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A couple of years ago it was reported that in 2012 more than half of all American wage earners made less than $30,000 per year. The Social Security Administration's new earnings report for 2014 is out and there's still much gnashing of teeth about the dying middle class. With earnings numbers that haven't changed much in 2 years, estimates running as high as 100 million working age Americans without a job, and no one tracking the population of H-1B visa holders, where are the jobs really?
The July 9, 2015, issue of The New York Review of Books carried a very thoughtful piece by Andrew Hacker. In "The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent," Hacker discusses a number of books and reports that address whether or not there really is a need for more tech talent, the justification for the H-1B visa program, and issues in the American educational system.
[...] Throughout his piece Hacker is basically questioning two things:
1. Is there really an unfilled need for STEM graduates, or are we actually graduating too many so that many end up unemployed or employed in different areas?
2. Are there flaws in the American education system, both at the K-12 level and in college, that lead us to be very dependent on foreign STEM graduates?
[...] The texts Hacker is reviewing, and his own information, seem to dwell predominately on overall job projections for the STEM fields. Nowhere does there appear a breakout of the job forecast for computing related job categories. With the increased ubiquity of computing across all industries and employment sectors, it seems unlikely that we will see the "deskilling" trend that may be occurring in engineering (whereby engineers create equipment that means they and others like them no longer have job opportunities). We know that there are many jobs in the "tech sector" but there are also a lot of computing jobs in banking, finance, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, etc. We can get an accurate picture of future job openings only if we can make a good determination of the computing jobs that exist outside of the "tech sector."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 27 2015, @01:49PM
I've been thinking that the way forward is to drastically reduce living expenses, and that's going to take some big and uncomfortable changes in our lifestyles. I think everyone will have to do that eventually anyway. Our current life of most everyone aspiring to be an employee may end, and most of us won't have jobs, nor will we live on government handouts. We'll be much more independent and self-reliant, with advanced machinery to aid us in harvesting sunlight, energy, and raw materials so we don't need to buy so much stuff. It may take that sort of revolutionary change to break the grip that the wealthy currently have on society.
How? Things like buying your own solar panels (or making them with your 3D printer?) and long life batteries. and disconnecting from the grid so you never have to pay another electric bill again. Switch to an electric car, and never spend another cent on gasoline. Maybe ditch the car entirely, because even if you don't need gas, it still costs a lot to keep the thing insured, inspected, licensed, and whatever else the law requires. It's like government uses the car as an excuse to tax us. Walk and bike everywhere instead. Grow your own vegetable garden and cut grocery expenses. Hang laundry on a clothes line. Water and sewage is harder, need land to set up a well and septic tank system and the latter still has to be cleaned out every 5 to 10 years. Or I suppose we could go back to the outhouse. With more land, can have a bigger garden. We used to burn our trash in the back yard, but it was never that practical, and was a bit dangerous. Still, if you have no garbage service, that's one of the options, as is hauling your trash to the dump yourself. Definitely never buy another song, movie, or book. Borrow from the library, or, well, you know what to do if the local library doesn't have a copy. Some of that, particularly the veggie garden, takes considerable time, but if you can't get a full time job, you have time for that sort of stuff. Yet another thing to do is start freeing ourselves from our more costly and unhealthy habits. The daily shower is actually bad for our health. How did we get convinced that body odor is offensive and must be frequently washed away and covered up with perfumes? Mowing the lawn every week is another expensive, unnecessary, and harmful custom. We've only been mowing regularly since the advent of the power mower, which was less than 100 years ago, and now somehow we're all expected to keep our lawns short, it's even a legal requirement in most cities, and anyone who disagrees might end up in jail.
As for medical, can do what the poor do now if you must. Wait until it's an emergency to see the doctor. They can't refuse to treat an emergency, and afterwards, pay only a little. Pay what Medicare says your treatment is worth, and not any more. That's shorting the doctors and yes they can damage your credit rating. If it bothers your conscience, well, they routinely cheat us. But that's another thing to do before reaching that point, pay off your debts, all of them, while you still have a job and are flush with cash. Then you are not paying any interest on any debt at all, and can tell those capitalist thieves to shove their credit rating and evil ideas like universal default.
What this will do to our economy if most people start doing that stuff is hard to guess. Big Oil cut waay down and battery manufacturers given a boom? Health care providers finally forced to charge sane prices? The personal hygiene aisles of stores upended? Laws changed so creditors can more easily seize homes and land? On the whole, the economy will undergo a massive shrinkage.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday October 27 2015, @02:42PM
In the past in the UK you used to have a 3 bed semi with 1 adult in work, 1 staying at home, and 2 children and this would be easily possible on the median wage and well below.
Then we started having 2 adults working instead, and all of a sudden prices went up, because instead of having £20k a year of post-tax income (say £30k pre-tax), you had £40k a year, so instead of spending £5k a year on housing you could spend £25k a year on housing.
Trouble is that everyone does that, and you suddenly need to spend £25k a year on housing, so to do that 1 in work 1 at home situation you need to have the wage earner earning an extra £20k post-tax. Rather than £30k pre-tax you need £60k pre-tax, which is twice the median average.
On top of that, you've doubled the workforce, without increasing consumption (aside from in small areas like transport -- and the roads and trains at rush hour are becoming busier and busier, they aren't putting more and more on, so noone benefits from increased employment there). This of course means that wages go down (increase supply, demand remains mostly static, Economics 101)
The "solution" to requiring two working parents has been the rise of the 12 hour 50 week nursery. People leave their kids for other people to bring up, from about 6 months. They drop them off at 7.30AM - before breakfast, sometimes still in pyjamas, and pick them up at 6PM, take them home, put them to bed, and that's it, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for the first 5 years of life, a stranger looks after the kids for 11,000 waking hours, and you get them for 8,000.
That's all expensive, so the government steps in to subsidise this [www.gov.uk]
It's a massive change in lifestyle, and not one I like.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday October 27 2015, @05:15PM
Whenever I read something like that I get the impression that somebody's pissing on my head and telling me it's raining.
Sure, it's probably not likely that a kid can afford the American dream by working a factory job straight out of high-school for 20 or so years, but I'm not buying that "austerity" bullshit -- bring income disparity down, take the money out of politics, and bust corrupt politicians and white-collar crooks. If things don't change for the better of the middle-class then, I just might believe you.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 28 2015, @06:06AM
I totally agree that austerity is bull and inequality is a problem-- a huge, ugly problem.
Nevertheless, the current US lifestyle is not sustainable. Our society has extracted vast wealth from the world by recklessly degrading and depleting valuable resources, and by making the environment bear the costs of absorbing and cleaning up our pollution, as if we are somehow outside and above the environment. Though many of these resources are renewable, we are using them faster than they renew.
And then we've allowed the bulk of that wealth that we all worked for to end up in a very few hands. Merely redistributing among ourselves isn't enough. When calculating a fairer share, let us remember the environment's share.
Nor is it all sacrifice. I do not want to mow the lawn at all, I only do it because of city ordinances and social pressure. If it was social pressure alone, I wouldn't mow. I'd gladly give up that bit of housekeeping if not for the ridiculous power the local government has to infringe upon my freedoms and severely and harshly punish me if I do not mow. I am willing to do some mowing for safety reasons, for instance next to roads, to give motorists adequate visibility, and also to reduce the fire hazard, though I know fires are a natural part of a grassland ecology, and it would be better if our homes were built to withstand fires, rather than us having to perpetually fight to prevent fires from ever happening. But the city demands far more, and why? To enrich businesses engaged in lawn care and lawn equipment sales?