Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Can All Become Job Creators

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 101 posts

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#11

Post by hugh3 »

randomdata wrote: post #8
hugh3 wrote: post #3

We need to stop talking about "job creation" and start talking about "wealth creation". It's easy to create jobs -- e.g. I can go round breaking windows with rocks and create jobs for glaziers. But creating jobs that create wealth -- that is, to create an opportunity for someone else to join their labour with my capital in order to build something that someone wishes to pay for, thus enriching all three of us... well…

The main reason businesses aren't hiring is that they're not convinced that putting extra people on staff will actually be profitable. I believe it is deeper than that. If we look to agriculture, there is a short expiration date on the job. If you don't get the crop off in a timely manner, you are quickly going to be out of business. I hear farmers constantly complaining how difficult it is to find good people, but t…

What proportion of jobs in the United States are in programming or things analogous to programming?

What proportion of jobs in the United States are in agriculture, manufacturing, or things analogous to agriculture and manufacturing?

I think you may be suffering from short-sightedness, and assuming that the whole world looks a lot more like your corner of it than it does.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#12

Post by pcowans »

randomdata wrote: post #8
hugh3 wrote: post #3

We need to stop talking about "job creation" and start talking about "wealth creation". It's easy to create jobs -- e.g. I can go round breaking windows with rocks and create jobs for glaziers. But creating jobs that create wealth -- that is, to create an opportunity for someone else to join their labour with my capital in order to build something that someone wishes to pay for, thus enriching all three of us... well…

The main reason businesses aren't hiring is that they're not convinced that putting extra people on staff will actually be profitable. I believe it is deeper than that. If we look to agriculture, there is a short expiration date on the job. If you don't get the crop off in a timely manner, you are quickly going to be out of business. I hear farmers constantly complaining how difficult it is to find good people, but t…

I'm not sure that's true - it's definitely not true when you have limited funding and aren't profitable yet, but for the most part the tech world moves on and products have a finite, and generally pretty short, lifetime.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#13

Post by OstiaAntica »

pcowans wrote: post #6
hugh3 wrote: post #3

We need to stop talking about "job creation" and start talking about "wealth creation". It's easy to create jobs -- e.g. I can go round breaking windows with rocks and create jobs for glaziers. But creating jobs that create wealth -- that is, to create an opportunity for someone else to join their labour with my capital in order to build something that someone wishes to pay for, thus enriching all three of us... well…

I disagree - I'm not an economist, but certainly here in the UK there's a lot of talk about access to credit being a significant limiting factor. Hence the government's 'credit easing' program, which is aimed at lending directly to businesses where the banks won't: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/03/george-osborn...

A lot of the growth of the last decade was driven by unsustainable private and public borrowing and spending. Most people in the political class are desperate to get the credit bubble-blowing machine running again, by having the state subsidize un-economic loans to un-creditworthy businesses and individuals.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#14

Post by jen123 »

I've seen some small businesses go under because they haven't been paid on time. They borrow capital to pay their employees until their customer gets around to paying them...This especially occurs if the customer is big and the business that is servicing them is small.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#15

Post by amikula »

fleitz wrote: post #10
redwood wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose for a moment, that putting extra people on staff will never again be more profitable than not hiring them at all. What then should society do? I'm totally open to the idea that the supposition above may be ludicrous, but would like to see how we will create the wealth you describe.

At that point we've likely reached a point of abundance and can use the non-human labour we're using to provide a nice life for everyone. At that point the major metrics of the economy switch from something akin to GNP to Gross National Happiness.

Actually the people who had the wealth to build the non-human labor force become the rulers of our society. Their corporations will become the new governments and campaign against one another for control of resources. What happens at that point is anyone's guess.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#16

Post by hvs »

hugh3 wrote: post #3

We need to stop talking about "job creation" and start talking about "wealth creation". It's easy to create jobs -- e.g. I can go round breaking windows with rocks and create jobs for glaziers. But creating jobs that create wealth -- that is, to create an opportunity for someone else to join their labour with my capital in order to build something that someone wishes to pay for, thus enriching all three of us... well…

I generally feel (and this is generally due to my Austrian economic leanings) that talking about easier access to capital (through artificially lowering interest rates) is confusing the symptoms with the disease. We need to build up the capital in this country through saving and investment in companies, but that is not accomplished by just wishing it (through economic manipulation). We are in the midst of a massive hangover and drinking more won't fix that, it'll just make us worse alcoholics.

