[Unknown Target]

This could also relate to that thread we had recently on robotic manufacturing.


What exactly does it mean that there are not enough jobs for people? Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t that mean that society is so gifted with excess that people simply don’t have to work? If there is work that needs to be done, then there are open jobs, if there are no open jobs then all of society’s needs must be taken care of and thus the people without jobs should be to kick back and relax? Isn’t that worthy goal, after all? A society where no one has to work? Wouldn't that be a benefit of automated manufacturing?

So why are there so many people suffering because they can’t find jobs?

EDIT: Oh, duh, there's no capital in traditional coffers to fund them, is there? Well what are some nontraditional methods with which to use to fund or otherwise compensate people for their labors, or make it unnecessary for them to work to survive?

Forgive my logic if it seems naive, I was just struck by this thought at 5:30 AM.

[Nuke]

seems to me a lot of jobs dont actually accomplish anything of any real importance to society. businesses seem to go out of their way to make themselves less efficient at accomplishing their chosen goals. coming up with ways to charge more for a good or service than would normally be acceptable. the way manufacturers constantly have to have some new gadget that is essentially last years product in a new package with a few minor "improvements" (most of which make the product cost less for them to produce, and might give you a couple of new features, while overall quality diminishes). i mean they certainly do generate income, but at what expense.

i think its silly to retool a factory every year to make a product that appears new. just look at the issues with tech junk. if instead of making a product that lasts a couple years and then breaks, why dont they make a rock solid product with a much longer service life? its not like youd loose money because consumers areno longer breaking their poorly made products and are not being sold a new one. youd create a service industry, and a spare parts industry. why do they got to go out of their way to convince us that the phone we bought last year is worthless and that we need to buy their new one.

i guess they do these things to promote the economy. i guess they figure so long as the money is moving that everything is fine and dandy. people need money so they get a job, and those same businesses turn around and sell you a bunch of stuff and your back to nothing. its an engine that exists simply to run with no other goal than to level up the economy. of course this creates a situation where money means all and people mean nothing. the result is a very unhappy workforce. especially when the company is run by people with huge ambitions that will exploit people to reach them. you might say that we need jobs to attain personal accomplishment, but i never felt any of that. i always felt that the jobs i ended up with did absolutely nothing that i wanted to do with my life. working up didnt work because there was no up to work to. i think ive accomplished more in the last 3 years of buming off the government than i ever did working any job (i think i made more money too). i found solutions to problems that i didnt even know existed, ive learned many new skills over the last few years. i think im too crazy to work anyway, i barely have the attention span to do the things i want to do, much less the things everyone else wants me to do.

granted there are important jobs that need to be done. we still got basic needs, food, water, shelter, heat, power and they dont make themselves. but when jobs are created just for the sake of creating jobs it seems kinda silly. if theres not enough work to go around then perhaps its time to reduce the work day or the work week. i find it sad that people with no dependents cant support themselves on a part time job. they way we have this while institution of employment set up seems like a legalized form of slavery. it promotes one thing and one thing only, greed. and that is why all things need to be nuked.

this rant is brought to you in part by cocaine. theres no better way to kill a prostitute than a blunt object and a lot of cocaine. look for it at a dealer near you!

[Mr. Vega]

There are enough jobs at full capacity, and even if they weren't the incentive to create more jobs increases as you approach full employment. The problem is there isn't enough demand to buy the goods we're capable of making. Firms aren't investing enough because they're jittery about the future. Consumers are likewise and a lot of them are saddled with debt. Actually, so are companies. That's the hallmark of this recession. Massive amounts of private debt. Trying to control it has led to cuts in spending and investment which leads to layoffs. And as for the agencies traditionally responsible for rescuing economies from this type of hole - governments - most are either saddled with extreme debt (Europe) or run by people determined to run the economy into the ground out of principle (the US).

And Unknown, if you're not going to find new productive jobs for unemployed but focus on pure fairness, the only way you make that work is by income redistribution, on a massive scale. To really make that work you'd need an honest-to-god anarchist or libertarian-socialist system with democratic control of the means of production.

[JGZinv]

As someone who is in the market for a job, and I have been all year... here's a couple thoughts I have....

1. The application process weeds out the good with the bad.  Several people I've talked to, as well as myself, have experienced
where an online personality test you answer honestly and realistically as possible, ends up keeping you from the next stage because
they automatically want some hyper/super employee that can sell anything, is always perfect with customers, never gets tired, and will
bark on demand.  99% of the population is not capable of doing that. It's an unrealistic expectation, and it blocks the honest people as well
as the fools.

