Ben Casselman at FiveThirtyEight has an article about the US economy discussing the recovery from the recent recession. It appears the job market still leaves a lot to be desired.
Labor Secretary: Long-term Unemployment Keeps Me up at Night
The plodding recovery in the U.S. job market isn't doing much to help the long-term unemployed. No matter whose numbers that you want to look at the recovery from the Great recession has been anaemic. The Long-term unemployed and the number of people dropped from the unemployment numbers as "no longer looking" have been creeping higher and higher, while job growth is painfully slow, and wages are stagnant if not dipping below the 2008 level.
But is it the same in the technology field? Both hardware and software seem to be doing reasonably well worldwide - certainly there has been no fall in the demand for smartphones which is expected to continue well into 2017, despite the significant fall in the demand for desktops. Laptops are still selling reasonably well in Europe. Is the problem that all the manufacturing is now done in the Far East, and software is subcontracted to the Indian sub-continent? Many of us work in the tech industry - what are your experiences? Do they follow the forecasts or have you seen an improvement during the last 12 months or so? Does it make you ask the question Is This as good as it gets?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:41PM
So all in the world is goood.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:43PM
As for our (American) economy, it is being gutted from the inside out. Americans know that, for the past 2 years, they could turn on the news one day and see, "Economic recovery, stocks at an all-time high," and they next day turn on the news and hear, "Stocks drop as investors worry about poor job creation." In short, Americans are being dicked around, their leashes being jerked back and forth on an almost-daily basis by the mainstream media.
As somebody who works for Corporate America what I am seeing is a trend of upper management deliberately hiring abusive middle-managers who force attrition on the older and more expensive employees by being being rude, issuing threats, and giving undeservedly bad reviews. We had a guy go out on disability due to being threatened on a daily basis, and the bewildered but abusive middle-manager responsible complained that he was instructed to be abusive.
In addition to that, managers are hiring more cheap and inexperienced people who don't have the common-sense to code or design their way out of a paper bag, and an internal structure set up so that departments benefit by offloading as much work as possible onto other departments, so even the simplest transaction is made unnecessarily difficult, "garage", and customers are pissed because the company doesn't want to spend the money on the support customers need, because support doesn't make as much money as sales. There is no opportunity for advancement unless you know somebody upstairs, and the company would rather hire 2 idiots that can kinda do the job of one good person because turnover is so high, why hire somebody expensive if they're just gonna quit anyway?
Perhaps I'm being kind of unfair to my employer, there are a lot of good benefits here to those who can think on their feet and handle a chaotic environment with minimal-to-no training. Many people get hired and quit 2 weeks later because they perceive the culture here as being unnecessarily difficult. We've come close to failing our ISO inspection a few times because management doesn't want to lose even a thousand dollars of quarterly profit having to shut down production for a day or two and providing up to date databases and equipment. We've had 2 extremely major issues with products and should have instituted a recall, but instead decided to have support act surprised and try to sweep the problems under the rug. Word gets around quick in this industry, but people still keep buying our shit, so I guess screwing our customers is still gonna be a viable business model, at least for a few more years.
(Score: 2) by gishzida on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:50PM
You know anecdotal evidence is unacceptable to Skeptics... That said I 100% agree with your analysis. My last employer was that way... and its pretty much why I sit as a broken, and poor man. I find I am unwilling to return to the abuse... not a happy way to end a career but better than working at a job that I'd hate.
This is the "kinder, gentler New World Order"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:19PM
Don't give up. Become a contractor. Even if you don't stick around in a job too long, you can just say it was a short-term contract. As a contractor, you're not obligated to stick around for a long time, and having a short-term stint on your resume doesn't look bad as long as it was a contract position. Get one of these, and if they abuse you, just put up with it but don't get any work done (i.e., be passive-aggressive). Start looking for your next contract gig as soon as you can, while you're already at one job. Contracting is a great way to milk money out of big companies.
Of course, you could get lucky and find a place that's actually a pretty decent place to work, and then you can probably move to a permanent position there. But in the meantime, you can move between shitty jobs without it getting you down, because you're just being paid to warm a seat for 8 hours (and no more; they have to pay overtime for contractors), and there's no penalty for not sticking around so you'll feel a sense of freedom that you can walk away at any time.
Yeah, it's not as good as a full-time job with solid benefits, but if the choice is getting a pretty good hourly rate and having the freedom to walk at any time, or sitting at home broke and unemployed, or being constantly abused at a fulltime job, contracting actually works out pretty well.
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:59PM
That is not the way I under contracting works... its more of the same but worse for several reason... As a contractor you are committed for the term. If you screw up or make the contracting company look bad you are gone and no one will want you. Then there is the problem of ageism in technical jobs. They don't want 60 year old server / systems specialists.. in fact they don't want anything over 50 years of age unless its got a "name for itself" that will shine on the company well... which explains why a company like Google hires only a few older engineering types who are always upper management while the majority of their employees are under 40. They contract out to temp agencies all of the hardware maintenance tasks and there too the temp agencies do not want older tech employees...
I tried to start an IT consulting service for home and small business. It ended up crashing simply because consumers and small business owners want pricing lower than "Geek Squad". They don't want to hear that their broken PC would be cheaper to replace than fix. They don't want to hear that in time alone to disfecting and rebuilding a virus / malware infected desktop system will cost $400.
They don't want to pay what Apple would charge to replace the keyboard of the MacBook Pro that they spilled coffee on. A laptop where the disassembly alone is about 2 and a half hours [and 40 of the tiniest screws you will never ever want to see]... or the price Apple charges for the replacement parts... so they come to me and want apple level service for less than geek squad prices.
Doing that is no better than being unemployed. Then there are the small business owners who want to "nickle and dime" everything and want a discount. I ended up giving up on that too.
Maybe contracting has worked for you... but in the backwards swamp where I live there are few contracting opportunities and the ones that do exist are government clearance related. I don't know about you but since I've heard all of these wonderful things about our government and its programs via Mr. Snowden's information I find I have moral qualms and therefore do not aspire to join the liar's club.
Gone are the days of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage for an honest business.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:17PM
That is not the way I under contracting works... its more of the same but worse for several reason... As a contractor you are committed for the term.
No, you're not. My contract for instance says I can leave at any time with 2 weeks' notice. It's the same for the employer; they can let me go at any time. No one is committed on either side.
If you screw up or make the contracting company look bad you are gone and no one will want you.
Where do you get that idea? There's tons of contracting companies (many in India), and all they care about is placing people in jobs. They don't go around calling their competitors (of which there's hundreds, if not thousands) in the headhunter industry to find out the reputation of any employee. They just take your resume if it fits the open position, massage it a little maybe, and submit it to the company.
I tried to start an IT consulting service for home and small business. It ended up crashing simply because consumers and small business owners want pricing lower than "Geek Squad".
I hate to break it to you, but I could have told you that before you even started. Consumers and small businesses are notoriously cheap, esp. for computers, and most esp. for services. There's a good reason TV/electronics repair shops don't exist any more.
Maybe contracting has worked for you... but in the backwards swamp where I live there are few contracting opportunities
Now you're getting into something entirely different: locality. Where are you located? If it isn't in a large metro area, and esp. in an area where there's a decent number of jobs in your specialty, then no, contracting isn't going to work out for you. You have to go where the jobs are; this is true for any industry. If you want to live in some little hick town somewhere in rural America, your job choices will probably be limited to working at the local feed-and-seed, the local diner, or some nearby farm or mine. If you want employment in the tech industry, you have to move to metro areas where those jobs are located, unless you can get lucky and land a telecommute job (this seem to be dying out lately).
