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Guest Post: The Future Of Jobs
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith via ChrisMartenson.com
The Future of Jobs
That the American and global economies are being transformed by the forces of globalization, demographics, and over-indebtedness is self-evident. What is less self-evident is the impact this transformation will have on the future of work, earned income, and financial security.
The key question an increasingly vulnerable workforce is asking is: What skills will be in demand once this transition occurs?
In order to answer this question, it's necessary to understand the macro trends that will shape the nature of employment in this new era. In our previous look at The Future of Work, we focused on the US economy’s dependence on debt as a driver of growth and found that debt saturation was correlated with declining employment. But there are many other long-term dynamics influencing the economy, and no survey of the future job market would be complete without considering these other factors.
The Trends That Will Determine the Future of Jobs
Most cultural and economic trend changes begin on the margin and then spread slowly to the core, triggering waves of wider recognition along the way. Thus some of these long-wave trends may not yet be visible to the mainstream, and may remain on the margins for many years. Others are so mature that they may be primed for reversal.
The key here is to be aware of each of these, think on which are most likely to impact your current profession and how, and estimate when that impact is likely to be expressed so that you can position yourself wisely in advance:
- Automation enabled by the Web continues to eliminate or reduce the role of human labor in production and services. The low-hanging fruit may be gone, but labor-intensive industries such as health care, government, and education are ripe for software/Web automation and streamlining.
- The cost structure of the US economy—the system-wide cost of housing, food, energy, transport, education, health care, finance, debt, government, and defense/national security--is high and rising, even as productivity is lagging. This reflects the growth of "friction" in the economy—unproductive expenses that add neither value nor productivity.
This high-cost structure drives the cost of labor ever higher, even as employees’ share of compensation stagnates. For example, if health-care costs rise 10% a year, the employer must reap 10% more surplus from labor to pay the higher compensation costs, while the employees see no increase in their take-home pay.
Rising systemic costs make employers wary of hiring more workers unless they create enough surplus value to keep ahead of the rising systemic costs and generate a return on investment. In low-productivity, high-cost basis economies like the U.S., the incentives shift from expansion to reducing labor costs by via automation and replacement of stable workforces with flexible freelance contract labor.
- The stress of operating a small business in a stagnant, over-indebted, high-cost basis economy is high, and owners find relief only by opting out and closing their doors. I call this exhaustion and loss of faith “when belief in the system fades.” Pundits may speak of our fraying “social contract,” but small-business owners increasingly feel betrayed by a system that constantly increases the burdens on enterprise at every level.
Much of Main Street America is stuck in two unenviable roles: tax-donkeys saddled with ever-higher taxes and fees, and/or debt-serfs working just to service crushing debt. Many are planning for the day they escape the burdens of enterprise by shutting down their business.
- The Central State has been co-opted or captured by concentrations of private wealth and power to limit competition and divert the nation’s surplus to Elites within the key industries of finance, health care, education, government, and national security. The rising friction within these vast systems is distributed over the entire economy via cartels and taxes, raising costs in every sector and lowering the nation’s productivity.
As a result of central State intervention and politically expedient controls, the prices charged for these services are “sticky,” meaning there is little to no market pressure to lower prices, as competition has been largely eliminated by collusion, cartels, and/or government control.
At some point, these top-heavy, protected industries will experience a “stick/slip” event in which their fixed pricing and funding will collapse once the dwindling productive economy can no longer support this enormous dead weight of unproductive friction.
- Financialization of the economy has incentivized unproductive speculation and malinvestment at the expense of productive investment. Financialization has been driven by low interest rates and abundant credit for speculation while credit for capital investment is restricted. In the boom years, money was effectively diverted into consumption such as luxury McMansions while the productive segments of the economy stagnated.
The direct costs and lost opportunity costs of zero-interest rates and malinvestment have been spread over the entire economy, as income that once flowed to savers was diverted to “too big to fail” banks and speculators. Speculation creates vast profits for financial Elites and a modest number of service jobs catering to the Elite: clerks in luxury retail shops, personal trainers, dog-walkers, etc.
- The U.S. economy has bifurcated into a two-tiered regulatory structure. Politically powerful industries such as finance, education, health care, oil/natural gas, and defense benefit from either loophole-riddled regulation or regulation that effectively erects walls that limit smaller competitors from challenging the dominant players.
Enterprises outside this politically protected circle are treated as adversaries by state and local government regulatory agencies.
- Selective globalization and political protection has created a two-tiered labor market in the US. Industries exposed to direct competition from low cost-basis economies with low labor costs must either close, automate or rely on minimum-wage immigrant labor. At the top end, global corporations are increasingly hiring talent in their offshore markets. Jobs, which remain in the US at the top tier of global companies are well-paid, but increasingly insecure.
The domestic industries that cannot be outsourced (education, health care, government, national security) have gained political power as their share of the national income has increased, and their domestic position astride the economy has been enhanced by political protection. As a result, the pay scales in these sectors are much higher than those in globally exposed private sectors.
These industries have thrived as Federal government spending has continued via borrowing 11% of the nation’s GDP every year. In this sense, these domestically protected industries are prospering at the expense of future taxpayers, who will be burdened with servicing this stupendous debt that has been taken on to fund these politically protected sectors.
- Financialization and the two-tiered labor market have led to a two-tiered wealth structure in which the top 10%'s share of the nation’s wealth has outstripped not just the stagnant income and wealth of the lower 90%, but of productivity, the ultimate driver of national wealth. This trend towards concentrated wealth also plays out in the top 10%, as the share of national income flowing to the top 1% has outstripped the wealth growth of the other 9%.
