Poor white people

[LordKiran]

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.

It's not just lawyers, machines are taking over TONS of specialist jobs and that trend will continue. Increased automation and computerization of the labor market will permeate all levels of society, you see it in the super smart doctor robots that can diagnose patients at a higher rate of accuracy than trained medical professionals, or assist in/execute surgical procedures on their on, just as much as you do in self driving taxis/trucks.

The future for specialist labor is FAR from bright, rather what computers and robots that do exist currently taking over jobs that once went to specialists are the harbingers of the end times.

 

[DBT]

The solution is obvious. If people are no longer employed in high paying manufacturing jobs and have to take service jobs instead, we need to raise the wages of the service workers. It is that simple.

No self-respecting billionaire wants to pay his gardener or maid $40,000 a year. Can you imagine having to cut half of your servant staff? Must be fucking hell. Some of them would have to wipe their own asses. We can't have THAT in a civilized society!

$40,000 a year? That hardly makes a liveable wage. A bare minimum.

 

[SimpleDon]

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.

Oh, touchy. Did I insult someone's favorite psychopathic proto-fascist?

At least you couldn't argue with my statement of fact that Trump based his whole campaign on lies. At least we are in agreement on that point.

And yes, I didn't mean to imply that the lying psychopathic proto-fascist hated the gays, etc. or even the illegals and Hispanics. I don't have any idea what, if anything, he actually believes in. I was talking about his supporters, conservatives, the alt-right, the NeoNazis, the Klan, etc.

I actually feel like I understand the frustration that working class Americans feel toward politics and politicians. Their wages have stagnated and the future of their children has dimmed considerably. The Democrats and the liberals have abandoned them for celebrities and money. The Republicans have never represented them and are in fact the main proponents of the economic policies that are largely responsible for their diminished wages and futures. If they were unhappy with Obama just wait until they see what Trump and a Republican Congress do to them.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You can't deny progress. The industrial economy will just become more efficient, more productive. There will be fewer and fewer jobs in manufacturing in the whole world. The transfer of much of the US and the EU's manufacturing to the Far East only delayed this by at most two decades. The good news is that manufacturing is actually returning to the US. The bad news is that it is highly automated and there are few jobs.

The solution is obvious. If people are no longer employed in high paying manufacturing jobs and have to take service jobs instead, we need to raise the wages of the service workers. It is that simple.

There's an even simpler solution. Don't demand that people get jobs. Basic income for everyone. Today, very few people are actually necessary in the economy. Most people do fuck all for the benefit for anyone. It's all pretend jobs that fill no function. Our societies are so wed to the idea that it's important that everybody works that we are often blind to the idea that it's not.

No, it is going to the people that Adam Smith warned us about, the rentiers. All of the gains from innovation and the increases in productivity are going to profits and to the already rich and none to the workers. They didn't change their lives to fit, they are just being paid a lot more for what they have always done, clip coupons, deposit checks and little more.

Also, less of a problem in Germany and Scandinavia. There are solutions. Just because Americans really love "the American dream" doesn't mean there aren't other ways.

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.

Ok, but we allow this. We can make rules that don't. The EU has been squeezing tax havens for fifty years now. They're getting less and less space to operate. Too bad that the UK is now leaving. So that's probably fucked now. But the point is that it can be done.

Neoliberalism is a disease. It is slowly spreading from the Anglo American countries into Europe. It will take longer to infect the more egalitarian countries like Sweden and Germany, but it will take hold eventually in those countries as well.

I lived and worked in Germany for four years, leaving in 2003. I already saw signs of creeping neoliberalism before I left. In the late 1990's the unions were convinced to moderate their wage demands and their job protection demands to lower prices and to increase profits to boost "investment," the siren song of neoliberalism.

Of course, prices didn't go down, profits grew mighty and investment dropped.

I think you're wrong. We're cherry picking. We're taking stuff from neolibaralism that works and sticking them into a socialist framework. Not everything about neoliberalism is bad. The badness is when the entire package is accepted.

