Simple question: have we reached a point where machines and computers leave us with less work to do? If so it can mean a lot of people are left without jobs and incomes, losing their homes and health, while the rest have our wages dragged ever downward. Or we can make some changes in who gets what for what, and every one of us ends up better off.
Cake or death? Which will it be? (*explained below)
Somewhere around one in five of us is un- or under-employed while at the same time so many of the rest of us, still employed are stressed, tired, doing the work of those laid off. With too few employed many stores, restaurants, hotels and many other businesses are falling behind. As Bob Herbert puts it today, "Simply stated, more and more families are facing utter economic devastation: completely out of money, with their jobs, savings and retirement funds gone, and nowhere to turn for the next dollar." The government has stepped in with stimulus to pick up some of the slack in demand but that can't go on forever and we need to find long-term solutions.
Is it structural?
There are signs that the jobs crisis may now be structural, or built into the system. This means that the usual solutions are not going to "restart the engine" and trigger a return to an economy that had where almost everyone can find a job, (even if it is a menial, boring time-suck).
Our unemployment emergency may really be about less work to do. Hale "Bonddad" Stewart writing at 538.com, Labor Force Realignment and Jobless Recoveries concludes, (click through for gazillions of charts and full explanation)
The "jobless recovery" is in fact a realignment of the U.S. labor force. Fewer and fewer employees are needed to produce durable goods. As this situation has progressed, the durable goods workforce has decreased as well. This does not mean the U.S. manufacturing base is in decline. If this were the case, we would see a drop in both manufacturing output and productivity. Instead both of those metrics have increased smartly over the last two decades, indicating that instead of being in decline, U.S. manufacturing is simply doing more with less.
So it may be that machines and computers are doing more of the work that people used to have to do.
Robert Reich sees signs of structural unemployment as well, writing in The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits From Jobs,
... big U.S. businesses are investing their cash in labor-saving technologies. This boosts their productivity, but not their payrolls. [. . .] The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won't even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won't start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks.
So what do we do?
Maybe we need some changes in who gets what for what. Right now we have an economy that is structured to send most of its benefits to a few at the top, while the rest of us -- the help -- sink ever downward into less and less security. People with power and wealth benefit when they figure out how to cause other people to receive lower pay -- or just lose their jobs. Eliminating jobs brings bonuses to the eliminators -- a perverse incentive if ever there was one. If someone can figure out how to cut your pay and benefits or just get rid of you ("eliminate your position") they get to pocket what you were making, and you get nothing (and conservatives say you're lazy). If you don't own the company you're out of luck.
In the past this perverse incentive was mitigated by people banding together in governments and/or unions and forcing the wealthy and powerful to share. But modern marketing science has been successful at making people believe that government and unions are bad for them. This was also mitigated by the ongoing need to find people to do the jobs that needed to get done. But with continual improvements in technology this need is reduced. We're living the result.
Also, this perverse incentive structure assumes an infinite pool of customers to sell to, ignoring that the transaction of benefiting from eliminating a job also eliminates a customer. But modern business has become so efficient at job elimination that this comes into play. Who will be able to buy the TVs that the employee-eliminating factory makes, if all the employees are eliminated and have no income?
These are structural problems that we can change. Let me just brainstorm a few possibilities for structural changes into the mix here:
The other obvious way to provide a quick boost to the economy is by giving employers tax incentives for shortening their standard workweek or work year. This can take different forms. An employer who currently provides no paid vacation can offer all her workers three weeks a year of paid vacation, approximately a 6% reduction in work time.
These are just a few ideas for restructuring the economy in ways the help all of us instead of just a few at the top. Please add your ideas in the comments.
We have a choice. We can continue with the system we have, and most of us -- the help -- will just get poorer and poorer while a few at the top take home more and more. Or we can change who gets what for what, and everyone comes out ahead.
*So which will it be, cake or death?
Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson
No one make collect more to obtain an office than the office pays. Congress may provide additional funds. No one may conribute to a candidate for office who can not vote for that candidate.
There are many things that this would accomplish, among these are
1. The money would have to come from the people that would be represented.
2. Since the people who would be running for office would have to go back to the old fashioned way of canpaigning, ie: getting out and meeting people, they would be in closer contact with the people.
