Wednesday, February 01, 2012

where did all the workers go?

19 comments:

nanakwame said...

Nice chart but please don't leave this out Technologist, not you

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/041410-world-robot-population 

nanakwame said...

Don Cornelius apparently killed himself

umbrarchist said...

The lower classes are brainwashed into concentrating on JOBS and INCOME not NET WORTH.  The system is designed to keep the lower classes running on a treadmill making the upper classes richer.  But technology changes over time and the world population keeps going up and that changes how the system works.  Most Americans could have had their homes paid for by now but instead they bought cars designed to become obsolete.

The economics profession ignored the depreciation of all of that JUNK.  But we are supposed to continue listening to economist that are stupid liars.

Running a world of  7 billion people on defective grade school algebra.

http://www.toxicdrums.com/economic-wargames-by-dal-timgar.html

Tom said...

Good point, and not just the lower classes.  Plenty of upper-middle-class people are living far beyond their means & don't know it.  Don't have the financial background to know it.

CNu said...

The only ones that count in my book are the autonomous drones.

CNu said...

Now if only all the other old raisins popping viagra, consuming vastnesses of complex medical procedures and trillions in "entitlements" could be induced to do likewise...,

nanakwame said...

You sure not talking about Cornelius and if he had a health problem, I admire his decision. Enjoy the rest of your day

umbrarchist said...

It depends on how you define classes.  If you define them solely on the basis of NET WORTH then a smart plumber could be higher class than a neurosurgeon.  We are indoctrinated to get our egos wrapped up in our jobs and income to impress other people.

That is what bugs me about people and cars.  I look at them just from a utilitarian and technological perspective.  So to me they are necessary junk.  Having a conversation about cars with someone who LIKES them is really difficult.  If I say what I really think he'll get mad.  Shouldn't all Rolls Royce cars have had turbine engines for the last 30 years?   Dumb rich people buying pistons.  LOL

John Kurman said...

Atlantic's Derek Thompson plucked his graph from the National Journals' pdf (linked to in the Atlantic article).

If you look at the next graph in that pdf, entitled "Made in America", there's some interesting stuff. It compares output from the years 1977 and 2008. Biggest losses, apparel, textiles, old reliables like metals, wood, motor vehicles gone. There is a chance that machinery/fabricated materials can be revived, as they have not had too much of a slide and the brains what hold that kind of knowledge have not calcified/died off yet.

Computers and electronics have doubled in size, probably good for another twenty years if (if!) we throw enough brains at it, which means we foster a "knowledge economy", which means we shove the kids into STEMS, which, oh, dear, ain't a happening. So, I guess we rely on the only other sure-thing growth industry, petroleum and coal products. And chemicals. And plastics and rubber products. Problem there is, the latter two are value-added through the extractive networks. Synthetic rubber just sucks period, so unless someone comes up with some wicked bad synthetic biology stuff, I guess we (America) better start sprucing up the infrastructure for eventual storybook tourism shit like England.

Shorter version: everything depends upon this generation of kids getting a proper education in the right fields.

Tom said...

Yeah, good point about class.  Lots of people who are supposedly highly educated act as if their income can only go up, and they not only don't save but they actually increase their debt over time.

BUT because of what you're saying about fancy consumer goods, they not only convince other people but they convince themselves  (!) that they're doing fine.  But as you say it's mostly just high-priced useless crap.  They could junk it all tomorrow and their lives would probably improve.

Worst of all, some of these idiots hire "money managers."  (They have debt, but they have "savings" too.  God only knows whether their net worth is even positive.)  The money managers charge 1.5% a year to put the money they "manage" into funds.  Then the funds charge 1.5% a year too.  So they start out PAYING 3% a year to sit in funds that we know generally UNDERPERFORM the market.    It's a status symbol:  it symbolizes the status of Idiocy.  

So looping back to what you said about class & intelligence, what is the difference between paying 3% a year, every year, on my own money, versus the immigrants from say Guatemala who line up to pay Western Union 5% or something to wire their own money to family back home?     Pretty rapidly 3% a year becomes a much worse deal than what the folks with no money and no checking account are forced into, and it's VOLUNTARY!!

And but you can not talk to these people.  Whatever class they're in, and at some point they may get a surprise, but they think they already know all about finance.  It's unbelievable.

Tom said...

People just want their kids to be on the football team.  What skills?  The kids will sit in offices watching the clock and sending emails around, like their parents did.  What me worry?

nanakwame said...

We still have the best machinist on the globe, and one of the problems since I been in  "Labor" since 14 years old - is my generation is still the most skilled and mostly the women are flexible to change skills. One of the problems for older men, especially after 40, it appears we accept "closed mind" too easy.

nanakwame said...

Generalization of the youth never worked, even I have made that error. 

Tom said...

Nana, of course you're right about that.  Makes me feel better to hear it too.

Makheru Bradley said...

"In 2010 the employment rate for African American males reached historic lows in metropolitan areas across the country. By 2010, in five of the nation's largest metropolitan areas fewer, than half of working age Black males held jobs. In 25 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas fewer, than 55 percent of working age Black males were employed." 

 http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/black-employment_2012.pdf

Big Don said...

http://www4.uwm.edu/ced/publications/black-employment_2012.pdf -- This .pdf is a joke.  It fails to address the IQ/intelligence problem (those words appear *nowhere* in the paper).  Few jobs remain nowdays for lower IQ's - they have mostly been computerized and automated. Most labor intensive jobs for drones are long gone.  Even the remaining menial jobs are best performed productively by those of higher intelligence - TBC has a dandy discussion of why this is (pg 70-80).  

Dale Asberry said...

 Speak, boy. Speak!

Tom said...

Maybe, Mensa, but the average IQ of laypeople who spend their time obsessing about IQ isn't that impressive either. 

Makheru Bradley said...

LOL@ Big Dunce and his Lula da Silva moment
 
Per the implications of this scintillating analysis by Big Dunce, America’s industrial capitalists transferred manufacturing jobs to low-cost geographies because cheap laborers in places such as China, Mexico, and Romania possess an IQ which allows them to perform tasks which could not be performed by workers in urban America.   
 
Just wondering what level of IQ is required to reach such conclusions.
 
Based on the “From Factories to Cubicles” chart the manufacturing sector and the finance (Lehman Brothers, etc), insurance (AIG, etc) and real estate (Countrywide, etc) sector flipped places.  Back in 2009 Luiz InĂ¡cio Lula da Silva offered his perspective on the economic crisis caused by the “high IQ” players of the latter sector:
 
“This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
 
Clearly it takes an IQ in the range of the Big Dunce to create and burst bubbles; crash the global economy, and force equally brilliant members of Congress and the Fed to bail your smart-ass out, while millions of people lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.
 
Then again psychopaths are extremely intelligent. You have to be smart to manipulate the economy during a presidential election cycle and replace one brilliant Ivy Leaguer from Yale with another one from Columbia in order to guarantee that your criminality will go unpunished.
 
How much more of this “high-IQ” tyranny can the people endure?
 
     

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