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:43PM
Well I sure don't live in India... and Charleston, SC is provincial... in a good ol' boy sorta way... If I were better off I'd leave an move somewhere north of the swamp which is the coastal south.
It's a bit late to break anything to me... I'm already broke [in 12 ways at least]. :)
You did not address the issue of age [just looked the other way].
So I'll as a hypothetical question: Were you in the position to hire would you hire folks that are "nearly retired" or would you just go get some inexpensive newbies?
You are right about "going where the jobs are... except that is almost exclusively something that younger less settled folks can afford to do: travel light and live out of a suitcase.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:58PM
The southern states are not a good place to get a tech job, except in the Raleigh area, maybe Atlanta. Charleston is a backwater; you're never going to find anything there. Have you looked in Raleigh? It's not far away. As for India, that's irrelevant; my point there was that many recruiters are in India now, and they really don't care about your reputation or anything else, they just use the shotgun method of placing candidates (shoot as many resumes out there as possible).
As for age, that does make thing more difficult, but not impossible. I work in an aerospace company now and I'm younger than most of my coworkers, and I'm not young (I started college before the WWW existed). I seriously worry that my boss is going to drop dead of old age one day. I've seen other older men hired as contractors too.
For hiring, I imagine I'd pick the people with the best experience. Newbies don't have good experience. I'd hire some of them too to do the grunt work.
As for traveling light and living out of a suitcase, that's silly. If you want to work in the tech industry, you need to live someplace where there IS a tech industry. Places like Charleston are not it. People in metro areas like the Bay Area don't live out of a suitcase; they're settled, because they can afford to: they work in high-paying jobs, and if one job dries up, they walk across the street to another tech company and get another job. With so many employers in one place, it's not that hard to stay employed, even when things are in flux. The same is true in other large metro areas, though this does depend on your particular specialty and what industries you've worked in. Some metro areas are better than others for certain skillsets, so you have to pick correctly. It's pretty easy to see what places are good for what just by browsing dice.com and monster.com. Move once, get to an area that has jobs for you, and stay there. Honestly, I'm surprised to have to give this lecture to someone older than myself; usually this is something I have to tell to young people who don't want to move because their family is living in a particular place. If being around your family is your priority (and your family doesn't live in a large metro area), then either get a job with your family, or be happy working at the local feed-and-seed or some other low-paid job. If you want a high-paid tech job, you have to go where the jobs are. It's the way things are, and the way things have been since the Enlightenment over 500 years ago. The jobs aren't going to come to you in some backwater little town.
(Score: 1) by rmerry72 on Wednesday April 09 2014, @01:35AM
Some metro areas are better than others for certain skillsets, so you have to pick correctly. It's pretty easy to see what places are good for what just by browsing dice.com and monster.com. Move once, get to an area that has jobs for you, and stay there.
Until the skillset you have (or the recruiters/employers imagine you have based on their bias when reading your resume) morphs or disappears from the area you moved too. Then what? Have a scan of monster.com, up and moved again, get settled, rinse, repeat?
Be prepared to do that every 4-5 years. Be prepared not to have much of a family. Be prepared to get screwed with the real estate market.
Honestly, I'm surprised to have to give this lecture to someone older than myself; usually this is something I have to tell to young people who don't want to move because their family is living in a particular place.
Got little to do with age. You are a different type of person with no/little family desire. You value yourself by what you do today not by who you live your life with. I - and many others - are not like that.
An economy needs people like you. A society needs people like me. Our society is disappearing. Your economy is depressing. Neither works on its own.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @01:37PM
Until the skillset you have (or the recruiters/employers imagine you have based on their bias when reading your resume) morphs or disappears from the area you moved too. Then what? Have a scan of monster.com, up and moved again, get settled, rinse, repeat?
Basically, yes, if you're picking smaller places, otherwise, no. Things don't change that fast. Besides, look at Silicon Valley; anyone who's moved there in the past 40 years hasn't had to move, as there's always work for them there. Large metro areas aren't going to have this problem.
As for recruiters, they don't have any bias. They don't even understand the difference between "C++" and "source code". I just had one ask me how many years of experience I have with "source code".
You are a different type of person with no/little family desire.
If "having family desire" means you need to be able to stay in one place for the rest of your life, then maybe you should look at a different profession, one which allows you to work anywhere (like working in fast food) or to easily set roots (like being a dentist; those guys are unable to move until retirement after they establish a practice).
You value yourself by what you do today not by who you live your life with.
If that ties you to geographic areas that are not large metro areas, then you have no business in the tech field.
An economy needs people like you. A society needs people like me. Our society is disappearing. Your economy is depressing. Neither works on its own.
This sounds nice and all, but it's completely irrelevant. Highly specialized professions are mainly located in large cities. It's always been that way, ever since western society emerged from the Medieval ages and people went back to specialization of labor (which they had abandoned in the fall of the Roman Empire) and moved back into cities. No company is going to move out to Bumfuck Idaho to give you a job developing router firmware; companies locate where workers are, and that's in cities. If this is too hard for you to understand, I can't help you.
(Score: 1) by rmerry72 on Friday April 11 2014, @02:21AM
Highly specialized professions are mainly located in large cities.
I.T.is not highly specialised. Highly fragmented absolutely. Highly specialised no. C++, Java, VB, .Net. C#, PHP, Javascript, etc are all very similar languages in a lot of respects and becoming adept in multple languages is not that hard for a competent, intelligent engineer.
Ditto for industries particularly in this day and age of building corporate apps to allow monkeys to bash keys into pre-defined fields in "workflows" that get thrown into a database. There are many similarities between such systems in many different industries.
Highly specialised for IT - apart from the true specialaties like chip design, PLCs, etc - is a term for dumbfucks that can only do one tiny thing in order to appear distinct in the recruitment market and protect their job and the need for them. Particularly in app development (internet, intranet, mobile, cloud, etc) which is what 90% of IT developers do these days and certainly where the "growth" is.
companies locate where workers are, and that's in cities
Quick, a new startup launched by a two guys in a garage in Bumfuck Idaho will be BIG next year. But you need to be a specialist in building "cool" apps on Chrome 37 running on Android 4.4 on a Samsung Galaxy. Hurry, or you'll miss out on the next big wave. Google, Facebook and Samsung are already talking buyout! Quick!
My team is spread across the world in 5 different timezones. But then we have a decent internet infrastructure in our part of the world so we don't have to sit next to each other in those "cities" you speak of.
What century do you live in and how difficult is it for you to communicate with co-workers not sitting next too you? Lucky us. Poor you.
If this is too hard for you too understand I don't care too help you. Don't blame your economy for the life choices you are making.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:19PM
In 2002 I was downsized by a major corp and shown the door. At least the 9 years 8 months of time spent allowed for a decent buffer and I took that time and then some to try and start my own business. That was eye opening in and of its self, but in the end I was working on roofs with no health insurance and watching my savings go away.
I entered the cube again in '04 and found, that after two years away, just how depressing it can be. The work environment does not reflect a recovery in the traditional sense. Companies are still nit picking on costs even as they can pull in double digit profits and clearly see there is no need to pass that on to employees, most are too scared to complain or ask for more. At this point I would love to get out of this rat race again, try again to start a business I am passionate about. I don't see so much the abuse, but what was once a passion (programming, design) has been dumped in the mud, spit on and shown to mean little to people in power. If I am going to serve our new lords and ladies I'd rather shovel their equine's shit and not their own.