3. Campaigns would have to be shorter.
It isn't more machine and computers. It's ILLEGALS. Those companies STILL need employees to make their products and to be successful. We are not in some New Age of Commerce. It's the same old business as usual. The only difference is that the jobs are now being done by non-Americans. You are right about a realignment of the U.S. labor force. The American workforce has been replaced by cheap foreign labor.
Force employers to actually pay for the sweat equity they're receiving by making a mandatory 40 hour work week for everyone. No more free overtime. Then you'll see how quickly departments will resume operating at a normal staffing level. No more running the last three people into the ground because they've seen 5 of their peers let go and are wondering who's next. Better work that OT or it might be me.
"So with all this money and profit, they’ll start hiring again, right? Wrong – for three reasons.
First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that’s where they’re investing and expanding production.
GM now sells more cars in China than it does in the US, but makes most of them there. The company now employs 32,000 hourly workers in China. But only 52,000 GM hourly workers remain in the United States – down from 468,000 in 1970.
GM isn’t just hiring low-tech assembly workers in China. Last week the firm broke ground there on a $250 million advanced technology center to develop batteries and other alternative energy sources.
You and I and other American taxpayers still own over 60 percent of GM. We bought GM to save GM jobs, remember?
GM officials say no American taxpayer money is being used to expand in China. But money is fungible. Because of our generosity, GM can now use the dollars it doesn’t have to spend in the United States meeting its American payrolls and repaying its creditors, for new investments in China."
http://robertreich.org/
Wise up and rise up! This is our country; take to the streets and take it back.
Why are we giving tax breaks to purchase cars from a company that is LOATHE to hire USA workers???
That's the EPITOME of our problem!!!!!!
http://www.bls.gov/fls/chinareport.pdf
"How long will it take for Americans to realize they’ve been had by their own corporations? US jobs are not coming back because the factories will not re-open, because those factories are now in communist China. This did not happen in previous recessions, except to a smaller extent where there was a manufacturing scare in the 1980s when Japan was taking manufacturing jobs.
US corporations began outsourcing and off-shoring jobs to China shortly after they were able to convince the US government to dismantle trade and investment regulations, about 10 years ago.
All the corporations thought this was great because they could employ people in China for 10 cents/hour and still sell the stuff for the same price back home in the US. How long could this continue? – for as long as the consumer and US government could continue borrowing. Time is almost up.
The US will soon have no choice but to either slap import restrictions on products from China, or devalue their currency so they can keep borrowing. Either way, the whole corporate deck of cards is going to collapse. After that the rebuilding can begin. We must bring back the manufacturing jobs."
http://www.thecomingdepression.net/main-street/deindustrialization/manufacturing-base-intentionally-destroyed-analysts/
parasites need to remember the only rule that really matters to them...don't kill the host.
they have world markets
cheap labor
they just need our address, banks , bailouts and taxbreaks
and cheap $$ from Fed
All well and good except for one very major flaw -
Machines don't buy anything.
They don't live in houses. They don't drive Fords. They don't eat at McDonald's. They don't drink coffee from Starbucks. They don't wear clothes from Target. They don't go to movies. They don't drink Budweiser. They don't go on vacation at Disneyland.
this is not for me anymore. Who can afford a 75.00 dress for their child? What an awful mom I am that my child will not be well dressed this Fall. It makes me think how interconnected the wealthy are to the middle. Soon these catalogs won't come anymore and it will be a relief.
Our sustenance is no longer in our hands as the wealthy corporate free traders STILL shout
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
We have been in an "under the radar" trade war since after WWII but the 21st century robber barons don't care.
All of our banks (yeah, the ones WE the taxpayers bailed out) are on the menu next:
"Sumitomo Mitsui is considering investing in and possibly acquiring major North American banks, according to a report Friday"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sumitomo-mitsui-looks-to-buy-american-bank-report-2010-07-22
Sumitomo Mitsui is one of the many companies listed in RESPECTED historian Linda Goetz Holme's book
"Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs"
(source: Official Japanese Government list of companies using POW forced labor in WWII)
OUR own bankers are evil enough...just wait until they are owned by our
so-called free trade partners that keep handing us shovels to dig ourselves deeper!
Ian Fletcher has the answer in his 2010 book: "Free Trade Doesn't Work"
We had better heed him or it will be welcome to the new "United Eloi States of America"â€
Shame on unbridled free traders, the men on Mt. Rushmore would bring them up on treason charges!â€
http://www.wfrnlive.com/labor-issues/buy-american