This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Low Wages & Unemployment Are An Existential Crisis For Millions
Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,
This post is a response to The End of Meaningful Work: A World of Machines and Social Alienation, an article I posted earlier. It is conducted in an interview style.
Jeff W:
There is a huge and growing problem of low wages and unemployment. It is an existential crisis for millions. If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly, and that is the end of us as a nation. Even though I deplore government interference in the marketplace, the problem is so severe that it demands government action.
You were wrong to discuss the idea of redistributed capital ownership. This idea is not worthy of discussion. Many people would blow their capital on booze, gambling, and luxury cars. The proportion of people who would blow it gambling on biotech stocks would be very small in proportion, and you should not have used that example because it would apply to such a small fraction of cases. Because many people would quickly squander their capital and soon become welfare or charity cases again, this idea is not worthy of discussion and should not have been introduced.
You are wrong to say that free trade has failed. People make their living in this world--they obtain the food, clothing, shelter and other goods and services they need--by working and trading. A functioning marketplace where people can trade freely, making their own decisions about what they will buy and sell, is very much a blessing to mankind. The historical record shows that Soviet-style, government-run pseudo-marketplaces fail the people because they prevent people from making their own decisions on how best to solve the problem earning a living. A free, thriving marketplace is a good thing. The problem is not that free markets are bad; it is that the corporatist thief state is in the advanced stages of crushing and dominating the markets where people can sell their labor.
The idea of taxing companies that employ robots in order to subsidize companies that use humans more to interact with customers and vendors is wrong. People do not necessarily want to deal with a human being when it slows them down. I am happy to save time using an ATM. Your goal should be more to provide resources for human interactions outside of work. The age of robots should be an age of leisure where people can enjoy a rich variety of human interactions outside of work. In work settings, employees must interact with customers and vendors in robot-life fashion anyway, so they might as well be replaced by robots. You are on the right track with the idea of taxing companies that employ robots. You are off track on where that money should go.
You are wrong to praise the Civilian Conservation Corps. My grandfather told me that people observed that there were often four CCC workers sharing one hoe. The workers also had an outhouse they could use when needed. What people said of them at the time was that there would be (in relation to the outhouse), "One a-comin', one a-goin', one a-shittin', and one a-hoein'." The CCC at its best produced a second-class kind of work. The work projects were dictated by a central authority in a manner not much different from the project planning methods used by the pharaohs. A big part of work being meaningful is that it is self-directed. A man who owns his own farm and builds it up through his own efforts is engaged in very meaningful work. A man who carves stone blocks to build a pharaoh's tomb is engaged in work that is much less meaningful.
Daniel Drew:
When I said "free trade" has failed, I meant free trade in practice. The concept of it is nice, but there has never really been free trade. It's always rigged in some way.
Jeff W:
Free trade is an ideal. Even though we admit that perfect free trade has never existed in a world ruled by force and fraud, that should not prevent us from striving toward that ideal: by resisting force and fraud as ways of getting money, and by insisting that people should get their money honestly from working and trading in an honest marketplace.
That having been said, I support tariff protection of U.S. manufacturing. That support is based on my understanding of why Americans became prosperous while the equally intelligent and hard-working Chinese did not. Prosperity is synonymous with high private-sector wages. Wage prices increased in the U.S. due to supply and demand conditions. Labor oversupply in China has always depressed wages.
In order to spread prosperity around the globe, high-wage nations should gradually absorb that labor oversupply in such a way that their own high wages are not reduced. Dumping huge labor oversupply on the market is like dumping a lot of wet logs on a campfire. Wet logs can be put on the fire gradually without putting it out, but if you dump a big load of wet wood on the fire all at once, you will put out the fire. That is why trade with low-wage countries must be managed. It is, at the same time, desirable for the U.S. to have free trade with high-wage countries like Canada, Australia, Japan and nations of western Europe.
In a free-trade sphere composed of high-wage nations, political leaders could focus on maintaining a fair trading environment for all participants, and each nation's business leaders could focus on competing on price and quality. A thriving free-trade sphere could then absorb a good deal of low-wage labor each year without damaging itself. Today's regime of global labor arbitrage (which is supported by global corporations under the spurious slogan of Free Trade) is spreading low-wage misery around the globe, extinguishing high wages where they used to be found.
