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If there are no jobs then what?

Pumpkin Row said:
No, it was definitely due in part to the Obama Administration
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See what i mean? The auto industry was given a life line by Bush 43. Bear Stearns was absorbed JP Chase, through the help of the Treasury (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) and Fed, in the summer of 2008. The housing bubble peaked in 2006/early 2007. Lehman's collapse occurred in Q4 2008. TARP was originally enacted under the direction of Bush 43, in which then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had to get down on his knees and beg House Speaker Pelosi, because his own party voted against it.

I just didn't know about the other things.
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Clearly you don't know many things. But that doesn't keep you from making matter-of-fact statements regarding them.
 
chuckiechan said:
Early in the US development leaders recognized that to have a society, you had to have workers, not serfs. You needed to get money into the hands of the population at a level that allows for discretionary income high enough for goods beyond a subsistence lifestyle.

Automation will eventually hit that wall in countries with high populations. Automation is fine in countries with low birth rates.

We need to slash general immigration until our U6 is under 6%, and unemployment is at 4%. We can live with 9 - 10%, and we have problems with u6 at 10% and regular unemployment at 5% due to social costs.
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So you think that having fewer consumers is somehow is going to fix unemployment or stop automation?

I'm not following you.
 
Casca XV said:
They have achieved it. Pre Obama 6% or less U3 unemployment meant everyone who wanted a job had one or was short time between jobs. Not even Obama himself claims that to be true today. Today’s U3 is mostly due to the millions unemployed so long they are no longer counted, rt Obamacare turning 1 fulltime job into 2 or 3 parttime jobs..
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There is no difference in the way that we compute the U3 than under Bush. And the percent of people who hold part-time jobs due to not being able to find a full time job has been decreasing, as has the number of discouraged workers.
 
MaggieD said:
It'll all work out. And not at 20% unemployment.

People will be job sharing...more people will be accustomed to paying for services than are right now. We may have more stay-at-home moms as couples realize the value of that decision and reject McMansions in favor of less space and more practical designs. Welfare roles will probably increase as gvmt makes it easier to stay out of the workforce. Retirement age may decrease. The gvmt may open Medicare to sixty-year-olds to encourage earlier retirement. Social engineering is a powerful tool. I think we're going to see more and more of it as time goes by.
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I agree, but all of that requires government intervention - in the direction opposite of what most conservatives desire.

My fear is that we wont make those changes, until we are already in a crises situation.

The way I see it playing out is another "Great Recession", and we blame the recession for massive unemployment, and we never really recover from that recession because for every new job created due to what should be a recovery we loose a job to technology. So conservatives make a plea for austerity, claiming that gov spending is somehow causing the lack of recovery, and the public buys into that (after all, the government budget should be ran like a household budget), and we slash gov spending which in turn reduces the GDP, business profits drop, we have even more unemployment, our tax base dwindles to almost nothing causing us to cut spending even more, and we end up with the worst depression that we have ever encountered.

Only after years of recession, do we figure out that we did the opposite of what we should have been doing.
 
imagep said:
So you think that having fewer consumers is somehow is going to fix unemployment or stop automation?

I'm not following you.
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It's part of economic theory as you how you build a consumer based economy. In centuries past, excess workers were turned into slaves, beggars, or if they were lucky, soldiers.

We write checks - unemployment, SS disability, SS, welfare, etc.

You can always ask yourself, "Why do I get a paycheck when I could be forced to work for free?".
 
pinqy said:
What is the source of your numbers? And what's wrong with the employment definition? The purpose is to measure how much available labor is not being used. Someone not trying to get a job is not available to work. So why should they be considered the same as those trying to get a job?



How are you calculating that?


There has been no change in definitions or methodology of unemployment that would affect the U-3.
There is no time limit for unemployed so no one is "unemployed so long they are no longer counted." And for the unemployment rate, people are counted once no matter how many jobs they have.

Does anyone bother to do research?
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No. Research wouldn't support their narrative, so they prefer to make up crap.
 
Pumpkin Row said:
The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment
After the Bush administration, the Burau started counting people on Federal Aid as employed by the government.
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The article has some decent points, but the methodolgy has not changed.

The "real" unemployment rate has ALWAYS been higher than the U3, even under republican presidents (gasp).
 
chuckiechan said:
It is necessary for the human organism to work at something most of the time. You can't just send checks and expect people to thrive. That won't work in the broader population.
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I suspect the same thing.
 
Pumpkin Row said:
Sounds like you're trying to tell me that the poor state of the economy isn't due in part to Obama's war on business, which is ridiculous.
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The thought that there is an "Obama's war on business" is what is rediculous.
 
