Poor white people

[repoman]

Can't Cuck the Tuck:

 

[barbos]

I'm not saying there are no jobs for people like you. I'm just saying there aren't as many as their used to be. It should be, damn those robots and computers.

I think something got lost in the sarcasm router....damn those UDP packets....Jimmy is an enGineer, unless he has been a fibbin.

It's TCP packets my poorly educated friend!

 

[bilby]

I think something got lost in the sarcasm router....damn those UDP packets....Jimmy is an enGineer, unless he has been a fibbin.

It's TCP packets my poorly educated friend!

I am not sure exactly how you determine which protocols a fictional system, invoked for humorous intent, might use; But insofar as it is possible, surely the originator of the fictional router would be the person with the best knowledge of which protocols it might hypothetically use, if it existed.

 

[SimpleDon]

The new element in this problem is not that poor people are not being represented by the powerful - they never were. The cause of their angst is that they now expect to be represented by the powerful, and are upset that it isn't happening.

People are now asked for their opinion constantly. Nobody ever used to care what the proletariat were thinking, unless they were actively engaged in violent revolt. And of course, that's still true of those in power - they couldn't care less, and never did. But every time people are exposed to information these days, they are given a space to make their own (usually valueless) opinion publicly known - most news articles come with comment options; many include utterly unrepresentative and pointless polls; and Facebook and Twitter allow everybody who wishes to do so to make their point in a public forum.

Back in the day, when someone didn't like a government policy, they had the choice of writing to their representative (who they expected to fob them off with a stock reply letter); writing to the newspapers (who would only publish a handful of letters, and vetted them to some extent for reasonableness and clarity); or grumbling to their mates (who they knew were in no better position to influence change than the grumbler himself). But now, people get lots and lots of opportunities to push their opinions - and as most people firmly believe that they are right, and that every reasonable person would agree with them if only they had the chance to say their piece, they are devastated when the government fails to conform to their opinion.

People have the ability to be heard publicly in a way that they never had before; And they are shocked to discover that this ability has made almost no difference to anything. It is far more hurtful to the ego to be asked and then ignored than it was to simply never be asked. Back in the day, you could console yourself that the reason that the government didn't (for example) simply set fire to refugees in public to discourage illegal immigration, was that only you and your mates down the pub were sufficiently ingenious to come up with this fairly obvious solution to the nation's woes.

Now you get to see that you, and the majority of your echo-chamber dwellers, are not voiceless - but your voice is being disregarded. That hurts. Previously they were simply not hearing you, but now they are hearing what you say, and actively discarding your advice, which is tantamount to calling you stupid.

I think that what was most obvioust in the run up to the election is that the Trump supporters not only didn't care that Trump was lying to them, they wanted Trump to lie to them. To tell them that they are right. That they are suffering because of the blacks, the illegals, the liberals, the elitists, the educated, the government, the atheists, the gays, etc. That only Trump can make everything like it was. Or rather how they thought that it was in the good old days.

People take comfort in the lies that support their egos, their beliefs, their ideology. This is what I have learned here. This is what Clinton didn't understand. That people don't want to be told the truth because they see the truth every day in their lives and it is ugly.. They know that the fairy tales aren't true, but they still want to hear them and pretend that they are true.

This is what Trump understands, probably not on a conscious level, that most people want the reality show to be real, but it doesn't matter if it isn't.

 

[beero1000]

It's TCP packets my poorly educated friend!

I am not sure exactly how you determine which protocols a fictional system, invoked for humorous intent, might use; But insofar as it is possible, surely the originator of the fictional router would be the person with the best knowledge of which protocols it might hypothetically use, if it existed.

Uncorrected loss of packets makes it more likely to be UDP anyway...

 

[DBT]

I think that our Politicians 'listen' to ordinary peoples concerns, often making the right noises in response (we care about your concerns) but nevertheless habitually look after big business and the rich rather than the working class...or heaven forbid, pensioners, etc.

 

[jjjjusta]

The feeling that things are bad now is just a feeling. Things really are great, if you've figured out how this new world works. The reality is that things are, generally, better than ever. The problem is that the jobs market is changing.