Daniel Drew:
If we tax companies that employ robots, where should the money go?
Jeff W:
Sources of tax money include companies that employ robots and rentiers. The tax money should be used to subsidize employers. Suppose there were a $10,000/year subsidy payable to each employer for each full-time employee. Employers would be free to pay employees as they choose. Non-profits would also be eligible to receive subsidies. One might imagine a small rural church with an annual budget of $40,000. If the minimum wage were $7/hour, such a church might be able to employ ten full-time workers.
If the problem in my community were too many wolves running loose, killing all the livestock, then I might pay a bounty to each hunter for each wolf pelt he brought in. Similarly, if the problem is not enough jobs, I would pay employers bounties to create jobs. That is the direct government approach to job creation. Once there are enough jobs for everybody, the law of supply and demand can start working in favor of employees; there would be a scarcity of workers, and employers would have to bid higher for labor; then we would finally see wage increases.
A key advantage of employer subsidies vs. guaranteed income is that with employer subsidies, employees become involved in the marketplace. They learn new skills. They produce marketable products. As they progress up the learning curve, employers can increase their wages. Economic progress can occur. By contrast, guaranteed-income welfare clients just sit like a dead weight on the private sector, imposing a huge and growing tax burden on a private sector that is already overburdened.
The best thing that government can do for working people is to create an abundance of jobs. When there is an abundance of jobs, workers can easily quit one job and find another. The ability to do that is key to the pursuit of happiness; where workers are bound to jobs and have no alternatives, they cannot easily make changes to improve their conditions.
Daniel Drew:
I would like to hear any more stories or first-hand accounts you may have about the Civilian Conservation Corps or anything regarding "The New Deal."
Jeff W:
I don't really have many New Deal stories, but I'll tell you another one from my grandpa. He was a policeman in Detroit, but he was also a real estate speculator. He bought and sold hundreds of houses in the course of his career. He told me a rumor he heard during the Depression. People couldn't understand where all the money had gone. In the 1920's, everybody had a lot of money. In the 1930's, nobody seemed to have any money. Where did it go?
The rumor in Detroit was that Henry Ford had invented a baling machine that would take stacks of currency and wrap wire around them, like a hay baler. After baling the stacks of currency, Ford then stored his cash bales in a warehouse. That rumor, which circulated widely in Detroit, explained where all the money had gone. Then as now, people did not understand the workings of the fractional reserve banking system, how it creates money when loans are made and how money is destroyed as loans are repaid. In the Depression, when few new loans were being made, money quickly disappeared.
»
- 16128 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I thank God every day that those millions of student debt-laden, basement-dwelling, no-job-having kids will be there to pay for my Social Security when that day comes.
I feel so safe and protected.
Anyone who works takes care of children through taxes. The working will take care of the children whos parents are too lazy to work.
Obama care crushes those in the 25K+ income range. My friend just had her subsidy lower and her bill for the garbage coverage she is required by law to have ...without any explanation. I had told her to never, ever sign up and to lie on her income tax form (the obama care tax). Now she's in the system and they got her.
What kind of stupid statement is that? In a free market there is never a surplus or shortage of anything.
Because in a true free market those who are unable to support themselves starve to death.
BULLSHIT on the above CCC coment.
The CCC built bridges and roads through many rural areas which helped them a lot to develop in later years.
The US is in great need of infrastructure programs like the CCC again today.
So think again Danny!
To labor, with your back and bare hands, then be able to point to a bridge or road and say "I helped build that" would do wonders for pretty much anyone under the age of 40.
This piece was an interesting twist on Free Market demagoguery. But, surprisingly enough, roflmao, it had to end with paying the bosses to hire workers . . . at public expense . . . and somehow the Magic of the Free Market would win the day for all. Lenin never did better in his heroic imagery, I'm sure.
But in the real world, the owners will hold out to the last hair against sharing what could be theirs! theirs! and all theirs! with anybody. Workers are a different species to them. Those few business owners who view things otherwise will soon be eaten by the sharks who have the money and corrupted natures to buy favors from the system that, well, favor them.