As I do contemplate this change I now see how the wealthy have gamed the system to work for them more so then the rabble. The whole system to start a small business in this country is such that you are expected to fail simply through getting buried under debt. Had a potential financier tell me one time to just get as many credit cards as possible and max them out...WTF? This because my loan request was too small. I know it is better to try and fail, but in this country, failure at the wrong time means your life is irrevocably changed for the worse. The ACA may have taken one worry off the pile, but there are many others to give one a long pause.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:57PM
"at least for a few more years."
Assuming they're not nuts, which is a serious danger, this kind of behavior usually signifies they believe they've only got a few more years, so maximizing return over that short term is the only logical behavior.
Lets talk retail. Would anyone who's read their financial data be insane enough to think J C Pennys or Radio Shack will be in business in more than a couple years? So, they'd be wise to go for the short term gain. If they're running the place in a way that'll put it outta business in a couple years, that means they don't expect to be in business in a couple years...
I've seen this play out personally. Why, those idiots are acting like dead men walking, why? (insert a couple years) Oh I see, because they're dead but didn't want to admit it at the time.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday April 08 2014, @11:18PM
> Would anyone who's read their financial data be insane enough to think
> J C Pennys or Radio Shack will be in business in more than a couple years?
I've been expecting Radio Shack to expire for the last 15 years. But they keep proving me wrong.
Pennys suffered by trying to go the "everyday low prices, no discounts" route, that back-fired because unlike shoppers at places like Trader Joes and Whole Foods, the people who shop at Pennys are suckers for manipulated discounts (raise the prices, then put them on sale). They got rid of that CEO and have gone back to standard retail price manipulation. They may well turned things around.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:00PM
I agree with your assessment, but not every company falls into that trap. it is just getting more difficult every day to find a cooperation with a decent culture.
As for myself I was quote broken by a similar company back in 97, only returning to the cubicle in 04 when i was desperate. I got lucky and ended up with someplace decent.
I don't blame the hiring to the managers, HR is more of a problem (at that previous company if HR saw you as smarter than them they would not hire you)
Typically a small or medium business does not have HR do hiring and Managers will look for sharp people. once they get big, and the culture changes things go south.
and Yes, the economy is getting gutted by the 1%. this all starts with the idea of putting your retirement in the market (under a 401K) where they can rape it at will.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:46PM
I see this state of affairs as a combination of punishing employers for employing people, minimum mandated wages and benefits for people who simply aren't worth employing at those costs, and encouraging people to stay out of the workforce with indefinite unemployment insurance. This is all driven by the same government which supposedly is doing something about the problem.
OTOH, I think subsidizing the first part of long term unemployed peoples' new job could work even if the business fires the person when they've run out of time on the subsidy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:22PM
"encouraging people to stay out of the workforce with indefinite unemployment insurance"
I've heard about that, mostly by people trying to reduce it, but the state I live in caps weekly UE at exactly $363. Thats per week. Which I guess drops my docs on what state I live in? The problem with encouraging me with 99 weeks of that glorious staggering income, is that weekly cap almost exactly matches my daily gross. More docs dropping. Yeah, on UE I only get about 20% of pay. If only the grocery store and mortgage company and gas bill dropped their desire by the same ratio, I'd be pretty happy. Well, its a little better for marginal income tax reasons than 20%, but not much. Still, I'm not sure how that's supposed to encourage me not to work. "Man, I sure love living in a van down by the river and eatin mac n cheese while those suckers go to work, LOL"
"minimum mandated wages and benefits for people who simply aren't worth employing at those costs"
I'm stuck paying for food and healthcare for Walmart employees one way or another. Let them eat cake doesn't work and is laughable so table that discussion. They're already all on food stamps and go to the ER for their only medical care, so cutting their wages and benefits just means I'll have to pay more in taxes so the .gov can pay them the same amount instead of walmart. Its WAY fairer and more efficient for people who shop at walmart to pay for walmart employees directly rather than making the general public pay for walmart employees.
Or rephrased, I'm paying higher taxes so walmart execs can get higher bonuses, because the minimum wages and benefits are WAY too low, and I don't even shop there. The only people who will benefit by lower wages and benefits are the walmart execs who already make too much money for what little they do, and the only people who will be punished are the taxpayers who don't shop at walmart who will have to pay more taxes to provide even more .gov benefits. So I'm understandably not a fan of that idea. We need to boost those way up, and if businessmen are too incompetent to do business, the .gov and taxpayers can stop subsidizing them and they can blow away in the breeze for all I care.
(Score: 1) by dast on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:41PM
Where are my mod points today?
+1 Preach On Brotha
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:08PM
That corresponds to an annual wage of $90k. Three quarters of the US [wikipedia.org] make less than that per household. More than 10% makes less than $18k per year.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:36PM
That's household although my wife works too. Still, with only fifty-something percent of adults of working age actually having a job, its fair.
The mantra is people who are unemployed are to blame, because they decided not to get 'leet IT skills.
So, the UE system is designed to:
1) Punish severely anyone who drinks the kool aide and gets a decent income because they won't survive long on UE
2) While still being a pay cut to, as you state, 90% of the population, most of which won't have leet IT skills and are therefore unemployable.
As usual, a .gov program designed to maximize possible suffering among as many people as possible.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:49PM
I don't get what point you're trying to make here. UE (Unemployment Insurance) is not intended to be a replacement for your high paying job. You should already be self-insured beyond anything that UE could provide. It's intended to be a temporary, emergency income supplement until you find another job. Extending it to just shy of two years is not useful to its purpose and instead encourages people to stay out of the work force for long periods of time.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:00PM
"until you find another job."
There are none. That's kind of the whole point of the story. Permanent decline in median income, permanent decline in median standard of living, etc.
The purpose of extending it two years is pushing the inevitable food riots out by two years. Or modern version of French Revolution guillotines, or whatever. That is not just of benefit to poor people, but rich people too. UE is cheaper than riot police overtime, its a sound financial decision.
The other problem is in a display of circular reasoning, we've given up as a culture on employment for the lower classes, of course they'll never have jobs, ever, because they're not in STEM or be born to the correct parents so they can be rich. So by definition, the only way to collect unemployment is to have been part of the permanently shrinking employee class, which implies being a well paid STEM worker. You can't be implying that anyone below the median at school is employed, perhaps at a factory, are you? Those closed in Dad's generation not ours.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:05PM
There are none. That's kind of the whole point of the story. Permanent decline in median income, permanent decline in median standard of living, etc.
China doesn't have that problem. At some point, you have to decide what's more important - having a healthy, growing society or playing games that worsen the inevitable trends you just described.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:28PM
You might be surprised at recent trends in the economy there. Also its completely irrelevant until we upgrade our government to theirs or we "regime change" them. As an example of lack of influence of positive role models, the entire world laughs at our healthcare system, and our response is ... nothing. Oh the Titanic is sinking, well lets re-arrange the deck chairs. So China may or may not be better at handling long term unemployment or economic growth or whatever, but it just doesn't matter here.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:10PM
You might be surprised at recent trends in the economy there.
I doubt I would, but sure, it could happen.
Also its completely irrelevant until we upgrade our government to theirs or we "regime change" them.
Not at all. Someone doesn't have our problems. Rather than just pretend they're inevitable, perhaps we should look at what works and remove the obstructions? We probably can do that while strengthening our democracy too.
