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Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

salon.com

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Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#21

Post by nwj »

tnuc wrote: post #4
jstalin wrote: post #2

"It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair." It's because we've been pacified through handouts and the welfare state. There's no longer a need to think about working hard and getting out of the unemployment morass we're in. Government will take care of you! Food stamp spending is at all-time record levels. Millions more people have gon…

Given that the US spends over half its budget on "defence" I really don't know where you are getting your ideas from. Maybe some numbers and a source?

Don't know where you are getting the idea that half the US budget is spent on defense.

Estimates I've seen range from 20-40% depending on what you count as "defense". See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#22

Post by glimcat »

acslater00 wrote: post #16

I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false. See this: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS And a prior discussion of the topic. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803022 Anybody who starts a discussion decrying the death of manufacturing in America is selling you something, and it's not a manuf…

"Taking Any Rand seriously" seems to be something of a persistent folly.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#23

Post by pudakai »

Peculiar article - I'd read a couple of sentences and think, "wow, Noam's spot on here". Then after the next few sentences or major point, I'd think, "what a moron".

Seems like there is something for everyone to love and hate in this one. Probably the one thing everyone can agree on is the concentration of wealth and stratification of society isn't a good thing.

Like a lot of these analyses, it is often hard to sort out cause/effect, I'm not so sure that this article didn't make some wrong conclusions in this regard.

I do have to say his contention that OWS is the first push-back against the concentration & corruption of power in the U.S. is sort of naive. There are plenty of people and movements that have been railing about this at least since the early 90's - I'm not going to mention specific ones because I don't want to seem like I'm touting them.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#24

Post by mcantelon »

acslater00 wrote: post #16

I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false. See this: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS And a prior discussion of the topic. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803022 Anybody who starts a discussion decrying the death of manufacturing in America is selling you something, and it's not a manuf…

>Aside from the fact that this story is clearly made-up, the idea that a profit-seeking corporation would favor "shutting down" an asset rather than selling it because it fears an uprising of the working class is just about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Profit-seeking corporations aren't immune to stupidity and pettiness. Another reason not to sell it is to prevent the emergence of a competitor.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#25

Post by jstalin »

rhizome wrote: post #19
jstalin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I support current or additional defense spending? Frankly, it's just another welfare scheme. Defense spending is largely a waste.

Maybe, but it's telling that you didn't mention it at all and instead focussed on blaming people on food stamps.

It's telling of what exactly? That I didn't connect defense spending and dependence on handouts? You are reading more into what I'm saying than is there. Check your pre-conceived notions.

And, AGAIN, where do I blame the people on food stamps? The system is the problem, not the people who take advantage of it.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#26

Post by jbooth »

acslater00 wrote: post #16

I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false. See this: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS And a prior discussion of the topic. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803022 Anybody who starts a discussion decrying the death of manufacturing in America is selling you something, and it's not a manuf…

Output is up, but employment is down in that same sector.

You know why? Robots.

Doesn't make the employment picture look any more rosy, in light of that increased output, does it?

Chomsky's pretty ideological and I'd always take him with a grain of salt, but the manufacturing output doesn't really rebut his main point about industrialists no longer needing workers as much as they used to.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#27

Post by jbooth »

jstalin wrote: post #25
rhizome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it's telling that you didn't mention it at all and instead focussed on blaming people on food stamps.

It's telling of what exactly? That I didn't connect defense spending and dependence on handouts? You are reading more into what I'm saying than is there. Check your pre-conceived notions. And, AGAIN, where do I blame the people on food stamps? The system is the problem, not the people who take advantage of it.

Food stamps are a drop in the bucket compared to defense spending. If you're just a nonpartisan who's concerned about the budget, rather than a limbaughbeckbot, one would expect you'd be approximately 1,000x as outraged about defense (in numerical terms) as you are about food stamps.

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#28

Post by dlokshin »

jstalin wrote: post #5
knowtheory wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can a) point to numbers indicating that your claim is true, and more importantly b) justify how this isn't just a teeeeny tiiiiiiny drop in the bucket compared to defense spending, tax cuts and health care costs, your post is essentially irrelevant noise in the grander scheme of federal budget politics. And come to think of it, even if food stamp spending is at an all time high, isn't that consistent with…

Food stamp usage breaking historical pattern of going down when joblesness decreases (and at an all time high): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/food-stamps-keep-go... Two Charts Exposing America's Record Shadow Welfare State - Disability going up dramatically: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/two-charts-exposing-americas-r... Oh, and I never said I support gigantic amounts of defense spending. I'm talking about…

On top of that, the US Gov now accounts for ~25% of wages in this country:

http://cl.ly/2a0p1T3a1B0y1B08050g

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#29

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

acslater00 wrote: post #16

I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false. See this: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS And a prior discussion of the topic. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803022 Anybody who starts a discussion decrying the death of manufacturing in America is selling you something, and it's not a manuf…

> the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false.

It depends whether you count robots and computers as part of America, doesn't it?

Re: Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

#30

Post by rhizome »

jstalin wrote: post #25
rhizome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it's telling that you didn't mention it at all and instead focussed on blaming people on food stamps.

It's telling of what exactly? That I didn't connect defense spending and dependence on handouts? You are reading more into what I'm saying than is there. Check your pre-conceived notions. And, AGAIN, where do I blame the people on food stamps? The system is the problem, not the people who take advantage of it.

It's telling that you choose to focus on moral issues, such as what you interpret as dependence, rather than the hard-numbers "this is what consumes the most tax dollars for the least benefit" of defense spending.

Of course, "least benefit" is a value judgement, but the system, as you describe it, is actually concerned with maintaining the military and the financial industries much more than any idea of the country having its legs knocked out from under it by poor people. This is a fact, and is supportable by actual numbers, unlike your kicking of people while they're down.

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