I agree. Put all who can work to work. Take the money from the rich, if need be.
It will be like a Renaissance for the common man, in America at least. We wait much longer and we'll be stewing in a Romanesque brew of corruptive decay. Everything and everyone will stink, regardless of the pedigree of their perfume.
"If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly"
it's not merely about the children.
you can import children from other countries.
but if the young-adult generation has no funds to buy stuff, all the companies that sell stuff will have to go idle.
layoffs. bankruptcies.
downward spiral.
They won't be able to afford to have children ?? Talk to the illegals, the Syrian refugees and the Somalians, because it seems thay can afford to have as many as they want.
This is going to end soooo well.
Here, let me fix that:
"Talk to the illegals, the Syrian refugees and the Somalians, because it seems thay can afford to have the Taxpayers, pay for as many as they want."
I thank God every day that in Europe college degrees are dirt cheap by comparison because they are generally heavily sponsored by the state... - Oh wait, that would be us the taxpayers paying the bill anyway, right?
My 19 year old daughter, currently in her first year of a bachelor degree, explained to me how it's not that big of a deal to stretch a 3 year study to 4 years. After all, what's another year in a human life? You flunk exams, you try again next year, so what? I had to explain to her that - while this is not such a big deal to us as a family, financially wise - this take on things is what is bankrupting our (her) nation in the long run.
True, our college students are not crushed by debt as American students are, but in our case the state is footing the bill (although college fees are not as outrageous over here as in the US).
Not sure I got through, though, because that's the current mood over here: as long as we don't have to pay, this is not affecting us. But since it's my beloved daughter, I'll keep repeating the message until she gets it.
On an entirely different note and since I am somewhat of a petrol head: I decided to buy a decent second hand car with my remaining Euros, rather than leaving them parked at the bank, and I finally decided on a Fiat Freemont, which actually is your Dodge Journey, only with a Fiat 2 litre turbo diesel (decent engine, I am told). But please don't tell me it's regarded as a crappy car in the US.
If they aren't shareholders...do they matter?
Quick issue more EBT cards that will solve the problem.
Speaking of which
State ( MA ) Considers Fingerprinting Welfare Recipients
https://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/massachusetts-considers-fingerp...
If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly, and that is the end of us as a nation...
i don't have time to shoot that statement full of holes.
on second thought yes i do:
1) poor people have MOAR KIDS
2) the gubbermint takes care of them
3) if they don't meet the breeding quota there's always rampant unmitigated immigration.
The problem isn't that those of low intelligence can't afford to have children. This is a good thing - we have enough stupid people. The problem is they keep producing children (also with low intelligence) that they can't afford
If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly, and that is the end of us as a nation...
Ya, pretty much the entire premise of this article is BS.
You want LOTS of children, keep the border open to Mexicans and Muslims..... they may be poor but breed like rabbits.
and that is the end of us as a nation...
Say what you want about the Muslims but they are disciplined, they move up the financial ladder pretty quickly (about 2 generations) and they work pretty hard. That has been my experience with them in the US. Also on a side note their women seam to love anal.
And on your last comment, is this from experience?
I THINK you miss the point . he is not talking about the WELFARE class he is taling about the college educated productive class .. and if you THINK for one minute having kids is not important to society .. you are totally clueless.. funny how RUSSIA is trying to encourage more birth and babies cause its in demographic free fall.. we cover that problem by letting in primitive third world baby producers... so guess what kind of society we have to look forward to.. white Europeans deserve what hey get which is destruction by demographics... whites stopped have babies. they were the ONLY ones who listened to he population control bulshit .. the entire Western civilizaiton will pay for that short sighted oh so trendy STUPIDITY.
He is talking about the unproductive low/marginally intelligent with worthless degrees from third rate universities.
the econooomy be fixed, dear leader said so
.... and the punchline of the article:
"Even though I deplore government interference in the marketplace, the problem is so severe that it demands government action."
Yes, yes. More government action. More of what got us here in the first place. Fucking tool.
Highlighted the same sentence.
