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Down and Out in White-Collar America
XorNand writes "Fortune has a pretty sobering article on the employment situation for white-collar workers. By many accounts, we've never had it harder--the slump in the 80's primarily hit blue-collar workers. While bleak, things might be inching towards the light; as my econ professor says, jobs are the last thing to recover after a recession."
American economy has been hit hard. Enron, etc, and september 11 couldn't have come at a worse time. Not trying to be flamebait, but the usual 'let's start a war or 2 to fix up the economy' hasn't worked :-(
According to the Debt clock, each Citizen's share of this debt is $22,684.87.
he National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.47 billion per day since September 30, 2002!
The Fix? I don't know. Welcome to Globaliziation.
I'm not Seth.
I'm an EE major, and the teacher keeps saying, "If you graduated two year earlier, companies would literally fight for every one of you... But now...".
My wife who like me is a GenX'r is now a manager in charge of hiring programmers, etc.
Well when the topic of GenX's who cannot get work came up in SlashDot I talked this over with my wife. She yeah she hires young programmers. I asked how come? She said that they learn quicker and are more flexible.
I looked at her with amazement and said HUH? Are you bs'ing me? I said you are just as bad as those other managers. Promptly I pointed out that I can learn very quickly, etc, etc. She said, but fine that is you, but not me. I have problems learning these days in contrast to previous years. And GenX's demand too much.
What I learned from this is as follows:
1) Managers suck! They look at their own perspective and think the rest of world must be like that.
2) People like to validate sterotypes. ONLY young people can learn new technologies and are flexible.
3) GenX's are screwed!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I've noticed that lots of people who were highly paid during the dotcom boom are not recovering well, despite the existence of jobs, only requiring a little bit of creativity to find them. I wouldn't say that things are in the overinflated state they were, with people being paid $100K for basic system administration, but jobs can be found. I think that the problem is that most of the people who were making the insane dollars they were don't want to take on a $30K-$40K job, even if basic administration or technician work will pay the bills. They can't forget the lavish lifestyles that they lived.
I was affected by it too, for I managed to get out of field techin' to start doing Quality Assurance Engineering. That job lasted a year. When it ended, I looked for other QA jobs, basic IS admin jobs, and the like, and I ended having to go back to what I knew very well, which was field tech. It's not the most fun, the most glamourous, but it does pay the rent, gets me away from a desk all day, and doesn't leave me sitting at home feeling dejected for myself for being unemployed for months and months.
If the market picks up, and QA positions become available in the money and stability that I want, I may leave my current job for one. Until that time arrives, I'm going to be happy where I am. It's not perfect, but life isn't fair, and those that get off their asses and try to make something for themselves will be a lot happier than those who give up.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I know it's not glamorous, but think about it...
All of my computer-industry related friends bemoan the state of the industry, in general. Those of us who have jobs face lower pay, longer hours, and general harassment by management, as management knows if we don't, there's 10 others out there that will. Talk about bum luck.
However, most of my friends who are skilled "trademen" of some sort are all working. They may not make the big bucks (although most of them still make in the $12-15 range locally, which is a decent sum), they're working. And when there's no work, well, it's time to kick back and relax. Isn't this what life's supposed to be about? (fortunately, there's never been a prolonged period of no-work for them, I can imagine a long spout would trigger the same anxieties we've faced: How are we gonna pay the rent? Food? Utilities? Of course, most of them fall into the "Fuck the rent, I'm getting a tattoo" category, but that's another story). What do they do?
Plumbers. People still shit and piss and pipes still get clogged.
HVAC. Gotta have A/C in the summer and heat in the winter around here (your mileage may vary depending upon your locale).
Welders.
Construction workers (ever see Office Space?)
Painters
Tilesetters
Manual Laborers.
Like I said, it's not glamorous, but you may actually find you enjoy doing such work. And it adds to your skillset in general (Ever see those Carlton Sheets ads? Buy property, fix it up yourself, sell for profit. In today's economy, the interest rates are spot on and lots of property is available on the cheap). And it gets you out of the house. Your parents will be proud.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
All the outsourcing examples given share one common requirement - the need for reliable, high-speed Internet connections between central HQ and the workhou^H^H^H^Hsatellite offices. While a lot of network management can be done remotely, there is still a need for a physical presence - even if only to check that the cables haven't come loose...