These trends are all visible and well established. Looking farther out, there are emerging trends I call “the five Ds:” definancialization, delegitimization, deglobalization, decentralization and deceleration. Though these may not be visible to the mainstream just yet, they will slowly influence the job market and our definition of work.
- Definancialization. Resistance to the political dominance of banks and Wall Street is rising, and the financial industry that thrived for the past three decades may contract to a much smaller footprint in the economy.
- Delegitimization. The politically protected industries of government, education, health care, and national security are increasingly viewed as needlessly costly, top-heavy, inefficient, or failing. Supporting them with ever-increasing debt is widely viewed as irresponsible. Cultural faith in large-scale institutions as “solutions” is eroding, as is the confidence that a four-year college education is a key to financial security.
- Deglobalization. Though it appears that globalization reigns supreme, we can anticipate protectionism will increasingly be viewed as a just and practical bulwark against high unemployment and withering domestic industries. We can also anticipate global supply chains being disrupted by political turmoil or dislocations in the global energy supply chain; domestic suppliers will be increasingly valued as more trustworthy and secure than distant suppliers.
- Decentralization. As faith in Federal and State policy erodes, local community institutions and enterprise will increasingly be viewed as more effective, responsive, adaptable, and less dysfunctional and parasitic than Federal and State institutions.
- Deceleration. As debt and financialization cease being drivers of the economy and begin contracting, the entire economy will decelerate as over-indebtedness, systemic friction, institutional resistance to contraction (“the ratchet effect”), and political disunity are “sticky” and contentious.
While these trends will cause harsh disruption to the Status Quo economy resulting in job loss and/or lost relevance for many of today's workers, there is good news here for those who remain flexible, open-minded, and adaptable. For those individuals, making the best use of the gift of having time to re-focus and re-skill professionally -- while the shock waves have yet to hit the Status Quo in earnest -- should be a top priority.
In Part II: The Skills Most Likely To Be In Demand, we explore the opportunities that this long-term transformation opens for those willing to adapt to the new realities of "work", including the business models that are likely to thrive, and what type of skills will offer the greatest job security.
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)
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Retort with something useful or piss off. Name calling is for pussies (oops, sorry, I didn't notice the avatar - LOL). Lots of religions have really nasty language. If you are truly an athesist, then you ought to be able to be objective here.
Works of religion, transcribed by men, are fiction at best. Tools of control, refined over thousands of years. Duh.
<<Girls prefer sex with cows, when JWnFL is the only other choice.>>
Cows are female. This is yet more relentless pro-lesbian propaganda.
So what do you want us to do with this information? What are you.... JeW n FL..... going to do?
You're going to do absolutely nothing you pathetic waste of air.
Every thing you reprinted there has been known for centuries. And there is nothing there that any other culture has not thought or done to another.
Including white people to American Indians.
Nobody is immune to the superiority complex. Nobody's hands are clean of blood.
So shut the fuck up if you don't have the balls to say we need to kill the Jews for operating in the manner that you say they do, you fucking miserable, cowardly piece of shit.
Kill American Jews!!
Win valuable prizes!!!
It's like saying 'kill all Libs'.
I agree.
OR YOU CAN CHOOSE DOUBLE AIRLINE MILES!!!
WHAT A DEAL!
I pray this is the quote that got you kicked.
Re. Every thing you reprinted there has been known for centuries.
Not so. This is repressed information. In the past, pre-WWW, it was said, by the Tribe, that you can't just read the Talmud. You need to have special training to interpret the anti-Goyim hate speach.
Then we heard all the bullshit about how moral all the Jews are. For example, "the IDF is the most moral army in the world ever.", when in fact, they famously enjoy killing children and other unarmed civillians.
Jews used to love to go on and on, on webblogs about the metaphor of 72 virgins for a martyr in the Quran. Now as more and more of this Talmud garbage comes out the Quran bashing seems to have been toned down.
Then there's the Kol Nidre. http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/kolnidre.htm
Why does JW have to say we need to kill the Jews? I don't want to kill Jews, or anybody else for that matter. But I do appreciate JW putting this up as it's the truth and it exposes the disconnect between the content of the religion and the bogus PR put out [by the controlled media] about it.
Nobody is immune to the superiority complex. So you admit to feelings of Jewish supremacy? Interesting because usually, you guys go to great lengths to keep that under wraps. You wouldn't want to expose yourselves as looking like a pack of storm troopers do you?
Finally, So what do you want us to do with this information? Why digest it of course. It gives useful clarity that is otherwise, not available.
Confused. What was the message you tried to convey?
Why all the Jew bashing here?
[link shows a "A Jewish settler throws wine at a Palestinian woman"]
Kill the Gentile Who Studies the Torah
The Jewish Talmud and Legally Murdering Your Neighbor
Permissible Adultery and Intercourse With the Dead
Bestiality
Robbery, Stealing, Murder — Approved Against Gentiles
Incest Preferable to Christianity
http://www.come-and-hear.com/dilling/dcontents.html
Don't trust anything on the internet man. Read the old testament and ask a rabbi if you have questions. Sooo many rants, anything can get there. Unreliable.
I'm not Jewish, I'm not superstitious at all...just don't trust the internet as the total truth. It is not.
Yeah, there's a lot of "fresh meat" to bang on with Jews. Easy target, as it were. Just try to form your own opinions with education.
Hell, I don't trust anything I cannot verify with at least two independent sources that I trust.
Damn religions and belief system have cause so much death...it's just not worth the suffering.
I could go on and on, but I do hope you get my point.
Sorry, re. Read the old testament, the Talmud takes precedence. Ask a rabbi. Are you sure you're not Jewish?