The government can help by cutting itself in half, and then,
wash, rinse, and repeat....
steve liesman referenced a poll today (not sure if it was the 6,000 person fed release or an internal CNBC one) but regardless, 81% of people polled said they would like to buy a house but can't because they can't afford one and/or can't afford the down payment. couple that with the 500k housing starts # we just got (V the peak when we were doing 1.3-1.5 million) and that IMO is the epidemic; the job growth simply is not there AND the jobs we are creating are simply not good enough for people to form households. liesman can run around with his hair on fire chasing GDP #'s (and today's flavor of the day happens to be productivity) but the real issues crushing the middle class are the 1. under-reporting of inflation 2. lack of job growth 3. stagnant median income. instead of focusing on inflation & redistribution of wealth, we need a governement that focuses on chopping the debt & getting the unfunded liabilities under control (to instill real confidence in business owners to take risk and that this house of cards isn't gonna come tumbling down), growth (with real job & income growth, you'll get inflation), and getting the fugg outta the way with regulation that is causing companies to spend more on lawyers rather than R&D and new salesmen. obama's economy has basically been doing everything i would do if i wanted to crash things and leave nothing but the government standing as the solution of last resort. guess thats been the point all-along tho.
They've barely even begun to get in your way with regulation. Statism is in it's ascendancy, not in it's decline.
"If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly, and that is the end of us as a nation"
You think?
The end of us as a nation was subsidizing the unintelligent in the first place enabling them to procreate. Like an ignored low grade infection that has now overtaken the host.
Well Mr. President here is where you can put your future skills to work instead of trying the redistribution idea. There is a reason for this inequality and the rest of us don't want dragged down so you can call us finally equal.
Single mom birth rate = 41% (First Lady should worry more about what goes in their minds at school and not their stomachs.)
1.2 million H.S. dropouts every year x 45 years (working life) = 54,000,000 working/not working and with 158,000,000 total in the work (15 & older) force that leaves the menial jobs to whom?. Hint Mr. Obama: Here's one main reason we have a lifestyle equality problem? Not knocking the workers buy you know the jobs available for this group.
what difference does it make???????
the explosion is just underneath; it'll be terribly bloody. too many w/nothin' to lose.
Who needs a job? Just buy Stawks.
Four words: Imm ig ra tion.
Secondly, can we please stop with participation rate charts that start in 1995.
Flood the US with more H1Bs, that's corporate America's and Washington's solution.
'There is a huge and growing problem of low wages and unemployment. It is an existential crisis for millions. If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly, and that is the end of us as a nation"
Now how can that be true?
We have been told by the next president/dictator that it takes a village to raise a child! Have as many as you like and the gubmint villiage will supply you with all sorts of free things!
So snap to it, and EBT your way to happiness.
9% of all wages spend goes to new technology that didn’t exist a decade ago.
smartphones, digital television, tablets...
We never really included it in the index and even used it as a benchmark why the index needed to go down and not up because it made our lives better...
Second, we all wanted our older people to retire in style and for that, we needed high dividend returns, which where paid with lower wages.
We created a society of mpre and wsll, we’re able to afford it. But greed took over and centralized the riches to a few guys who where already so fucking rich and they got even more fucking rich at the expense off.
Now the real problem is for the people who are 30 to 40 now because in 25 years, the income for their retirement won’t be there.
we all know it
we all don’t care.
But as these people age... they suddenly start to care...
and to panick...
And as every cathastrophe usually goes, it always comes in 3. That means, many, many more problems will start to pop up and panick will turn into anger.
As long as people are content with what they believe is affordable food, they will never strive to own the farm...just too much damned work.
Until people actually OWN the technology rather than simply consume it, we will never end this downward spiral.
That's actually very socialist...ownership of the means of production is better than labor being merely passive consumers of the products...
Yes, sure, socialist in that the government will take ownership of the technology in our name for our own good, right?
The collective owns nothing BUT us.
To own your own means of production, your own technology, in the strictest sense constitutionally. The right to PRIVATE property, not the right of the state to own us and all that we depend upon.
"One a-comin', one a-goin', one a-shittin', and one a-hoein'."