As an example of lack of influence of positive role models, the entire world laughs at our healthcare system, and our response is ... nothing.
I would characterize the current response as worse than nothing. And it was alleged to fix the US health care system.
So China may or may not be better at handling long term unemployment or economic growth or whatever, but it just doesn't matter here.
Unless you should ever want to learn from the positive experiences of others. Then it becomes quite relevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:14PM
another job
There are none
Exactly *how* bad is the employment market? Bleak. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [alternet.org]
People who make money with money (capitalists, aka The Bourgeoisie) *are* recovering.
People who make money from labor (workers aka The Proletariat) continue to do worse.
What the USA (and the world) needs is another Franklin Roosevelt. [soylentnews.org][1]
...and another John Maynard Keynes. [soylentnews.org]
With the recent/current crop of politicians listening to the Neo-Liberals from the Chicago School of Economics, we're in for a very long depression like the one from 1873 to 1896.
[1] More bleak numbers at the link by "23 percent" in that item.
(They don't count people who realize there simply are no jobs to be had and they DOUBLE-COUNT the folks who do part-time work for multiple employers.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by anubi on Wednesday April 09 2014, @05:55AM
You may want to look at some historical data. [thebscgroup.com] Notice how the banker-boys have been relentlessly dropping the interest rates trying to keep the economy liquefied with funnymoney after Nixon took us off the Gold standard some 40 years ago... [forbes.com].
I am no economist, but this looks to me like an altitude chart where some pilot is trading altitude for airspeed. It appears to me the bankerboys are trying to loan yet more and more dollars out, with usury, by lowering interest rates. Both merchants and governments are used to year over year sales "growth", and the only way to do this has been to keep flooding the market with loaned dollars. We are now catching on that money from a banker has to be repaid. With interest. And where will that money have to come from? More loans! Debt appears far worse to me than any chemical addiction, yet its perfectly legal!
We are now enslaving an entire generation on debt!
Yet people seem to lack the fortitude to just say NO to the man waving the pen.
The trouble is us just as much as them. They offer us Kool-aid... and we drink it!
It has become a social thing where we can "make it happen", right NOW, if we just sign... and a moment's signing becomes a lifetime of payments.
We were at one time pretty high in altitude and had interest rates in the 10% range trying to keep the economy from overrunning. Now, the only way we can get the system to work is having the fed funds rate at 0 percent, and still the economy is sluggish. People are in debt, and there is all sorts of debt service to pay, and our government is still draining money out of the "spending class" of our economy next week at an enormous rate via the Income Tax.
For now, we can still keep the masses contented with social welfare programs. I guess we have all seen a cross-section of a helluva lot of unused personnel capacity described in the posts in this forum. I see America kinda like a farmer with all sorts of tractors and equipment, yet his equipment remains in the crib, unused, while the neighbor farmers till his fields. We are America and have attracted the Banking Class, as we have the guns it takes to back up the ownership rights of lienholders.
I do not think this is going to end well.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:30PM
"encourages people to stay out of the work force for long periods of time."
I think I failed to adequately address that.
A core part of American values is being willing to sell your soul, sacrifice your family, sacrifice your health, sacrifice your love life, all to get a good review so as to get a pay raise or a promotion maybe as much as five percent over the inflation rate. Or maybe no pay raise, and you should be thrilled to be given that opportunity just because you have a job. For now. Great deal, right? Everyone drinks this kool aid, that's for sure. "Yeah well after those 100+ hour weeks I got divorced and my kids hate me and the new diabetes diagnosis sucks, but that 5% raise sure makes up for it, compared to last year when they didn't give out pay raises at all, but that's OK because that's just how it is in the biz and you gotta love it" I think there's no disagreement that's what being a "true american" means. Its deep in our culture and propaganda and all must aspire to it or be cast out of heaven on earth as heretics. I'd sell my sweet little old grandma for 5% because I'm an American.
I provided the math to prove that UE, at least where I live, can be viewed as paying about half minimum wage, and never, under any circumstances, pays more than half employed wage. In my case, if I were unemployed, as a punishment for "success" I could gain not 5%, not DOUBLE, but QUINTUPLE my income by getting a job. And even the poorest worker at minimum wage would at least DOUBLE their income over UE. Yet a mere 200% to 500% or more "pay" raise supposedly isn't enough to motivate people to get a job. Supposedly. Because we said so. And its your job to explain why not, otherwise we're right. Oh, and that's "get a job" where the job doesn't exist, so it doesn't matter. Its an article of faith that if you really want it you'll get into heaven... er... get that job that literally doesn't exist due to permanent economic decline of the civilization. So making increasing the ratios from 200% to perhaps 400%, would surely motivate them to get that job. That doesn't exist, but now they'd be motivated to get it. Supposedly. And the reason why this peculiar belief system exists, its rationale and philosophy... is nothing more than "just because".
Its someone else's job to reconcile those two statements. I simply don't think it can be done.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:14PM
A core part of American values is being willing to sell your soul, sacrifice your family, sacrifice your health, sacrifice your love life, all to get a good review so as to get a pay raise or a promotion maybe as much as five percent over the inflation rate.
Speaking as a US citizen, I have yet to see this alleged core value. People frequently balance jobs with their lives, usually quite successfully and that is often considered a sign of success to be able to do so.
I provided the math to prove that UE, at least where I live, can be viewed as paying about half minimum wage
That $363 per week income is equivalent to a $9 per hour job which is over minimum wage for most of the US and the only work you have to do is a handful of job applications. If all you are interested in is keeping UE going, it's good money for the trivial effort of finding and applying for a few jobs that no one would hire you for. So that's more like $363 per hour than $9 per hour. And maybe you're getting paid for work under the table too.
In my case, if I were unemployed, as a punishment for "success" I could gain not 5%, not DOUBLE, but QUINTUPLE my income by getting a job.
You are already in the upper levels of income. Not everyone has your incentives.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:48PM
I couldn't disagree more with the first comment. Any time work life balance is discussed in a tech forum, you should be thrilled at the privilege to work 100+ hour weeks, blah blah. Probably a lot of astroturf in those claims, but still. You should be thrilled to spend two hours per day commuting, when so many don't have a job, that kind of stuff. Anyone who doesn't think workers sacrifice their health for a job just isn't paying attention to blue collar, which is the only area with job growth rather than shrinkage.
Still the whole point of performance reviews is its supposedly trivial to manipulate people for a 5% pay raise, although that seems unusually high. Going from UE to a job will be a staggeringly higher percentage, at least 100%, but supposedly twenty times that motivation equals none at all. Doesn't add up.
I had made a math error and workers don't make more than half pay, with a cap. So a formerly minimum wage worker would never get more than half minimum wage. I would cap out at about a fifth my current income, but without the cap I would theoretically get about half pay. Each state is a little different.
As for the upper levels of income you're making my point for me. The difference in standard of living between $5/hr equiv and $10/hr is spectacularly higher than the difference between $35 and $40 per hour. An extra $10K when you only get 10K is a huge deal, maybe that guy gets to live in an apartment instead of a homeless shelter or maybe he gets medical care or maybe real food, but for me, I'd take a slightly nicer vacation and stick some in savings, that's about it.
And the whole point of a declining median income is its the good, high paying jobs that are disappearing not the low income jobs, so the people under discussion are mostly (formerly) highly paid guys.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:14PM
Any time work life balance is discussed in a tech forum, you should be thrilled at the privilege to work 100+ hour weeks, blah blah.
