The future of the North American economy

[rousseau]

If you do a bit of searching you'll find articles here and there which mention that some of the poorest of North American populations are also some of the wealthiest on a global scale. And so as various companies become increasingly global, workers willing to work for a lower wage are taking a bite out of cash flow in North America. This is also coupled with increasing automation, where low skilled workers just aren't as necessary for low-skilled work.

So when politicians talk about 'creating jobs' there seems to be something a little misleading going on. We're talking about creating jobs for people who no longer have any useful skills, or who otherwise aren't willing to use those skills for a wage that companies are willing to pay. And so if this is the route we're taking, trying to desperately grasp onto a declining manufacturing sector, our economy and quality of life can't do anything but decline in reference to recent decades.

So what's the way forward? How do we allow people to live prosperous lives, when many of them are no longer able to do useful work?

 

[JonA]

How do we allow people to live prosperous lives, when many of them are no longer able to do useful work?

By getting rid of the long-outdated economic system that requires every person to labor forty hours a week to provide themselves a standard of living that hasn't really improved in nearly fifty years.

 

[rousseau]

I think we need to accept that we can't control technological change, and that inevitably this is going to make a huge proportion of populations irrelevant to production.

Whether that leads to disaster or utopia is up to us.

 

[barbos]

How do we allow people to live prosperous lives, when many of them are no longer able to do useful work?

By getting rid of the long-outdated economic system that requires every person to labor forty hours a week to provide themselves a standard of living that hasn't really improved in nearly fifty years.

Agreed. Universal Basic income would be a start I think. The only one possible reason against it that there is a danger that certain probably very large percentage of population is incapable to deal with the free time they get. But the way it's going there is no way around it, eventually we will have to implement this utopia. The irony is, capitalism is about to be replaced by ..... communism.

 

[Juma]

By getting rid of the long-outdated economic system that requires every person to labor forty hours a week to provide themselves a standard of living that hasn't really improved in nearly fifty years.

Agreed. Universal Basic income would be a start I think. The only one possible reason against it that there is a danger that certain probably very large percentage of population is incapable to deal with the free time they get. But the way it's going there is no way around it, eventually we will have to implement this utopia. The irony is, capitalism is about to be replaced by ..... communism.

Universal basic income is not communism.

Everyone owning the production means, in equal parts, is.

 

[barbos]

Agreed. Universal Basic income would be a start I think. The only one possible reason against it that there is a danger that certain probably very large percentage of population is incapable to deal with the free time they get. But the way it's going there is no way around it, eventually we will have to implement this utopia. The irony is, capitalism is about to be replaced by ..... communism.

Universal basic income is not communism.

Everyone owning the production means, in equal parts, is.

I did not claim it was. But you are wrong anyway,. What you described is a defining part of socialism.
Defining part of communism is bolded part

a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

For the most part we are already there.

 

[Juma]

Universal basic income is not communism.

Everyone owning the production means, in equal parts, is.

I did not claim it was. But you are wrong anyway,. What you described is a defining part of socialism.
Defining part of communism is bolded part

a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

For the most part we are already there.

So you say i am wrong and in the same post cite something that definitely make sure i'm right: ownership of the production means is a necessary part of communism.

Priceless.

 

[barbos]

I did not claim it was. But you are wrong anyway,. What you described is a defining part of socialism.
Defining part of communism is bolded part

a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

For the most part we are already there.

So you say i am wrong and in the same post cite something that definitely make sure i'm right: ownership of the production means is a necessary part of communism.

Priceless.

No, you are still wrong, but that's OK.

 

[whichphilosophy]

If you do a bit of searching you'll find articles here and there which mention that some of the poorest of North American populations are also some of the wealthiest on a global scale. And so as various companies become increasingly global, workers willing to work for a lower wage are taking a bite out of cash flow in North America. This is also coupled with increasing automation, where low skilled workers just aren't as necessary for low-skilled work.

So when politicians talk about 'creating jobs' there seems to be something a little misleading going on. We're talking about creating jobs for people who no longer have any useful skills, or who otherwise aren't willing to use those skills for a wage that companies are willing to pay. And so if this is the route we're taking, trying to desperately grasp onto a declining manufacturing sector, our economy and quality of life can't do anything but decline in reference to recent decades.

So what's the way forward? How do we allow people to live prosperous lives, when many of them are no longer able to do useful work?

New skills and technologies are constantly being created as our job requirements change. However many skills and semi skills that were removed by the US farming jobs abroad. In real terms the actual savings was very small, but while often benefiting the corporations, burden the state with more welfare payments in the interim.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Start with encouraging students to pursue what they are passionate about. When what a person does is not just their job but a part of who they are, they are not only more productive but more creative and their passion is more likely to translate into more employment for others. Shoveling a generation of people into the hot industries is fuel for boom/bust cycles in employment.

So what's the way forward? How do we allow people to live prosperous lives, when many of them are no longer able to do useful work?

How does an ever increasing population live prosperous lives?
For those without a passion that contributes to society. Those who's passion is simply relaxing at the end of the workday and, as many do, dream of retirement. Those who would gladly live an entire life of relaxation. If there is a creative utopian answer, it is beyond me. Paying people to lie about and make babies isn't it.

 

[barbos]

New skills and technologies are constantly being created as our job requirements change. However many skills and semi skills that were removed by the US farming jobs abroad. In real terms the actual savings was very small, but while often benefiting the corporations, burden the state with more welfare payments in the interim.

