Slashdot Mirror
Computers, Unemployment and Wealth Creation
Andy Oram writes "Anyone who writes programs or plans system deployment should start
thinking, "What can I do to bring average people back into the process
of wealth creation?"
A few suggestions."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
You need a printer with very good resolution for that.
This seems like a ridiculous suggestion. This is essentially backwards capitalism, which quite simply, doesn't work. I could create plenty of jobs... I could throw out my business' computers and instead hire a few people to track inventory by hand and place orders by manually counting inventory. Sure, I'd create more jobs, but those jobs would be very short lived, ebcause I'd quickly go out of business. Efficiency, in the long run, *does* produce wealth. That's how capitalism works. We may not see "wealth" growing in the US, but in the economy (which is now a world economy), wealth is most definitely being created. Standards of living are rising exponentially around the globe, even as they slip in the US. Nothing's broken. Nothing to see here. Go back to work.
Make as much money as you can*, and then use it to do some of:
(a) Buy stuff. Other folks are employed making it or serving it.
(b) Invest. This results in capital for businesses to hire more people employed making or serving stuff.
This method works. Simple, really.
* Within ethical and/or legal standards, of course.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
As the wealth of nations increases, those who have lost jobs or had to accept menial ones over the past three years are left with only a wealth of culprits to blame: financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation, etc.
For a start, a 3-year sample isn't big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. We're just in the down phase of the economic cycle, that's all. Smart people salted away some of the high salaries and bonuses that were easy to come by in the recent boom years, when shortness of staff drove up the price of labour. Now, some people look for blame - but it's hard to see how some of these can be blamed. Wars and conflict drive up employment in the engineering and aerospace sectors. Tax cuts can't increase unemployment except amongst government workers, and there have been no reports of government layoffs - if anything, the government is busily hiring.
Let me make this clear: wealth is not created by governments. It's created by risk-taking entrepreneurs. Right now, the markets need to recover from excessive risk-taking in the late 90s. This is perfectly natural. When sufficient capital has become amassed, the cycle will begin again and there will be another boom.
But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation
I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49. 5 years ago, these products cost hundreds of pounds. That's what capitalism delivers: more and better for everyone. The "poor" in a capitalist society are far better off than the "poor" in any other system - and capitalism generates the surpluses that fund the entire welfare system.
Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.
Yawn, they said exactly the same things when the car started to replace the horse drawn carriage, when mechanical looms replaced hand-operated looms, when automation was introduced to farming, in fact whenever any technology has revolutionized an industry. Getting laid off is always a little disconcerting (yes, it has happened to me so I know what I'm talking about) but unemployment is what you make of it.
And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?),
Ah, now we see the author's real agenda - I should have realized when I saw the words "tax cuts". I will merely point out that the dotcom bubble economy was created under a Democrat president and began declining in mid 2000 - there is nothing Bush or Greenspan could have done to prevent it bursting.
I tried creating wealth with my scanner and ink-jet printer once, but the government didn't like that very much.
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
How about reducing the population? The Economist magazine had an apropo cover story a few months ago entitles, "Can the World Afford 500 Million Americans?" The article went on to explain that by 2060, the U.S. population would exceed 500 million and given current consumption trends, what that would mean for the rest of the world. Not to bash Americans, but what is the optimal population (or carrying capacity) for the Earth? A rhetorical question, sure, but one that needs more serious study than the oft neglected WHO reports.
Over 50% of my income goes to taxes of one form or another. I'd say that's subsidy enough for the other guy.
Commie bastards. 1/2:)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
Why beat around the bush and just come out and suggest that everyone forks their paycheck over to the government so that they can give everyone an equal share (minus whatever government believes it is entitled to)? That's really what you're advocating, so why not come out and say it?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Problem is, they don't replace you. Instead, they give your job to someone else who now has two jobs to do. I saw the prefect example this weekend. A friend of mine works as an engineer for Clear Channel. Three months ago, his assistant quit. He was forbidden to replace him, even though he's already doing two jobs (He's doing his regular job and being project engineer for a big build out). Now he has three jobs to do. Last weekend he visited a transmitter site for the first time in a month and found some equipment badly damaged. The pattern of the AM radio station was far out of FCC tolerances. Problem is, his logging system broke last month and he hasn't had the time to fix it yet. He doesn't even know how long ago this happened. He planned to hire a contractor to help, but his bookkeeper told him NO CONTRACTORS. So, he struggles to do three jobs, none of them well. At the same time, his bosses get HUGE bonuses for cutting expenses so well. THIS is the rebublican economy at work! It ain't 'trickle down' it's TINKLE DOWN...and we all know what they're tinkling...all over us!
In the last recession, we had high unemployment, yadda, yadda, yadda...
What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.
My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")
Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.
When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.
Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).
Under the tutelage of presumably "good conservatives," we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the "defense" industry and using it to conquer a major Third World petroleum producer. The latter not only also a multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy for the energy trading industry, but also one of blood. Nearly 200 American soldiers dead, and over 1500 wounded, to say nothing of the thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of wounded. How you see this as being against big government eludes me completely.
You are right, but for the wrong reasons. You, like most, have fallen into the trap. It is not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Hawks vs. Doves, Right to Life vs. Freedom of Choice, etc. It is about the actual day to day mechanisms of political action. Who do politicians pay attention to? To whom are they beholden? What segment of society drives political action in our country? Do they represent your interests, or do they consider you an expendable "Human Resource"? Is your employment status of any significance to them, or is it at best figured into some large-scale economic indicator? Wake up, my friend, we are all in the same boat.
Today's stolen sig:
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.
A remarkably blindered view. Wealth is only zero-sum at a given instant.
Wealth is properly measured by value - what is the value of a great medical system, a great transportation system, varied and efficient communications systems? What is the value of having the time to attend your daughter's soccer games? What is the value of a multitude of research efforts into extending life and making it healthier, or of a US infant mortality rate of 6 per 1000 compared to say Angola's 200 per 1000? Did the US somehow "steal" Angola's ability to produce healthy babies or did the people of the US slowly build their wealth to one that allowed the "purchase" of a society that could provide the lower rate?
Wealth is (to some degree) exponential and viral - it is used to create more wealth for others if applied in a free market system - one in which those who offer a service or product are free to charge what they can and the buyer is free to choose WWWWW to buy. When wealth is stolen by those-that-know-how-to-spend-your-money-better (that is, tax used for social purposes) then it takes longer for wealth to grow and spread - those who had wealth now have less of it to spread through their own acquisition of products and services, and there is tremendous waste and fraud because of a lack of personal interest in seeing that value is obtained for the expenditure.
The kid next door charges more every year to cut my grass - I could look for another grasscutter or I could make some lawnmower manufacturer happy by buying their product and using it instead of allowing this young fellow to practice capitalism, but I've chosen how I want to spend my wealth (my cash) and the kid's chosen how he want's to spend his (his time). I have the luxury and wealth (and gray hair) to be lazy, and the kid trades his time and effort for my cash. This is not a zero-sum game - the world had to invent the lawnmower for the kid and the plasma TV with Angelina Jolie on screen to interest me for this transaction to have occured - else I'd have more inclination to cut my own damn grass.
This kid is using his saved wealth to buy a car, so that he can get to "a real job", so that he can save money and go to school, so that he can invent bigger plasma screens or extend the average lifespan even more or eventually bring sanitation and sane government and decent health care to Angola, or free-market education to the masses, etc.
The ability to pursue happiness mean the number of people enjoying longer, healthier lives with more free-time increases continuously, as it has. That is not zero-sum - it is the growth of wealth.