Cheaper services, like cheaper PCs, is good for anyone who needs it, and the current outsourcing wave is likely to be very good for the global economy in the long term. It just means we in the service sector have to find other ways of passing our time, getting paid less and working on smaller, local projects.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Yes..and quite a few of those blue collar workers, some of them my friends morgaged their homes and went back to school to get degrees so that they wouldn't have to go through that again. Guess what ..every industry that goes really strong in the U.S. seems to eventually get shipped overseas.
..it's ok. It saves money. They don't lower taxes because of it..they just shove the savings into another pork barrel.
I read an article on CNN's website about 19 of 50 states have outsourced their call centres to India. So if an unemployed person calls about their check they are talking to someone in India. Sorry buddy but I don't like that use of tax dollars when someone here could do that job. But I guess since they do it at $200 a month instead of $2000 a month
I was never quite happy with U.S. companies be able to send blue collar jobs out of country and this doesn't set well with me either.
Tell me what you believe...I'll tell you what you should see.
I'm not an economist, but this is how I understand it:
International inbalance in supply and demand is mostly solved through exchange rate fluctuations. When jobs and investment are move out of the US, the American exchange rate is drops. This is because the things Americans make are too expensive compared to equivalents offered by other economies. But as the exchange rate gets lower, things become more affordable to other countries. And as it lowers, at some point the exchange rate will drop to a level where things are as affordable as they used to be. Trading will resume at the same level it used to in US dollars, even though people outside the US will be paying less for the same goods and services. Ignoring worker efficiency improvements, at this point the economy will return to normal.
However, the great tech boom of the 90s did a lot to improve worker efficiency. Now that corporate revenues are lower, companies are finally starting to implement systems for their cost savings. Software such as Enterprise Resource Management and Customer Relationship Management tools reduce the need for workers, while the Internet allows workers to be moved to more affordable locations. These technologies are causing the recovery to take longer, but at some time the supply and demand will be rebalanced.
my blog
Well, in this area (Washington DC metropolitan) depending upon the type of construction work you do, you can be just as screwed as the white-collar types. The late 90s saw a huge commercial construction boom, but with the current economic bust, there are huge buildings that either (a) have never been finished, (b) have never been occupied, or (c) are now standing empty because all of the tenents went bankrupt. That means no new commercial construction. In Loudoun county alone (home of AOL & MCI/Worldcom), 16% of the office space is empty, and if MCI/Worldcom is forced to close their offices here (more than one million square feet), that figure would double.
Residential construction is still hot, but "used" home sales are starting to outstrip new home sales, and new residential construction is moving farther away from the metro area, simply because most of the inner metro areas are already built to zoning capacity, and "smart growth" advocates (you know, the sorts who have a $1m+ house on 5+ acres of land, and want everyone else to live in apartments near metro stops) have squashed new local development.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
The problem is that blue colar folks can take some night school classes and bump their skills up to white collar. What happens when there aren't enough white collar jobs? Then those blue collar folks are shit out of luck along with a lot of the white colalr folks because there is no place to go. You can't have every American as middle management. How do you make the leap from flipping burgers to managing 10,000 employees in India without anything available in the middle? The way things are going only the lowest shit jobs and the highest rolling in the dough jobs are going to be left in this country. You could raise the taxes for the wealthy to support the lower classes but then they'll just move their assets out of the country to. Then what happens to the US? Nothing good.
Remember all those sci fi books where machines, ultra-cheap foreign labor, and the affordablity of shipping stuff around turned the USA into a flat broke smoking hole in the ground? Welcome to the future. Maybe if I get some bitchin swords I can deliver pizza.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Instead of hanging, why not eliminate the tax benefit of moving work and companies off-shore.
If you don't allow companies to deduct costs for moving work off-shore. It is a double slapp when a company moves the work offsjore, to foreign workers, then give the company a tax advantage for that.
Fight Spammers!
