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America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

economist.com

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Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#21

Post by busterarm »

michaelochurch wrote: post #18
moocowduckquack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it horrible, but it is also mean, wrong and stupid. Well done, you nearly have the full set.

If you want a mean but more creative fix for a large number of society's problems in one go, here's an idea: take the 1000 richest people and split them into teams, Red and Blue, 500 on each. (Don't put immediate family on opposing teams.) Put collars on them that can kill them instantly. After one year, whichever team has fewer people alive will all be killed. (A less vicious version of this is that they lose all th…

> Conspiracy theories are a massive oversimplification of what actually goes on, but elites would rather collude. If you don't give them an immovable enemy within themselves, then their enemy becomes us (and that's not a fair fight). Obviously, this Red/Blue thing is an impractical fantasy, but it may provide insight into why the world seems to demand that wars (despite their being extraordinarily destructive and seemingly utterly undesirable) happen.

Thank you for explaining this in a way that won't cause the kneejerk hate-response from people. This is exactly it, but I'm a jerk and like to phrase things in ways that provoke.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#22

Post by adventured »

busterarm wrote: post #16
moocowduckquack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it horrible, but it is also mean, wrong and stupid. Well done, you nearly have the full set.

How else do you propose removing a large group of people who also have the largest amount of wealth and political influence and a high life expectancy who are purposefully removing economic opportunity from younger, less fortunate generations? A deadly flu (which is something that used to be and will again be common) seems like the LEAST mean/stupid option to me.

The starting premise is entirely false. I don't propose removing them at all, and I argue that you're wrong across the board.

It assumes that one person's wealth is an impediment to another person's opportunity, such that there is a finite amount of wealth to go around and no more is ever created. Classic fraudulent economic argument.

In 1932 your argument would have held just as much weight then as it does now, and would have been just as false. We're vastly better off and wealthier as a nation across the board than we were then. Wealth is not finite, and one person's success (or failure) does not mean there is less or more wealth to be had. A simple proof of this in action, is the stock market crash of 2009. Trillions were lost by the 1%, and that wealth should have been picked up by the 99% in your theory; it wasn't however, specifically because wealth can created and destroyed, it is not only transferred as your premise assumes. The 1% suffering a 40% haircut on their wealth did not create more opportunities for the 99%, which again your theory proposes to be the case.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#23

Post by yummyfajitas »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #4

Talking about unemployment numbers without talking about how they are routinely massaged, and the calculations changed, is either stupid (for the journalist not knowing about it) or evil (if the journalist does and is merely trying to toe a line). See shadowstats.com for instance - they (the BLS) have changed the way unemployment (and many other stats such as CPI) are calculated over the years, and are no longer very…

Changing definitions? Citation needed. A detailed link, not a vague referral to a conspiracy site.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#24

Post by twoodfin »

busterarm wrote: post #15
michaelochurch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's totally horrible for me to say this but a deadly flu pandemic is needed for the health of our economy. If it comes to that, I prefer a French Revolution style class war. Fewer deaths, more gain for each death and in total, thus more efficient. Between 10 million deaths, no correlation between dying and deserving it, and chaos and no reason to believe in political progress, versus 200,000 deaths, a high correlati…

Women got better quality jobs in the 30s/40s not because they were capable (they were) but because there was a shortage of men to do those jobs. Eventually those in control of a mean, sexist elite were forced to modify their perceptions because of economics. I'm ultimately just saying that the only thing that will force a mean, privileged elite to modify their perceptions will be economics. Class war sure would give…

pg must be thrilled that this site has now devolved to the point where we talk longingly about putting entrepreneurs up against the wall.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#25

Post by adventured »

busterarm wrote: post #20
adventured wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same logic used for the broken window fallacy. Things would be better if only we destroyed some existing value. If you applied the same logic to the whole world, it would mean billions dead, because hey, what good are those 600 million Chinese living on $2 a day. Any time an argument begins with: hey you know what we need, a billion dead people - you know immediately the argument is false. If you have vast under-util…

Failure to recognize the argument. I'm not advocating mass death as the "cure". I'm saying "you know, traditionally, lots of people dying ahead of their life expectancy had an (typically healthy) impact on the economy and since that's not happening right now, that's having an impact too."

You are saying exactly that.

You said: "It's totally horrible for me to say this but a deadly flu pandemic is needed for the health of our economy."