Yes, I'm sure...Episcopalian in my upbringing, school and everything....
I just advise personal research and not taking internet postings as if they were all the informed truth,
Lot's of crap out there......too many agenda.
Note that I am no apologist at all, and don't dismiss anyone's opinion out of hand. Yet I doe realize (as all should) opinions are just that. Opinions. Everyone has them.
Thanks, I knew you would say that.
I believe Jobs is dead.
There's your future.
I don't know why but it made me laugh.
Because Jobs was the closest thing we had to the devil. Everything wrong with consumerism could be found in one building helmed by the king of greed himself.
Ah, you are consuming by posting, so FO hypocrite!
US had Steve Jobs
Italy has no jobs
France has blow jobs
Good worker drones will do as they are told, don't complain, be on time and don't fuck the staff. That's about it these days. Oh and don't ask for a raise
I just like this guys metered cadence. He's fun to listen to!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U949Hu9pZw
In part II we show you how the job of the future will be writing fiction, dividing it into two parts, giving away part I and, selling part II.
In part 3, we show you how to get girls.
Send money here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/
blue collar trade will be fine eventually ,again...but when i look at all this bullshit promise of the future all i see is vast amounts of overhead jobs......we r fucked!!!
There will be no jobs left because just the business of operating a retail behemoth like Walmart will very soon cost more than the profit it can generate. Even at 100% margin (which is impossible) Walmart will not be able to generate a profit and will have to rely on government subsidies to exist. We all all being conditioned to accept the global central power as master, we will each be assigned a job to do or accept death to reduce the surplus population.
100 years ago I could decide to start a car company, an electric company, or any other company and have a decent shot at success. If I wanted to start a real company, not a stock scam government tit sucking bullshit corp like Tesla, I would have no shot because I could never get the funding necessary to compete.
I will say though. If the government gave me $500 million and a shuttered domestic auto plant I would put the Big 3 out of business within 5 years. I would never take the company public and any Union Rep sighted would be shot on sight. So right there than means I would never get my money. If I did get it I would create a true American corporation and follow the original philosophy of Henry Ford knowing that employees are your greatest asset. I don't need a billion dollars for myself either. I'd never hire 37 corporate VPs and fuck a board of incompetent directors sitting there just to collect stock options they can sell for a hefty premium after a corporate stock buyback.
WE ARE FUCKED BECAUSE THOSE THAT RULE OUR ECONOMY BELIEVE A STOCK TRADER IS WORTH 1000x MORE THAN A SIMPLE WORKER BUILDING A PRODUCT WITH HIS OWN HANDS!!!!
The problem is that 50% of our nation is completely worthless in a system not backstopped by the centrally planned government. They would need to go in order to allow those who are actually productive to society to flourish. Forced emigration to Latin America? Let those bastards know what it feels like to have their countries destroyed by welfare sucking parasites for a change.
I'm buying me a Volt cuz that cig lighter seems to reaaly work.
"I'm buying me a Volt cuz that cig lighter seems to reaaly work."
When you buy a Volt you ARE buying a cigarette lighter !
lmao
Double post
+1 for advertising it in BOLD
If the government gave ME 500million, I'd just pretend to build solar panels...
"I will say though. If the government gave me $500 million and a shuttered domestic auto plant I would put the Big 3 out of business within 5 years. I would never take the company public and any Union Rep sighted would be shot on sight."
Right now, a guy in China is thinking the same thing.
"WE ARE FUCKED BECAUSE THOSE THAT RULE OUR ECONOMY BELIEVE A STOCK TRADER IS WORTH 1000x MORE THAN A SIMPLE WORKER BUILDING A PRODUCT WITH HIS OWN HANDS!!!!"
Have you worked in a car company lately? The a-holes on the floor, do nothing with their lives except smoke meth, watch TV and get drunk. A stock trader, trading their own account, IS worth 1000 more than a SIMPLE WORKER, as the stock trader makes fluid markets therby causing price discovery - a necessity for efficient resource allocation in a true market.
This Barney Frank retirement got me to thinking. He knows more than he willling would say and that this Dodd-Frank bill is a complete joke and predictably another bank will need to be bailed out. All the promises this blow hard made will come back to haunt. So now we have both Dodd and Frank gone on the piece of legislation that was supposed to save us from financial destruction. Credit Default Swaps and all unchallenged. Great stuff. You know you really can't make this stuff up.
Get over it. He has got sovereign immunity.
Plus, the fisher people luv how he destroyed their industry.
He isn't called 'The Banking Queen' fer nuthin.
Sovereign immunity never helped the French Elites in 1789. I foresee a return of the Guillotine.
I thought the Jobs problem was solved last month. Oh, this isn't a pro-Andoid piece by Reggie? My bad.
Can't go wrong in criminology...
http://www.texemarrs.com/choice_for_2012.htm
you ever wonder why things happen the way they happen. gingrich rose from the ashes and now is the leader. isn't that special..........if there ever was a willing and obedient righteous gentile, it has to be newt gingrich. a traitor to his very core and a destroyer of freedom and liberty , yet there he is in the lead for the right to run as the republican presidential candidate......
you ever notice how the same names keep being recylced about in and out of what we call our government. it is amazing how short the amerikan attention span is...........
there is always ODumma....
What part of anything is better don't you get?
You can always stay home and abdicate your responsibility as a citizen...
I prefer the OJ can meeself...
interesting thats its very similar to the same script that Mccain used
Yep, let the LameStream Media dictate your choice.
Yes, and the attention span is so short that the same old Right vs Left still works. Obama admin has only built upon what Bush et al before him got going.