So do you have a reason to disagree? Not everyone works in hardcore IT or posts on tech forums. In fact, it is perhaps 1 in 10,000 or worse. That isn't representative of the general population by number, occupation, or ambition.
As for the upper levels of income you're making my point for me.
So what was the purpose of your point? Not everyone is in your situation. I'm not all that concerned that the government will pay you not to work.
And the whole point of a declining median income is its the good, high paying jobs that are disappearing not the low income jobs, so the people under discussion are mostly (formerly) highly paid guys.
So you're saying that the trend is towards more people in a situation where they have strong incentives not to work after they lose their jobs?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:50PM
"So you're saying that the trend is towards more people in a situation where they have strong incentives not to work after they lose their jobs?"
OK fine, we'll agree to disagree. Yes, I agree with you, giving people a minimum 50% pay cut isn't motivational at all, not at all, although entire books of management theory have been written about how to motivate current employees with the possibility of a 5% pay raise.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @11:50PM
A current employee at least has some desire to continue working. 5% increase in compensation boosts existing motivation. As to the unemployed person, it's not just a 50% pay cut. It's a 50% pay cut with near elimination of work for up to two years. For some people, the cost of being out of the workforce for two years is either not that great or not that visible. You have to consider all costs and benefits (as well as the perception of them), not just some of them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:53PM
Employee retention used to be a major goal of US corporations. Nowadays, workers are seen as disposable cogs and since they have their pick of the litter, they can replace you at the drop of a hat with someone pre-qualified who doesn't need to be trained.
Since they don't make it worth your while to stay, your best bet to get a raise is to change employers. That led to the revolving-door job market we have today. Personally, I don't see a way out unless people become less dependent on their employers, through saving and investement... but who wants to save when the best interest rate you can find is 0.5% or less?
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:50PM
Whoooops I made a big mistake in my calculations. The cap is 363 and there's also a minimum of 54 and in between those limits its 4% of highest total quarterly income. Insane, but aren't most .gov laws?
So a dude who made 19K while employed most certainly does not make 19K on UE, he makes $190/wk or about $10K/yr, equivalent to full time at $4.90/hr. Which is below the legal minimum wage, so any full time job would be better.
So if you make less than $36K/yr, then every penny you make in your highest quarter will boost your UE when/if you get it, but above that level, extra income provides no "bonus" UE.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:53PM
See, my father taught me growing up that you never stay unemployed any longer than you absolutely have to. You apply for every job you might possibly be qualified for then you find a job you want after you have an income. By his, and now my, reckoning, anything else is being a lasy-ass and a drain on society.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:56PM
Let me guess: Your daddy never had to look for work in the middle of a depression with 33 percent unemployment.
Current numbers (the REAL numbers [shadowstats.com], not the gov't's cooked numbers) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [shadowstats.com] are that 23 percent of workers cannot get full-time work.
There are others who realize that looking for work simply drains their available resources with near-zero chance of that paying off.
THE CAPITALISTS ARE **NOT** HIRING.
What is needed is a president with a Keynesian adviser. [google.com]
You need to switch off lamestream media. It isn't giving you useful information.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 08 2014, @10:20PM
I'm not in my 60's yet, so no.
Thank you. In this world there are exactly two kinds of people: those who believe they are entitled to things they have not earned and those who do not. You are obviously in the former group, so now I need not bother with a rebuttal.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fadrian on Wednesday April 09 2014, @01:47AM
Oddly enough, it is your comment that speaks clearly about the kind of person you are - a black/white thinker who believes that all people can be classified into two categories like that. Frankly many believe that there are some things people are entitled to just for existing (and many that are not). Do you believe your satement when applied to "natural rights" like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? If so, I'm sure you'd love to move to an authoritarian state where you wouldn't need to be troubled by pesky entitlements like those.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 09 2014, @02:08AM
Part of not believing in taking what is not yours by right includes my life, liberty, etc... I never bothered to work out a rationale for why they belong to me but I don't really need one to know that you, society, or the government have no rightful claim to them.
As for what kind of government I prefer? Dictatorship. They're less oppressive than democracy. In democracy the majority oppresses the minority with every single law they pass or shoot down against an opposition party. They are logically incapable of anything else. In a dictatorship everyone is oppressed equally at least. Plus it's a much easier system to overthrow when, not if, it becomes corrupt; especially if you stack the deck against the dictator by not allowing him more than basic security or control of the military right from the start.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Wednesday April 09 2014, @04:54AM
What is needed is a president with a Keynesian adviser.
Keynesian policies are just more voodoo economics. The fundamental problem is that economic activity is not the true measure of an economy. It's not how fast the hamster runs on the wheel, but what things of value get produced. And the two fundamental flaws of Keynesian economics is that they don't actually produce that much of value, and they do so by taking away value in other ways - either by borrowing against the future and/or increasing inflation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:30AM
Keynesianism is what got the USA out of the Great Depression.
Full stop.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by khallow on Wednesday April 09 2014, @12:46PM
Keynesianism is what got the USA out of the Great Depression.
More than a decade after Keynesian policies were first implemented? No, what got the US out of the Great Depression was the suspension of most of FDR's economic policies (particularly the forced oligopolies) during the course of the Second World War. We have since come up with two additional, recent cases where Keynesian policies didn't work, the Japanese recession of 1990-1991 and the current economic mess stemming from the 2007-2008 real estate crisis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @06:37PM
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
It's clear that you are parroting some Neo-Liberal nonsense you got from lamestream media.
In 1937, when FDR listened to the Republicans and decided to back off on the policies that had been hugely successful for 4 years, the economy started to tank again.
Keynesianism had worked and it worked well again when, once again, he began to ignore the deficit hawks of the Far Right.
If we had the 94 percent top marginal tax rate on billionaires that FDR instituted after Coolidgeism/Hooverism had put the economy in the crapper (or even JFK's 70 percent top rate), we'd be just fine right now.
Keynesianism also worked in Germany, keeping their economy from completely collapsing in the same time frame. [google.com]
In the middle of a deep economic crisis, there is NOTHING ELSE which has PROVED to be effective.
If you have an actual example to the contrary, now would be the time to give specifics.
Name the country and the dates.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday April 10 2014, @02:52AM
In 1937, when FDR listened to the Republicans and decided to back off on the policies that had been hugely successful for 4 years, the economy started to tank again.
Historical revisionism. If the policies were hugely successful, which they weren't, then the economy wouldn't have tanked in 1937-1938.
If we had the 94 percent top marginal tax rate on billionaires that FDR instituted after Coolidgeism/Hooverism had put the economy in the crapper (or even JFK's 70 percent top rate), we'd be just fine right now.
Given that the 94% or 70% margin tax rate never actually existed in practice due to tax loopholes, what is the point of claiming that we would be "fine" now?
Keynesianism also worked in Germany, keeping their economy from completely collapsing in the same time frame.
By "working", you mean bankrupted them by 1943? I suppose starting the largest war in history is not quite proper Keynesian strategy, but it's the same people making the same boneheaded economic decisions.
In the middle of a deep economic crisis, there is NOTHING ELSE which has PROVED to be effective.
Doing nothing has proven to be just as effective. This was implemented in the US during previous recessions such as the Long Depression of 1873-1879 which other than almost action by the US government was similar in severity to the start of the Great Depression and lasted a bit over five years. Afterward was a decade and a half of growth and then another significant recession in 1893. The US recovered from both without significant government intervention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10 2014, @04:31AM
If the policies were hugely successful, which they weren't
You're still offering your whackadoodle opinions as if they are fact, so I'm going to come right out and say it:
You're full of shit. [wordpress.com]
that[...]tax rate never actually existed in practice
...and when tax rates on the rich go below 50 percent, the USA's Capitalist economy goes into depression; [firedoglake.com] there is a latency, but it's a certainty.
