
Unnecessariat - thenobsta
https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
======
jraines
I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech:

 _The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For
the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe
that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of
our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually
dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen
below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and
for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of
happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning._

Everything he listed has gotten worse, not better. Both local communities and
our institutions have fragmented, crumbled, or turned, at least in part,
cynically exploitative (see: degree mills, asset forfeiture, Creflo Dollar,
myriad regulations enabling rent-seeking and hindering free enterprise).

Because HN and tech world chatter is my background noise, I think about
Universal Basic Income, though I don't know much more about it than a
definition. It seems to me the "winners" in the current game can provide
assistance and some level of comfort in a more expansive and efficient way
than the degrading system in place today. But they can't provide meaning.
Neither can the institutions Carter listed, alone. At minimum, an earned trust
in all or most of them is a foundation on which secure footing can be had to
build a life, a family, a community. But I don't know how we get there from
here. It sure doesn't seem that either party is steering that way, or that our
current media is capable of engaging with the situation without driving 10
different outrage-optimized wedges through it.

The civic and moral fabric of the nation is not an election-winning topic, as
Carter found out.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
You were right until your last sentence. Reagan made the nation _feel_ that
its civic and moral fabric was strong. Nevermind that his policies undermined
civil society and his religious backing was hypocritical of anything close to
Christ's teachings on compassion, it made people feel strong and so it won him
the election.

~~~
jbooth
Trump's got the same thing with the specific brand of disempowered people that
the article's talking about.

~~~
emblem21
I have found people are frequently ready to kill one another to protect THEI
specific brands of the disempowered of choice, often at the expense of the
disempowered brand they despize.

~~~
api
The culture war is a great tool for dividing the disempowered and keeping
economic issues off the table.

------
Animats
From the article: _" We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has
gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the
top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty
okay with that._"

That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the
stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it.

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week.

Overtime is coming back to America, on December 1, 2016.[1] The threshold
below which overtime must be paid rises from $455 to $913 per week. This
affects about 4 million US workers. Goldman Sachs says this will add 100,000
jobs, as employers try to avoid paying time and a half for overtime.[2]

[1]
[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/)
[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-new-obama-
overt...](http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-new-obama-overtime-
rule-to-add-jobs-2016-5)

~~~
labster
You seem to have missed the point of the article. The $15 minimum wage will
most likely help the precariat. This is a good thing. But it will do little if
anything to help the unnecessariat.

> ... no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans,
> the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don’t. Don’t, won’t,
> and know it.

Overtime and wage increases are not going to help people who don't have jobs,
and can't be trained for high paying jobs. UBI _might_ help them, but might
have some other unbeneficial social effects. And maybe if we invent Soma we
could give people a safe way to escape a crushing reality.

But the gist here is that for a certain underclass, things are not improving,
and no solutions are being offered. No one even cares that these people are
dying, no community is organized around helping them. Nothing. It's bad enough
to make one want to take heroin.

So vote Trump! If you can't save the world, better to watch it burn. Fire walk
with me.

~~~
seizethecheese
> But it will do little if anything to help the unnecessariat.

A higher minimum wage will most likely _hurt_ the unnecessariat. One way to
think of a $15 minimum wage is a prohibition on anyone who's labor is worth
less than $15/hr from working. Not only will it make the current
unecessariat's situation worse, it will likely expand it's ranks.

~~~
jjoonathan
Elasticity in the US labor market is much closer to 0 than -1. Not only has
this been studied, it's been studied enough that we can do pretty solid meta-
studies to find bias is the studies:

[http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/studying-the-studies-on-
the-...](http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/studying-the-studies-on-the-minimum-
wage)

I wouldn't advocate a jump straight to a $15 minimum wage because for
sufficiently large MW jumps the elasticity has to start heading for -1 (and
beyond -- that's just the break even point) and we only have good information
for small changes. But for small changes the evidence is unambiguous. The
traditional narrative taught in Econ 101 is an oversimplification.