At what point do you tip over the plateau, though, and take someone seriously when they say they're living in misery?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Not only the right attitude but the right aptitude and interest. The IT market may be expanding (with other sectors shrinking), but they may have trouble attracting the right applicants because only a certain percentage of students have the aptitude and/or interest in IT. It's not for everyone.

Exactly. And this desire to force everyone into IT has a side effect of lowering average and actually make it harder for more qualified people to succeed, they are simply overwhelmed by mediocre careerists.

The problem partially is that IT today eats people up and spits them out. A lot of IT jobs go overseas to lowly paid Indians, while in USA people get laid off. Lower paid HB-1 visas do much the same. There is a certain amount of churn in the IT business and older IT workers find it hard to get jobs. The company lays off large number of workers, imports lowly paid replacements and expects their laid off workers to train their replacements. So people that IT wants to go to college, get a degree in CS and go into IT don't see a future in it due to IT's bad reputation. It's not a job you'd really want unless you want to move to San Francisco and live a life of hell where it's getting impossible to afford a home. IT is no longer a great idea for the good life. I have a brother in law who had hell with getting a job. Either he's over-qualified or does not have so many years experience in this and that software, blah, blah, blah. If IT in the USA is having trouble with nobody wanting to go into computer science, its to a great degree their own faults.

 

[barbos]

Exactly. And this desire to force everyone into IT has a side effect of lowering average and actually make it harder for more qualified people to succeed, they are simply overwhelmed by mediocre careerists.

The problem partially is that IT today eats people up and spits them out. A lot of IT jobs go overseas to lowly paid Indians, while in USA people get laid off. Lower paid HB-1 visas do much the same. There is a certain amount of churn in the IT business and older IT workers find it hard to get jobs. The company lays off large number of workers, imports lowly paid replacements and expects their laid off workers to train their replacements. So people that IT wants to go to college, get a degree in CS and go into IT don't see a future in it due to IT's bad reputation. It's not a job you'd really want unless you want to move to San Francisco and live a life of hell where it's getting impossible to afford a home. IT is no longer a great idea for the good life. I have a brother in law who had hell with getting a job. Either he's over-qualified or does not have so many years experience in this and that software, blah, blah, blah. If IT in the USA is having trouble with nobody wanting to go into computer science, its to a great degree their own faults.

Regarding to your brother in law I was told that a key to success in finding a job is lie on resume.
But yeah, IT seems to be a poor choice of career unless you are indian.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It is true that the world is leaving increasing numbers of people behind. The poorly educated and the rural and the intercity populations.

It is also true that the modern industrial economy produces an ever increasing surplus of goods and services above the basic human needs for survival. This converts into an ever increasing surplus of money.

This means that there is room for a solution. More than there ever has been in history. But our policies are now set to do the opposite, to increase distance between the haves and the have nots.

There are more industrial economies than USA and the UK. The Scandinavian countries and Germany have state sponsored education. We funnel these people into new jobs, if they want.

The main problem is just that the world is changing. Change isn't necessarily just bad. We went through similar things when we industrialized. It'll be fine. But they do have to realize that we can't have the same jobs as our parents had. That world is dying.

Where is this surplus going?

To the people who have accepted the new reality and changed their lives to fit.

A sizable portion of it is sitting in the accounts in off shore tax haven banks. Vastly more money than could ever be loaned out. More than could ever be invested. More than could even be spent by the wealthy incredibly small portion of humanity to whom it belongs.

It is estimated to be in region of 21 trillion dollars, more than the annual GDP of the United States.

This is just down to government policies. American voters, for some reason that I don't understand, think this is great.

A thoughtful society would be working hard to expand educational opportunities for the have nots. At least in the US we are doing the opposite. The schools in the areas that we should be concentrating our largest efforts on have the least amount of money. This is because of the way that we finance the schools.

Sweden is filling up with emigrating Americans now. There are options.

 

[DBT]

To the people who have accepted the new reality and changed their lives to fit.

