact. Just because the OP hates the idea doesn't mean public works don't create jobs. Maybe he thinks UPS should fill the potholes, but either way, the only way to fill them is to hire people to fill them, whether the government or private business does it doesn't change the fact that someone was hired to…

Public works also destroy jobs, since the wealth to fund them has to first be extracted from the public.

There is no evidence that lowering tax rates creates jobs.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#129

Post by idonthack »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #66
ChristianMarks wrote: post #10

The OP's post could use some context. Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage was forged in a world where labor and capital were essentially fixed. England could weave cloth more efficiently than Spain, but Spain could make wine more efficiently than England. Therefore, they would both benefit from trade given that each of these countries had a comparative benefit or efficiency to offer. The assumption under compa…

"substandard conditions" this needs to stop. you compare the working conditions of the laborer in china with the laborer in the US and bemoan the conditions. instead compare the laborer in china with the country field worker in china. you can't magic a billion people into the middle class lifestyle that you find the minimum tolerable. the 2000-2010 has been the greatest decade in all of human history in terms of the…

you can't magic a billion people into the middle class lifestyle, but you can use a gun to keep them away from it.

i have no doubt those field workers in China would prefer the wages available to field workers in America, and if they could move to take advantage of that, they would.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#130

Post by caffeine5150 »

Three things stand out in my mind as to what's making job recovery so challenging in the wake of the 2008 crisis:

1. Unlike e.g. the tech crash of 2000, 2008 was a crisis of credit, the lifeblood of all other industries. Their cautiousness in beginning to lend again will make recovery and therefore jobs growth extra long.

2. The 2008 crisis forced companies to find new efficiencies. Whole layers of middle management were eliminated in many cases without any downside and remaining employees were fine working harder to keep their jobs. Those 'unnecessary' excess positions take a long time to come back. It will require companies to feel flush and to get lax on this again.

3. I think most importantly, our economy largely comes down to consumer spending and the housing bubble didn't just drive inflated housing prices; it also enabled home equity lines of credit to buy boats, etc. Coupled with loose credit card lending standards, our economy was built upon unsustainable growth in consumer credit. I don't know when such a consumer credit environment will come back, but again, it will have to be preceded by a sort of boom in the economy.

I agree that 'technology efficiency' etc. are not helping, but the heart of it are 1, 2 & 3 above.

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