The only gem in this article. I'm stealing this.
I think the author entirely missed the point of the CCC... FDR was scared of the pending Great Albino Chimp-out, so he created the forerunner to the FEMA camp...
"FDR was scared of the pending Great Albino Chimp-out "
Classic angst saturated ZH analysis.
We might just GACO on the Donkyphants yet...
The current accelerating downward trajectory for free cash flow per individual means there will be many business models that will collapse in the USA based upon mass consumption - high volume / low margin - consumer goods / services will be replaced by increasing prices and high margins and lower volumes as people cant afford the mall, fast food, utilities, rents, medical services - once they take away / reduce drastically the government entitlements / government jobs - there will be little left in many local markets to tax - states / cities / counties - cant afford public education depending on property taxes - i dont see what sustains this current system
"...they can't afford to have children, or take care of them properly," This is where we are today like in NOW. This country went to hell in a hand basket a while back.
You know, in the 19 hundreds, people has way less.
they had about 6 to 12 kids.
People aren’t poor, they have abit less yes, less than what they need to have it all.
And yes, they can’t take care of their kids anymore because they can’t take care of their own.
Their spending habbits are totally fucked up.
AND WHAT’S EVEN WORSE!!
I have a pretty big background in retail. And what we always stimulated was payment with a card. The reson was because average expenditure with cas in our stores was 22 euro’s per buying moment.
but with a card... that jumped to 28 euro’s!!
People don’t realize what they’re actually spending with a card.
And that’s also the real real truth why they want to ban cash. Increase spending.
Sure they’rall flat broke but they don’t care. We’re a credit society.
And it’s full of dumbed down people who always think that taking out a loan now to pay for crap they think will make them happy.
And sure it won’t end well.
But untill then, they’re all slaves of the interest.
And once the interest is to high, and they’re all maxed out, they can’t afford kids.
So if you would increase their wages by 20%?
They would just take out more loans and the game would keep going a bit longer.
And sure, wages are lower than in the past!!
They are!!
But spend what you have and save for a rainny day. And it always rains sometimes and if you didn’t save anything but did buy every version of the iPhone??
Your own fault.
Government shouldn’t be a daddy to hold your hand. If you fucked it up yourself you need to deal with it.
it’s called growing up.
And sure the problems it creates are highe!!
Big damn hughes and everybody will pay the bill!!
That stupid iPhone?? It’s the source of a lot of evil.
When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies every family I knew had a father who worked, a mother who stayed at home. Every family owned their own modest house and car and seemed to get by quite well. We've badly lost our way....
Low wages and unemployment a problem? Not anymore, $15/hr is already becoming a reality which will solve the low wage problem. A 70% increase in wages is a positive impact on small businesses, and will also entice them to hire more people at their businesses, so that solves the unemployment problem.
Either your comment is total sarcasm or you have never owned/managed a business.
A recession is an economic term whereas depression is a psychological term. We are in a depression because labor is depressed. We are in a deflationary spiral of labor because our real wages are declining, our savings are being consumed by our need to satisfy our consumer indoctrination and negative interest rates, our personal and national debt is off the charts, all contributing to a psychological depression, which only reduces our willingness and ability to be more productive. This depression is deflationary relative to productivity and therefore even further reduces our ability to compete against technology and unbridled "free trade" that ultimately tells us we are faced with working for $5/day to keep a job.
Increasing wages today in spite of our reality is as smart as unions doing it forty years ago. We see how they ended up and yet we still want to follow their path?
To all those who are board with population decline . . fact is the wrong or rather the less intelligent .. less enterprising are having babies.. by the score . white Europeans . not so much in fact they are not even at REPLACEMENT levels.. so what you end up with is . .the Idiocracy .. the birth dearh that ensures decline of the society . if the best are not reproducing and the more primitive ARE reproducing . what do you think the outcome for any civilzation or nation is going to be . . http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/04/our-demographic-decline... or this ... http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nohumans.html One thing seems certain: Europe's importance is finished. Despite the divergences in long-range forecasts, all IIASA and Eurostat scenarios show a relative decline in Europe's share of the world population. In 1950 almost 12% of the worlds population lived in the present EU states. In 2050, according to Eurostat, it will be just 4%. IIASA 's projected 2050 share for all of Europe is 7% or 8%. In the ESA 2004 projection, the medium-scenario share is also 7% in 2300. The constant-fertility scenario is much more extreme:
Those most loudly screaming of their wholehearted belief in evolution seem to be the first to believe that it can be perverted or turned on its head with simple government dictate.