All of this is basically unnecessary. With a little more work we could have cheap nuclear power or perhaps hydrogen. Start up mining projects in nearby parts of space and you solve matrial shortages. Once that's done, we could build machines to do the work we need to do and free us all from labor and poverty. This isn't sci-fi, it's something attainable by mankind in a generation or two. The problem is there are too many people opposed to this. Oil companies, old money who'd loss their importance without scarcity, polititions and leaders who thrive on war and stife (George Bush, I'ma lookin' at you), etc, etc.
Probably the silliest group that opposes this sort of thing is common laborer's afraid of losing jobs to machines (that includes white collars, remember how many accountants got put out of work by Lotus 123?). It seems to me instead of getting angry at the tool that takes your job, you ought to be mad at people who control the distribution of goods made by those tools to the detriment of the rest of society. There's something really wrong with a society that lets 2% of the people control 95% of the wealth. There ought to be less talk about bolstering the economy and more about improving the general standard of living. Oh well, not like that's gonna happen anytime soon.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ironically, it's a pretty good place to be these days. Defense spending is way up for obvious reasons, and it's poured into high-tech programs that demand a lot of engineering. Many, many people bailed out for the tech boom in the late '90s, which thinned out the employee base. I won't say there is a massive shortage of people or a huge number of unfilled openings, but there is a healthy market with employers like Lockheed, Raytheon, CIA - calls from recruiters and job hopping are pretty common where I work.
And, national security jobs can't be outsourced to India - 99% of them have US citizenship as a basic requirement.
I am in a similar situation to what you are in except I spent 4 years in the computer industry as a systems engineer with linux and other unices. I worked for Qwest and Navisite during that time and had a lot of fun and made some good money. When the company was going down I took a couple of months off and then decided to get a job as a bartender, since I had previous experience serving tables. The money is great and you dont have to participate fully in the countrywide tip pool :). I am just now after over a year, going back to finish my CS degree. If things go well and the market recovers I can hopefully land a good computer job because the only thing I want right now is to work in the industry at any level or pay. I just love working on computers but I have to live.
If you are ever in Riverhead on Long Island go to the restaurant across the street from the racetrack. Just look for the black haired guy with a part in the middle. Ask me something about computers and I'll know.
As
With the bad taste over the phantom 'Weapons Of Mass Destruction' (tm) still in our mouths, those of us who disagree with the owner of the largest stockpile of 'Weapons Of Mass Destruction' (tm) on Earth chuckle at the US predicament.
You see, the companies that have elevated your country to its current position in international thuggery are quite willing and able to give your jobs to less well paid workers in other countries . Usually these slave-labour countries are run by a military dictatorship, much like the one the multinational corporations would like to have everywhere.
Several contradictions US society must deal with if they want to evolve from where they are:
1) You can't steal everything. Even with all the wars US has started and all the 'rights' it has won and 'deals' it has signed, it must pay the world for the goods and services it uses. Currenty it does not. Currently, the US foreign debt is climbing by over $US 1 billion per day.
2) Military dicatorships are not acceptable, except when they allow US corporations to rape the country's local resources - including the people in slave labour camps.
3) American patriotism is the greatest force on the planet, except when tbe individuals insist on charing so much for their sevices, and it becomes more profitable to employ foreigners in slave labour camps.
I could go on and on, but those who agree with me need no more reminders, and those who don't agree with me already have their heads in the sand by now.
Please explain this to me...
If what you say is true, why did federal tax revenues nearly triple from 1980 to 1988?
Remember, the top 1% had their tax rate slashed in 1980 and then cut a little further in 1986.
According to your theory, higher taxes on the top 1% results in more tax revenue. Are you saying that you really think revenues would have nearly tripled in that 8 year period if taxes were not lowered? How do you explain this gigantic surge in tax revenue?
Clearly you are out of your league here. Also, in regards to your comments about debt, read some of the other replies to this subject, the myth of the national debt of the US is one of the largest frauds ever used by politicians in this country. The US national debt is a low percentage of the US GDP. This is right up there with military spending. People like you also run around telling everyone that the US spends way too much on defense, when really, the US spends a modest 3% of GDP on defense.