Pumpkin Row said:
No, that was genuinely an Establishment Servant doing an awful job, and a result of a terrorist attack.
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You mean the terrorist attack that was back in 2001?
 
chuckiechan said:
It is necessary for the human organism to work at something most of the time. You can't just send checks and expect people to thrive. That won't work in the broader population.
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As stated, it will not be a painless transition.
 
imagep said:
The thought that there is an "Obama's war on business" is what is rediculous.
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Obama war on business was innocent enough. He sought to eliminate risk by adding regulations. Regulations serve to reduce risk by taking decisions out of the hands of entrepreneurs, and putting them in the hands of "regulators" who are empowered, in a perfect world, by education or experience to make the right decisions. But they aren't on the factory floor.

Risk is how we generate profit. And all income and all taxes are generated in the private sector as a result of some profit somewhere. (Printed money is neither).
 
chuckiechan said:
He sought to eliminate risk by adding regulations. Regulations serve to reduce risk by taking decisions out of the hands of entrepreneurs, and putting them in the hands of "regulators" who are empowered, in a perfect world, by education or experience to make the right decisions.
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Can you elaborate on these regulations and how the impacted the economy?
 
imagep said:
I don't know that 16 million Americans retiring over a 10 year of time is unusual. I would actually expect more, that's only 0.5% of our population each year.
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Ya, more research is needed but I have no doubt but that a ton of 50+ people the likes of which we have never seen dropped out of the workforce because they can not get anything close to a job with-in their talents and experience. Big firms and small have long made it a practice to dump older workers when possible (because they cost more and are usually considered to be more rigid (less exploitable too) than younger), and the Great Recession greatly aided and expanded the purge.

I dont have the facts on hand to prove this but I am 98% sure that I am right, my argument I think should fall under "stipulated facts", because the knowledge of this is all over the place.
 
imagep said:
The thought that there is an "Obama's war on business" is what is rediculous.
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I suppose the tax on businesses per-employee isn't a war on business and totally, totally helps fix our unemployment rate, right?
 
Pumpkin Row said:
I suppose the tax on businesses per-employee isn't a war on business and totally, totally helps fix our unemployment rate, right?
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Unemployment is 4.9%.......
 
Pumpkin Row said:
I suppose the tax on businesses per-employee isn't a war on business and totally, totally helps fix our unemployment rate, right?
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Which tax is that? I'm not aware of a poll tax on businesses, and that would have constitutional implications.
 
Pumpkin Row said:
Neat, so tell me how said tax per-employee is helping?
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What tax are you referring to? Given unemployment is below 5%, the tax you speak of cannot be as bad as you're making it out be.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Ya, more research is needed but I have no doubt but that a ton of 50+ people the likes of which we have never seen dropped out of the workforce because they can not get anything close to a job with-in their talents and experience. Big firms and small have long made it a practice to dump older workers when possible (because they cost more and are usually considered to be more rigid (less exploitable too) than younger), and the Great Recession greatly aided and expanded the purge.

I dont have the facts on hand to prove this but I am 98% sure that I am right, my argument I think should fall under "stipulated facts", because the knowledge of this is all over the place.
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I don't disagree with that, but if only 16 million dropped out of our workforce in 10 years, that's not very many out of 320 million americans. I would think that was a normal amount, or even less than normal.
 
Pumpkin Row said:
I suppose the tax on businesses per-employee isn't a war on business and totally, totally helps fix our unemployment rate, right?
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I own a business and I have employees. I've never heard of this tax.

I think that someone has given you some bad information, and your bias has prevented you from being able to recognize that it is incorrect.

Im assuing that you are suggesting that this tax started under Obummer. There has been something like 10 times as many new jobs created under Obummer than under Bush, so obviously this imaginary tax must somehow be an incentive for companies to hire more workers, not a disincentive.
 
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imagep said:
I don't disagree with that, but if only 16 million dropped out of our workforce in 10 years, that's not very many out of 320 million americans. I would think that was a normal amount, or even less than normal.
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I was hoping that the assertion was that an extra 16 million dropped out above what would be expected if people worked normally towards normal retirement age. We also need to account for the millions who are taking disability, and from what I understand DC is almost using this program as a sort of welfare program for the middle aged, that they are getting approved without medical merit, but I am not prepared to argue that point today.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
...what I understand DC is almost using this program as a sort of welfare program for the middle aged, that they are getting approved without medical merit, but I am not prepared to argue that point today.
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That's probably true. Republicans have blocked all federal job creation programs, so the executive branch is working around that by trying to get more people on various welfare programs to get money pumping into the hands of consumers.

So in a weird way, four the last 7 years republicans have been aiding in the expansion of our welfare rolls by not creating jobs.
 
kanabco said:
Many of us were brought up to fear automation only to see it produce more product, a better economy, and more jobs.
It is a hard argument to debate because of the very strong post hoc evidence.

Does anyone here think we are looking at a "very normal" 20% unemployment by 2030? 2040?
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That would be the time the democRATS will demand $20 a hour minimum wage . :lamo
 
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