economy and jobs scary article

[Anonymous]

Read this article and felt it was right on the mark as to why our economy is so down. Looks like we will continue down the path we are going.

"Several economists, including Paul Krugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterised not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great “hollowing out”, as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine. Alan Blinder, of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if anything more “offshorable” than low-wage ones. A plumber or lorry-driver’s job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmer’s can."

http://www.economist.com/node/21528226

[Anonymous]

Yes but ironically computer programming is one of the fields where supply does not meet demand in the US.

Now there is one caveat: when I say supply does not meet demand I mean qualified candidates. Software development is not a profession bestowed upon you at graduation. But still software companies complain up and down about not being able to fill positions.

Also I take issue with the general direction of the article. EVERY occupation starts out as a job for a skilled few artisans, and eventually becomes routinized until it can be handled in a mass production fashion. This is nothing new, from agriculture, to lumber mills to shoes to forging nails to building cars to accounting to eventually medicine. This is progress. And the top earning jobs are the ones that require the rarest talent. Meanwhile anything that can be simplified should and will be simplified.

[Anonymous]

Op read "The Bell Curve". The smart get smarter, the rich get richer, the most intelligent are steered into the best jobs... leaving all the rest of us.

Only so many people can work at McDonald's.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:Op read "The Bell Curve". The smart get smarter, the rich get richer, the most intelligent are steered into the best jobs... leaving all the rest of us.

Only so many people can work at McDonald's.

Thanks, at least in part, to their control of politicians, the rich certainly get richer, but are smart people today smarter than in the past?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op read "The Bell Curve". The smart get smarter, the rich get richer, the most intelligent are steered into the best jobs... leaving all the rest of us.

Only so many people can work at McDonald's.

Right, rely on a discredited book about sociobiology to address unemployment rather than look at broad structural change in the jobs available due to structural changes in economy and technology. That's not helpful or insightful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op read "The Bell Curve". The smart get smarter, the rich get richer, the most intelligent are steered into the best jobs... leaving all the rest of us.

Only so many people can work at McDonald's.

Funny, you don't get the same massive disparities of wealth in the other (or should I say "more") developed countries. Of course, it's an article of faith among some of the less informed folks on the right that European countries suffer in terms of productivity, but over the last decade or so, even that advantage has evaporated. So we just end up with a crueler, less prosperous, more inequitable society.

Heckuva job wingnuts!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op read "The Bell Curve". The smart get smarter, the rich get richer, the most intelligent are steered into the best jobs... leaving all the rest of us.

Only so many people can work at McDonald's.

Right, rely on a discredited book about sociobiology to address unemployment rather than look at broad structural change in the jobs available due to structural changes in economy and technology. That's not helpful or insightful.

Actually, there's considerable evidence that the recession is *not* caused by structural issues, but rather a demand-side slump. Pointing the finger at underlying "structural changes" is guaranteed to make the proposed solutions ineffective. It's the same problem with mistaken fear of "bond vigilantes" and calls for massive deregulation to sooth the "confidence" of corporations. We're in a recession because consumers aren't spending money. They're not spending money because of debt overhang from credit cards and housing bubble bursting.

Anyway, the argument against structural unemployment follows. If there's a rational counter-argument to be made, I haven't seen it:

Basic textbook macro tells you how to distinguish between slumps brought on by supply shocks and those brought on by demand shocks: look at inflation. If you have stagflation, rising unemployment combined with accelerating inflation, that’s the signature of a supply shock; if you have unemployment with disinflation, that’s the signature of a demand shock. And guess what we see?

Now, you might second-guess this basic observation if there were strong direct evidence of some kind of labor mismatch — layoffs in some industries combined with labor shortages in others; high unemployment for some types of labor combined with tight markets and soaring wages for others; high unemployment in some regions but exceptionally good hiring in others. But as EPI documents, none of these things are, in fact, visible.