It's not hard to figure out why: markets set the actual price of labor between
the producer price (minimum people will work for) and consumer price (value to
the employer) based on bargaining power. If employers are winning at the
bargaining power game, wages will be close to the minimum. If employees are
winning, wages will be close to the maximum. _Only those earning wages already
close to the maximum will be affected by a minimum wage increase._ Since the
unskilled labor market is flooded, approximately everyone is on the "minimum"
side of the spectrum. Both theory and evidence say that small MW increases are
boons to laborers under these conditions.

As machines advance and begin push humans out of the market, the maximum side
of the spectrum will begin to drift downwards and impinge on all the people
crunched up against the minimum side, squeezing them out of the market and
into "unnecessariat" status. Minimum wage will become an ineffective tool at
that point, just as you say. But we aren't there yet.

~~~
todd8
> Not only has this been studied, it's been studied enough that we can do
> pretty solid meta-studies to find bias is the studies.

The cited blog is by the CEPR, a leftist/progressive think-tank, this doesn't
make their conclusion wrong, however, my reading of the graph present on the
blog looks more like there is a negative elasticity, with respect to the
demand for labor at higher wages, indicated by the meta-study. The graph looks
like it might be as large as -0.1, suggesting that doubling of the minimum
wage could have a noticeable negative impact on employment. Not all studies
show that happening, but a greater number do.

------
aston
This is a pretty great personal account, and it helps me tremendously in my
goal of understanding this group of people who feel left out and overlooked by
their government. However, it's also a good demonstration of how people find
ways to rationalize acting against their own self-interest.

One example: The author observes that the unnecessariat is having lots of
economic value extracted from them, e.g. from required, high cost healthcare
plans. She implies things were better when there was no requirement (and thus
no coverage). I think that's a common sentiment among conservatives, which is
why they have voted continually against Obamacare. But as she points out,
these are people for whom even moderate healthcare costs can be devastating
financially. So why didn't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public
option, subsidized by higher taxes? And why didn't she consider that a
reasonable enough future to even mention it?

I worry the answer is that they've given up on using (representative)
democracy to improve their lives.

~~~
smacktoward
_So why didn 't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option,
subsidized by higher taxes?_

Because _there was nobody to vote for who offered that._ McCain's proposal was
to deny that the problem existed. Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an
individual mandate. Clinton's proposal was Obamacare _with_ an individual
mandate. Those were the only entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran
on a public option, so you couldn't vote for that even if you desperately
wanted to.

Ironically, one of the first moves of the candidate who got the most votes,
Obama, was to decide that Hillary Clinton had been right after all and include
an individual mandate. So if you voted for him over her because you opposed
that idea, you were officially SOL.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an individual mandate. Clinton's
> proposal was Obamacare with an individual mandate. Those were the only
> entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran on a public option

Actually, all of Obama, Clinton, and Edwards ran on a public option. They
differed on other points (as you note, during the primary Obama opposed and
Clinton supported an individual mandate, and there were various other
differences between the three plans, but largely Clinton and Obama cribbed
their plans from the same place Edwards did first, so they all looked pretty
similar.)

~~~
smacktoward
They sometimes mentioned a public option, but it was never central to either
Obama's or Hillary's pitch.

See here for an evaluation of Obama on the issue:
[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2009/dec/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2009/dec/23/barack-obama/public-option-obama-platform/) It
was included in his platform, but as an "also, too" kind of thing. And if you
took your evaluation of his position from what he said on the stump, you'd
never have known it was in his platform at all.

(I'm omitting Edwards from this discussion because he flamed out so early.)

~~~
gbhn
My recollection is that it was included, but then traded to the relevant
industries for their acceptance of the plan we have now. Whether it was always
intended as a chip or was a serious part of the plan is open for debate I
suppose, but the best chips are ones that are serious, so I'm not sure there's
much difference in practice.

~~~
dragonwriter
Kind of, in that opponents of any bill were joined by some Senators that were
closely tied to the insurance industry to threaten to filibuster the bill
(which passed the House with a public option) if a public option was included,
looking several attempts (both passing the form the House did and putting
forward different public mechanisms) to include a public option in the Senate
version, and dropping the public option was the only way to secure Senate
passage.

------
vasaulys
This reminds me of a This American Life episode where many members of a town
collected disability because doctors there didn't consider them "smart enough
to work". Seems to be the beginning of Universal Basic Income in all but name.

On another note, it must be depressing to live there.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/490/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits)

~~~
dcposch
Unfortunately it's not a Universal Basic Income at all.