Prophetic words from potter George Ohr. What we are seeing is a cycle we are doomed to until we get over this mass consumerist mindset. Sure, you can go to wallyworld and buy tons of crap you couldn't afford before - but for what? I'm willing to bet 70% of everything that comes out of that place ends up in a landfill within three years.
If you look around you'll see some people still doing just fine - or even better than last year. $40,000 cars still sell and automakers are coming out with $100,000 cars. People I know who make high end home entertainment systems are still doing just fine. Why? Because the people who can afford that stuff aren't the ones whose jobs are being shipped overseas.
I hate how this sounds, but it all comes down to values. Not family values but simple common sense values - like spending twice as much on an article that will last five times as long. Like buying something that represents craftsmanship and community instead of a cheap chinese trinket you had to get in order to keep up with the neighbor.
It's everywhere - even on those "home improvment" type shows. Every week I laugh in disgust as Steve Thomas and the boys tell us how great this new styrafoam and plastic POS they are gluing to the front of their project of the month is when compared to the old, outdated plaster and woodwork that it's replacing - never mind it's a hundred fucking years old and just now in need of replacment - this new same-as-ten-thousand-others piece of crap is "just as good"... yeah, right.
You don't have to be a millionaire to buy good shit - you just have to learn to not drive yourself into debt buying truckloads of cheap crap. Until the people of the US can accept this most basic bit of common sense, it's all downhill.
But don't worry... all that infrastructure - the roads, the abandoned factories, the empty offices - will still be here, and all those jobs will come back... in twenty years, when the US economy has finally and completely hit the shitter and the people of the US will once again willingly work 12 hour days in sweatshops for peanuts - producing cheap american trinkets for the up-and-coming EU market and all those freshly minted eurotrash capitalists from the FSU.
Because of GDP growth and increased dependence on regressive forms of taxation.
Tell that to the currency traders who have been dumping dollars for euros like mad over the past month. The truth is that the present value of the U.S. deficit in perpetuity is about $44 trillion, which has us teetering on the brink of insolvency at our current tax rates. Look at the pie charts in the back of your federal income tax instruction booklet; do you see the slice labled "interest on the national debt"? Now open Barron's or the Wall Street Journal and have a look at historical interest rates. If you ignore the brief run-up in the several months preceding the 2000 election, you will note that they have been at all time lows. What do you suppose would happen to the size of that pie slice representing interest if rates returned to 1982 levels? Here are some hints: David Stockman, "Read my lips...," Paul O'Niell, Mitch Daniels.
There is no way we can support the health and pension costs of the baby boomers as they retire without a radical rebracketing of income tax rates, and there is no reason not to select Sweden's simple brackets, based on the clear emperical evidence of their excellent society in terms of education, worker training, unemployment and inflation rates, parent support with daycare, social services, etc. Swedish unemployment levels are not what anyone associates with a "socialist" or "welfare state." They simply have a two-bracket, steeply progressive, egalitarian income tax that grows their middle class while ours in the U.S. is shrinking.
A shrinking middle class puts us on a collision course with riots, not unlike those the president's father faced a dozen years ago.
Indeed I do.
I'm certain that if American companies were to advertise once $50,000 jobs as now being $20,000, you'd still have people rushing to grab up the jobs.
:P
" According to the IRS, the top 1% of wage earners payed 37.42% of the tax burden while only making 20.81% of earned income. The top 10% payed 67.33% of the tax burde while only making 46.01% of earned income."
That's because those people are very adept at hiding income. Were you paying attention to the enron goings on? Now those guys knew how to hide money. Look at Steven Jobs. His official salary is $1.00 per year. Yes one dollar per year. You really think that's his total income?
War is necrophilia.
That $44 trillion of US Federal debt provides a tremendious amount of liquidity to world financial markets and a "safe" investment to park cash in. Eliminating it or even reducing it below certain levels wouldn't be a good thing.