Not to mention the online applicant system may rake in a few hundred or more people for a given job, and then software takes over and eliminates
people based on certain criteria. Then a recruiter ends up with a stack of 20-30 application. Not necessarily do I believe that is a good thing. A lot can
be known about a person from that face to face time in an interview. How many people were rejected, based on some small criteria, when they could
have performed the job quite well?

Furthermore.... on these tests, once you have failed they refuse to tell you on what part or how you failed the test. You can however apply again in 30 days.
It isn't in the least helpful.

2. The jobs that are out there, are overpopulated with applicants. In the case of one interview I had, the owner told me flat out he had 5 other
people apply around the same time I had. Even though I wasn't the one hired, I hear after the fact that they aren't happy with who they picked.
I have to admit though, only 6 applicants, even with all the hoops they had us go through, is fairly low.

3. The pay scale is screwy. One place you can go with your certifications, and get $10 an hour, and go 2 miles up the road and get $14. Most places are at
minimum wage for uneducated folk, much less experienced techs.

4. I'm fairly sure in quite a few job listings, the employer doesn't actually know what they need. For a simple programming job, they want someone with 10 years
experience, 5 related years experience, half a dozen programming languages known, half a dozen certifications, and more... and pay you a quarter what you're worth - if that.
They should be researching who is adequate for the job, not pouring out every known related word from a Google search into a job listing.

5. Employers want you to have years or tons of experience on paper... but how do you expect me to gain that experience if you won't hire me?  This also applies when you try to explain
you've done more with your life and gained other experience or skills that "should" apply - but because you didn't follow the established path of high school -> special ed -> college, you're
treated as though you don't matter.

6. Most jobs have little or no training as part of them. This particularly hurts the elderly as they are the least computer literate. Everything today is computerized, in many cases you
can't even submit an application without an email, MS Word, and PDF export ability. Much less the education to write a decent looking resume.

7. Since I mentioned college, and there's been another thread around here on the rising costs. Essentially even if you pick a local community college or university, unless you
have grants/scholarships up the whazoo (ie sports), and/or large donations from your parents - it's not happening. Most parents can't afford it as they are barely scraping by
trying to keep food on the table and a roof over head. Something major like credit card interest rate spikes (even if you've had perfect credit and always paid on time they can do this
and it's being done right now) or a major car repair can choke a family quickly.  So the bottom line is a lot of young adults are not going to get additional education in the traditional sense.
You might have the option of a trade school, but again they are still fairly expensive. You're left with self study or going for entry level certifications, but they are commonly dismissed on your resume.

8. Tests or requirements unrelated to the job. If I'm applying to a computer technician position, why do I need to know ancient Chinese history, or the capital of a country no one, including CNN,
has heard of? Are they simply testing my luck or ability to guess? Math I can understand, problem solving makes sense... but come on. I can't think of any "reasonable"
reasons a cook should need to solve trigonometry questions while cooking.

[bobbtmann]

I've entertained the idea of a society where the basics are a guaranteed, and jobs are available to collect things or level up or something. It would definitely be based off of a role playing game.


The thing that bothers me is the idea of unlimited growth. If the economy is always growing, then you'd think that there'd always be new jobs being created, and population growth would mean that the vacant positions are being filled. Except the population is shrinking, and the economy is growing, and there aren't enough jobs.

[Grizzly]

I've entertained the idea of a society where the basics are a guaranteed,

What do you mean with that exactly? that everyone gets a basic income (since that is already true in quite a few societies)?

[Mars]

Yes, as machines continue to do improve and do more jobs more efficiently than humans, more jobs will disappear. As it is artificial scarcity is already a major component of the global economy.

I like to think that someday we'll either find new things to dedicate human labor to, or find a way of effectively doing away with the vast majority of it; but I think the fact is, there's a lot of social and political inertia keeping Man as a species working. Until the day we find an effective way of allocating resources in a futuristic economy where hardly anyone does anything, there isn't a hope in hell of it happening. Even once some type of system is established, I'd bet all my teeth that there will be a large movement that decries it as evil.

EDIT:
In an ideal world, all of the basics would be taken care of, there would be some type of effective cap on population growth, high skilled /  machine irreplaceable people would have incentives to continue to work, and we would find something for the vast majority of people to do.