Promotion of failure and punishment of success, the suppression of success and the subsidization of failure, all in some strange ideological mission to "correct" Darwinism to create what has NEVER existed on the planet...equality.
A question asked many times over the last century of those who seek to use taxation as the great equalizer....what is the ultimate number??How much will you need to take from the productive to satisfy this "equality" compulsion? This question should be extended to ask...what cost, not in money but human lives and suffering, is acceptable to reach these lofty "equality" goals. As with all other taxation theft to support some greater good...that good is never met, only begging for even greater theft. Schools...poverty...defense, how much is enough? Never enough and never an answer because those in charge understand it is not quantifiable. It is a need like any other addiction of the mind that can only temporarily be satiated, creating only greater hunger or need tomorrow.
We all know what the answers to these rhetorical questions are. The answer is ALL, EVERYTHING, INFINITY AND BEYOND!
As we have seen through the centuries, those enlightened leaders see their mission as heavenly. No cost is too high and no failure is proof of a fallacy in thought...only proof that they were not committed enough. Double down. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
All civilizations in human history have been dysgenic, and this was their undoing. In Ancient Rome, ruling families were constantly going extinct and being replaced by descendants of assimilated foreign slaves. Eventually they got an influx of barbarians they couldn't assimilate, and the lights went out.
The flip side of this is that barbarism must be eugenic, or intelligence never could have evolved in the first place. Idiots don't last long when there isn't a government to feed and protect them. Murderous assholes don't do as well as you'd expect either -- with no government, you don't have to testify against Pablo Escobar, you can just kill him.
No worries, the poor will keep popping out at least one cretin kid every couple years as long their JJ's don't totally disintegrate. Each kid being the product of a separate anonymous dead beat wam bam sperm donor. Why not? The more illigitimate kids the more welfare, SNAP, food cards, energy assistance... What's wrong with having a country filled will illiterate, degererate, lazy moron's anyhow? Take Baltimore as a microcosm example?? If the % growth slows, simple, just allow more illegal Mexicans across the bourder.
""Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton."
Bertrand Russell, 1933.
PS Pat Buchanan wrote one of the definitive books on this top ... http://www.amazon.com/The-Death-West-Populations-Civilization/dp/0312302... The West is dying. Collapsing birth rates in Europe and the U. S., coupled with population explosions in Africa, Asia and Latin America are set to cause cataclysmic shifts in world power, as unchecked immigration swamps and polarizes every Western society and nation.
The Death of the West details how a civilization, culture, and moral order are passing away and foresees a new world order that has terrifying implications for our freedom, our faith, and the preeminence of American democracy.
Westerners are definitely losing ground, and while we may well be obsessed with gay marriage and far too selfish to waste time and money on children, don't count us out just yet.
We are the most efficient killing machine ever devised on the planet. we could balance the population scales in a few weeks if it came down to it. Admittedly we do not have the will to currently do it, but if deprived of our TVs and smart phones, there is no telling how big an asshole we could become.
The question is...will we kill ourselves off or our competition? 50/50 in my eyes.
well we have gay marriage now right...which should further kill the demographic pool. Which begs several questions first being why are corporations who dont give a crap about anything else ie not paying their workers fair wages, not caring about the environment and backing a whole host of tax measures which offshore jobs are so pro same-sex marriage, can someone tell me what is the catch, what is the play at work.
Next question is in a couple of years we will have generations of children with no biological ties to either their mother or their father..lets just think about that and the implications for that in a moment.
And lastly, ancient rome was known to be pro homosexual and pro pedophile society...so what happened...simple the romans who believed in that sort of thing just produced less children while the christians were breeding like rabbits and ended up being the majority, now with the growing amount of muslims in europe and other western countries how will that affect the longevity of same sex marriage. If my analysis is correct eventually it will be repealed, but until then i suppose society must degrade further.