Carroll Quiqley on the Two Party System
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one perhaps of the Right, and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy... But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same policies".
Carroll Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope", 1966, p. 1247-48
(btw Bill Clinton's mentor and others)
read in a Python-esque voice, those words are comedy, yet in truth, tragedy. . . zero hope, but that's a good thing - hope is for children & their various benefactors - the tooth fairy, easter bunny, santa claus, etc.
ideally, adults outgrow "hope" and accept personal responsibility for their lives & actions.
take england for instance. they have so divided that country up politically, the white people are completely disorganized and most of them don't even understand it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom
division causes weakness, like racial diversity. it is insanity to think that allowing mexicans to flood into this country will somehow make us stronger......etc etc etc..........ad finitum
quigley wrote that book not because he wanted to do anyone any favors. he did it because he was proud of what was being done.......
The principal reason why wages in the United States for blue and grey collar workers and the low end of the white collar labour market now are lower than 40 years ago is the basic, fundamental economic law of supply and demand. Since the supply has increased more than in Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, employers have not been forced to pay as much as in the past for hiring as good workers as in the past. At the same time, many jobs have disappeared due to computers and robots.
Economies in Western Europe are not more protected by tariffs than the US economy. So that´s not the principal explanation. One big difference between many Western European countries and the US is that more sectors are unionized than in the US. Unions that force up wages usually mean more unemployment. Despite that fact unemployment in countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland is not higher compared to the US.
Rather than oversupply of labour, the US and Western Europe should have encouraged people to invest in stock long ago by reducing taxes on dividends and increasing taxes on consumption. For instance, the US should probably have imposed a significantly higher federal tax on gasoline and diesel long ago. Even if the labour market needs less labour due to robots and computers people still need the same incomes. If people had invested in stock long ago rather than consumed a lot, they could have received dividends rather than pay-checks. Furthermore, the death tax should have been abolished long ago. This tax makes people more inclined to spend and less inclined to save. The reason why even the Republicans have not abolished the death tax when they could have done that is that more saving and less spending would have reduced the demand for labour which in turn would have resulted in more unemployment and a greater risk that people would realize that you actually got an oversupply of labour.
Some people make 0.
Other people make more than 0.
Immediate income disparity.
Any questions?
I'm more inclined to see dividends as the problem rather than the solution. To play in the dividends arena you need disposable income, and in general those who benefit most from dividends are speculators rather than workers. Dividends can be diluted, and companies can award large grants of stock to their senior management in lieu of (or in addition to) pay, which not only dilutes the stock further but also insures that a company is run to maximize large shareholder value at the expense of small shareholders. Additionally, companies may issue multiple tranches of stock, some available only to specialized investors. Workers may or may not get similar warrants of stock or even options, and in many cases are often unable to convert these stocks even when senior management can. Workers can be fired before they exercise those options, and in many cases workers are often left holding worthless options even when senior management is able to cash out prior to a company flaming out.
In other words, in a dividend society you get something that looks an awful lot like what we have today. I'm not sure where the advantage comes from.
CTG-Sweden,
Cutting these taxes may satisfy your sense of justice but it isn't going to create a lot of jobs. Getting government minimized may be fair but the private sector not going to employ many more people in the USA, lower taxes or not.
Today, there are more people in jail than growing food (2-3%).
Those in the hoosegow are known as Soylent Green.
Or darker Green, whatever. Get the point? Or is it not sharp enough?
"...definancialization, delegitimization, deglobalization, decentralization and deceleration."
Christ Chuck, Jesse Jackson ghostwriting for you guys these days?
Relax! There will be lots of growth jobs in the new economy: as servants to the ever-more powerful, glamorous, powerful ruling elite!
Stable hand, food taster, mirror-bearer, grooming valet, gardner's assistant, pool boy, chamber maid, poodle groomer, jester, chimney sweep, page boy, game warden, deckhand, scullery maid, eunuch, toxic substance mixer, washerwoman, knave, bee keeper, bird boy, charwoman.......
It's definitely a growth economy if you just look at it right.
Rent boys, concubines, and wet nurses.
Those are the best! Need connections for those. Eunuch and choir boy are especially desirable jobs for sons
We are rather unusual as a nation because we routinely put our servant class on welfare and disability.
They could at least do something useful for somebody, but our labor laws and liability issues force these people to be idle instead of productive.
You dont see a lot of idleness in countries without a safety hammock.
You dont see a lot of idleness in countries without a safety hammock.
Because those who are disabled or obsolete are, well, disposed of. I seem to remember a charming man with a clipped mustache once suggested this
We dont need to dispose of them, but they should be given the dignity of working for their gruel. It is an important moral principle. Everybody can do something, no matter how small.
Arbeit macht frei
I think we could all agree that most of the Euro nations are...ummm...shall we say, left of center.
So what exactly drove their economies into the ditch?
Euro nations are no more or less in the ditch than US. The difference is the ability of the central bank to directly monetise the debt. The FED can, the ECB can't.
It wouldn't matter if they could.
The end result is the same, debasement of the currency (the medium of exchange for labor). In both cases the debt cannot be serviced.
The monetization meme was the last gasp of Keynesian scoundrels. The debt has to be repudiated and written off. There is no other way...in a debt based system you either pay it off or say you can't.
My point to Cav was...debt can come in many forms...wars or welfare...both circumstances accumulate debt and the decision should always be, do we pay up front or not.
They have already been helped by the fed. Look down on the list.
Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places
View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011):http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation
Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696
FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4b...
It's coming. Work for gruel enterprise coming right up.
"Everybody can do something, no matter how small."
