Screenshot from Shadowstats
These are Great Depression levels since 2008.
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That reflects what I see in my Rust Belt Los Angeles neighborhood. There are A LOT of people on food, housing, healthcare, and income payments from the state and local government. During the lockdowns, an acquaintance of mine quit his delivery job as he made substantially more money from government aid than he did driving a truck and handling loads all day.
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Thanks for this!
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Found his concept of the âwealth pumpâ very relevant. But with his accent, every time heâd say âoverproduction of elitesâ Iâd hear âoverproduction of idiotsâ which might not be incorrect.
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I understand that in the 1930s, labor statisticians didnât consider government employees to be employed as their jobs depend on private sector taxes. So the unemployment rate back then would be lower if we calculated it the same as today.
So todays real unemployment rate may be worse than during the Great Depression.
I donât recall the source for this but it may be an essay by Murray Rothbard.
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I have to try to gently make this point with a good friend who retired as a city employee, got a short stint with a federal contractor, then became a federal employee and now has retired from that while still in her mid 60s. She made excellent career decisions and was a very diligent, ethical worker. Sometimes rocking the boat when warranted. But even with that, her career was a drain on the productive economy. And I stopped pointing out the irony of her ranting about the evils of socialism long ago.
Iâd go further and argue that a truly useful employment statistic would try to strip out non-productive âbullshit jobsâ from real jobs. Should be a separate number, but imagine how many, or few, jobs have some impact on the production of a good or service?
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The government is much bigger than the individuals that make it up. Itâll sprawl and create those jobs to justify its existence, so somebody will have occupied that seat cushion.
Iâm grateful to your friend for being the one to do that because pushing back against the bureaucracy is exhausting at any level. Better someone who has a grasp of productivity and socialism *and ethics!, than another yes-man.
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Isnt this logical by sheer madness level of robotization and automation in previously factory jobs and also agri jobs are heavily more efficient⌠bigger tractors, GPS signals, even AI vision to help detect differences in crops⌠digital maps to assistâŚ
I follow some history of forestry from 1940s to 1980s⌠several orders of magnitude less people needed now. No horses but in few places used. Very powerful machinery comparable to modern agri.
Im just baffled what are people supposed to do in big picture.
David Graeber did book âbullshit jobsâ. His estimate was in ballpark of 10-20% are only useful jobs. 2/3 are not essential. Society is so efficient doing needed things. Thatâs some decade old book now without latest AI and other fancy stuff already here or coming in couple years.
I find this baffling that how much productivity has improved in 100 years⌠short time in humanity or even US history. But still our notion of work and participation to society is same salary job work or entrepreneur work (almost similar service as salary job in micro scale) yet society actually doesnt need so many people in this model. so there is âglitch in matrixâ when people even try to think it, like lefties do in many things, people try to force things back to this old model by some steelman argument when it simply doesnt fit.
Some argument for mass scale immigration is they will be consumers then. But how without job? In US mindscape they would have very little purchase power, no social status (in US people are expected to work or be shamed). This viewpoint also comes to same circular logic problem.
We cant even use 1930s logic of âgive them shovel, to do some useful workâ⌠but then person with big excavator is simply so much more efficient than 10+ shovel people it would demoralize these people.
Andrew Yang tried to talk about this very existential problem in societal view. But I havent seen him much now, after dropped from presidential campaign and this topic vanished.
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No I donât think so.
Technology progresses and productivity increases, driving down costs which frees up money to be spent elsewhere, creating new demand. Some jobs become obsolete but new ones are created. At the time of the innovation and adoption, it isnât always obvious where the new jobs will arise or how the technology eventually settles into the economy. On the whole, more new jobs are created than destroyed. This is a basic tenet of free market economics.
One area Iâd like to explore is looking at the role of growth. Many jobs arise because the economy is growing. What happens over the long run to jobs if the economy is long term stagnant or shrinking? In other words the limiting factor for jobs per population may not be technology but rather the rate of growth.
Thereâs a lot more to be said about jobs in the economy. Sayâs Law is often forgotten for instance.
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True, but efficient is not the same as resilient. In fact, redundancy and localization is very important when things go sideways. And if you wait a few years, months, or even days, things always go sideways. See plandemic meat processing plants in the U.S. as an example. Centralization is great for the oligarchs and for control, but not so great for us plebs.
By definition economy doesnt grow if salaries dont grow because those productivity gains you mention 100% flow to owners of company. Thus no purchase power and thus no new jobs despite this continuum.
US is as wealthy nation very consumer,consumption driven, so this is important.
Everyone keeps forgetting this. Centralization model allows free looting and taking resiliency debt to be withdrawn as stock dividend and profit to owners now. Then they pressure bailouts when resilience fails. Consumers have to eat this quality cost that companies dont invest in, due to centralization giving no options.
Redneck is talking about on paper theory. But companies have corrupted system so badly it isnt functioning. It is weird look when companies say how they write legislation in white house(FAANG tech companies in some lecture).