Tax dodges have existed as long as taxes have.
Your "insight" is really pathetic. You're still full of shit.
bankrupted [Nazi Germany] by 1943
You conveniently left out the military aggression.
You're still full of shit.
Doing nothing has proven to be just as effective
I asked you to name a country and dates.
An actual citation from you would be a change.
You're still full of shit.
the Long Depression of 1873-1879
The Long Depression lasted until 1896.
You're still full of shit.
The US recovered from both without significant government intervention
Rich people doing even better is a perverse measure of "recovery".
Americans starving because they can't get work is not what I call "recovery".
Were you born full of shit or did you have to attend the Chicago School of Economics to get this full of shit?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday April 10 2014, @05:23AM
I like how you link to a graph that disproves your claim and yet you call me full of shit. Unemployment didn't going down to pre-Depression levels till partway into the Second World War.
While I haven't been able to find estimates yet going back to the 1930s, there's no evidence that the rich pay much more in income taxes then than they do now. For example, their tax burden has been pretty steady [baldingsworld.com] back through 1966. That includes several years of a hypothetical 70% tax rate on the highest income bracket which never got reflected in the actual income tax paid by the rich.
As to your "certainty", I know that the US's "Capitalist economy" would go into recession anyway "with a latency". Economies do that. That is such a retarded argument to make. Learn something about confirmation bias.
Read what I wrote sometime. I already anticipated your argument. And this is yet another incredibly dumb argument to make, claiming the Nazis were wonderful Keynesians while ignoring that they destroyed their society within the decade.
No, I got the dates right. There were two recessions in that period.
So let's see what you got wrong this time:
1) You completely mischaracterized the latter part of the Great Depression again and the link you provided shows it.
2) Not only claiming that a high income tax rate is beneficial - ignoring that it never happened in reality (meaning you don't actually have evidence backing your claim), but claiming also that drops in income tax prestage recessions - which would happen anyway.
3) You gave the terrible example of Nazi Germany and still stand by it even after being told how bad it was as an example.
4) And you got the dates of the Long Depression wrong.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:36PM
I see the opposite trend: The US and many other western countries currently have a very hostile attitude to benefits, infrastructure and spending in general. Budgets are being cut all over the damn place in an effort to appease the voters.
As a result, more and more people are sliding into debt and poverty and illness and despair and crime, which means they are no longer part of the economy either as employees, employers or consumers. Instead they become a drain on the economy via the judicial and healthcare systems.
A person out stealing to pay for his fix costs far more to the victims and police than addiction treatment would.
A person in prison costs far more to keep than a person on unemployment.
An person off work for illness costs the economy more in lost work than prompt, government-paid treatment would have cost.
A new bridge or high-speed railway or fibre optic cable might not return its investment immediately back to the government coffers, but the millions of tiny savings in time and money to the various people who use it all add up to more efficient, more productive workers and businesses that return the investment to the economy in an indirect way.
Still, everyone has to protect their own little budgets! Pass the cost onto someone else (with interest) and no matter what, nobody look at the big picture!
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:10PM
The US and many other western countries currently have a very hostile attitude to benefits, infrastructure and spending in general.
In the US, Social Security is the obvious counterexample. If there really was a "very hostile attitude" to such benefits, we would have seen it by now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Lagg on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:49PM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:58PM
This. I lost a couple of big clients and can blame it on only one thing - they fell victim to the "let's go after all this stimulus money" syndrome. They became so involved in writing grants and going all glassy-eyed thinking about the millions that would be coming in that they lost their focus and wound up losing a large chunk of their own core client base. Support slacked off in the name of grant writing.
I'll make it through ok, because I've got a diverse client base and wear lots of hats. But my big clients are suffering, just had to issue salary reductions, a few people quit, and morale is very low. If they do bounce back it'll take a long time and they'll have to work very hard at repairing their strained and broken client relationships, not to mention the relationships w/ their own employees.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:01PM
yeah - that stimulus money. funny that. I work in tech sector sales and frankly... we didn't really see much of that at all. and where we are in the chain we should have seen a decent blip. not a complete turn around but something we could have measured and seen drop off - and we didnt see it. sales went from robust to anemic (due to the crash) and have slowly ramped back up with NO blip in the data to suggest stimulus money was ever in the picture.
I did watch a lot of companies get bought out and/or end up under private equity. funny that.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:21PM
According to all the liberal Obamabots, the economy is doing great and articles like this are just fear-mongering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:04PM
Yes and the reports of Soviet tanks crossing the Oder are just defeatist talk. Any minute now a new super-weapon will be destroyed that will turn the tide of the war. Also, Godwin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @10:31PM
the liberal Obamabots
Obama is NOT a Liberal.
People who support Obama [politicalcompass.org] are NOT Liberals.
People who support Obama are Neo-Liberals (way right on that axis: they like Capitalism) and Authoritatians (toward the upper edge on that axis: they're OK with warrantless searches and missile strikes on weddings).
Now, compare that to where Obama's rhetoric placed him in 2008. [politicalcompass.org]
An actual Liberal would have voted for someone in the green quadrant.
(Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney doesn't appear on that chart.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 09 2014, @01:44PM
Obama IS a liberal, according to the American definition of the term. The definition changes over time. It's just like Bush: he was conservative. Yes, some people like to try to redefine these terms, making up stuff like "neocon", "paleoconservative", "neoliberal", etc., but the fact is that anything on the right is "conservative" and anything on the left is "liberal", and these map to the Democrat and Republican parties. Yes, these days things have shifted right so compared to other countries, or even to our own past, today's "liberal" is rather conservative (just look at Nixon's policies compared to Obama's). But in the context of current events, they're still a "liberal".
As for Obama's rhetoric, that's pretty much irrelevant; what's important are his actual actions and policies. He famously advocated transparency in government and has done everything opposite that while in office.
An actual Liberal would have voted for someone in the green quadrant.
See the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @07:36PM
Obama IS a liberal
You consume too much lamestream media. (*Any* is too much IMO.)
The definition changes
...for those who consume lamestream media and who think that that junk is useful.
the fact is
The fact is that you show no evidence of having clicked my links.
The charts are very instructive.
You're ignorant and, apparently, choose to remain ignorant.
look at Nixon's policies
Obama is more Capitalism-friendly than Nixon.
With air strikes on weddings, I'd position Obama as more authoritarian than Nixon.
(After the bombing of Cambodia, it's a close call.)
Obama is a Crony Capitalist and a chickenhawk[1].
Obama is NOT a Liberal. Not even close.
If you want to see a Liberal, you are going to have to look outside the 2 big USA parties.
Bernie Sanders is a Liberal.
Elizabeth Warren and Barbara Lee are as close to Liberal as the Dems get.
To see consistent Liberal thinking, you have to go to e.g. the Green Party or the Peace and Freedom Party.
Wanna see an actual Liberal?
Find some images of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein participating in the anti-austerity protests in Wisconsin (Obama never showed up) or her being arrested at the bank/foreclosure protest in Philly.
what's important are his actual actions and policies
...like the most massive deportations on record, bombing weddings, a huge giveaway to insurance companies, a bankster bailout with no strings...
...or is it the parroting thing again.