To quote from Steve McQueen's great movie "The Sand Pebbles": "Everyone must have a rice bowl".
bee keeping would be pretty rad
I hope the bees hold out, looks like they're going fast
New jobs, my ass. Dem Libs sure can run when the Green Machine is afta them!
(Soylent, that is)
You forgot Piss Boy,
Hey you look just like the Piss Boy!
Don't froget prostitutes. The elites love them, and can afford them
just remember most "elites" prefer very young boys.
I was a highwayman, along the coach roads I did ride. With sword and pistol by my side.......
I'm a public school English language learner teacher- thoughts to how that career will fare? I imagine it won't be pretty in the future but maybe a shift to a different second language acquisition area would be prudent; Mandarin school bitchez!
Automation enabled by the Web continues to eliminate or reduce the role of human labor in production and services. Perfect Catch-22 comment..let's eliminate some more jobs requiring only a high-school diploma so that we can "be more competitive". Just what we need more of.
I think of this every time I leave the airport parking lot and drive up to rows of empty cashier booths that once had people but now are just credit card machines. A little more convenient but no price reduction and 100+ people now out of work. I'm guessing we are more competitive now as a country as a result.
Luddite
GOPer.
Ummm, reminds me.
I would vote for a mean, snarly teabagger for president if that is what you mean, or ron paul.
Republicans scare me just slightly less than Dems.
Group rights, looking to government to solve all problems, and a casual disregard for liberty to promote the "greater good" is far scarier than a republican.
On a simiar track, Watch the tv show "How things are made" They will show you factories that put out (say) a 100,000 twinkies or whatever in an hour. With only 3 people in the whole plant.
A soda bottling plant, about the same, 500,000 six packs a day. The one in my town used to do just one at a time, employed 5 people. There were many of those throughout the state. Now only one plant can ship it and replace them all.
And yes, Goverment GDP numbers go up with the less people you have,
Efficiency = less labor.
Interesting Thing in all of this is that these plants and airports DON'T scale Downwards very easily at All. You can't go from 100,000 an hour to an order of 5000 for the whole day. It's Either 500 flights a day, or None. Minimum Threshold and all....
We are going to see the very PAINFUL experience of 'Minimum Threshold"
i am actually surprised that we still have brick and mortars
At first glance I thought that red arrow on the post was a sign for In-N-Out Burger...
Who needs a job when you have Cramer?
Named my pet rock Crammer. Ask him about every trade, and do the opposite.
I guess I'll be fine. I work in high-tech and have for nearly 20 years, I change jobs on average about every 3 years whether I like it or not, and been outsourced twice once to India and the other time to Hungary. I've become about as mercenary as you can get. No loyalty, no expectations, no future. About the time I show up at a new workplace I'm already calculating when to jump ship. All but one time I've managed to jump just ahead of the axes. In my line of work that is an enviable record.
It doesn't bother me that the globalized economy supporting me will burn up some day. I never trusted it anyway. It's been a fun ride. I was treated okay most of the time. The pay wasn't half bad. Any scarred pirate with a few ships passage against his name would remark about the same.
From a height I've learned how to land on my feet. And I've taught my kids the same skills.
That alone is going to pay off for them. Someday they'll tell their own kids ... Dad was a fast-moving merc operating at the knife-edge of the world. He always said the Devil would take the hind-most. And he was right -- the Devil did just that.
by Dr. John Coleman
The dissolution of the middle class was a priority of the New World Order-One World Government.
The first move against the middle class came in 1913 when the graduated income tax was introduced by President Woodrow Wilson.
The first indication of overpopulation came out of a conference held by the Eugenics Society run by Mrs. Harriman, a scion of a wealthy elite family.
The event received maximum press coverage prompting the question why all attendees were from the upper-echelon of American society.
The common theme was that there were too many “useless eaters” depleting natural resources that belonged to the upper class.
This was followed by a policy formulated by an organization called The Club of Rome, which persuaded the policy makers that there were just too many “useless eaters” depleting the natural resources that belonged to the upper classes and that they must be got rid of .
It was followed by the Club of Rome with an edict that henceforth, Americas’ greatest asset -- the middle class -- was to be regarded as an encumbrance to progress and that methods had to be devised and put into practice to greatly diminish its numbers.
Thus began a concerted effort to drive out the middle class, which is ongoing today in 2010.
http://www.coleman300.com/Store/Details/38
We don't need no steenkin middle class..
We have reached the state of post-meritocracy. Social structure is being re-engineered into a pyramid shape, with a tiny self-sustaining elite at the top. Skills will be valued over education. Education can best be reserved and focused on the elite. In return, life for the lower echelon will be much simpler. The elite will have to bear the concerns of matters of state and finances. And speaking of pyramids, it's really been a long while since we hand-built some.
The middle-class has been the only thing keeping the poor from eating the rich. Which historically the poor seem to do on about a 150 year cycle.
Looks like the rich are about to run out of luck, in that regard. And this time, the poor will have nuclear weapons.
Should make for some glorious sunsets.
"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis..."
- David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member
"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself." -- Alexander King Co-Founder of the Club of Rome, (premier environmental think-tank and consultants to the United Nations) from his 1991 book The First Global
Members of the Club of Rome include Al Gore, Javier Solana, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blairr, Stephen Scheider, Bill Gates, George Soros, Ted Turner and many other influential leaders…
Funny, since Rockefeller is sitting in a wheelchair now, from which he will never ever rise again in this life.
So he himself has become a "useless eater" now, according to his own definition.
Don't forget the Chase in JP Morgan Chase is the Rockefellers. Oddly through all the banking crises - the more internationalized Chase Manhattan always survived.
Should have started reading at the top of the thread. I am a Jew.
