Economic Equaility

Zero

Here's something interesting from where I work: in the last year, we have been invaded by the FBI, the stock price dropped into the toilet, and suffered massive layoffs. We haven't gotten raises in two years, the top pay hasn't increased in five years, and middle management has taken a 10% pay cut. This would seem like a 'tighten your belt' time....except that the executives have been giving themselves $20-60,000 bonuses every year. Don't tell me they can't afford to, or it would be bad policy to give me a raise, when some of the bonuses they give themselves are more than what I make all year.

Bystander

Not sure I can agree with this, but I'm also not quite sure what you're trying to say here. The "service" sector is increasing at the expense of the "skilled" sector? That's the same thing as the IR economic dislocation --- jobs for skilled labor disappear, putting those people into an "unskilled" labor pool for other purposes --- it's not so much an increased service sector market pulling people in as it is an increased labor pool driving service sector "growth." I expect that efforts to raise the labor costs in the service sector will be countered with further displacement of the labor pool by the expansion of automated "this, that, and the other" --- the "U scan" checkout movement is the case in point I've noticed --- self-service gas pumps, vending machines vs. concession stands. Congress decides to kill Walmart's tax breaks for elderly "greeters," and they're gone. There's a diminishing man-hour requirement for work that has to be done --- combined with an increasing population, it adds up to an employer's market. Yeah, there are new industries born every day, and new industries filing Ch. 11 & 13 every day. Dept. of Labor statistics don't help a whole lot as far as saying the bottom line is increased or decreased demand in various employment categories, and I have no clue where else to look to establish facts --- globally, it's the same situation.

Bystander

Hustling, scamming, pulling fast ones, coin clipping, and outright thieving. You ran into a few in your pub crawling days, you've got at least one at work (there's one in every shop, office, workplace in America) --- you know, the guy who brings in the box of stale cake doughnuts when it's his turn --- the guy at the bar who buys you a house draft and expects you to reciprocate by covering his next mixed drink?

The "sharpshooters" --- or, is that in the Corps lexicon?

russ_watters

Thats not what I said. First off, thats "semi/unskilled." YOU used those words in the post I quoted. And there is a big difference. Also, I didn't say at the expense of, though I worded it badly (the word "implication" is the wrong word, it was simply an additional fact).

My point was simply: the fact that the market for service workers is increasing largely cancels out lost semi/unskilled jobs. The facts simply do not support that. Even including the recently passed low point of the current economic cycle, unemployment in the US is relatively low.

Also, the types of jobs you cited were the unskilld ones. There are also a whole lot of semi-skilled service jobs - jobs that require a few weeks or months of OJT.

Bystander

"Skilled, unskilled, service" --- I hate PC talk --- I'm gonna have to watch out for the "designed" inferences in those terms --- f'rinstance, there are ditchdiggers and there are Ditchdiggers. Skilled? You betcha. Highly trained "service sector" functions? Health care comes to mind --- skilled? Some are and some aren't --- definitely worth shopping around.

Do you agree that there are fewer man-hours required to feed, clothe, transport, and entertain you than ten years ago? I'm arguing a complex conjugate of Malthus, or a corollary, and there are other factors that creep in, but Malthus is qualitatively correct. In the same way as Malthus argues a limit to capacity for supporting populations of a set of resources, I argue that there is a limit to the demands/load that an individual consumer can place on those resources --- if that load is expressed in man-hours standardized on the 1948 wheat crop, or the '54 auto production, or coal production in 1917, it tends toward zero with increasing automation. More leisure time, more services available --- I can't go to the movies, and the opera, and broadway, and Vegas, and Disney World every night.

kat

Sounds like a personal problem to me [;)]

russ_watters

Why are you complaining? YOU used the words semi-skilled and un-skilled. I even agree with you on the definitions. What is the problem here? Yes. But that does not mean that we don't still DEMAND more. Thats the REASON our economy is shifting toward services. The net result is still that unemployment remains roughly the same, but the mix of jobs available is different.