Sayâs law I would think would require product to be good enough quality to be base for another product. Weâve seen this⌠Apple 2 was popular computer that spawned many other little niches. In iphone world it doesnt work same way. Some pros, some cons.
But somehow most of those ânew jobsâ seem to always go to public sector now⌠or inside corporations how to write papers towards regulation. Thus bullshit jobs everywhere making products and taxes cost more. This wasnt supposed to happen.
From Sayâs law those 2 caveats seem to be riddling western economies. Companies nad some people save more. Thus governments have to constantly try to push demand by putting more cash into market. But then companies often drain glut by buying their own stocks. Thus Nvidia can be 4Tn$ valuation in mere years.
We seem to be in some sort of recession/depression in real terms for long time. Thus even ZIRP can happen.
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I donât understand the scale and speed of this. Weâre talking several billion-dollar DCs popping up in short order. Iâm guessing this is a national thingâŚ? The grid, much less the electrical rates, wonât be able to handle this.
It will affect all of those in some way. The local politicians are (im guessing) being paid off under the table.
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Yeah⌠politicians getting rich off of nvidia stock for example is clear flaw. Of course they dont want competition as that would undermine their stock suitcase that they plan to have after term ends. Thus big companies and politicians are in same interest.
Coming out of several decades in Automotive, Iâd suggest 2/3 is understated. Kind of funny, I was recently asked to come back as a consultant, because I succeeded where many have failed. I declined, as I had a leaned on others that made me successful. Corp in their infinite wisdom, cut all of those jobs, keeping the 2/3 (or higher) useless employees.
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My gut feeling says we are somewhere around 10+% now. We are heading to 1% with automation. Does it matter if mexicans or whoever illegal,immigrant picks up corn or wheat in fields, when it looks giant corpos are buying all that land and government is even paying not to farm anything in huge swaths while owner is collecting subsidy money.
Boeing is often in news headlines along MIC but Im baffled how automotive in US is. It is still alive and gets new bailout packages, despite being bloated.
Thus Im not too surprised connecting these dots that what dating market and life looks for younger gens. Elon Musk and Andrew Tate are top 1% or 10% and it gets tighter by time. If man or woman is not happy pushing papers of course they can divorce out of depression and that breaks families⌠point of work wasnt to do âsomethingâ but to do things and connect to community. BS jobs do neither, barely give paycheck. But paycheck is worth less if you develop addictions and other problems in life due to that problem.
Problem in those corpos is that if you had taken that position, youâd sooner or later would be running half of department as everyone else is fired and fresh people âworkingâ there. If you could teach someone to take leadership and then leave, that would be decent but it never goes like that in corporate life. Thus people especially promoted there have zero life, be it men or women.
Corpos are so fat now there is no reason to do it like that, especially considering how many bailouts they got so they cant even go bust⌠high chances they just get new bailout. âto save jobsâ.
BTW why did they cut your job and still can afford to keep dozens of other folks there⌠that aligns with stories Ive heard. It seems there is neither no need or correlation to company bottom line to do staff cuts but they do it because of stockmarket optics. Small private companies often dont do these. It would be economic and skillset suicide to loose best people possibly keeping things running(eg company of 100, family run, may have only couple key people who keep things running⌠and they are very hard to replace⌠always can hire new intern or fresh outta school person).
These are good examples why companies with sometimes only 1 dictator (CEO or board) are not smart and well run entities. And in bigger company it is worse problem. Thatâs why good CEO can make the difference, but it has nothing to do with how big paycheck they have. It is matter of personality that one cannot buy with stock options or cash(Im fan of AMD in this respect that doesnt enjoy state bailout policies⌠in contrast to current Intel it is huge difference).
However any public organization is very far from this âdictatorshipâ that arguably corporation can be. So far I havent seen any public organization where leader would have same amount of influence. Although as you describe it is always teamwork and piece of multiple people puzzle.
I voluntarily chose to retire. Had I waited about 3 more month, I might have gotten a lucrative buy out⌠but I was done. The company is now feeling the pain of all the layoffs, and why they reached out to me to come back, primarily to get them through their prototype hump, and to train the next generation. But, so much of the core group who actually did the work is now gone.
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I actually taught a corporate class on project management, and I loved reading the post class reviews. I was either the smartest project manager in the world or a total waste of corporate resources. Which correlates with my experience, people either understand project management, or they donât. There literally is nothing in between.
One of my most memorable projects, which was one of many âextraâ projects I got, my supv, came to me because they needed this cost reduction project implemented. I told my supv it was going to take me TWO YEARS to get it implemented. He argued with me for months, of why it was only a 4 month project. As good as I thought I was, it was almost 4 years to implementation. Thereâs a lot of tales to why it took so long. Second one that was literally the pinnacle of my career, same idiot supv, came to me with a project they said was 6 months⌠with only 3 months to get it done. They were off on cost by almost 400%. I got it done on time and within MY BUDGET. Again, this was on top of my regular job responsibilities.
I fear for the future of the corp. They have gotten rid of so many who actually did the work. DEI hasnât helped
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