EDIT: and a banker...
Duh. Hence the 'Idiot' tag.
Yeah, that's me...idiot Jew. I remember when you first showed up, too.
Village, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago and nobody's children got eaten, nobody's house ever got robbed by a Jew, nobody got raped or beaten up by a Jew. On the other hand, they did celebrate Christmas, come to our house for "corned beef" and generously give our family nice gifts. Some people are just ignorant, really ignorant.
We don't need no stinking job!
We know we already got way too many computer monkeys, so my guess is we need real skills like: farmers, carpenters, mechanics, tool makers, electrician, bakers and in kind trades.
Obama and the Democrat Party deliberately are using the poor economy to divide the country along class lines. They are purposely destroying the private sector by using federal spending, ie., socialism, to make people – be they university professors or non-working welfare recipients – dependent upon government. Obama already has increased the government segment of GDP from 20% to 25%. Here’s the story…
Obama campaign abandons white working-class voters in favor of minorities and the educated | U.K. Daily Mail | November 28, 2011
President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign will be the first in modern political history to abandon white working-class voters, strategists claim…
Democratic strategists say President Obama is focusing his attention, instead, on poor black and Hispanic voters and educated white professionals.
'All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment... professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic,” longtime political reporter Thomas B. Edsall wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times. (November 27, 2011 New York Times Op-Ed section article by Thomas B. Edsall)
'The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort,' he writes later. …
'The Republican Party has become the party of the white working class,' [Ruy] Teixeira (a strategist at the liberal Center for American Progress) told the New York Times recently. …
Instead, as two Democratic strategists lay out, the president's 2012 re-election campaign will likely rely on winning over new 'young people, Hispanics, unmarried women and affluent suburbanites.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067223/President-Obamas-2012-campaign-abandons-white-working-class-voters-favor-minorities-educated.html#ixzz1f2sTMDIA
In short, keep those borders open and arm all who cross with a vote to transfer the wealth…
i think the blacks are going to see him for what he is , a half whitey who sucks Wall Street Cock for a living
J.R. We had this talk in May of 2009. This isn't a history lesson. Look @ that weekly candle ? My best to Sue Ellen.
It’s all part of the recasting, Yen. Time to turn up the heat.
Are you suggesting, what I think? A Meltdown with a " HIGHER" , low? A wedge of non- recovery? I'm game J.R.
Another great find JR. And of course our MSM is silent...we have to get it from overseas.
It has always been about power, not skin color or religion or culture. This guy will do anything to keep it as he sees it slowly slip away. He's not stable IMO.
Apparently he needs a new bunker to house his ego...lol.
"For the first time in recent memory, the ground and pipes beneath the Oval Office are exposed, and each day, workers lower massive concrete blocks several stories underground. Cranes, trucks and construction workers file in and out of the hole, usually through a passageway between the White House and the Old Executive Office Building."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/us/big-hole-on-white-house-lawn-prompts-speculation.html
Shovel ready ;-)
imho, sue ellen was the hottest babe on the show........:)
This is really tough talk from you, J.R. And it’s about time that somebody is saying it.
I have close to 3 yr's trading with J.R. !
J.R> called the yen trade to levels we " NEVER" , thought possible, in 09. That man has my respect { JUNIOR } <><><
I have worked as an Automation Engineer for the last 30 years and can attest to the complete collapse of qualified technicians and engineers EVERYWHERE! Troubleshooting skills require years/decades to develop and the educational pipeline for these skills was all but abandoned during the 80's and 90's in Asia, Europe, and the US. I can confirm this because I witnessed it personally as customers would no longer pay for engineering companies' personnel unless they were experienced. No interns allowed! No OJT allowed! Fix it NOW, No delays for training! Go to any factory, Waste Water treatment plant, large facility heating and ventilation, etc... and you will find that the maintenance departments are a JOKE! They take forever to fix the simplest of problems; they take forever to make even small changes to programming and may just blow up the whole shooting match...AKA Iranian Missile site. There are plenty of PLC programming and Automation/Controls engineering jobs on the Web but most people who apply or get accepted are inexperienced CLOWNS! Most of the 'Aces' went 'John Galt' years ago when companies deliberately held pay below 100k for too long. Good Luck Suckers!
And who is going to repair nuclear facilities and reactors in case of a malfunction ?
Bart Simpson ?
God help us all !
ummmm, donuts....
Well, there is a place Bwaney Fwank need not apply to...
I've been in process control automation for 46 years. I strongly agree with everything you said (if anything, you've understated the situation).
I went "John Galt" with three others back in '79- long before doing so was cool. Many reasons for doing so not the least was idiot management! If anyone is wondering, see Scott Adam's pointy-haired-boss in "Dilbert". 'nuff said!
Nichole Ritchie can fix anything!
The Central State has been co-opted or captured by concentrations of private wealth and power to limit competition and divert the nation’s surplus to Elites within the key industries of finance, health care, education, government, and national security.
In other words: mostly government, mostly government, mostly government, government and government.
And no, it is the Central State that has co-opted or captured private wealth and power with a bit of hand-in-glove cooperation from key players on the private side.
Everything inside the stae, nothing outside the state is how Mussolini put it.
sometimes the long forgotten past seems more real than anything being said today.. I dove into reading Tacitus' observations of an early forming of Pagan Germany and how their land did not have any gold or silver and how Tacitus made the statement that he didn't know if the gods did that to curse or bless them...
take some time to read this and you will see that we live more in a sham reality than some modern blessing of highly evolved commerce
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/tacitus1.html
Funny how not even the barbarians of the time did not care much for the barbarious relic unless they had to deal with neighboring cultures ... in fact silver is all they really cared about if at all..
just shows that only the kings drive the need for gold since they need to show high values of wealth, and commoner cultures do fine without large accumulations of wealth.. gold=power. An observation more than an opinion - whether either is needed at all is open to discussion
Germania is a good read. Read the part on the order of battle.