 

[rousseau]

Re: Basic Income. I've heard some very valid arguments that it's not an entirely viable solution, at least in Canada. There was a public debate in my city a few months back between two prominent economists, and the economist arguing *against* actually won in terms of the number of people whose opinion he swayed. The main argument being that, in practice, it's prohibitively expensive.

Maybe in the long term it will work, when *no one* is working, and there is no other option. But for now it's not necessarily practical.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Re: Basic Income. I've heard some very valid arguments that it's not an entirely viable solution, at least in Canada. There was a public debate in my city a few months back between two prominent economists, and the economist arguing *against* actually won in terms of the number of people whose opinion he swayed. The main argument being that, in practice, it's prohibitively expensive.

Maybe in the long term it will work, when *no one* is working, and there is no other option. But for now it's not necessarily practical.

I'm thinking far off into the future, when there hardly is any jobs. But even so, basic income is possible today. We're not that far off today from already having it. There are very few people today who actually do anything useful.

 

[James Brown]

Could Basic Income be called Social Security For All?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Could Basic Income be called Social Security For All?

That's what it is. But basic income is an entire concept. The whole point is that we do away with almost all bureaucracy. The aim is to construct a robust welfare system that requires little or no babysitting. A welfare system that manages itself. I'd argue that the concept of social security is a separate thing. It has lots of history and assumptions built into it.

 

[BH]

Didn't Nixon propose something like this back in the early 70's?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Didn't Nixon propose something like this back in the early 70's?

They even tried it in New Jersey and it was successful. There's been a couple of pilot attempts around the world.

It should be said that there are communities that have had basic income for generations and it has not ended well. It tends to bring with it all manner of anti-social behaviours, such as alcoholism and domestic abuse. It seems like a lot of people need a boss to tell them what to do with their days.

I'm not proposing basic income, or even arguing for it. I'm saying that I think it will happen. If not basic income, then something with a similar function. For the simple reason that when democratic countries have a majority of their voters out of a job, and unable to find jobs, they'll just vote for it.

 

[BH]

Didn't Nixon propose something like this back in the early 70's?

They even tried it in New Jersey and it was successful. There's been a couple of pilot attempts around the world.

It should be said that there are communities that have had basic income for generations and it has not ended well. It tends to bring with it all manner of anti-social behaviours, such as alcoholism and domestic abuse. It seems like a lot of people need a boss to tell them what to do with their days.

I'm not proposing basic income, or even arguing for it. I'm saying that I think it will happen. If not basic income, then something with a similar function. For the simple reason that when democratic countries have a majority of their voters out of a job, and unable to find jobs, they'll just vote for it.

Dr. Zoidberg you make me ashamed. You are a Swede and you know more about my country than I do!

 

[Horatio Parker]

Didn't Nixon propose something like this back in the early 70's?

They even tried it in New Jersey and it was successful. There's been a couple of pilot attempts around the world.

It should be said that there are communities that have had basic income for generations and it has not ended well. It tends to bring with it all manner of anti-social behaviours, such as alcoholism and domestic abuse. It seems like a lot of people need a boss to tell them what to do with their days.

I'm not proposing basic income, or even arguing for it. I'm saying that I think it will happen. If not basic income, then something with a similar function. For the simple reason that when democratic countries have a majority of their voters out of a job, and unable to find jobs, they'll just vote for it.

Do you have a link to this New Jersey experiment? I'm drawing blanks from Google.

Universal income is a subsidy to low wage employers such as Walmart. That's one reason I prefer a job guarantee; businesses would then have to compete with public sector employment.

 

[DBT]

Could Basic Income be called Social Security For All?

That's what it is. But basic income is an entire concept. The whole point is that we do away with almost all bureaucracy. The aim is to construct a robust welfare system that requires little or no babysitting. A welfare system that manages itself. I'd argue that the concept of social security is a separate thing. It has lots of history and assumptions built into it.

How is it payed for? That's the question.

 

[DrZoidberg]

They even tried it in New Jersey and it was successful. There's been a couple of pilot attempts around the world.

It should be said that there are communities that have had basic income for generations and it has not ended well. It tends to bring with it all manner of anti-social behaviours, such as alcoholism and domestic abuse. It seems like a lot of people need a boss to tell them what to do with their days.

