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[Mykl:] This is actually the exact problem in the US at the moment. Money is trickling to the top and not making its way back down. Those at the top are hoarding it, thus keeping it out of, and slowing, the economy. This in turns damages the businesses that they own, because their customers can't afford to spend money that they don't have.
The problem would be largely solved by handing out a bunch of cash to employees, who will use it to go out and spend, stimulating the economy and generating demand (thus improving the outlook of business). It would actually be a win-win, but the cash hoarders can't see beyond having the biggest number in the bank they can (which they'll never spend).
The big thing missed is that due to inflation, hoarding money means losing money. Rather than wonder why businesses aren't hiring people or building up capital right now, Mykl merely suggests that the business give away that money to create a little short term economic activity and something that will be better than the present state of affairs while ignoring that the business has just thrown away its cheapest means to expand and employ more people. Later on in the same thread, we have this gem:
[deimtee:] I think this is actually becoming one of the major problems, especially on the small end of the investment scale. At some point, the economy is producing enough to feed, house, and entertain everyone without requiring anywhere near enough human work to keep everyone employed.
Investing in a new business requires identifying an under-filled need in order to attract customers. It is getting to the point where starting a new business means competing with a giant company, it is just not viable unless you can come up with something that is both truly new and valuable. Not many people can do that, and every time one does there is one less opportunity left. At the same time, big companies are streamlining and using automation and economies of scale to reduce the number of employees.
The solution, of course, was to shrink the labor market, not fix the problems described above.
[khallow:] Deliberately shrinking the labor market won't identify under-filled needs nor create more small and medium sized businesses.
[deimtee:] The labour market is currently over-supplied. This is evidenced by the difficulty young people have in entering it. Raising the retirement age is like eating your seedcorn. By the time those geriatrics are finally knocked off by COVID 2040 or something society is going to hit a wall where no-one knows how to do the jobs. 30 year-olds on unemployment for 10 years are not ideal trainees and no trainers will be around anyway. Early retirement forces the companies to train the next generation now.
Yes we should be massively investing in life-extension, medical research, space, all that stuff. Now what percentage of people do you think can realistically contribute to that sort of endeavor? I would say less than 1% of people have the capability to undertake research at that level.
Notice the insistence on shrinking the labor market even when presented with clear evidence that we need that labor for hard, open-ended problems and to preserve institutional knowledge. In the recent story, Kill the 5-Day Workweek (which was about some business that does 4 day workweeks), we see more examples of this dysfunctional reasoning in action. There's anecdotes about bad bosses, insistence that economies is less rigorous than physics, and lots of fantasizing about all the amazing things you'd do, if your employer was forced to give you one more day off. Let's start with the "bullshit jobs":
[Thexalon:] Counterpoint: A lot of jobs are completely useless and exist for basically bullshit reasons. If you've ever worked in a larger corporation or non-profit, you will have no difficulty identifying a bunch of Wallys or Peter Gibbonses walking around who are accomplishing absolutely nothing but vaguely looking like they might be working. And no, that's not limited to government, because despite what a lot of libertarians seem to think private corporations are not even close to perfect models of efficiency.
To summarize the above link, some clueless idiot doesn't understand a variety of jobs. So those jobs must not have a reason for being and are thus "bullshit jobs". Notice that once the author has failed to understand the purpose of these jobs, he then has to come up with a conspiracy theory for why they exist.
[author David Graeber:] The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the '60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.
Who here really thinks that Joe Billionaire is going to burn money on that?
Then there's the fantasizing about how shortening the workweek and the amount of work per job won't have any impact on competition from other countries.
[AC1:] A lot of Asian companies still work on Saturday (6 day week ). If going to a 4 day workweek in any way hurts productivity these Asian firms will have an advantage
[AC2:] Ridiculous, and already proven wrong since they are open an extra day already and haven't taken all the business.
"Proven wrong" because those Asian companies haven't eaten entirely our lunch. We still have some left. Funny how half a century of off-shoring can be ignored.
Moving on, it wouldn't be complete without a contribution from the peanut gallery. fustakrakich continues his bid to destroy Western civilization:
[fustakrakich:] Also demand a six hour work day. Make each day a little less tiresome
Here's my take on all this. It's basically a supply and demand problem in the developed world. Due to labor competition from the developing world, developed world labor has lost much of its pricing power. For some reason, most of the above posters think we can get back to higher labor prices by reducing the supply of labor. What's missing from that is that the developing world is still increasing its supply of labor (more from building out trade/transportation infrastructure to populations than from birth rate). Those moves won't actually reduce labor supply as a result.