UBI and related proposals like Negative Income Tax minimize economic
distortion. As you make more money, there's a smooth transition from receiving
money from the gov't to paying net money as your taxes increase.

When you're on disability, you are generally not allowed to work. Any
"substantial gainful activity" beyond roughly $1k / month ends your benefits
[1].

So you might have a choice between $13k/year working 0 hours a week, or he
could make $15k/year working 40 hours a week doing something menial and
unpleasant.

If you tried to design a system to incentivize the working poor to drop out
and accept a lifetime of poverty and gov't dependence, it's hard to see how
you could do more. The fact that the program also incentivizes states to
convert welfare recipients into disability is just icing.

\---

I think America needs sweeping entitlement reform. Not "entitlement reform" in
the euphemistic Republican sense of cutting benefits, but reform done with
empathy for the poor and guided by competent economists. IMO the goals should
be to simplify and combine the many ways we have of giving money to poor
people, and to reduce the perverse incentives that those programs create.

------
dbcooper
It's probably also worth reading the recent Slate Star Codex blog post that
cites this.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/three-great-articles-
on...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/three-great-articles-on-poverty-
and-why-i-disagree-with-all-of-them/)

~~~
JulianMorrison
I found that really interesting too. My comment from there:

Throwing money at the problem of poverty, ironically, is actually being
treated as a serious answer by international NGOs these days, where for ages
people tried everything else on the assumption that the feckless poor would
spend it on drink. Build infrastructure for them, food aid, subsidized goods,
food stamps, workfare, every which way but "here have some cash". But when
they actually tried the cash, it worked. That's one reason I'm optimistic
about a basic income. Another, is that I feel that a whole lot of creativity
has been stomped flat by, basically, living one paycheck from the street. With
an inflation-pegged basic income that's enough to subsist on, and protected
against creditors, effectively that fear would be gone. Bad news for employers
wanting cheap poor people to do awful jobs. Good news, for all those
individual people. I have a feeling they'd rebuild their local economy. I have
a feeling, too, a lot of people stuck in the city by the necessity of the next
paycheck, would move out and join them.

------
DenisM
I often say to my fellow engineers that software engineering is a profession
of destroying jobs. There doesn't seem to be any follow up discussion though,
everyone just nods and moves on to the next subject.

What _can_ we do? There is no stopping the train of automation.

~~~
CodeMage
Of course there's no followup discussion. The fact that software engineering
is "destroying jobs" is the wrong problem to focus on, but any discussion that
approaches the right problem -- capitalism -- is practically taboo in United
States.

~~~
clock_tower
Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said
"feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites
-- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having,
and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations
towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm.

Of course, there'll always be room for islands of capitalism (imagine New York
or San Francisco as a free city), and a modern neo-feudal system will allow
social mobility more readily than the original; but still.

I'm not trolling, by the way. The usual assumption is "if not capitalism then
communism," but there are older, more interesting systems out there.

(There are also younger, scarier systems out there. The far right is getting
disconcertingly strong in Europe, and indeed in the US; I think that if we
don't explicitly choose some sort of neo-feudalism, we're going to get neo-
fascism instead, or possibly just the original kind of fascism.)

(Disclaimer: neo-feudalism does not mean the revival of torture and
oppression. One, "revival" implies that they aren't currently with us. Two, I
think that a king, who answers only to God, assassins, his own conscience, and
his hopes for his heirs, is less likely to turn lawless or pander to
bloodthirsty mobs than a president is.)

~~~
marcoperaza
> _Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism, with elites -- who are more
> or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing
> and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the
> common people and towards the collective defense of the realm._

This post is a good reminder that capitalists are the radical liberal utopians
of an earlier age, and what the realistic alternative is: social engineering
and control of ordinary people by elites who think they know better, in the
best case.

Count me out. I'll die fighting before I become a serf.

(edit: Also, it's just not true that the elite in capitalism are mostly
permanent and hereditary. There are over two million Cuban-Americans who
either came to this country with nothing to their name, or are the descendants
of those who did. Today, they've found their way to the middle and upper
classes in about the same proportions as non-hispanic white people who have
been here for much longer.)