"But to reprimand, to imprison, even to flog, is permitted to the priests alone, and that not as a punishment, or at the general's bidding, but, as it were, by the mandate of the god whom they believe to inspire the warrior. They also carry with them into battle certain figures and images taken from their sacred groves. And what most stimulates their courage is, that their squadrons or battalions, instead of being formed by chance or by a fortuitous gathering, are composed of families and clans. Close by them, too, are those dearest to them, so that they hear the shrieks of women, the cries of infants. They are to every man the most sacred witnesses of his bravery-they are his most generous applauders. The soldier brings his wounds to mother and wife, who shrink not from counting or even demanding them and who administer food and encouragement to the combatants.
Tradition says that armies already wavering and giving way have been rallied by women who, with earnest entreaties and bosoms laid bare, have vividly represented the horrors of captivity, which the Germans fear with such extreme dread on behalf of their women, that the strongest tie by which a state can be bound is the being required to give, among the number of hostages, maidens of noble birth."
What does that remind you of?
simmered on this a bit... perhaps only gangs and mafia ?
Football. It's designed as simulated melee combat straight out of Tacticus' Germania. Why do you think people get so worked up about it? It's because it resonates with them instinctually. It's the ultimate bread and circus.
Not really, I see football more as a replacement of the Crusades - the war culture of Germania was much more gang like in all aspects as it being very ingrained to the families
also the sports of Germania had more of a individual fatality vice around them, not the massive spectator approval esteemed on football players
football is more derived from holy wars
...or watching paint dry....with slow motion replay and more commercials.
Football is gang like. I'm not sure what you see in common with the Crusades except this brief part "by the mandate of the god whom they believe to inspire the warrior". To compare it to football that's the mascot and the idols of the mascot that the fans worship, you know all the junk that they stamp the mascot on and people love that shit. The crusades, though, was never about ideology that's just what the school text books teach us. It was about the Vatican expanding its power, colonialization, resources, and consolidation of the kingdoms.
Notwithstanding the brilliance of many ZH posters, the future is agrarian. Sorry, dudes!
Sounds like the Morgenthau plan once envisioned for post-war Germany.
Respectfully,
I don't think you got the point of that statement. 'Agrarian'. It won't be a 'Plan', Like Mao's 'Back to the Land' type plan... Ah, no. Not by a Goverment, etc.
It it will be demanded of by Mother Nature, Enforced by her 1st 3 laws of thermodynamics.
In the end it will be a much lower net energy footprint in total. Local. Thus; Agrarian.
Peak Oil kids,
Monsanto genetically engineered aluminium resistant seeds.
I keep hearing all of this about creating jobs. I have an idea. Hire everybody to work for government then everybody will want big government. Everybody wins
Imagine you needed to hire a cook. The common sense way would be to have an applicant prepare several dishes of the type you desire and using whatever criteria you deem important, ie taste,texture, presentation, cost, etc..., you would judge and find the best candidiate. The currently accepted HR way to hire goes something like this. You must be proficient using Microsoft Food 2000, KitchenAid Mixer Plus, Wolf/Viking Heatblaster 5000, and prepare recipes in accordance with FDA and EPA regulations CFR 2155 with proper sodium and sugar contents as well as caloric...blah,blah,blah,blah. Only after getting resumes pasted and copied with exactly what you say you require do you interview and decide on a candidiate only to find after hiring them that their food tastes like SHIT! Now you are too embarassed to fire them and are stuck for one or more years with someone who can't COOK! Eventually you promote them to a Management position! LOL You can't make this shit up but that is exactly what happens all over the World and in virtually EVERY profession. MEDIOCRITY tailor made by HR departments who do not have a clue how to hire a qualified candidiate for anything.
in a fucking nutshell perfect, thank you!
Simply put, the resume is a concept inimical to proof of skill. Being able to do something requires a demo, not a sheet of paper detailing a list of 'credentials.' The age of credentials will soon be ending methinks.
The future of jobs> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMf2mlHlwAA
Roger Moore and Sean Connery give their regards.
I'd say, hedge your bets and get into computing and law enforcement. If/when the shit hits the fan, better to be with the gestapo than against them...maybe get a certification in torture and cyber stalking. That might go over real well in the future and then new take your shit tax.
No more jobs because of the NWO.
libertarian86.blogspot.com
prostitution will always be around. that seems to be one career that never goes out of style.
you didn't read my post above linking to Germania
"...Thus with their virtue protected they live uncorrupted by the allurements of public shows or the stimulant of feastings. Clandestine correspondence is equally unknown to men and women. Very rare for so numerous a population is adultery, the punishment for which is prompt, and in the husband's power. Having cut off the hair of the adulteress and stripped her naked, he expels her from the house in the presence of her kinsfolk, and then flogs her through the whole village. The loss of chastity meets with no indulgence; neither beauty, youth, nor wealth will procure the culprit a husband. No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted. Still better is the condition of those states in which only maidens are given in marriage, and where the hopes and expectations of a bride are then finally terminated. They receive one husband, as having one body and one life, that they may have no thoughts beyond, no further-reaching desires, that they may love not so much the husband as the married state. To limit the number of children or to destroy any of their subsequent offspring is accounted infamous, and good habits are here more effectual than good laws elsewhere."
those fortunate few females who escaped being owned as chattel often sought sanctuary in monastery, where some even thrived, such as Hildegarde von Bingen,who
freed from being envisioned as a piece of property, she thrived.
if one's "virtue" is measured solely by one's "owner" there is no virtue, merely submission.