Is it possible that there has been some rise in structural unemployment that’s swamped by a much larger rise in cyclical unemployment? Yes, conceivably. And let’s talk about that when unemployment gets below, say, 7 percent — which at current rates of progress will happen, well, never.

I really don’t think there’s any way to make sense of the fuss about structural unemployment unless you posit that a lot of influential people are looking for reasons not to act. Based on everything we know, this just shouldn’t be an issue. What the economy needs is more demand; provide that, and you’ll be amazed at how many willing, productive workers there are, currently sitting idle.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and yes, "The Bell Curve" is a pseudo-intellectual horse-shit targeted at soothing the prejudices of wannabe "thinkers". Reading it for its socioeconomic content is like reading "The Da Vinci Code" for insight into global politics.

[Anonymous]

One last thing, that quote's from Krugman, who (like wikipedia) is of course is immediately dismissed by various right-wing types because he's a "discredited" hack. The charge is ridiculous, of course, but if you haven't got an argument, go after the man.

[TheManWithAUsername]

Anonymous wrote:Funny, you don't get the same massive disparities of wealth in the other (or should I say "more") developed countries. Of course, it's an article of faith among some of the less informed folks on the right that European countries suffer in terms of productivity, but over the last decade or so, even that advantage has evaporated. So we just end up with a crueler, less prosperous, more inequitable society.

IIRC, for at a least a few decades now, the Scandinavian countries - those inefficient socialist clods - have been right behind us in productivity. The funny thing is that they're not even trying to compete there.

Productivity is output per worker. That's in part a measure of efficiencies and talent, but probably much more a measure of how much workers are squeezed. The Scandinavians are trying to live well, not to rack up points on the GNP scoreboard. I'd like to see the world's economies ranked on output per hour.

[Anonymous]

The Scandinavians are trying to live well, not to rack up points on the GNP scoreboard.

Excellent point. Especially in a society where such a large portion of the GNP is concentrated in the hands of so few.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The Scandinavians are trying to live well, not to rack up points on the GNP scoreboard.

Excellent point. Especially in a society where such a large portion of the GNP is concentrated in the hands of so few.

On the subject of

European productivity grew faster than the US until the 1990s, mainly reflecting catchup; but America moved ahead in the late 1990s; the data suggest that the differential has leveled out since, so this may have been a one-time bulge.

And what was it about? Van Ark’s data point to a huge surge between 1995 and 2004 in US productivity, not so much in producing goods as in distributing them. And we know what that’s about: Wal-Mart and other big box stores.

I’m not denigrating these productivity gains. What’s interesting, though, is that if you’re looking for a story about the relative American revival from 1995 until recently, it’s not so much a broad, generic economy thing as it is a story of one particular innovation that for whatever reason — land use regulations? — Europe was slow to imitate.

(http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/the-wal-mart-decade/)

So even the productivity "edge" is debatable.

[TheManWithAUsername]

It's also the debt-fueled spending, no? I'm surprised Krugman didn't credit that, but maybe I'm missing something.

[Anonymous]

TheManWithAUsername wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny, you don't get the same massive disparities of wealth in the other (or should I say "more") developed countries. Of course, it's an article of faith among some of the less informed folks on the right that European countries suffer in terms of productivity, but over the last decade or so, even that advantage has evaporated. So we just end up with a crueler, less prosperous, more inequitable society.

IIRC, for at a least a few decades now, the Scandinavian countries - those inefficient socialist clods - have been right behind us in productivity. The funny thing is that they're not even trying to compete there.

Productivity is output per worker. That's in part a measure of efficiencies and talent, but probably much more a measure of how much workers are squeezed. The Scandinavians are trying to live well, not to rack up points on the GNP scoreboard. I'd like to see the world's economies ranked on output per hour.

We are behind Norway and 50 cents an hour ahead of France. Norwegians work 400 fewer hours per year than we do. The French work 250 fewer hours per year than we do.

[Anonymous]

You can't have the haves without the have nots. If you want to have more haves, you have to create a LOT more have nots.