It's true, but it's becoming irrelevant now. Manufacturing as an occupation is gone not only for Americans but soon for Chinese as well. Question is, when people realize that 40 hour work week does not work anymore. Fact is, probably half of the people are employed at meaningless jobs right now.

 

[whichphilosophy]

For the time being the US is borrowing to finance wars, healthcare and its infrastructure. People are still buying bonds but there would be a point where some of these need to be cashed in. If this is en masse then the US will face a serious crash which will affect the rest of the world

 

[whichphilosophy]

New skills and technologies are constantly being created as our job requirements change. However many skills and semi skills that were removed by the US farming jobs abroad. In real terms the actual savings was very small, but while often benefiting the corporations, burden the state with more welfare payments in the interim.

It's true, but it's becoming irrelevant now. Manufacturing as an occupation is gone not only for Americans but soon for Chinese as well. Question is, when people realize that 40 hour work week does not work anymore. Fact is, probably half of the people are employed at meaningless jobs right now.

It would have been easier to phase these out instead of exporting jobs abroad. The US is possibly overpopulated in this sense and should consider requirements of the future while phasing out old jobs. It's cheaper to pay someone to do something rather than pay him because he is unemployed.

 

[barbos]

It's true, but it's becoming irrelevant now. Manufacturing as an occupation is gone not only for Americans but soon for Chinese as well. Question is, when people realize that 40 hour work week does not work anymore. Fact is, probably half of the people are employed at meaningless jobs right now.

It would have been easier to phase these out instead of exporting jobs abroad. The US is possibly overpopulated in this sense and should consider requirements of the future while phasing out old jobs. It's cheaper to pay someone to do something rather than pay him because he is unemployed.

I don't follow you, phase out what?
I am not sure meaningless jobs are that cheap. Overall they make everything more expensive.

 

[Horatio Parker]

The best way for a society to be as productive as possible is to employ everyone willing and able to work. And if the private sector can't supply the jobs, the public must. An unemployed person is in the public sector.

The system we have now, prioritizing price stability over employment, was implemented in the 70's. A byproduct of that change was the NAIRU, Non Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, initially set at 6%. The idea being that there's a relationship between employment and inflation. In short, a portion of the population needs to be unemployed to prevent inflation. Before that, we prioritized full employment. It could be done again.

 

[Horatio Parker]

For the time being the US is borrowing to finance wars, healthcare and its infrastructure. People are still buying bonds but there would be a point where some of these need to be cashed in. If this is en masse then the US will face a serious crash which will affect the rest of the world

The US, or any sovereign currency nation, doesn't borrow to spend. It doesn't even need to issue bonds.

 

[lpetrich]

Manufacturing Matters… But It’s the Jobs That Count - ewp-420.pdf
Asian Development Bank - Working Paper Series #410, November 2014

The abstract:

This paper asks, first, whether today’s developing economies can achieve high-income status without first building large manufacturing sectors. We find that practically every economy that enjoys a high income today experienced a manufacturing employment share in excess of 18%–20% sometime since the 1970s. Manufacturing output share thresholds are much poorer predictors of rich-country status than their employment counterparts. This motivates us to ask whether it is becoming more difficult to sustain high levels of manufacturing activity. We find that the maximum expected employment share for a typical developing economy has fallen to around 13%–15%, and that deindustrialization in employment sets in at much lower income per capita levels of $8,000–$9,000, than it once did. Neither manufacturing output shares, nor the level of income at which they decline have fallen as obviously. These results are consistent with the idea that industrialization in employment terms has been more important for eventual prosperity than has industrialization in output terms; and that high manufacturing employment shares are becoming more difficult to sustain as incomes rise. This suggests that the path to prosperity through industrialization may have become more difficult.

In the paper:

The second finding is a clear confirmation of H1, i.e., manufacturing employment shares have declined over time. This is apparent from the decline in the peak employment share expected by a typical economy as well as the negative and statistically significant derivatives of the shares with respect to the year (not shown—any positive coefficients on the year are more than compensated by the negative coefficients on the interaction between the year and log per capita GDP).

Third, the results also confirm H2, i.e., manufacturing employment peaks at lower levels of per capita income over time. The coefficient on the interaction between per capita GDP and income is negative and highly significant, and (in regression 5) the income level of peak manufacturing employment fell from $33,994 in 1970, to $9,576 in 2010. Thus, deindustrialization sets in sooner than in the past.

That paper made no mention of automation or robotics, however. It's very evident that automation is getting better and better, and making more and more human workers unnecessary.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think we need to accept that we can't control technological change, and that inevitably this is going to make a huge proportion of populations irrelevant to production.

Whether that leads to disaster or utopia is up to us.

A perfect illustration of what I've been talking about about the supposed wage stagnation.

Note how the wage graph looks an awful lot like the "routine manual" line of this graph. (They're actually talking about the routine manual jobs, also.)

If you want to do well these days you need to be in that nonroutine cognitive group!

 

[whichphilosophy]

It would have been easier to phase these out instead of exporting jobs abroad. The US is possibly overpopulated in this sense and should consider requirements of the future while phasing out old jobs. It's cheaper to pay someone to do something rather than pay him because he is unemployed.

I don't follow you, phase out what?
I am not sure meaningless jobs are that cheap. Overall they make everything more expensive.

Until it is not required a particular job which is required has meaning until it is obsolete.

 

[barbos]

I don't follow you, phase out what?
I am not sure meaningless jobs are that cheap. Overall they make everything more expensive.

Until it is not required a particular job which is required has meaning until it is obsolete.

Required by whom? Who is requiring pharmaceutical companies to develop pointless drugs?