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Then again, the prevailing opinion of the 19th century was that "inalienable
rights" are so last century and the only true rights that exist are those that
can be won from a free market.

~~~
deciplex
That's pretty much the prevailing opinion _now_ , and probably moreso than
even during the Gilded Age.

------
rmchugh
I'm reminded of the book 'Wasted Lives' by Zygmunt Baumann. In it he describes
how the ever changing nature of capitalism constantly creates a population
that is surplus to requirements. Think of what happens to dockside communities
when the harbours are automated and the dock work dries up. Or coal mining
towns when the mines are closed. This pattern is repeated all over the world
throughout history as capitalism renews itself through creative destruction or
flees to low wage countries in response to labour militancy.

------
legulere
> In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term “precariat”

Not really. It began to appear in German books in 2005
([https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Prekariat&year...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Prekariat&year_start=1950&year_end=2015&corpus=20&smoothing=0))
and searches took off in the end of 2006
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prekariat%2C%20preca...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prekariat%2C%20precariat&cmpt=q)
The German version of the word is still more common.

It actually really surprised me that the word is so young, as I think the word
is pretty much common knowledge in German.

------
hellbanner
Automation can automate manual labor jobs the easiest. Maintaining cities,
crafting medicine, colonizing space -- these are important jobs that humanity
has.

I think the bigger issue is that most people don't have resources to pursue
training to tackle this kind of work.

There are so many problems left to solve in the world it's a joke to say
"there isn't work to be done"

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _There are so many problems left to solve in the world it 's a joke to say
> "there isn't work to be done"_

There is a lot of work to be done, and there will be in the conceivable future
- but it doesn't mean there's _profitable_ work to be done _by humans_. a)
machines keep replacing us doing more work and doing it better than us, and b)
capitalism doesn't optimize for useful work, it optimizes for profitable work
- so even if there's a lot of world problems to solve that could be tackled by
the poor and uneducated, they're still screwed if they can't feed themselves
from that work.

------
roymurdock
I'm reading two books right now. _The Rise and Fall of American Growth_ [1] by
Robert Gordon and _The Grapes of Wrath_ [2] by John Steinbeck. They complement
each other, and this post, very well.

I would recommend Gordon's book as an objective overview of the astonishing
growth in economic and quality of life terms from 1870-1970. It's not as
thoroughly researched as I expected it to be, and the prose is somewhat
clunky, but it's a good lesson in the history of technology that we take for
granted nonetheless.

Steinbeck's tale of the banks/landowners displacing poor, rural farming
families is also extremely pertinent in light of this post. Car dealers
extract value from the fleeing, unnecessariat farmers in "Grapes", while
insurance companies/debtors prisons extract value from the unnecessariat rural
poor chronicled in this post. The promised land of "Grapes" (California)
continues to be successful today, with the coasts accreting a large portion of
the nation's wealth. It's also just a beautifully written and thoroughly
considered (to the point of seeming spontaneous) piece of art.

I am waiting for the next paradigm shifting technology with bated breath.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-
Princeton/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-
Princeton/dp/0691147728/)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John-
Steinbeck/dp/0143039...](http://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John-
Steinbeck/dp/0143039431/)

~~~
dredmorbius
I've read Gordon and am planning a review (I've published a "first
impressions" at
[https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius](https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius)). Some
(brief?) thoughts:

1\. His history of change 1870 - 2015 is good. Some weaknesses, but solid, and
he makes his case for dramatic changes. A mention of Maslow's Hierarchy of
Needs would improve the discussion, but his point even without stating that is
of drastic changes (and improvements) to basic food, shelter, clothing, and
security needs.

2\. He misses some _infrastructure_ with his focus on consumer impacts. Less
so with early work than in his discussion of information and communications
infrastructure, in which I think there _might_ be some weaknesses to his
argument (and a possible out for the optimists).

3\. You'll find the meat of his theory in the third section of the book.
Chapters 15-17 IIRC. Focus your critical eye there.

I've got many quibbles with his _economics_ arguments, though most of the
errors actually _bolster_ his overall argument -- I feel actual recent trends
are _worse_ than Gordon states.

Steinbeck's _Grapes_ is a true classic. Reading that as a story of an epic
animal migration (as Steinbeck begins it) is humbling.