I'm not proposing basic income, or even arguing for it. I'm saying that I think it will happen. If not basic income, then something with a similar function. For the simple reason that when democratic countries have a majority of their voters out of a job, and unable to find jobs, they'll just vote for it.

Do you have a link to this New Jersey experiment? I'm drawing blanks from Google.

Universal income is a subsidy to low wage employers such as Walmart. That's one reason I prefer a job guarantee; businesses would then have to compete with public sector employment.

In the 70'ies it was called "negative income tax". But it's the same thing. The point with it is to give people wellfare without fucking up the incentives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

 

[LordKiran]

They even tried it in New Jersey and it was successful. There's been a couple of pilot attempts around the world.

It should be said that there are communities that have had basic income for generations and it has not ended well. It tends to bring with it all manner of anti-social behaviours, such as alcoholism and domestic abuse. It seems like a lot of people need a boss to tell them what to do with their days.

I'm not proposing basic income, or even arguing for it. I'm saying that I think it will happen. If not basic income, then something with a similar function. For the simple reason that when democratic countries have a majority of their voters out of a job, and unable to find jobs, they'll just vote for it.

Do you have a link to this New Jersey experiment? I'm drawing blanks from Google.

Universal income is a subsidy to low wage employers such as Walmart. That's one reason I prefer a job guarantee; businesses would then have to compete with public sector employment.

How does this work in a world of increased automations when there's lower overall demand for human labor? How effective would the gov be in supplying specialist/profession jobs?

 

[Horatio Parker]

Do you have a link to this New Jersey experiment? I'm drawing blanks from Google.

Universal income is a subsidy to low wage employers such as Walmart. That's one reason I prefer a job guarantee; businesses would then have to compete with public sector employment.

How does this work in a world of increased automations when there's lower overall demand for human labor? How effective would the gov be in supplying specialist/profession jobs?

JG wouldn't be in private sector production; they'd be more in service jobs: education, health care. Infrastructure construction and maintenance.

They'd be low paying say $10-12/hr, but with health care and vacation time. Private employers would then have to compete with JG jobs. The idea is to maximize productive power while ameliorating the negative effects of unemployment.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Do you have a link to this New Jersey experiment? I'm drawing blanks from Google.

Universal income is a subsidy to low wage employers such as Walmart. That's one reason I prefer a job guarantee; businesses would then have to compete with public sector employment.

How does this work in a world of increased automations when there's lower overall demand for human labor? How effective would the gov be in supplying specialist/profession jobs?

Tax the robots.....

 

[DrZoidberg]

That's what it is. But basic income is an entire concept. The whole point is that we do away with almost all bureaucracy. The aim is to construct a robust welfare system that requires little or no babysitting. A welfare system that manages itself. I'd argue that the concept of social security is a separate thing. It has lots of history and assumptions built into it.

How is it payed for? That's the question.

Usually it's paid for by a proposed flat tax. The object is just to flatten the income gap. Incredibly easy to administer.

 

[DBT]

How is it payed for? That's the question.

Usually it's paid for by a proposed flat tax. The object is just to flatten the income gap. Incredibly easy to administer.

Would the producers and suppliers be happy to pay the tax given they automated in order to cut the cost of labour, now here they are being asked to pay people to stay home?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Usually it's paid for by a proposed flat tax. The object is just to flatten the income gap. Incredibly easy to administer.

Would the producers and suppliers be happy to pay the tax given they automated in order to cut the cost of labour, now here they are being asked to pay people to stay home?

That'll solve itself. If most people can't find work. Those who have jobs will be happy to have them, and pay taxes, given that they make enough to off-set the taxes. That's just about fiddling around with the levels. I think we'll always find plenty of people who actually enjoy working. I do.

Keep in mind the alternative. A world where most people are perpetually on the verge of starvation is a dangerous world. We had that world all the way up until the 20'th century. We don't want that back. It was an exceedingly violent and dangerous world. I can't think of a worse scenario. If a bit higher taxes will fix that, I'm cool with it. It's all about alternatives. The world we have now, there's no going back to. The robot revolution cat it out of the bag.