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The Engine of US Jobs
eberta writes, "BusinessWeek has an interesting take on the US job situation, What's Really Propping Up The Economy. I think many of us have felt the US tech job market was stagnant and this article has insights into why this economy is so hot, yet not from our perspective. The spoiler is the business of health care — which will come as no surprise to anybody who has looked through the help wanted section lately. BusinessWeek has some opinions on how IT should play a bigger role in the health care industry."
Public subsidies through the Pentagon system.
This is often stated as the way the unemployment rate is determined, but it is completely wrong.
The method by which the U.S. goverment determines the unemployment rate is far more accurate than that. They do a survey every month of 60,000 households collecting various data including employment status. It's really quite detailed and the methodology seems to be pretty good.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
>The spoiler is the business of health care --
Anyone interested in this point should read "The end of Medicine", reviewed on Slashdot recently.
I found it a sad read. In between the author explaining why he is a realli smart, cool guy, he takes you on a tour of the tech companies working in the US health care area. There is *big* money in detecting and dealing with the symptoms of bad life style. And a lot of the money is going on tech.
(The sad bit is how little is going on prevention - life style changes, proper food, exercise. Ah well)
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Easy. Why do you think the US is one of the proponents of IP and copyright? Because that's all that's left in its industry: Content.
Agriculture is heavily subsidized. As in many/almost all "western" countries. In other words, a lossy business for the state. It's kept running to remain at least in a moderate way able to sustain itself, just in case the world starts treating them like, say, Cuba and shuts down international trade (or in case some country/ies decide it's fun to sink ships going for US harbors). It's a war insurance, if you want. And many other countries do exactly the same.
Productive industry is pretty much in the same boat. From cars to consumer products, everything is manufactured abroad. The only hardware still going strong is military hardware, and there the government is even the main (and often only) customer, not something where they would EARN money. They're spending.
So what remains as the generator of tax is service and content. Now, service is pretty hard to export. You can only export it by getting people from abroad to your country. While it is a generator of tax, it largely only creates domestic tax. Tourists from outside the US become fewer and fewer (and, honestly, I can't blame anyone who doesn't want to dare going to the US).
So what remains as the bringer of foreign money (besides the biggest bringer, the ability to "tax" internationally by having the foreign trade currency at your pressing fingertips, the USD) and balances the foreign trade at least to some degree is content, patents and copyright.
Health care is certainly a big tax bringer of the future, but this most certainly only creates domestic tax and does not generate a single cent of foreign money pouring into the country.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not sure that a bridge counts as a household, probably not. In any one counts as unemployed only if one is actively looking for work.
Who told you that? I'm from Europe (The Netherlands) and there is of course some critic on counting measures (here, many who are officially unfit for labour and get government pay were in reality dumped by large corporations when the economy was bad), but you count as worting when you work over X hours a week (don't know the exact number for X). If you have a PhD in CS but are cleaning dishes 40 hours a week you count as working.
The figures I've seen say that the majority of new jobs in the last 5 years have been created in the real estate market driven by enormous inflation of house prices. I'm not American but as similar thing has happened in the UK where I live - about 65% of the UK economy is based on the housing market. If this market stops growing (and it looks like it has now in the US) bad things are in store for the economy. Especially given the 'cash point on everyone's lawn' will stop working.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Government "borrows" money, which creates dollars to be paid to government contractors who pay their suppliers, shareholders and employees.
The reason US inflation hasn't skyrocketed in the past in response is oil. The producers are paid in US dollars which means the rest of the world has to buy these new dollars to pay for their oil, essentially what's happening is that inflation is being exported from the US to the rest of the oil consuming world, or rather, the US economy is heavily subsidised by the oil consuming world. With the falling dollar though and corresponding reduction in the value of their dollar holdings, some are switching those dollar holdings to alternative currencies so less of that inflation is being exported and the falling dollar accelerates. Prices appear to increase correspondingly.
You will have noticed inflation and interest rates increasing.
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I think you got your numbers messed up..
The aritcle said 1.7 million new HEALTHCARE jobs..
Are you trying to say Healthare should should be creating jobs to meet all US population growth???
Healthcare alone added jobs to meet 12% of the population growth. Thats is quite a bit for a single sector of the job market.
Now a usefull stastic would be how much did Healthcare grow vs US Population..
Now according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there were 6,388,000 US Healthcare Jobs in 2002.
By adding 1.7 million jobs the sector grew by 26%
In the same timeframe the population grew by 5% so healthcare is growing 5x faster the the population.
I couldn't find numbers for total US job growth from 2001 to today.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Not to worry, the US will probably soon be annex'ing Mexico. I think I just figured out the immigration plan the govt. is working on.
When the illegal immigrant population here in the US from MX reachs a bit over 1/3, of MX's total population....we can just annex the whole country...resources and all.
We can claim, "Hey, we got the people here, we might as well get the real estate that goes with them".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........