There is no way we can support the health and pension costs of the baby boomers as they retire without a radical rebracketing of income tax rates
Fuck the boomers. Actually almost every country is facing a demographic crunch. The number of workers availible to support pay-as-you-go pension schemes is shrinking almost everywhere. Both social security and medicare are in need of massive reform. Jacking the tax rates on younger workers is not the way to fix things. Actually a gradual rise in the age where one can collect social security and medicare would take care of most of the "crisis" unfortunately this is politically difficult to do.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Like $20,000 of consumer debt provides tremendous liquidity to Visa and MasterCard? No way; the national debt is simply a means of passing the buck to the next generation. If the U.S. wasn't selling debt, then that $7 trillion that U.S. common stocks lost since 1999 would likely still be in people's pension and college funds.
It wasn't too long ago that our leaders in the U.S. prided themselves that "the buck stops here." It wasn't too long ago that we had a budget surplus. These days, we have neither.
A good thing for who? Osama bin Laden? Every dollar Uncle Sam pays off the debt is several cents per year saved in interest.
You can say that again. Next time, please try it without the pathetic rationalizations.
That's true, but that's only half of the picture. Most of the top 1% wage earners also earn plenty of money outside wages unlike the average American (which on average wins very little, and even loses money outside wages, in the form of paying interest for his debts for instance [which, you will notice, goes to profit of bank shareholders]). The rich pay less taxes on other forms of earnings, the non-rich pay an additional tax in most of their incomes in the form of sales tax.
Or you can lower the tax rate and hopefully spur the economy to boil up, increasing income. The second strategy is much more agressive and have a huge potential upside. It is also why the US was and is the economic leader of the world.
No. The US is the economic leader of the world because it is big (couting people). EU zone will be almost as big. The average American is richer because it is working more and longer (and spends less time with friends and family), but anyway from the post-war 1945, the totally destroyed Europe, Japan, part of Asia (South Korea), have considerably reduced the gap between US and them. Wait for China, India, and Russia to quick in. And in addition, Sweden was in big economic problems in beginning of the 1990s... they didn't need to dismantle their state and privatize eveything to get back and roar economically, unlike the American ideologues were saying.
It's called the American Dream and not the Swedism Dream for a reason.
Sorry, but this is typical of American arrogance... Most Europeans (except from British), would rather live in Sweden than in US. And not only them. The ultra-violent regressive workahoolic selfish society is not a dream - I have only disgust for massive jailing, death penalty, creationism, abortion questionning, gay putting-down (the Economy minister of Sweden officialy married another man), big SUV, insane work hours and "praise-the-winner-piss-on-the-loser" mentality. That's probably I haven't heard of the "American Dream" in a positive means in European media since the 1980s.
1. Real income of white and blue collar workers have been on the decline for several decades, cost of living has been rising.
I think you could live a much better life much cheaper now than ever. I think we spend a lot of money on things such as market brands and expensive apartments, but these are things that aren't really necessary for your survival. Try taking a look at your expenses over a couple of months and see how much of it that actually goes to quite useless things.
2. Capitalism is basically killing it's own customers, since people earn less, they can consume less (otherwise they simply make more debts and creating dangerous bubbles).
The nice thing about capitalism is the balance between demand and supply. As soon as one thing changes the other thing replies by adopting to the change. I don't think the problem is with capitalism but with our current structure of society...
3. Most manufacturing is done by machines these days, only service and administration jobs are the main areas for humans. So most people work in jobs were they can be easily replaced.
4. Job fluctuation has become extreme - compatred to the old "job for life" hardly anyone stays longer then five years in one company. This also dimishes the social fabric in companies, the ties between workers and management are loser, people stick less together.
This is true from one angle. But our social networks are more important than ever. They just don't coincide as much with our current employmment as they did before. In stead of saying "I work for Company X" you might be saying "I belong to network A, B and C. And, oh yeah, currently Company X is paying my salary". I think that's a good thing.
5. Globalisation also means not only the exchange of riches (by creating jobs in these developing countries9, but also sharing poverty (in those "rich countries").
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game, but you are right in that maybe finally the wealth distribution of the world is slowly flattening. I think this is good in the long run. People with a job, a good life and a secure income don't blow themselves up.
6. Protectionism (like US-steel tarifs) just speed up the shift of jobs, since they raise the benefits of outsourcing even higher and create a "false" market that could collapse anytime without more government intervention.
Agree.