------
studentrob
> from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re
> unnecessary

You're not unnecessary.

Have you read your local candidates' views? Have you identified the ones with
whom you agree? Have you ever run a voter registration drive to help elect
them? Or suggested to friends who share your views that they run for local
office?

You're capable of making change. Putting so much energy into saying you're
unnecessary shows you have the time.

~~~
thenomad
Not entirely sure about the "shows you have the time" part.

It doesn't take that long to write a blog post, particularly not a blog post
about something you clearly think about a lot and feel passionate about.

I'm not convinced that "you had some time to write a blog post" equates to
"you have enough time to thoroughly research your local politicians, network
with all your neighbours, and if necessary run an entire political campaign."

~~~
studentrob
If a person can maintain a blog with ~40 posts over the last year and a half
[1], they can afford to spend some time reading about their local candidates'
positions as it relates to issues they care about. Networking is just a
Facebook group or page away. People in less developed countries such as
Cambodia are mounting campaigns this way [2], and they have lower wages,
longer hours, and worse living and working conditions than Americans. People
there live under a government that has the longest running dictator in Asia
(31 years), yet they show up in droves every chance they get to vote.

I'm not attacking the author. I understand the feeling of worthlessness and
its effect on your desire to do things. My point is she has the ability to do
these things. And, nobody can bestow confidence upon you to act.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sit...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmorecrows.wordpress.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

[2] [http://sea-globe.com/virtual-democracy-social-media-
election...](http://sea-globe.com/virtual-democracy-social-media-elections-
cambodia-cpp-cnrp/)

------
mark_l_watson
Fantastic article. Extraction of value by the elite is the problem and a
partial solution is a movement for local business and constantly pushing back
even with simple things like paying for local goods and services in cash, not
credit cards. Why should banks get 3% on all local transactions?

Our system is grounded on the requirement for growth, and somehow that has to
change. There is nothing wrong with businesses that don't grow and pay decent
wages and serve their communities, but our economic regime heavily discounts
companies that are not growing.

------
blisterpeanuts
Just referring to the first section which was about AIDS, I'm curious about
this statement:

 _" For much of the 80’s, AIDS was killing thousands of people every year, and
the official government response seemed to be: Who cares? Let the fags die."_

I was around during the 80s, too, and I remember a tremendous national effort
to address the problem. From 1982 on, there were crash research projects all
over the US and Europe to figure out what AIDS was, and find ways to treat it.

I also remember the ACT UP group and especially the reports of them invading
medical conferences and screaming verbal abuse and threats at the researchers.

You could have written a similar kind of "What about us?" article in 1935,
when fully 25% of Americans were out of work and no prospects. Or in 1905,
when the Progressive movement arose in response to the grim abuse of factory
workers (as per Sinclair's "The Jungle"). Or in 1890 when the robber barons
were riding roughshod over small farmers and other businesses and American
society was riven by vast injustice and income disparity. Or in 1875 when
Blacks, freed from slavery, were disenfranchised, refused education, and put
down violently all across the South. One could go on and on.

Things are not now, nor will they ever be, perfect. It's always possible to
find fault with the system. It's important to keep trying to improve things.

Yet, I have to believe that the blogger who wrote this article has a roof over
her head, not in danger of freezing to death for lack of utility payment, owns
a computer, probably also a smartphone, probably also a car, and gets three
square meals a day despite feeling underemployed or overlooked. In short, the
poor and the victims of the vast economic changes that have convulsed our
society are better off today than ever before.

At the same time, huge debts and vast regulatory structures have choked off
the kind of small and medium businesses that at one time employed much of the
middle class. We have a lot of work ahead of us to restructure our society and
level the economic field once again. I think it's possible.

New disruptive industries will arise that will afford fresh opportunities for
young people. 3-D printing might be bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.,
for example. The energy sector, currently in a bit of a slump, nonetheless has
a bright future between fracking and solar/wind alternatives. The chemical
industries are moving back to the U.S. thanks to rock bottom natural gas
prices. There's a lot to be hopeful for, actually.

Just my 2c.

------
AnimalMuppet
Disclaimer: Very half-baked idea follows.