Your memory is very conveniently selective.
transparency in government
I see your point: Honesty *is* a exclusively a Liberal thing. 8-)
"Reality has a well-known Liberal bias." Truth too, apparently.
Again, you consume too much lamestream media.
Redrawing lines artificially is FUD.[2]
Accepting FUD as truth is just weak-minded.
[1] Nixon had at least served in the Navy during WWII.
[2] The GOP has been very effective at that; look at the recent redistricting.
(I won't say that the donkeys previously did it less, but the recent changes were pretty blatant.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @03:26AM
Were you born stupid, or been training a lot?
Even Obama voters aren't thrilled with the "recovery" and feel he's too far right of center.
Remember, liberals aren't a bunch of authority worshippers like the knee-jerk rightists tend to be. Get 10 liberals together and you get 15 opinions on something, unlike you whack jobs, where you accept talking points from on high and repeat them despite their illogical premises.
(Score: 2) by combatserver on Wednesday April 09 2014, @12:53AM
"There was a recovery?"
Please, give it a little more time--Reagan's Trickle-Down Economics are just about to reach my level, and I don't need you mucking things up right before I see any benefit.
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 1) by fadrian on Wednesday April 09 2014, @01:51AM
Let us know when your millions start rolling in. I'm sure mine will follow directly and I want to be there with my semi, ready to be filled with the Benjamins, dawg.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:50PM
The other think I forgot to add was the article where Apple and Google were found guilty of (having an agreement) holding down wages for tech sector employees. Had wages heated up in California i would have expected that sector would have started to generate a wholesale thawing of wages in the tech sector across north america, and sideways into some of the service and sales positions attached to the industry.
Sure quite a number of programming is getting outsources to India, but unless you have one of the top firms on the job the work is so substandard that more companies are either pulling the plug; or throwing more money into the hole.
Sales in Tech industry have crept back up and past the 2008 levels (for both hardware and software) but it has taken years to get back there; (and most companies skipped an upgrade cycle; that they can no longer ignore as the hardware starts to fail)
(Score: 1) by cykros on Tuesday April 08 2014, @11:47PM
Once that hardware starts to fail...or once it can't be used for any (Windows) OS that is still being supported...oh right, that's today.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:51PM
I've been following the markets for a long time, and amongst real discussions its pretty unanimous we passed a local maxima headed for another recession a couple months ago, around the new year-ish. No not talking about 2008 or a zombie apocalypse but real economic indicators for production, orders, employment, mortgage originations, building starts, that kind of stuff headed for another recession. Generally recession length is vaguely correlated with how long the "growth" phase went on, so we're in for a big correction this time around. Make 2008 look good, likely.
This is separate from the multi-generational decline we've been in. Rome didn't collapse in a day, or even a couple decades, nor did the British empire, etc etc. So the long term graph is in decline, but what I'm talking about above is just a traditional recession.
There is an interesting aspect to economics where indicators and numerical metrics have a birth, growth, decline, and death, just like technologies in IT, and the more clueless use obsolete tech/indicators long after they should. Some are well past their "best by" date, like the near meaninless DJIA, or the gradual uncoupling of the fed rate from meaning anything to the greater economy, or the heavily manipulated into meaninglessness unemployment and inflation rates. The last two are particularly bad where someone picks a result and then numbers are generated to match the pre-selected result, Soviet Pravda style, and the made up unemployment stats are the topic of this article post. The official numbers for those two indicators are quite literally meaningless and made up.
If the press and public came to rely on census or IRS data WRT incomes or whatever as our primary economic indicators, they would falsify those instead, so keeping the status quo of real indicators vs imaginary indicators stable and unchanging is actually a pretty good idea. Just don't act or talk as if the imaginary numbers mean anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @10:43PM
The bailout of the banksters didn't have any strings attached.
Their behavior hasn't changed, so, as you note, we're still headed full steam ahead for the iceberg.
Brace yourself for impact. Things going to get dire.
{Picture of 1930s German child building a playhouse with bundles of reichmark notes goes here.}
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:53PM
Well, Doc says I should be out of here in a couple days, then another six weeks and the bandages come off. When that happens, he says I'll be able to play the violin again, which is weird, because I couldn't before.
But enough of my troubles. How's about you?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sl4shd0rk on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:17PM
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, manufacturing in the US was going well (I suspect it was anywhere else in the world where there is middle-class). Lot's of people employed in a lot of businesses with plastics molding, steel manufacturing, machine shops, Tool and Die shops, mass production of cars and trucks. Lots of people "making stuff" and making a decent middle-class wage doing it. A graph below shows a ratio of population and employment on a multi-decade scale* (bigger numbers are better on this graph).
In 1994 (Thanks Bill) Clinton signed NAFTA. A deal that basically let US businesses move all their production facilities out of the US and off to Mexico and beyond. Within three years, one production facility I was acquainted with went from an exclusive manufacturer of popular cell phones parts, to nothing. All of the CAD work, mold making, metal working and production runs of plastic parts -- all of it -- left for Mexico and China. The primary reason was super cheap labor, and second was lax, or lack of, safety and environmental regulations.
This exodus of labor from the US created a cascading effect where staying competitive meant doing the same thing your competitor was doing. Why would you pay a Moldmaker $25/hour (plus benefits) to create a plastic injection mold on a CNC Machine when you can send the G-code down to a machine in Mexico where someone will push the button and watch it run for $5/day? Granted that person will not be able to fix problems or tell high carbon steel from aluminum, but most of the time they wouldn't need to. The cost savings alone is worth the risk. If problems come up, ship the mess back to the states to have it fixed. Most of the time you still win. You no longer need 20 toolmakers working in the States, you only need two or three to cover emergencies, so, f#ck it. Lay everyone off and reap even more savings.
This has been the pattern for decades now. China was the next cheap labor source after Mexico and then came Korea. During this period of manufacturing exodus in the US (and elsewhere I'm sure) there was also a massive exodus of software and support which went offshore to places like India. Many software houses shut down and are no longer in business. Many electronics manufacturers also left putting even more people out of work.
It's hard to say when it will stop but if Detroit is any indication of what happens when you unplug your labor force from your country, there is a very real potential for things to get much worse on a much larger scale. Basically, capitalism is only making life good for the 1%. Their take on it is that if you "only worked harder" you could have what they have. Since you don't have what they have, you must be "stupid" and lazy and "living on handouts", so go take your handout and f#ck off. There are some very well-off folks I know who DO NOT take this perspective but they seem to be the folks who grew up with sh#t and can empathize with the struggle of those who have nothing. It's very small group however.
[*] - http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 [bls.gov]
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:40PM
Jobs started moving out of the US in the 70's, when it became cheaper to import Japanese steel and ship t across the ocean, and overland; than to manufacture it here. It accelerated under Regan when tax credits were put in place that encouraged businesses to off-shore and our-source. and each president since then has either promoted this nonsense (to the extent that you can't really find US made Textiles or Steel) or talked and done nothing to help the us worker.
but you are spot on outside of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @11:08PM
When something is scarce, the price for that something goes up.
(e.g. Contrary to lamestream media headlines, there is no scarcity of STEM workers, otherwise, wages for those disciplines would be increasing.)
Labor became non-scarce for American companies in the time period that you noted.
Some people will put the inflection point as early as 1968.
Worker-Productivity-Annual-Wage-Compensation.png [thinkprogress.org]
In a properly-working market, people producing more would be paid more, or they would be paid the same and their weekly hours reduced.
