We're not going to have a jobless recovery. We're going to have a jobless future.
Holding out blind hope for the magical appearance of new jobs and the reappearance of growth in the economy is a fool's faith. Politicians who think that merely chanting the incantation "jobs, jobs, jobs" will bring them and the economy back are fooling us if not themselves. When around a tenth of Americans are out of work, for Wall Street to get momentarily giddy at the creation of 117k jobs is cognitive dissonance at its best. No one can make jobs out of thin air. Jobs will not come back. A few new jobs reappearing won't fix anything.
Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth. That is the notion I want to explore now.
Pick an industry: newspapers, say. Untold thousands of jobs have been destroyed and they will not come back. Yes, new jobs will be created by entrepreneurs -- that is precisely why I teach entrepreneurial journalism. But in the net, the news industry -- make that the news ecosystem -- will employ fewer people in companies. There will still be news but it will be far more efficient, thanks to the Internet.
Take retail. Borders. Circuit City. Sharper Image. KB Toys. CompUSA. Dead. Every main street and every mall has empty stores that are not going to be filled. Buying things locally for immediate gratification will be a premium service because it is far more efficient -- in terms of inventory cost, real estate, staffing -- to consolidate and fulfill merchandise at a distance. Walmart isn't killing retailing. Amazon is. Transparent pricing online will reduce prices and profitability yet more. Retail will be more efficient.
The housing market has imploded and is not likely to reinflate for a long time to come. So the market for new homes will not recover and construction jobs will not come back.
I can and will keep going, but later. Technology and related trends, including globalization, lead to efficiency in companies and sectors. Transparent markets lead to lower prices. Digital abundance leads to both.
All this has profound implications on both business strategy and policy, but we're not facing these issues as, instead, our leaders keep trying to resuscitate old markets and old ways. Bailing out banks only transferred debt from them to governments (read: citizens), leading to Europe's mess. Bailing out GM gave life support to an industry that deserves disruption. Fighting over debt in Congress -- and reducing the markets' faith in the markets, leading to this week's mess -- isn't the issue. The question is, what should government be doing -- where it should be investing -- to improve our lot in the future as the size of government with the taxes available will inevitably shrink with the economy.
Don't fill potholes -- or rather, don't think that will fix the economy. Instead, we should be investing in the entrepreneurs who will create jobs -- if fewer -- and wealth -- greater, thanks to platforms and efficiencies. Invest in education of our youth and our unemployed. Invest in efficiency -- energy efficiency, for example.
As I say, these are ideas I want to explore now and I hope you'll help me by sharing yours.
Follow Jeff Jarvis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffjarvis
Job creation program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economic Issues No. 20 -- Job Creation: Why Some Countries Do Better
Job creation limps along after recession - USATODAY.com
Obama Turns 50, Tackles Job Creation - Politics - CBN News ...
Deflation doesn't require bricks and mortar.
Technoogy helps but there are many Barriers to a Virtual World, Tansportation Costs
being one of them.............Consumer Goods must be delivered, Post Office is going
out of business, leaving a small choice in how to get there from here !
Suburban Sprawl will decline, strip fast food, etc. Costs will increase and Jobs will be
scarce and pay less !
Some suggest rasing taxes on the "Rich" who already pay 60 % of Taxes (Rich=Top 5 % of Taxpayers) by demanding that they pay even more ! Many of these schemes involve trade
restrictions and import controls, etc. to protect domestic producers (Germany) !
Devaluing the Currency is not the Answer, or Higher Taxes ! The answer is innovation thru
Healthy Capital Markets and LOWER TAXES and SPENDING !
Yes, a single payer Healthcare System would be better, since Policitians will not touch the
Large American Healthcare Monopoly to spur Competition ! ! !
In short, the Public Sector needs to improve productivity by 30 % in ten years, can they do it ?
Fewer and fewer individuals are needed in the production of goods and in the agricultural industry. Population continues to increase. In my lifetime the population of the US has nearly doubled and the world more then doubled. More nations are classified as emerging into the middle class. Resources are dwindling.
For the now and the immediate future we can continue in the "old" ways. However corporations can not fill the bill. It's only government that can provide the necessary employment for the short term, through infrastructure and programs for the general Welfare. This is stop gap at best. We need to figure out what we want the future to look like socially and economically.
Where once there were mom and pops are now 7/11s. And all the etcs.
Entrepreneurial journalism. The Internet.
I agree what is gone is not going to come back.
It's not unfortunate but it is the truth. A few great minds have led us to an opportunity to enjoy life
with new technologies taking our place in so many enterprises. It is unfortunate the consciousness of the human race is still trapped in the nineteenth century
Prior to 1980 as the economy grew, gains were distributed across the board resulting in the belief that nayone who works hard can get ahead. This actually used to be entirely valid. Since 1980 and the advent of the Reagan economic model and the insane concept of trickledown economics, the richest 5% of Americans have seen their wealth increase by 400% while for the other 95% of americans the gain was basically nothing, (technically it was a paltry 1%).