7. Business is more and more concentrated, so less companies produce all the goods/services. Obviously less companies need less employees.
Yes, this is true for businesses in the production sector. But as people move up the Maslow ladder of needs their demands changes. In stead of a faster car we want a car that is an extension of our own personalities and that is fun to drive and own. In stead of a bigger burger we want a fun burger served by a clown that can do Bill Clinton impersonations standing on his arms. We're also healthier and live longer. We want a better quality of life, even as we age.
Conclusion 1: people in healthcare will always have things to do. We will never be healthy enough.
Conclusion 2: entertain your customers, no matter what you do.
8. The financial market has developed in a way that it investors make more money, thru short term money business instead of investing long term in companies. This of course doesn't create many jobs ...
9. Since most companies these days are on the stock market, their share values have become more important then the actual core business. Instead on focusing on markets and products, CEO's are forced in a three months rhythm to create value for stockholders - so money gets sucked out of companies and long term projects are hardly tackled.
I agree. And I think one of the solutions to this problem is to l
Macromedia Flash MX
It's not for only websites. Flash MX is a powerful vector tool to create presentations unlike any other. It can be exported to the medium of your choice (try that with PPT! You'd be lucky to get it working on non-IE browsers). Embedded video, fully dynamic content, etc.
I would rather see Flash gaining widespread usability in presentations than having "web developers" poison our browsers with shitty intros. Then again, Macromedia did a bad job promoting Flash as such. Here's an example of it in action
Keynote is gaining widespread acceptance in companies. It's files are based on XML and doesn't really get annoying like PPT. With PowerPoint, you don't get much satisfaction. It's like fucking for the sole reason of concieving. With Keynote it's more like fucking for pleasure and getting results at the same time.
And lets not forget about Impress, which is included with OpenOffice.org
Just as good as PPT, although it needs another year or so before completely closing the gap.
For more of presentation software, check DMOZ.
Remember, friends don't let friends create PPT files.
Your plan has several large gaping holes in. First, the liberals would have to be in power. They are not, although it might happen. Second, the liberals would have to be smart enough to spend that money effectively. I don't see that EVER happening. Where I live the liberals bracketed their historic district/tourist trap with public housing back in the 60's. Want to guess what happened a year or two later? I knew you didn't really need to. I live in the high rent area of the historic district. Right in the middle of the most beautiful part of the city in a house built in 1870. I also sleep with an AK47 and a 12 gauge within easy reach. They haven't been needed yet (the dogs got the one would-be home invader that was dumb enough to break in) but I would be a fool not to be armed judging by the crime statistics around here. Fed up downtown residents just invited the Guardian Angels in since the police won't enforce the law for fear of appearing to be racist. The government won't help us, so we're helping ourselves. Yeah, there could and probably will be side effects (it was a realy interesting meeting when the Angels came in, old southern white money and two Hispanic ex-gang member Angel reps... and some cops trying to make everyone uncomfortable) So, to me, you're saying that you want to give more money to the people in those concrete jungle housing projects surrounding my home. Why? Do they need more fucking gas money to drive the five blocks to try to rob me? Again? Guess I need ANOTHER trained doberman if your tax plans ever see the light of day. Comparing liberals in Sweden to liberals in America is foolish. The liberals here would give the money to the minorities to get that guaranteed "black vote" on election day. They don't care if the quality of life goes up for those people, or anything else about them. If a tax plan like yours ever goes through I'm afraid I'd be forced to move offshore or buy a fanny pack if I wanted to go out after dark.
You know, I've always been disgusted that modern business people are incapable of conceptualizing thought without resorting to power point slides, but this piece of knowledge just places me on a whole new plateau of disdain and revulsion toward basically every human being in this country who wears a suit.
I always enjoyed the way George Lucas handled this problem. On his main location, the Skywalker Ranch, only the creative people work - designers, writers, prop artisans etc. His companies need the "suits", like all the others, but the "suits" are located in another valley, so they are not seen unless really needed. The creative guys have the Skywalker Ranch all for themselves (and walk in t-shirts and sneakers).