The reality of more applicants per vacant position, lower wages, less security, shorter contracts with little or no negotiating power, take it or leave it? Unless one has specialist skills, the cream of the crop, in a field that in in demand....which probably excludes a significant percentage of graduates who go on to drive taxi's or work for low hourly rates in the service industry?

 

[DrZoidberg]

To the people who have accepted the new reality and changed their lives to fit.

The reality of more applicants per vacant position, lower wages, less security, shorter contracts with little or no negotiating power, take it or leave it? Unless one has specialist skills, the cream of the crop, in a field that in in demand....which probably excludes a significant percentage of graduates who go on to drive taxi's or work for low hourly rates in the service industry?

You spell out the solution in your question. Just get specialist skills. That is increasingly going to be the only open route into working life. Right now companies are struggling to find qualified staff. If you are a specialist life is really good nowadays. Just do it! There's really nothing holding you back.

 

[DBT]

The reality of more applicants per vacant position, lower wages, less security, shorter contracts with little or no negotiating power, take it or leave it? Unless one has specialist skills, the cream of the crop, in a field that in in demand....which probably excludes a significant percentage of graduates who go on to drive taxi's or work for low hourly rates in the service industry?

You spell out the solution in your question. Just get specialist skills. That is increasingly going to be the only open route into working life. Right now companies are struggling to find qualified staff. If you are a specialist life is really good nowadays. Just do it! There's really nothing holding you back.

I'm not talking about me personally, I am approaching retirement. I don't need a job. It may not be that simple for many of our current job seekers though

For example:

CLERKSHIP HUNGER GAMES

''For several decades, big law firms have exclusively hired graduate lawyers through vacation clerkships. Law students in their penultimate year of study apply and, if successful, spend their summer/winter break as an intern with a firm. The expectation is that the students will be offered a law graduate job when the clerkship ends. Failing to secure a clerkship with a corporate law firm virtually ends any opportunity to work at such firms, as they do not hire graduates among final year students.

Obviously, clerkships are ferociously contested by law students.

The level of competition is the stuff of legends.''

 

[DrZoidberg]

You spell out the solution in your question. Just get specialist skills. That is increasingly going to be the only open route into working life. Right now companies are struggling to find qualified staff. If you are a specialist life is really good nowadays. Just do it! There's really nothing holding you back.

I'm not talking about me personally, I am approaching retirement. I don't need a job. It may not be that simple for many of our current job seekers though

For example:

CLERKSHIP HUNGER GAMES

''For several decades, big law firms have exclusively hired graduate lawyers through vacation clerkships. Law students in their penultimate year of study apply and, if successful, spend their summer/winter break as an intern with a firm. The expectation is that the students will be offered a law graduate job when the clerkship ends. Failing to secure a clerkship with a corporate law firm virtually ends any opportunity to work at such firms, as they do not hire graduates among final year students.

Obviously, clerkships are ferociously contested by law students.

The level of competition is the stuff of legends.''

Ok, so not that job then. I suggest the IT industry. It's like the thing now. Yes, there are plenty of soft skills needed in the IT industry. You don't need to be good with computers to make it in the industry. Yesterday a friend got a HR staffing job at an IT firm. She works with requiting IT staff. She knows nothing about computers, nor does she care. Yet, she is a successful specialist in the IT industry.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out how our glorious future will look like. Anything mindless and repetitive will get automated. If that's your job then you're shit out of luck. The jobs that will survive are all the soft jobs. Jobs which require a listening and empathic human to interpret your problems. This sector will grow because it can. Also, surviving jobs will be anything that requires creativity. Aka fun jobs. This sector will also grow, because consumers will increasingly demand smarter technology. Which will increase demands on products put out, which means more people making them. More psychologists will be needed and testing specialists.

I think you're just a bit unimaginative.

 

[J842P]

The new element in this problem is not that poor people are not being represented by the powerful - they never were. The cause of their angst is that they now expect to be represented by the powerful, and are upset that it isn't happening.