erm.. end rant

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#17

Post by randomdata »

hugh3 wrote: post #11
randomdata wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason businesses aren't hiring is that they're not convinced that putting extra people on staff will actually be profitable. I believe it is deeper than that. If we look to agriculture, there is a short expiration date on the job. If you don't get the crop off in a timely manner, you are quickly going to be out of business. I hear farmers constantly complaining how difficult it is to find good people, but t…

What proportion of jobs in the United States are in programming or things analogous to programming? What proportion of jobs in the United States are in agriculture, manufacturing, or things analogous to agriculture and manufacturing? I think you may be suffering from short-sightedness, and assuming that the whole world looks a lot more like your corner of it than it does.

It is not about absolute values, it is about trends. There's no question the tech sector is small, relatively speaking, but agriculture and manufacturing jobs are shrinking while technology-based jobs are growing.

For every job lost in agriculture and manufacturing, there is a new job in the tech industry. However, unless you are highly skilled, nobody will be interested in you. That is the problem. Farmers desperately want skilled people too, but they will hire anyone if they absolutely have to, simply because the job has to be done. In tech, if you can't find that perfect programmer, it doesn't matter all that much if it takes an additional six months to start the product.

Google claims they have approximately 2,000 open positions at all times. If those jobs had to be filled at all cost, they would have no trouble finding people. There are more than 2,000 unemployed people in the USA. The point is that they aren't really in need of filling those roles, it is more of a "nice to have" thing. They are waiting for great people.

My corner is agriculture and technology, so I get to see the vast differences in how people are hired.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#18

Post by invalidOrTaken »

hugh3 wrote: post #3

We need to stop talking about "job creation" and start talking about "wealth creation". It's easy to create jobs -- e.g. I can go round breaking windows with rocks and create jobs for glaziers. But creating jobs that create wealth -- that is, to create an opportunity for someone else to join their labour with my capital in order to build something that someone wishes to pay for, thus enriching all three of us... well…

A good question to ask is---do we want to create jobs?

"Job" has a variety of meanings. It can mean a great opportunity, or it can mean devalued wage slavery. Usually it means filling a role as an economic input in the profit machine someone is constructing.

The killer development that would create a bunch of jobs at a stroke would be

  a tool
  that lets companies profit
  by hiring uneducated people.
But there are other options for helping the masses than jobs. On the cost reduction front, cheap home solar energy would be huge in terms of saving people from their utility bills. Optimized-for-small-garden strains of crops could play the same role with food.

Also, there are some scenarios where something doesn't create jobs per se, but certainly allows people to make wealth. The rise of the OSS stack was one, and 3d printing might become another.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#19

Post by OstiaAntica »

redwood wrote: post #2

Interesting, glad to see, at the very least, a bit of patriotism returning to the idea of jobs. In big companies the push to outsource is strong and political correctness prevents much dissent. Would still like to see a government regulation help as well: e.g. perhaps companies with more employees per profit would have a tax incentive and companies with fewer employees per profit would have a penalty. This way you es…

Well, currently the government punishes companies that hire employees-- all sorts of payroll, worker's comp, and unemployment taxes, and also workplace legal liability that is extreme in the U.S. To the degree there is already a lot of central planning in U.S. labor markets, the government actively works against employment.

Re: We Can All Become Job Creators

#20

Post by chadmalik »

This is great. That said, its time to cut the crap. The US government has all time low rates on long term treasuries. There's plenty of stuff that needs doing. There's an army of unemployed. And most importantly, there's really no profitable investment opportunities in a lot of the country due to negative real interest rates and flat consumer demand. Business just isn't capable of digging us out of this ditch. Its time to stop genuflecting to the Randroids. Government is a part of the economy. Without government we wouldn't have things like, oh, let me think...THE INTERNET. This idea that the government can't do anything to fix this situation is just insane.

Its time for a serious New New Deal program that puts people to work doing stuff. Obama is clearly a complete coward of a politician. The Republican party is off the deep end. People need to DEMAND serious fiscal stimulus that creates jobs paid by the government fixing things, teaching, researching, building infrastructure, etc. There's plenty of buildings, parks, etc. still standing that were built during the New Deal in the 30s. We need another similar effort. Now.

Post reply on HN