The problem seems to be rooted in automation replacing jobs faster than it
creates new ones. The solution, then, may be to limit automation so that we
have close to full employment.

The best (economically) way to limit automation is to tax it. You set the
level of the tax, and basic economics does the rest. The jobs that are more
economically done by humans (after the tax on automation) get done by humans.
If there are still too many people unemployed, raise the tax. If the job
market gets tight, lower it.

What could go wrong? Plenty:

The tax might not cover _all_ forms of automation.

The tax might be set at levels that are politically determined, rather than
for the effect on employment.

Raising and lowering this tax could react in unfortunate ways with the
business cycle.

Foreign countries using automation could eat our lunch. We could to some
degree handle that with tariffs, but they might respond with tariffs of their
own and kill our exports.

I'm sure there are more possible problems that I haven't thought of. Never the
less, _in theory_ , this might be a decent solution.

------
rm_-rf_slash
I would call it consumeriat. Our consumption drives supply and we need it to
fund things like infrastructure and technology that help us consume things
better, and in the process the general standard of humanity rises (as long as
there are sufficient resources and the planet is not too disrupted by climate
change).

~~~
labster
That's cool and all, but it's not exactly what unnecessariat idea is about.
People who in the past would be considered the proletariat -- the source of
labor and capital -- are no longer useful economically. The labor they offer
is no longer useful to society.

If a hundred people can be replaced by one skilled worker and some robots,
that will always be the better deal due to costs like insurance, work speed,
management overhead, lawsuit potential, and so on. So simple jobs that these
people used to do simply do not exist. And while everyone can be a programmer,
not everyone can be a competent one.

So yes, the standard of living for the labor class has decreased relative to
others, but is still high. It's still high enough they get access to addictive
drugs. Which is a problem, but also a symptom. I feel like the root cause is
that we really do not have a great economic theory to handle the case where
labor cannot produce sufficient value to capitalists. (IANAEconomist, though.)

Note that they're still human beings and we still have some duty of care to
them as a society. Fixing consumption is not going to stop these people from
killing themselves.

------
platz
relevant:

"Bessen argues that during times of technological innovation, it often takes
years before workers see higher wages from productivity increases. Bessen
stresses the importance of the standardization of education on the job as
workers adapt to new technology."

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.html)
James Bessen on Learning by Doing

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Animats
The California suicide map is interesting. Coastal suicide rates are low until
north of the Bay Area. Then they are very high.

~~~
api
California's major cities are doing well, while its rural areas like those of
much of America have been in a depression since 2000.

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gaur
William F Buckley advocated for forcibly tattooing people? I guess he really
was a crypto-Nazi after all.

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koolba
The map of suicides per capita are pretty depressing. 5x higher in the south
west vs the east?!

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tomlock
The aids epidemic affected a much smaller community than the suicide and drug
problem does, though. So I'm a little lost by the comparison.

~~~
devishard
The AIDS epidemic affected a community. The suicide and drug problem doesn't
affect a community, which is why the community banded together to create
change and the non-community hasn't. It's a contrast, not a comparison.

~~~
tomlock
Well, the contrast lost me because population size wasn't contrasted.

~~~
devishard
If you still think that population size is relevant to the point, the contrast
is still lost on you.

~~~
tomlock
Imagine 10% of your community dies a year. Now imagine 0.1% does. Do these
differing percentages make any difference to your sense of urgency and
willingness to fight the problems causing those deaths? No? Well ok then.

~~~
devishard
Imagine a percentage of your community dies a year. Now imagine a percentage
of people die who _aren 't part of your community at all_. Does the differing
membership in your community make any difference to your sense of urgency and
willingness to fight the problems causing those deaths?

I'm not saying the percentages aren't relevant to the larger discussion, but
the membership in a community point is also relevant, and doesn't require the
percentages to be a valid point that stands on its own.

~~~
tomlock
I wonder how many of the suicides and overdoses are veterans? Farmers? Both
those communities contribute here. I've seen smaller scale outcries on veteran
and farmer/rural suicides and drug use. Couldn't this lack of large scale
outcry be explained by the small amount of people that it relatively effects
when compared to aids in the gay community?

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ArkyBeagle
<inserts entire James McMurtry catalog here>