[Nuke]

i like the idea that basic human needs should be a right and not a privilege. though i should point out that basic means basic. a tiny no frills apartment, just enough food stamps and a small cash allowance to live off of, very basic health care and a bus pass. if you want more than that you have to work for it. i kinda think that the majority of people want to work, not for income or to appear normal, but because they want something to do. sitting around doing nothing all day would drive them nuts. the rest of us mental nutjobs, artists, musicians, and self study geeks (i think i fit in all of those categories) would thrive without having to worry about living in a van down by the river (and some of us cannot afford said van).

of course that is un-amarican at best, communist at worst. but when you think about it, what good are employees that just want to get paid? why hire someone who is only there for a paycheck and really doesn't care about the job or the ambitions of their superiors? if you run a car shop you dont want a guy who needs cash, you want a gear head, someone who lives and breaths to work on cars. if you run a computer repair service, you dont want a guy who got a certification because he saw money in the job, but someone who loves working on computers. if theres one thing that should change about the job market is to have it stop putting people in places they dont want to be, and stop misallocating talent.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Oh boy. I probably shouldn't get started on this, but I'm bored at the moment, so why not.

A massively overpopulated planet and an increasingly mechanized society don't mix, and we're starting to realize the consequences. Jobs are getting replaced, and meanwhile, the lower classes that traditionally perform those exact jobs that are being replaced are breeding like rabbits. None of the "first-world" governments have the balls to stand up and do something about because they're so afraid of offending a few people's sensitivities. This is the biggest problem with elected governments - the politicians only care about getting reelected instead of caring about actually making a difference in the world that they're supposed to be looking after.

Basically, the jobs that have been lost are gone for good. The only variable we have control over is the population. Where the hell are the population control measures?

[Nuke]

Basically, the jobs that have been lost are gone for good. The only variable we have control over is the population. Where the hell are the population control measures?

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Basically, the jobs that have been lost are gone for good. The only variable we have control over is the population. Where the hell are the population control measures?

Your name makes it perfect. You'd better get to work, there are all kinds of vermin to exterminate. 

I was thinking something more along the lines of a new plague, though. It's not a question of "if," just "when." These recent scares about bird flu and swine flu...please. Media fearmongering. Wake me up when Ebola evolves the ability to spread through aerosols and then I'll run for the hills.

[Nuke]

population is really only a concern if you want to normalize everyone's quality of life across the globe. there are way too many people for everyone to do as americans do. bringing some of them up to our level would likely require mass murder, of course you must also consider that out quality of life is often at the expense of theirs. it doesnt really help that our society requires some country in africa to enslave its population in order strip mine their land to bring us materials with which to make chips that go into cellphones that we are allowed to carelessly throw away to obsolescence at no real consequence to ourselves. granted if we vaporize the crap out of these people then we would have to use our people to get the resources, so no actual normalization would occur and anyone who tried to pull it off would be branded as the next hitler. we would need a world government just to get everyone on the same page.

but for the "best country in the world" to still have people living on the street is quite sad. but as far as human history goes we have always let the wrong people design our societies. we have given the job to the power hungry with an under thought out plan for how to proceed based on some misunderstood ideology. then once established the lawmaking process meanders out of control growing into a fractal tumor that in itself becomes so complicated that you need to pay someone a thousand bucks an hour to figure it out for you. i think that a society is essentially a big machine and like any machine it can be engineered to perfection, but weve let the wrong people design it.

[Kosh]

Has it occurred to anyone that the last few years worth of "job shortages" were because we've been in a recession?

[LordMelvin]

Has it occurred to anyone that the last few years worth of "job shortages" were because we've been in a recession?

But the Wall Street Journal said the recession was all done! Don't you trust them?

Also, Nuke, I find that your population control methods have an excessive likelihood of damaging myself and/or infrastructure that I rely on for browsing the internet for pictures of cute kitties.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Has it occurred to anyone that the last few years worth of "job shortages" were because we've been in a recession?

I don't think anyone on this board is dense enough not to know that. But the recession is a symptom, not a cause. It's a symptom of the rampant greed of the people that run the world markets, reckless lending habits, and engaging in baseless speculation with people's livelihoods.

[Bobboau]

this bit of optimism seems relevant.

[Bobboau]

Also, Nuke, I find that your population control methods have an excessive likelihood of damaging myself and/or infrastructure that I rely on for browsing the internet for pictures of cute kitties.

maybe we can compromise? neutron bombs?

[Aardwolf]

Responding to OP:

Unfortunately it is rather difficult for people to find means to support themselves besides getting paid for goods/services... that is, even if you have the know-how to grow your own crops, you still need money. Otherwise either you're a squatter (which I think is illegal in most places), or you can't pay the property tax.

Query: if you have zero income, but own land and a home, are you exempt from property taxes?

[Mongoose]

Man, where's Battman, I'd love to see him go to town on this thread.

[Nuke]

Responding to OP:

Unfortunately it is rather difficult for people to find means to support themselves besides getting paid for goods/services... that is, even if you have the know-how to grow your own crops, you still need money. Otherwise either you're a squatter (which I think is illegal in most places), or you can't pay the property tax.

Query: if you have zero income, but own land and a home, are you exempt from property taxes?

property tax is based on property value, not income.