I don't think you understand that liberals these days couldn't care less about public housing and restoring welfare. Our top priorities are universal health care (not a whole lot more money than Medicare for the boomers, really), education (better preschool, class sizes, and college tution aid would be a good start), and figuring out how to pay for your social security when you retire.
We aren't going to come take away your gun, as much as I might personally belive that to be a good thing. We are well aware that the Republicans know how to siphon that top percent money into campaign ads one way or another, so we want you to be armed in case another John Ashcroft shows up at 3 a.m.
You have two programmers. One is just out of college, and costs you $x per year. One has been working in the industry for fifteen years, and costs you lets say $3x per year.
You give both programmers the same assignment.
Most managers look at stupid metrics like number of lines of code produced, number of bugs fixed, that kind of thing. Younger programmers can crank crap out by the dumptruck, resulting in bugs by the dumptruck. And all that for a lower cost per year. But we all know that the more experienced programmer is the way to go, because he is actually completing more projects -- even though that metric cannot be accurately measured (since you practically never give the same assignment to two separate teams).
Managers hate this kind of reality, because it is impossible to graph on a powerpoint slide. They may not even know it intellectually, because all the metrics they measure are pointing to the wrong conclusion -- but as they do what the metrics encourage them to do, they wonder if there is a better way than having all these kids grinding all these hours producing all this crap.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
I KNOW you couldn't care less about public housing. I have to live next to it while it rots. And riots. And robs. And mugs. And reproduces. You are saying that "OK, we fucked up urban planning. Artificial ghettos suck, we put them in the wrong place, oh well. Tough shit. NOW we're after health care and social security". And I'm supposed to think that the liberals will do a better job with health care than they did with welfare? Tell you what, you liberals fix the messes you have made already, and figure out how to the criminals to do what you tell them (like turn in all those guns they have illegally) and THEN maybe the country will give you another shot at fixing things. Voters, like myself, are concerned about issues. You should address those issues, even if that "it's politcally incorrect" thing in your brain starts to protest. And no, I'm not a Republican, I'm a libertarian.
Can you imagine how much the US would hurt if people decided to abandon the Dollar (to which they only held on because the US Gov in the past was working for a strong Dollar) and move into the Euro? All off the sudden the US would need to buy Euros in order to do foreign trade, which in turn would bring the Euro up higher and the USD down even more which in turn would mean higher prices at home, for EVERYTHING. Have a look next time you're shopping where your stuff is coming from and you will realize just how fucked up for the US that would be.
And you completely skip the balancing part of that economic concept: where our exported good cost less therefore become more competitive in the world market, lowering our trade deficit, creating more jobs, and recovering our white collar IT jobs back from India, because it is now cheaper to hire our own workers, and possibly even for other countries to hire our workers/contract out to us.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Just a little Irony...I was sitting with our onshore reps from India and discussing a project that was to be offshored to Manila that another company was doing - and cheaper than India by half.
With a straight face, mind you, the Indian consultant looked at me and said..."But you won't get the same quality"
Having lived the tale so to speak (I'm in the Bay Area, worked for startups and corporations, through boom times and now slacksville):
We as workers need to adapt. Get used to the idea that you will likely not have your job for a lifetime, let alone five years. Get used to the idea that you will not have a sustainable career, either. You might have to totally change gears every ten years, and get into something related but completely different. The days of job security are over. Companies simply don't give a shit about their workers. Many of the benefits enjoyed by previous generations like pensions and unions are now gone, thanks to the largely empty promises of stock options and equity in the company. Yeah, when times are good, those things can be worth something but the people running the companies always gave themselves more anyways. The disparity between the execs and the workers is shocking to behold. And they will ship your job to whatever country is cheaper so they can save a dime. They don't give a crap about us. That's life, that's business, and it sucks, but we gotta eat, so every day I suck it up and go to work but in the back of my head I'm preparing an exit strategy ... just in case.
It sounds harsh, but we all gotta do it. No matter what job you have, no matter how secure you think it is, you gotta pay off your debts, get six months of expenses saved up, and just imagine "what if"... because I've already lived through a layoff where you go to work one day and the next day your out on your ass, a security guard watching you pack up your cube. And you have to learn from this.