Instead, let's increase the demand for labor. Rather than rhetorically ruling out the creation of new businesses and such, how about we enable those things to happen. Because plenty of new businesses still happen - indicating the narrative is faulty.
But that would mean acknowledging that protecting labor is less important than nurturing business growth and creation. Who will do that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:19AM (9 children)
You might have a strong leisure preference, but I'll take a bet that you also have preferences for food, and drink, and a reasonably soft, sheltered place to sleep. You probably like some degree of safety from roving gangs, more-or-less intact clothing, and so on and so forth.
These things cost resources - usually abstracted as money. And the more you want, and the more lavishly and frequently you want it all, the more it takes. Who'll pay for that? Would you work a little extra to get a little extra chicken on your kids' plates? Many people would. In fact, many people don't like living on social safety nets because they aren't lavish, and they want more.
Some people work part time jobs, live in hovels, and have ample time for fishing, and it suits them. They are, however, a minority.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 24 2021, @02:28AM (8 children)
Please, enough of the 19th century work or starve economics. We didn't invent our modern appliances and automate our factories for nothing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @06:29PM (5 children)
If we made it easy and safe to switch up our careers we would have a lot less burned out workers, a more diversely skilled workforce, and a happier population.
However, for the uber rich money is no longer the goal, they now work for power and without the feaudal employment system in the US right now they would lose their power over others. They really don't want that to happen.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @03:21AM (4 children)
The very insightful Eric Arthur Blair;
I consider this to be one of the most illuminating interactions between Winston and O'Brien but interestingly, Winston's answer in the middle paragraph is almost never quoted. It is always reduced to just the final sentence about tearing minds apart. Maybe it hits too close to home, even for those petty tyrants like school teachers and managers.
To be honest, I think khallow imagines himself to be one of the Inner Party.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday June 27 2021, @03:59PM (3 children)
He does, yes. It is blindingly obvious: anyone who looks at things as they are and goes "this is fine" either *is* in the "Inner Party" or imagines that, morally, s/he ought to be or deserves to be and that this is somehow the same thing (and then cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth when they suddenly get their skulls caved in by the boot they've been licking).
Nothing will teach him and his kind except personal suffering of a type specifically germane to his arrogant assumptions along these lines. A month homeless or so ought to do it, preferably without a shelter to go to.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday June 28 2021, @01:29AM (2 children)
Well, you're just another goon missing their torture room.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 28 2021, @07:39PM (1 child)
You call it torture, I call it "personal responsibility." If you don't want to learn your lessons the hard way, learn them from a position of relative safety and comfort. Remember, this is all being graded...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday June 29 2021, @01:38AM
That's because you are a dumbass. Actually exercising personal responsibility eliminates quite a bit of suffering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24 2021, @07:31PM (1 child)
Have a *whoosh* for the point that you completely missed.
Even if you have a social safety net, all the resources that go into it have to come from somewhere. Someone has to be the doctor that patches up your leg after you used your social safety net to get drunk and wrap your social safety net bicycle around a tree at the bottom of a gully. Someone has to be trucker, someone has to be the road maintenance, someone has to farm the food and someone has to dig up the cobalt out of the Congo that goes into your social safety net phone.
And what if you decide that you want more than your social safety net provides? Instead of a bicycle and budweiser, you want an ATV and Wild Turkey to fuel your poor decisions? How will you finance those? Maybe you will run a garbage truck to help keep the social environment nicer? And then maybe that isn't enough to really fund the hookers-and-blow benders that you would like to experience? Maybe you'd pick up a qualification and work on high tension power lines to help structure that social safety system?
The point is that motivations to have more do not always have to sit hard up against the breadline. People will work very hard indeed to make arrangements to improve their children's lives, doing things like paying for extracurricular training or private schools or what-have-you. So what do you do to those strivers? Ban them for being naughty-naughty greedy pigs? Tax the three-phase donkeyfuck out of them to support everyone else who doesn't share those motivations, because how dare they show initiative and motivation? Or just write up employment laws that are so onerous and byzantine that the establishment of any substantial enterprise outside of government is impractical?
What's the plan?
Or do we acknowledge that people will respond to an expanding scope of possibility by exploiting those possibilities to improve their own lives as far as they may? Because the track record sure as hell seems to support that tendency.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 24 2021, @08:36PM
Point? [youtu.be]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..