People are now asked for their opinion constantly. Nobody ever used to care what the proletariat were thinking, unless they were actively engaged in violent revolt. And of course, that's still true of those in power - they couldn't care less, and never did. But every time people are exposed to information these days, they are given a space to make their own (usually valueless) opinion publicly known - most news articles come with comment options; many include utterly unrepresentative and pointless polls; and Facebook and Twitter allow everybody who wishes to do so to make their point in a public forum.

Back in the day, when someone didn't like a government policy, they had the choice of writing to their representative (who they expected to fob them off with a stock reply letter); writing to the newspapers (who would only publish a handful of letters, and vetted them to some extent for reasonableness and clarity); or grumbling to their mates (who they knew were in no better position to influence change than the grumbler himself). But now, people get lots and lots of opportunities to push their opinions - and as most people firmly believe that they are right, and that every reasonable person would agree with them if only they had the chance to say their piece, they are devastated when the government fails to conform to their opinion.

People have the ability to be heard publicly in a way that they never had before; And they are shocked to discover that this ability has made almost no difference to anything. It is far more hurtful to the ego to be asked and then ignored than it was to simply never be asked. Back in the day, you could console yourself that the reason that the government didn't (for example) simply set fire to refugees in public to discourage illegal immigration, was that only you and your mates down the pub were sufficiently ingenious to come up with this fairly obvious solution to the nation's woes.

Now you get to see that you, and the majority of your echo-chamber dwellers, are not voiceless - but your voice is being disregarded. That hurts. Previously they were simply not hearing you, but now they are hearing what you say, and actively discarding your advice, which is tantamount to calling you stupid.

I think that what was most obvioust in the run up to the election is that the Trump supporters not only didn't care that Trump was lying to them, they wanted Trump to lie to them. To tell them that they are right. That they are suffering because of the blacks, the illegals, the liberals, the elitists, the educated, the government, the atheists, the gays, etc.

The only people on your list that Trump was blaming were illegals, and maybe elitists in government. He never attacked blacks, atheists, or gays. This is a problem. Liberals just knee-jerk responded to what they *supposed* was Trumps appeal, without ever really addressing the things Trump was saying that appealed to his supporters. Why did so many white people in the midwest, who voted for Obama twice, suddenly decide to vote for Trump because he was "blaming the blacks?" Why did Peter Theil, a gay man, give Trump so much money if Trump was demonizing the gays? This is the problem with the Democratic response to Trump in a nutshell. The only group that you could credibly say Trump was demonizing was Hispanics. And they didn't seem to be troubled enough to vote for him more than they did for Romney - or rather, voted for Hillary less than they voted for Obama.

 

[J842P]

You spell out the solution in your question. Just get specialist skills. That is increasingly going to be the only open route into working life. Right now companies are struggling to find qualified staff. If you are a specialist life is really good nowadays. Just do it! There's really nothing holding you back.

There is *plenty* holding people back in the United States, not the least of which is that specialist skills can takes loans in the region of $100,000s - $200,000 to acquire, and require adequate preparation at the primary and secondary level which most poor and working class people were not afforded. Your perspective is almost a satire of someone who is so out of touch with the poor and working class that it is almost funny if I didn't know you were being serious. The idea that working class people are better off today than they were in previous generations is a crock of shit. It doesn't matter if globalization has provided them with cheap trinkets and electronic toys, they cannot afford housing, tertiary education, or healthcare. Without these basic things, no one is going to feel better off than the previous generations who could buy these things with a job they received after graduating from high school. It is almost impossible to do anything but keep your head above water with the sort of employment you can get with similar backgrounds today.

 

[J842P]

More psychologists will be needed and testing specialists.

Haha, yeah, that's what will get people jobs! Being a Psych major!

 

[DrZoidberg]

You spell out the solution in your question. Just get specialist skills. That is increasingly going to be the only open route into working life. Right now companies are struggling to find qualified staff. If you are a specialist life is really good nowadays. Just do it! There's really nothing holding you back.

