What If The Jobs Never Come Back

Sorry to hear this, Squinn. I remember how much you enjoyed that job. Hate to ask, it's nosy but hopeful, will you be covered by unemployment bennies?

This is a fair point, up to a point. If we lived on a planet with infinite resources, then we could easily enough go back to a labour intensive economy. However, if we lived on a planet with infinite resources, we wouldn't have to.

What I am trying to get at is that our global human population has exploded on the back of the one time draw down of the stored solar energy of millenia. We now have so many people in the world that we simply cannot function without cheap, easily accessaible and plentiful hydrocarbons. Hell, it's worse than that. I's not just that our global industrial civilisation will collapse without them, it's that we won't be able to feed more than a fraction of our current population without them.

Of course, when about 80% of the current human race has gone into the night, labour will indeed be sought after. I want to take a little time here to explain the severity of the problems facing us, so please bear with me and read on:

As soon as somebody figured out how to use at the industrial level to run an internal combustion engine, this provided the foundation for other technologies to be built on top. This process carried on unabated for a 150 years or so. However, for the last decade or three, easily-accessible energy availability has begun to plateau. This has resulted in world energy prices reaching a point where they became ever more economically unsustainable to use in the profligate way we did for the first 150 years of industrial growth. This, in turn, has led to a pressure in the West to develop technologies that use the energy ever more efficiently. This includes robotisation most obviously. In the developing world, of course, employers are still able to screw labour into working for effectively slave wages and, to a significant extent, our continued easy way of life here in the west has been maintained over the last few decades on the back of that near-slave labour.

However, we are now rapidly approaching an economic singularity where even those technological efficiencies cannot bridge the growing economic dissonance between the way of life we are accustomed to and our capacity to provide it. Indeed, the growth of unsustainable debt over the last couple of decades might be seen as a further development that has happened when technological efficiencies were no longer able to keep up with the disparity and so the debt has been used to paper over the cracks.

One might be tempted to optimistically assume, from the above, that as technology-fixes become ever more expensive to implement due to rising resource prices, there may come a time where a tipping point is reached whereby labour intensive production is once more economically viable. However, the above will only work in an environment where growth is still possible. In other words, if hydrocarbons suddenly became unavailable in a world that, nevertheless, has abundant resources, then a largely labour based economy would be sustainable. The trouble is, there aren't abundant resources. Not for 6.7 billion and rising. Our population has simply exploded on the back of cheaply available hydrocarbon energy and so is completely unsustainable without it.

Take a look at the population growth charts dadpad.

Take a long, hard look at them.

And bear in mind they are not even to scale.

I think that we will fix that population explosion problem with Nuclear detonations in the very near future, so it is not something that overly concerns me.

"......It's business as usual; some things never change
It's unfair, it's tough, unkind and it's strange
We don't seem to learn, we can't seem to stop
Maybe some explosions would close up the shop

You know, maybe that would be fine
We would be off the hook
We'd resolve all our problems, never mind what it took
And it all would be over, finito, the end
Until the survivers started up all over again......"

Loudon Wainwright

"A hard day on the planet"

The reason I do not believe the jobs are coming back is because in the 1950's there was talk of industrial automation eliminating jobs. So, between automation in factories, and the factories leaving the U.S., we saw industrial jobs diminish. Then the computer evolved into more sophisticated programs, so one person at a computer did the work of several prior employees.

In effect, primarily service workers that have not been outsourced yet, or automated by a computer, have a job that does not pay equal to the old industrial factory jobs. Unions are not what they once were either. And, let us be honest; everyone does not have a bent for more schooling.

How many men can support their families, without a wife working? Gone are the days of the proverbial tv Father Knows Best.

So, with jobs being less than what was once available, the one glimmer of light, in my opinion, is that prices per unit of consumer goods should come down so many can still afford to buy this or that. And, one solution could be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_servant

It worked in England during the Victorian era. Our society just has to change a bit, so the wealthy find it part of the social mores to hire more people as part of their status image. Having a gaggle of hired help could become the new status symbol. Let us not forget there is money in the world, and if the U.S. functioned like one big five star hotel for the world's wealthy, there is a better chance to keep the economy afloat. We must learn some humility first, perhaps, Mum.

Sozobe, Drewdad, Msolga, OsSo... It's scary being unemployed. It hits me in the middle of the night. I did get a seperation package and can draw unemployment after that I think. Will decompress for a few days and then get to thinking about what to do.

As far as what that might be, I'm hoping it will be a new self-employed venture. I'll likely write for a bit as I've been meaning to do. I've always wanted to do Foster Care and will likely take that up... Not as a job, though. I need to get back in touch with my humanity. Kids do that for me.