Neither happened. Ipso facto.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:53PM
WRT your last paragraph, the truly disturbing part is Detroit is extremely stable at its low level.
There's a hope that the future will look like "let them eat cake" because after that kinda rough patch, rougher for some than others, things were awesome, or at least better. Like Europe in the 1800s. So lets hurry up and do everything we can to make the rough patch arrive quicker, so we can get to future good times sooner.
What appears to be playing out provides a future that looks a lot more like the dark ages and feudal era Europe, stable, but failed. Like Detroit, Somalia, Haiti, but the whole civilization. A new dark ages.
The other thing is we one of two political parties where the mantra and philosophy to keep the members in line where being a good quisling results in good handouts, or really tough overseerers get rewards from the massa. Well that might work as a philosophy if the party was 2% of the population, but it doesn't work when its roughly 50% of the population. So they've got a little mismatch in scalability between their philosophy of internal party discipline and the statistics of the population, you can't realistically have 51% of the voting population actually be quislings or plantation overseers for the massa, even if you can successfully convince them they want to do it. And the other party offers nothing but swallow your pride and join the free sh!t army, which is equally unsustainable. It'll be fun to watch that play out in the near future.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:37PM
I'm no fan of the Free Trade movement; but the chart you linked doesn't tell enough of the story. try this one [wikimedia.org]. That's the labor force participation during almost the entire post WW2 era. It shows that the economy can function with a much lower participation rate. I'm guessing that the rate took off in the early 1970s due to more women entering the work force. There are many anecdotes of declining labor participation due to men getting displaced. We may not see a complete roll reversal, but the term "house husband" was a joke 30 years ago. Now it's a way of life for some people.
I'm not saying the loss of those blue collar, mostly male manufacturing jobs is good. I'm just saying that the economy can function with fewer of those jobs...
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:03PM
"I'm just saying that the economy can function with fewer of those jobs."
Unless the financials have been goosed such that it requires two incomes / 70% participation rates to prop up house prices and apartment rents. When those collapse back to mid 1960s levels, then you'll learn what true crisis looks like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @11:29PM
ONE PERSON who has 2 part-time jobs is counted as TWO JOBS.
ONE PERSON who has 3 part-time jobs is counted as THREE JOBS.
A person who realizes that after looking for 8 months and getting zero callbacks and who then just stops wasting his time--that person isn't counted at all.
Making Good News Out of Bad [counterpunch.org]
Figure don't lie, but liars figure. Thanks, Clinton.
...and thanks to all you gullible people who fell for the sham.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:20PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by metamonkey on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:22PM
What are you talking about? The economy is great! The Dow is through the roof and corporate profits are at an all time high! Workers are cheap and plentiful thanks to the outsourcing of manufacturing and the ease of importing indentured servants via the H1-B visa programs. Everything is going perfectly according to plan!
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1) by CyberB0B39 on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:01PM
I work for a major engineering and consulting firm in the NE United States and typically we would see environmental permit applications for large, "job creating" business such as refineries, chemical manufacturing plants and the like. Typically you would need to secure these types of permits 3 to 5 years in advance of actual construction to ensure that you would have them to show to bankers to obtain loans to build.
I can tell you that in the NE, there is little to no new construction of major businesses - the only business we have left is to remediate old sites that have moved or closed . . . or work for the municipal wastewater treatment plant that can’t pick up and move because people still need to use the toilet even if they are at home unemployed. The only bright spot is in natural gas drilling, processing and production. The big boys are investing money to move it around the NE – the small fish are putting up basic chemical manufacturing such as vinyl chloride and acetylene plants.
(Score: 1) by SplawnDarts on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:42PM
This isn't a huge surprise - federal policy is now completely hostile to these sorts of businesses. I wouldn't sign up to be kicked in the teeth repetitively either.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:05PM
"is now"
We're talking post 2008, not since the EPA and OSHA were created 45 years ago. Or even NAFTA 25 years ago. Or if he is, then I'm surprised his employers have paid him for decades to twiddle his thumbs.
(Score: 2) by SuperCharlie on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:08PM
I have become quite cynical when it comes to the reporting about jobs, economic growth and the like. I look around me and people are unemployed or barely employed and the news says jobs are back. I go to the store for groceries and everything is higher but the cost of living has a miniscule raise, gas and housing are miserably high. From the front lines, the news is significantly different than the headlines. The news appears to be simply a softening of the blunt force trauma that has been dealt to our economy by corporate globalization.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:32PM
This is why I take everything with a grain of salt -- even the news articles here on Soylent News. Nothing against Soylent News (far from it! It's a breath of fresh air!) but there doesn't seem to be any place that I can trust anymore for actual real news. What I see in person and what I see on the news are two very different things. Even in science.
(Score: 1) by SplawnDarts on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:31PM
My experiences have been very good as a FW and HW engineer in the storage industry. There's a huge shortage of these skills at the high end, and my salary has increased by a factor of slightly more than 2x since 2007, although that train is probably coming to an end. Foreign competition both in the form of H1Bs and overseas design sites is present, but not very good.
I also have an interest in the computerized side of finance, and I expect I will have enough capital to spend all my time on that within 5 years. I'm concerned about storage simply because the marginal value of what's being stored is dropping - what's the 2nd billion cat videos worth? So it'll be time to get out semi-soon.
In the end, people with the skills to make computers do whatever is profitable for them to do will be the winners, and those who are getting their job replaced by computers will be the losers. I plan to be in the first group.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:14PM
I plan to be in group 1 also, but what happens when group 2, which is explosively continuously rapidly and permanently expanding, drops consumer demand for group 1 to nothing, and/or the riots start and the rioters burn down my entire gated community, perhaps with me in it?
People with nothing to lose tend to act like people with nothing to lose. And we're intentionally making more of them, and making them worse off, every year. What could possibly go wrong?
(Score: 1) by SplawnDarts on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:27PM
One partial solution for various worst case scenarios is good armament - having the right tech works there too.
More generally there's a huge mismatch between human capability and economic need. It's hard to fathom a role for the IQ 80 crowd in a world of expert automators and machines. But I disagree that we're "intentionally making" such people. Genetics and bad child rearing made them, we're stuck with them.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:00PM
The problem in world of
"a world of expert automators and machines"
Is not the IQ 80 ditch diggers, who fundamentally are always going to have some kind of weird ditch to dig on the side of the road anyway, but the IQ 100 accountants and IQ 120 tool and die machinists who are smart, highly educated, and starving. Just the kind of guys most likely to build a guillotine in their garage and start making lists...
And if you retrain them all as expert automators, that'll merely push wages down till we/they all starve together.
Even worse if it takes 20 years to achieve experthood and thus employability and they're 20 years out of retirement, I can't think of anything to do with them other than soylent green. And for the middle aged that only need 20 years of retraining, what do they eat and where do they live for 20 years till they can earn a buck?
(Score: 1) by emg on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:35PM
When the government tries to prevent anyone going bust, the result is that everyone goes bust. If they'd let the banks and other non-viable businesses go bust in the 2000s, we'd have recovered by now, but now we're in a zombie economy where no-one can make any rational decisions on hiring because they keep throwing money at failing business and passing new laws that increase the cost of employees.
Japan tried something similar in the 90s, and has had twenty years of a zombie economy as a result.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday April 08 2014, @07:50PM
I'd like a bit MORE interfering. for instance - if you are "too big to fail" then you are too damn big, and need to be broken into much much smaller pieces. Pieces that can fail or succeed and not cause a global collapse.