There is *plenty* holding people back in the United States, not the least of which is that specialist skills can takes loans in the region of $100,000s - $200,000 to acquire, and require adequate preparation at the primary and secondary level which most poor and working class people were not afforded. Your perspective is almost a satire of someone who is so out of touch with the poor and working class that it is almost funny if I didn't know you were being serious. The idea that working class people are better off today than they were in previous generations is a crock of shit. It doesn't matter if globalization has provided them with cheap trinkets and electronic toys, they cannot afford housing, tertiary education, or healthcare. Without these basic things, no one is going to feel better off than the previous generations who could buy these things with a job they received after graduating from high school. It is almost impossible to do anything but keep your head above water with the sort of employment you can get with similar backgrounds today.

Super easy to fix those. Government can provide free health care and free education. Just vote for it. If it works for North and Central Europeans it can work for you to.

So Bernie Sanders basically.

The game of life has rules. The rules can be changed. So change them.

Take any quality of life metric, we're all better off today. It's not just cheap trinkets. It's everything. Also, don't knock cheap trinkets. I recently bought an entire set of home furnishings (everything I need) from IKEA for about half a months salary. Cheap, but not trinkets. This is all thanks to robots

What exactly is worse today?

 

[DBT]

I think you're just a bit unimaginative.

Nah, just realistic when it comes to the current trend in the job market, based on evidence from numerous sources.

For example:


The Shrinking Ph.D. Job Market
''As number of new Ph.D.s rises, the percentage of people earning a doctorate without a job waiting for them is up. While all disciplines face the problem, some have particularly high debt levels.''



''To be fair, more than half of those part-timers are at least technically working as lawyers. But many are likely "contract lawyers," who are hired to sit in front of a computer and review vast document caches for as low as $25 an hour. These luckless young folks are supposed to spend less than a minute staring at each PDF before marking it "relevant" or "not relevant," and there's now software available that can do the work better than most humans. It's a pretty soul-sucking gig, and often a career dead end.''

When the sleeper wakes
'Yet some now fear that a new era of automation enabled by ever more powerful and capable computers could work out differently. They start from the observation that, across the rich world, all is far from well in the world of work. The essence of what they see as a work crisis is that in rich countries the wages of the typical worker, adjusted for cost of living, are stagnant. In America the real wage has hardly budged over the past four decades. Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.''

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think you're just a bit unimaginative.

Nah, just realistic when it comes to the current trend in the job market, based on evidence from numerous sources.

For example:


The Shrinking Ph.D. Job Market
''As number of new Ph.D.s rises, the percentage of people earning a doctorate without a job waiting for them is up. While all disciplines face the problem, some have particularly high debt levels.''

View attachment 8871

''To be fair, more than half of those part-timers are at least technically working as lawyers. But many are likely "contract lawyers," who are hired to sit in front of a computer and review vast document caches for as low as $25 an hour. These luckless young folks are supposed to spend less than a minute staring at each PDF before marking it "relevant" or "not relevant," and there's now software available that can do the work better than most humans. It's a pretty soul-sucking gig, and often a career dead end.''

When the sleeper wakes
'Yet some now fear that a new era of automation enabled by ever more powerful and capable computers could work out differently. They start from the observation that, across the rich world, all is far from well in the world of work. The essence of what they see as a work crisis is that in rich countries the wages of the typical worker, adjusted for cost of living, are stagnant. In America the real wage has hardly budged over the past four decades. Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.''

So don't be a lawyer then = success

This is what I'm going on about. If your career path isn't working out for you, get another one. So it isn't the life you had hoped it would be? It never is for anyone.

Or to put it more simply, people who adapt to a changing environment are winners. Those who don't are losers. Aka ToE

btw, I've read that article before. While a real risk, won't be a problem within the next 10-20 years. Nobody has a clue what will happen beyond that.

My best bet down the line is communism. If things keep developing as they have in the last fifty years think that is a pretty inevitable outcome. At least if democracy keeps going strong. Also, not really a problem. People will just have to figure out what to do with all their free time and free money. Keep in mind that these people will all be wealthier than you or me. Because that world will be run by efficient robots.