Even the best prostitutes go 'John Galt' either by finding a Sugar Daddy or becoming a 'Consultant' at $500-1000 an hour or MORE. Like any skill, the best of the best are usually beyond affording by us mere mortals.
how much was eliot spitzer paying? 5000 /hr...?
Humans are increasingly becoming too expensive, especially those with limited education/skills. As technology improves there is less and less that humans are needed for ... but just at a time when we continue to add a billion new humans every decade or so. We need maybe a billion to 2 billion folks on the planet for a suatainable existence.
The trick until then is to find a way to recycle the profits made by applying technology back to the 99% of humans that are not really benefitting.
So we help the 99% of humanity by killing off over 70% of ourselves then redistributing the wealth. Will it just be indiscriminate slaughter or will it be more systematic and ninnys like yourself be pardoned?
C students have always ruled the world.. they bribe flunkies to be their muscle and swindle away scholars' achievements
that would be the Law of (the) Average(s), eh.
and so very very true.
but what if......
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2011/11/28/the-electromagnetic-pulse-what-...
snark: You do know that Paul Krugman reads this blog right? He is looking for a great amoral war to unite humanity. This information should not be released to Nobel prize winners outside of the hard sciences.
Structural change occurred in the 1920s causing the First Great Depression. Tractor/trucks replaced mules/horses which freed up millions of acres for planting that had been used for pasture. This in turn flooded the world with excess cotton, corn and wheat causing a collaspe in commodity prices which in turn caused foreclosures and the cycle begin. Now the 1990s, the internet made labor rates to drop to $5/day w/o any medical, retirement or labor protection. The developed countries outsources millions of jobs, property values collasped and the cycle begin. The last depression lasted 15 years and was only stopped after millions were killed in a world war.
on the surface that is true, but the forces behind that tend to bear out that the money changers rather not stimulate economies without debt
now, with more debt than any banker could have ever wet dreamed about, the big scam is to have the people not laugh away the mountanious debt as insane and just give up the game..
they really don't want to start a new cycle - this is their endgame and they wish to keep this checkmate as the final game...
The USA's 9 month public school year is based on the 19th century farming requirments.50 years later it was decided that schools did not have sufficent climate control for summer months. 100 years later, teachers still work 9 months per year, the average age of (non-migrant) farmers is 58. And year round HVAC should not be a problem when we spend $15k/yr per student.
The majority of the 70,000 pages in the US tax code can be traced back to agricultural incentives. Because of capital outlays to insure against weather risks or over supply. (As described by the previous poster) With advances in equipment and tech, it is virtually assured that every core crop will go in, and every crop will come out +/-20% yeilds. But 50% of small businesses will fail within one year. (read: nail salon for Kstreet hookers probably wont get audited. A person brave enough to hang an "open" sign on main street USA will have every tax collector from dog catcher, to head of the local union hall, to county, to state, to 10 federal agencies show up within a week for a free sample. "So who is your tax attorney? Oh yeah, I play golf with him. make sure we all keep in touch" 70,000 pages of tax code that was originally intended to help what is now 1% of the workforce producing about 15 distinct types of commodities.
MegaCorps dont pay taxes, but they basically put a war chest aside for the ABA. "Good news! you are eligable for a part of a class action settlement for tree-fitty. you just need to read the next 20 pages, volenteer lots of personal details, sign and initial. and send it back to us!"
Fitch did not and will not drop the USAs AAA rating, but they said "It is bizzare how the USA does not tax general consumption in any meaningful way at the federal level" (see k-street coke and hookers)
Since none of this is actually meaningful productivity, or shaker like reduced consumption, as we all know, the real economy and government is funded by debt. We are all whistling past the graveyard and writing off the music lessons as a business expense.
snarc: But Mitt Romney from the republican party can fix what is wrong with the economy! He wont need to call Tim Geithner to learn how the economy works. Tim can't even file his taxes right. Romney, on the other hand. is so good at his taxes he pays a lower rate than the typical single mom! And he is a Billionaire! That must make him really smart! /snarc
They really dont want to change anything.
Did Groupon Tank 9% today?
Groupon is now around $15/share, losing 9% on a day when broader markets are up around 2-2.5%.
It's now well below its IPO price, and about 50% below its high of around $30.
http://www.businessinsider.com/holy-crap-groupon-is-off-10-today-2011-11...
once it is 70% down, they can offer their own stock as a proper groupon deal
South park's SEC: And it is gone! Please move along. This institution is for people who actually own class A shares. Dont let the door hit you on the way out, but make sure you pay your taxes this year.
Wonderful points. No discussion is complete without referring to the current system as in a state of "Taianter Collapse" i.e. Western countries have become so complex with millions of laws and rules and rigid structures that nothing can be performed in a legal manner. The fastest growing jobs in this kind of state are, very simply, in crime!
"Automation enabled by the Web continues to eliminate or reduce the role of human labor in production and services"
The Web enables automation of production? Gosh, that's sure nifty.
Stopped reading after that.
yeah haven't you heard? email spam killed the Postman
The cost structure of the US economy—the system-wide cost of housing, food, energy, transport, education, health care, finance, debt, government, and defense/national security--is high and rising, even as productivity is lagging. This reflects the growth of "friction" in the economy—unproductive expenses that add neither value nor productivity. (Italics mine)
I thought the high and rising cost came from monetization of debt, and the fact that people's souls are being sucked dry by the "invisible hand" of government interfering with market forces.