I'm saying, in addition to thinking about what you'd do if you lose your job, we all have to think about what else we can do as a career. The reason why recessions are so hard on people is because they think whatever they did at their last job is all they can do. We all have got to come up with other careers to fall back on just in case.
Here's the reason you need to go to school to an American bar and an English pub:
;)
In an English pub, the majority of drinks served are beer or cider. Once you can pour a pint, you're all set.
Americans are much more partial to weird funky mixed drinks. At least once a night, you'll get some chump who wants to play "stump the bartender". Long Island Ice Teas, Buttery Nipples, Kamikazes, Sex on the Beach...They name it, you have to be able to mix it. That's the kind of crap you learn in American bartending school
What this says about the different cultures, I can't even begin to guess.
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
And I do not owe the world to behave by its rules, however I do and for that I expect some cooperation in return. If one person breaks the law he is a criminal. If a handfull of people break the law it is a cult. If a large quantity of people break the law it is a revolution. I much prefer cooperating and getting some protection in return. However, making a living and eating are basic needs that are far more popular than religious beliefs and ideals. There will be a breaking point where the former will force people to look for a better place to put their faith, and GOD FORBID it is communism--a lie that promises these needs and delivers slavery, oh , wait, it seems that globalization is doing the same.
Bush's first chief economic advisor, Lawrence Linsay, came from Enron. So did the U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick. Bush's energy policy was based on discussions between Cheney and Enron's Ken Lay.
One of the most important jobs of the President is to appoint good people. On the economic side, Bush's appointments have been terrible. Bush can find good people - his chief political advisor, Karl Rove, the man who got him elected, is brilliant. But his economic team is all crony capitalists. Third-rate crony capitalists, from companies that have tanked. These are the people that insist a tax cut will solve all problems.
Bush's current economic advisor is Stephen Friedman, formerly head of Goldman Sachs, the investment bankers who took many of the dot-coms public. After five months on the job, he hasn't accomplished much.
While relatively-speaking Sweden may still be doing a acceptable job with its tax funded services, they have become an increasing problem for the last ten years. The major issues in the past two elections (most recently in September last year), have revolved around:
An under-funded police, with way too few officers especially in scarcely populated areas. The percentage of crimes solved has gone down, particularly for car burglaries and such crimes that may be considered less important on the whole but are important to give citizens a sense of safety.
2) A declining health care system, which while still having good technical quality (Sweden is home to a lot of medical research), and providing care to everyone, has incredibly long operation queues for various non-urgent (but still frustrating) conditions. Would you believe me if I said that for some types of operations, the queue is in the range of years rather than weeks? It's true, although it does vary a lot between counties.
As an aside, I should perhaps take the opportunity to also mention the privatization of healthcare services in Stockholm county, ruled by a liberal-conservative-christian coalition for the past several years (until they were ousted by a largely skeptic and hostile population last year and replaced with the social democrats, greens and left party who already held national majority). Many hospitals built with tax money were sold (underpriced) to private firms, although taxes still provide the actual funding with the exception for smaller fees which are present for publicly owned hospitals as well. My analysis is that the public was frustrated with declining healthcare, giving the right-wing a window of opportunity to attempt their recipe for solving it -- with privatization. Would it have worked had it continued? Your guess is as good as mine. But the right-wing coalition left the county with a huge budget deficit I'd rather live without.
A declining education system, with insufficient discipline and decreasing scores, particularly in immigrant-heavy areas and an insufficient number of teachers to help students with special needs.
An increasing sick leave problem -- a surprisingly large part of the workforce is on long-term sick leave, causing an absolutely gigantic hole in the public finances.
An aging population (having to cope with poor service at publicly financed retirement homes), resulting in fewer people having to provide finances for more and more retirees.
I should also point out that while a lot of people don't pay national tax, everyone pays local tax to the county -- between 28 and 33 % depending on what parties hold majority county in the local governments.
In summary, Sweden has major problems in some areas and emulating it in every respect is not necessarily the solution. I should perhaps say though that I support the basis of the system, and do not want to see further privatizations (which are impossible to reverse and in my opinion are more likely to go wrong than right).
"LeftOfCentre"
Stockholm, Sweden, EU