At an event today a guy that works at the country club came over and started talking to me about starting a business, how much he didn't like working there, how he has all these ideas that he jots down in a journal. I don't know why he thought to approach me with this. People just tend to do that. I could turn that into a career path.

The problem, besides not everyone being cut out for higher education, is that not everyone can be in school learning to do the same old things, either. That's why I said we need to start thinking outside the box and being creative in how we use our skill sets. New industries and services need to be developed. This may be a turning point for people finally learning to do what they love, not just whatever it takes to pay the bills. That is what we need to be teaching, IMO.

It took my wife a year to find something. Not something great, but something.

Interesting (to me) article here: Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage

I'd not thought of that, that skill levels are ramping up with new technological complications...

It is all BS.....companies have gotten spoiled, and now feel entitled to expect someone else (taxpayers) to fund training. If a person can not walk in and do the job on day one they are now considered sub-par potential workers.

Yeah, and the only ones to walk in the door ready to go are the ones they laid off a year ago, if only their skills weren't a year out of date.

We went fully off of the rails 20 years ago when we agreed with the corporate class that if a collage grad did not leave university ready to produce on day one then the university had failed to do its job. Once upon a time higher learning was something more inclusive than a jobs training program.

Give an inch and the corporate class will take a mile, now they expect the taxpayers to finance all job training. Then they bitch about taxes and expect theirs to be lowered because taxes on them are so unfair don't ya know. And if they can't get people to work for what they want to pay they claim that workers are not available and insist on the right to import cheap labor of work visa's.

And we the people buy all of this malarkey...

SOURCE

http://ironictimes.com/index.html

Mods can move to Bad Joke Thread if needed.

Bang on the nail

Squinn -- I'm so sorry.

Contact your Unemployment -- you might be able to collect both severance and unemployment at the same time. Never hurts to ask! If you can, see if you can bank (just throw into savings) whichever is the lesser of the two.

It doesn't look the NC allows for unemployment while receiving severance.



IL allows for UI if the severance is a reward for past service but not if it's a continuation of pay (it gets kinda fuzzy sometimes).

File a claim anyway, Squinney. They'll tell you for sure when you become (became?) eligible.

You stole my idea by reading my mind 3 days via some kind of mental time travelling then posted it without giving me credit!

YOU DAMN SUPERHUMANESQUE FRONTIER PLAGIARIST YOU!!

I've got mixed feelings on this.

At first blush, I want to say, "I almost hope they don't come back" - although the pain, discomfort and genuine twisting-in-the-wind so many unemployed folks are going through is a pain no one deserves.

To support more people, you need more mass production/more mass consumption. To support those same people at a higher standard of living you need to double or triple both the amount of production and consumption. Looking at how much of the earth's resources the "developed" nations are taking, consuming, emitting and gorging on - I'm not sure I want the higher rates of pollution, crowding and consumption that more people (yes, that means more jobs) tends to come with.

There's talk in this thread about whether or not the world can sustain more people, a higher population or the growth we've been experiencing. This is rather academic, since it's only through the efficiencies we've gained that such is possible as-it-is! I completely believe that we *could* accomodate more people, a LOT more people. My question is twofold: 1) Why would we? -and- 2) Is having SO many people (or even more) a good thing?

Look at any problem (whether it be resource depletion, international or racial conflict, man's inhumanity to man or virtually any other widespread human "issue) and you'll find - almost inexorably - that with a higher population comes an increased complexity or intensity of virtually any problem. Human life, the more abundant it becomes, consumes more and that high number begets (for many) an even greater reason to treat that very life "cheaply" - as it is so abundant. Yes, this is sick thinking, but history tends to play out this way.

So sure, we might be able to support more: But is this a good thing? The jobs recently lost hurt millions of people that deserve our compassion and support. But on a philosophical level: Would we *want* that level of frenzied consumption back?

Volunteers please for a mass cull of humanity. Should we encourage cults that recommend mass suicide for salvation? that would please a few atheists. Should we be developing flu endemics ,what a bonus the black death was for the survivors. Instead of pensionable age, a death date. Accidents, emergency arrival expectations should be a matter of days not minutes. War should be the norm, encouraged. Push the old git off the bus instead of offering him your seat..I cant see it being a problem if we put our mind to it.

We could have (and should have) managed our population size several decades ago.

We didn't.

Don't worry, though. The kind of moral dillemas you appear to be rather exercised over are quite unecessary. History informs us with an abundance of evidence that when we push against the contraints of our environment, some very anchient forms of population control tend to be initiated. Namely, war, famine, pestilence and disease. Otherwise known as the The Four Horsemen.

Coming to a civilisation near you....

Don't worry about it--the Baby Boomers are about to retire in large numbers, and not only will it open up the job market a lot, but it will be crucial for government to assure full employment so they can pay the Boomers their retirement benefits.