Mass death is needed for the health of our economy, is what that says. Emphasis on needed and for the health of our economy.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#26

Post by patrickg_zill »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23
patrickg_zill wrote: post #4

Talking about unemployment numbers without talking about how they are routinely massaged, and the calculations changed, is either stupid (for the journalist not knowing about it) or evil (if the journalist does and is merely trying to toe a line). See shadowstats.com for instance - they (the BLS) have changed the way unemployment (and many other stats such as CPI) are calculated over the years, and are no longer very…

Changing definitions? Citation needed. A detailed link, not a vague referral to a conspiracy site.

Are you trolling or just woefully underinformed to be throwing around the words "conspiracy site"? The computations were changed in a major way during the Clinton administration . http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1995/10/art3full.pdf

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#27

Post by MereInterest »

jared314 wrote: post #6
ChuckFrank wrote: post #2

Contrary to the millennial gripes and the 'trophy kids' syndrome, I believe that there's a generation of highly specialized and highly educated people out there whose expertise is going to waste because they are not getting the first important steps to start working on the job. The work gap that most of these people are going to experience is going to have irreparable harm to the product, with regards to all the pape…

A few years ago, I believed outsourcing was the main culprit removing the bottom rungs on the career ladder. That was until someone, older than I was, told me: "A career is not a right." That's when I understood that it is a choice by business owners and business managers to only hire pre-trained workers. It is a choice to run at half staff while waiting for a "perfect fit". Despite the large number of skilled, and n…

>That's when I understood that it is a choice by business owners and business managers to only hire pre-trained workers. It is a choice to run at half staff while waiting for a "perfect fit".

I would say that it is entirely the prisoner's dilemma. It benefits everyone to have a supply of well-trained workers. However, if you can skimp on training by hiring workers that other companies have trained, you can an advantage. But when everybody does so, suddenly you can't find any "perfect fits".

It makes perfect sense from any one company to refuse to hire non-perfect fits, but it is ridiculous for every company to do so.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#28

Post by busterarm »

adventured wrote: post #22
busterarm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you propose removing a large group of people who also have the largest amount of wealth and political influence and a high life expectancy who are purposefully removing economic opportunity from younger, less fortunate generations? A deadly flu (which is something that used to be and will again be common) seems like the LEAST mean/stupid option to me.

The starting premise is entirely false. I don't propose removing them at all, and I argue that you're wrong across the board. It assumes that one person's wealth is an impediment to another person's opportunity, such that there is a finite amount of wealth to go around and no more is ever created. Classic fraudulent economic argument. In 1932 your argument would have held just as much weight then as it does now, and…

You're putting arguments in my mouth. I'm not saying that there's only one economic pie that we all pull from, I'm just not spelling out every single way how a currently powerful class of people is robbing our future.

Sure, wealth gets created, but that doesn't mean you can't have a confluence of conditions that cause an economy/to decline.

Arguing that we're fucking ourselves over long-term is not the same as saying wealth is finite. If my premise is flawed, it's no moreso than your response.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#29

Post by busterarm »

twoodfin wrote: post #24
busterarm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women got better quality jobs in the 30s/40s not because they were capable (they were) but because there was a shortage of men to do those jobs. Eventually those in control of a mean, sexist elite were forced to modify their perceptions because of economics. I'm ultimately just saying that the only thing that will force a mean, privileged elite to modify their perceptions will be economics. Class war sure would give…

pg must be thrilled that this site has now devolved to the point where we talk longingly about putting entrepreneurs up against the wall.

Well, there's healthy and unhealthy entrepreneurship.

I'm sure patent trolls consider themselves entrepreneurs too.

If someone is a greedy asshole at the expense of others, I have no problem advocating putting them up against the wall.

Re: America’s labour market has suffered permanent harm

#30

Post by pessimizer »

hristov wrote: post #3

Sorry I don't believe this. If it is true that we are close to maximum employment, there would be more pressure for wage inflation and more overall inflation. In places other than the bay area (which is its own world) inflation is really low nowadays. If you take into account various promotions, many prices are actually lower than last year. And other than in the STEM fields, there is pretty much no wage inflation. I…

This is the Economist, and this is the party line. The economy was destroyed due to a demand crisis that we haven't even made an attempt to recover from yet. Crying about a supply problem is silly.

It's like when they complain about the graying of America, and how there will be too many seniors to too few workers - and in the next breath about permanent structural unemployment. Both not enough and too many workers, depending on the argument they're trying to make.

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