The Long March Through The Institutions. "‘Organise the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilisation stink". (Willi Munzenberg). If you destroy the family everything else follows. Once you understand the plan everything you see happening makes sense. Everything.
Brother can you spare a ... bitcoin?
That decline in participation over MANY years by those with bachelor's degree is in part a sign of the excess of mostly bogus bachelor's degrees. OK, probably 50% of awarded degrees were always bogus, silly majors and/or bad grades or just bought anyway, but when they were in short supply they were worth something anyway.
Just had that thought.
The rest is valid, not news, but valid.
Top grads, particularly in the STEM programs, aren't even getting the proverbial "time of day" from employers who almost immediately use foreign guest workers despite being in possession of a plurality of qualified applicants. The elites tell us we are in a 'knowledge based economy', but some of the most knowledgeable people, those with a Bachelors degree or higher, have seen their employment prospects decimated over the past decade. H-1B and L-1 visas are used routinely to displace qualified American workers with less qualified temporary foreign worker resources, a prelude to complete offshoring in many organizations.
Graduate in the wrong year, as many are finding out these days, and one's career prospects may be permanently impaired as employers only want to re-hire their most recent interns. Lowball offers abound -- in STEM, often less than compensation on offer 15 years ago with no inflation adjustment. Much propoganda exists about the social media sector, and its apparent employment of young people, but the reality is, only a very small cross-section of the talent pool (young and old) can actually find employment with those companies as the market cap per employee is astronomical.
Everyone I know with a stem degree is gainfully employed.
You must not have many friends then. As STEM unemployment is rampant.
More likley underemployed. Or else you have a lot of Indian friends.
I ran an IT program for one semester at UI Champaign in late 90's. Graduates could name their price and choose their jobs. Now they tell me it's a jobs wasteland out there even for the top performers.
Anecdotally I believe top performing grads have had it worse than bottom-performing graduates simply because firms are obsessed with not paying a premium for talent. Unless a top grad makes it into the quintessential firm of their industry, say for example, Google, they're often considered to be 'overqualified' or a 'flight risk' for the run-of-the-mill jobs.
R&D jobs that formerly would have competed for and vacuumed up the top grads have also dissappeared in large quantities as entire R&D sections have moved offshore or been closed in the name of short-term improvement to the bottom line.
Yeah, but these denizens have their faggotry, pot, and iphones. fuck them and their brood
The problem with any addict is problem acceptance.
Too many addicted to their delusions.
Waiting for that one event that destroys everything.
NAFTA and free trade were designed solely to help one class and guess what, it wasn't the middle one. Immigration will be the next government sponsored corporate welfare bill for the 1%. This 1-2 punch just might be unrecoverable in the long run for what used to be a middle class. To say nothing of completely destroying health care in the US. Bread and circus, that's all there is now.
The next? Try more like the current welfare bill. H-1B and L-1 visas have brought in literally millions of foreign tech workers at rates approaching half of what a typical American worker would have earned had the labour market not been flooded. Purchasing power has been stolen from our domestic best and brightest and vested with the FIRE sector which has profitted enormously through the deflationary environment for technology goods and services thus induced. The situation is so acute today that even top grads of many STEM programs can't even get themselves interviews before the jobs are filled with foreign tech workers on American soil.
Of course normal people can't afford to raise children! That's the fucking idea!
What, you think our masters want anybody breeding who's smart enough to possibly pose a threat to them? If robots are ever invented that can do all the work our masters need us for and do it better, their first task will be to exterminate us and get the stink of the proletariat out of our betters' nostrils once and for all. At that point they won't need us any more, except a very few to serve as, and breed, slaves to rape, torture and kill for sport. Robots will do the hard work of conquering the galaxy.
The class war is real. The bad guys are winning. And when they are victorious they will give no quarter.
it's public sector.
vesectomy bitchez!
A similar comment may have been already made, but I'll state it anyways. The author writes: "If millions of young Americans don't start earning more money, they can't afford to have children..."
If money was needed to have children, the Third World would have been depopulated by now!