The wealthiest 5% of Americans are now worth 38 trillion, while the rest of us are worth 13 trillion. basically we accumulated 14 trillion in debt since 1980 so that the rich could quadruple their money, instead of merely increasing their money by 266%.
The game here in the US has reached a tipping point where the rich have extracted most of the wealth they can expect to get from the American middle class, so they will next be investing elsewhere while the middle class here continues to implode. The alternative is to reinvest in the middle class, collect on the 14 trillion in debts the rich racked up by not paying their fair share, by finally substantially increasing their taxes.
Take healthcare. the exisitence of national single payer healthcare in germany, and in many other nations means that the labor force is healthier, takes fewer sick days, is more productive and also costs less because manufacturing is not saddled with the added cost of supporting a pointless for profit private insurance bureaucracy.
This sort of thing only is possible if you are willing to make the rich pay taxes, but his is one of the reasons that Germany is back on track economically while we are mired in a continuing recession.
Our future looks like that of Mexico if we do not change our tax policy. Mexico imposes very low taxes on its richest citizens, yet has enough concentrated wealth that they could improve things drastically if they wanted to. Instead Mexico is an under-educated polluted corrupt nation with crumbling infrastructure and a violent crime rate double that of the United States.
We face a decision. The repbulicans obviously want us to become like Mexico, but we could choose to be more like Germany, England, Australian, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands...
Yes it is a good idea to leave a burning building that is all that is at stake, but if staying behind means that the fire can be extinguished and millions of other lives saved, then this needs to be considered as well.
Nobody should be without basic housing, nutritious food, or medical care.
Education should be FREE at every level.
If we really want to unleash human creativity, we must put our money where our mouths are.
"Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. It is a dystopia of automation and capitalism, describing the dereliction they cause in the quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become a hallmark developed further in later works." - Wikipedia
FanDfavd.
See Second Incomes for All at www.aesopinstitute.org
That leads to a Capital Homestead Act, which seeks to provide everyone with substantial additional income not dependent upon savings.
Other new ideas to revitalize the economy and generate millions of jobs will be found on the same website.
I don't condemn corporations for bettering their "bottom lines" That's what capitalism does. It moves to the emerging markets. That's the reality.
There are several comments above, including mine that you may want to look at and consider.
In general, mans place in the production of goods becomes more limited everyday.
We don't put a premium on the accumulation of wisdom unless it can be related to a job and produce material value. That's unfortunate. As the need for humanity to work hard continues to decrease, we need to find something new to absorb our time and energy. I recommend wisdom as the new goal of human endeavor, rather than the continuance of mindless production that overly consumes scarce resources and damages the planet in order to earn a monetary profit.
Yes we need a new paradigm. A new education. A society in which there's sharing. A society that has space for the artist, the poet. A society with a lot of birth control.
I know what you are saying and agree. However we're going to have to evolve in consciousness and that is not an easy proposition for the majority of the worlds population at present. There are a few minds that can concieve it but not all.
Thanks for you post. Fanned.
On top of that, we need to change the old paradigm, which asked people to sell their energy to businesses and earn cash to purchase the collective fruits of HUMAN labor. Now that machines are doing all the labor, the formula no longer works. We've been freeing ourselves from the NEED to work, but not from the need to earn money to buy the things our machines create.
We could utilize a carrot and stick approach to rebuilding our manufacturing base. We can tax goods made offshore and offer tax breaks to companies that are willing to open manufacturing facilities here in the USA.
We need to reform the overall tax code to eliminate loopholes and deductions, which would make it possible to lower the overall rates. The top tax bracket for individuals starts at $379,000 and those people pay 35%. Companies making $100,000 to $335,000 pay 39% and the rate for companies making more than that are lower. The top corporate tax bracket starts at $18,333,333 and they pay 35%.
Of course if you can afford a creative accountant, they can find ways to stash money offshore or use those loopholes and deductions so that you effectively pay nothing!!!!!
New tax brackets for individuals need to be created so the top tax bracket starts at a higher income number. Our corporate tax rate should be changed to avoid penalizing small businesses while favoring large corporations. Our Social Security tax could be reduced if we lifted the $106,800 income cap.
To shift the paradigm we could invite all children to discover their genius, talent, skills and passions and bring them forth to meet the challenges humanity faces. We have SO much work to do, but it doesn't come in job form because it isn't profitable - it just benefits LIFE. We need to clean up our pollution, learn how to live sustainably and regeneratively, figure out how to recycle and reuse goods, find ways to make products that don't cause harm or environmental damage, invent renewable energy processes, repair and upgrade our infrastructure, make sure all people are well fed, housed and educated, and care for all the creatures with whom we share this space.
The myopic focus on money and profits has blinded us to the truth of our own reality. It's caused us to ignore the huge LIFE challenges we're facing, because they're financially "inconvenient." Until we drop that narrow lens for viewing reality, we're bound to continue to suffer.