
A Labor Shortage Could Explain Negative Interest Rates - sdbrady
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-13/negative-interest-rates-could-their-cause-be-a-labor-shortage
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rogerkirkness
It seems like there are (almost) unimaginable bottlenecks in technology
creation, leadership and creativity. The contrast between thenear unlimited
amount of capital available for value creating companies, and the almost
universal lack of people who can reliably create those companies, is
staggering. Why does school still prepare people for a world of zero sum,
mediocre work? There has never been a larger, more diverse capital class, but
it seems like people could not be trying harder to avoid being a part of it.

~~~
salawat
>There has never been a larger, more diverse capital class, but it seems like
people could not be trying harder to avoid being a part of it.

Because people don't really like Monopoly.

Not everyone seems to want to sit on, micromanage, or otherwise have their
life degenerate into a real life version of savvy financial instrument user:
the game.

There is living, raising a family, seeing the world, experiencing something
truly singular, discovering something, realizing something no one else has,
sacrificing for something importamt, or being satisfied merely living and
existing sustainably.

Yet every day, a Market clamors for their participation. It demands they take
their credit, consume it's output, entrust their life savings to it regardless
of the risk or consequence.

Transact! Transact! Transact! It screams incessantly, unwilling to be
silenced. If you cannot transact directly, hand the fruits of your sweat to
someone that will! Feed me!

I'll insure you! Just give me a cut! I'll loan to you, but trade your debts
and obligations to others involved in the original transaction!

It forces itself in the most unhealthy, self-reliance poisoning way into your
life like a layer of poison gas traveling along the floor.

I'd suggest a read of Henry David Thoreau's Walden to understand that part of
the Hunan psyche that seems to sit in rebellion to the modern financial
system. There is life beyond the economic construct. Something beautiful,
real, and worth finding, sharing, and experiencing that is robbed and trodden
upon by the worldwide market. It is outright rejected and decried as savagery
by the very tenets of decent economic theory. All actions under economic
theory must be in search of profit, or in avoidance of loss. In reality
though, a person may spend one's time to make some good in the world besides
mere dollars and common cents.

To see communities and churches flourish; to see work done, and excess goods
grown and gathered distributed between friends/adopted family merely because
they are there and it seems the right thing to do.

It seems fitting that capital is caught in a tizzy looking for somewhere to
be, and fears of a recession circle in the markets due to a lack of labor.

The next generation, like the latter born sibling, need not repeat the
mistakes of those who came before to learn the lessons of the past. They are
unconsciously drawn (or possibly even shielded, or explicitly warned away)
from the banks, lenders and money men, and see the damage the financial system
becoming the ultimate arbiter off all that is "good" and "worthwhile" has on
the human spirit.

The dollar sign reigns supreme from it's bag, even as most are left struggling
to find their financial footing from the get go as the Jack Welch's of the
world play to the financier's tune, sacrificing the many, and the mission in a
quest to deliver value to the shareholder and no one else. Why labor for their
pittance of a wage? Why accept the slavery and encumberance of the
responsibility for such a tethering of possibility? Why sacrifice my
birthright as a free agent to these men and their ledgers?

Just as J. P. Morgan famously said of banking during Congressional testimony,

 _Untermyer: Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?
Morgan: No, sir. The first thing is character. Untermyer: Before money or
property? Morgan: Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it … a man I
do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom_

There is little to recommend the Market in terms of Character nowadays. It is
volatile, unreliable, and as untrustworthy as those people we currently find
ourselves attempting with great difficulty to share a sociopolitical sphere
with.

Without trust, the underpinnings of the "the economy" comes undone. That trust
has been eroded by government overreach, reckless banking, unrestrained
excesses of the capital wielding class, and the splitting of the population
into the shareholding vs. Non-shareholding class. No call to "then buy-in,
damn you!" will succeed to move one who has experienced the economy as an
impersonal predator of one's time and virtue. Who has toiled and toiled yet
barely seems to make ends meet without taking any steps repugnant to their
moral character.

"Chiding their ignorance" and attempting to correct it will not move them as
well. Deep down, man is still animal as much as rational being, and the animal
spirits that move us are just as connected to our feelings on the status quo
as the instincts of wildlife in the midst of a forest fire.

It's a lot to unpack, but to summarize, the issue isn't economic, but one of
Character. The financier/economist wishes (through actions if not through
words) to lay claim to a role of primacy in everyday dealings and existence.
They assert the systems of monies and transactions suffused all that man
should ever do and and aspire to/for. Yet, that primacy comes at the price of
blind trust being present. A commodity in precious supply nowadays. Solve that
for laborer and shareholder/instrument holder alike, and you have the
beginnings of a recovery in the works. Continue in the current direction at
the system's own peril. It takes precious little to lose mankind's faith,
especially in comparison to what it takes to restore it.

My 4.a.m. 2 cents at least.

~~~
chewz
Thank you...

~~~
salawat
You're welcome.

It just felt like it needed to be said.

------
neguim
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