

Jobless and Staying That Way - startuprules
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/weekinreview/08schwartz.html?_r=1

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bugsy
The article briefly touches on the fact that this is a Depression and not a
recession. More should be said about this obvious fact as awareness of this
should drive decisions made.

The article says that the solution is "more training" in institutions (and
thus more debt for the unemployed) because "their jobs are not coming back".

More training in WHAT? The lost jobs were not making buggy whips, a pointless
task for which there is simply no demand any longer because horse drawn
carriages are obsolete.

The lost jobs have been in manufacturing which has been shipped overseas to
countries with no enforced labor wage or environmental laws with which we, a
country with enforced labor, wage, and environmental laws, can not possibly
compete. The jobs did not become obsolete, they were shipped to a location
where they can be done cheaper because they can be done without regard to
human rights or the cost to the environment of dumping toxins straight into
rivers and oceans.

These jobs are not gone because they are not needed. They are gone because
they are being done by slave labor. Paid labor with benefits and a living wage
costs more than slave labor and will always cost more, no matter how much
"training" is done. Slave labor being cheaper is not a problem that putting
people further into debt through "training" will solve. But it does have the
effect of wasting time and effort, enslaving our own population through
further debt, increasing government power as they get to control, regulate,
tax and fund it all, and increase the income and power of bankers benefiting
from no risk guaranteed student loans.

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ja27
It's not just manufacturing jobs. I know people that have lost service sector
jobs, including teachers, law enforcement, and firefighters. The hardest hit
though have been construction-related. Those jobs aren't going overseas.

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bugsy
Sure, but manufacturing and farming, making things, is the actual financial
foundation of an economy. Service sector depends on the existence of sound
economical functioning of the jobs that produce things in order to function.
If no one is making anything, real income is not being produced, and it is
inevitable that the service sector must then collapse as it depends on the
former for its health.

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hga
True ... but why draw lines at the semi-artificial boundaries of countries?
Can you properly refer to e.g. the US as "an economy" or "part of the world's
economy"?

You're also, I think, focusing too much on the labor input into manufacturing
and farming. We're doing _very_ well in those sectors, but not with a whole
lot of labor.

In fact, fantastically decreasing the labor in farming was thought to be a
_good_ thing, and from the viewpoints of my parents, who were born in the
early to mid '30s and who grew up on farms, I can assure that's largely true
on the micro scale....

~~~
bugsy
Sure we're doing well using imported oil to run equipment, using natural gas
to manufacture fertilizer (this runs out in less than 10 years according to
reserve divided by newly built 'clean gas plant' consumption), and latin slave
labor to do what remains of the stoop labor.

It's not the existence of backbreaking labor that makes creating things
valuable, it's the fact that things are being created which have value and
which can be sold. Ultimately sold to people with oil and gas perhaps. There's
only so many banking services they need for their petrodollars.

Involving ordinary people in manufacturing endeavors keeps them from
committing crimes during the hours they are awake, and provides them with an
income which supports industries such as services which are greatly dependent
on volume of services provided. Services mentioned like firefighting and
police and teachers depend on taxes which depend on income of the general
populace, only a few of which are CEOs who live in ivory towers with gilded
gates; or depend on volume such as tax preparation and retail sales. In either
case you need the general population to be employed doing something. That
something can be productive or not. If not productive, the economy collapses
on itself as it finds itself unable to import things it needs because it has
nothing of value to trade.

The gentleman made a comment that services jobs are being lost as well. Yes,
but that is a direct consequence of the loss of manufacturing jobs which
create actual goods of value using many people, who then are able to direct
some of the income generated from goods creation to support these other
secondary dependent industries.

