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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."
The economy may be "hot" with jobs, the problem is that it's not hot with *well paying jobs*. Between the IT bubble bursting, offshoring, the decline of unions, and stagnant minimum wage, it's not exactly the garden of opportunity in the U.S. And before I get some elitist comment like "there are good jobs out there, you just have to get off your lazy butt and look", yes I know there are good jobs, there just aren't many to go around, no matter how good a worker you are.
It's another case of the broken window economic fallacy. If more people receiving health care is what's helping keep the economy afloat, that's not a good thing. The money wasted on $100 boxes of Kleenex and $2000 short ambulance rides (don't laugh, it's the truth!) is money that couldn't have been spent elsewhere on better things.
Further:
Despite the splashy success of companies such as Google (GOOG ) and Yahoo! (YHOO ), businesses at the core of the information economy -- software, semiconductors, telecom, and the whole gamut of Web companies -- have lost more than 1.1 million jobs in the past five years.
Isn't this a good thing generally? These people are being displaced to do other, more important work. Information technology should, in general, not be a boom industry anymore. The tools are becoming good enough to displace human labor. Let more software and computers do work that people in IT used to do, and let them go work in the health care industry where mechanization has less benefit or opportunity.
What if you're in a country that has mandatory health care, unemployment insurance, retirement insurance and so on? Where is my increasing value! (*cry, rant*)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can get a kidney there for a price you can afford. Or you can't get any over here. You can maybe die from AIDS over there, or you can die for sure here.
Pick your prefered cause of death.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is an important point (although a tangent to the article). The abusive policy of allowing illegal workers into the US without providing them the basic protections and education that citizens get is absolutely disgusting. The solution to a complicated and difficult immigration system is not to just let people through the boarders. Every time someone mentions immigration reform people for immigrant rights go crazy and demand the preservation of the status quo. I don't get it. I think immigrants should be placed in a much better position than they are today. Some argue the price of fruit and building costs would skyrocket, but I'm not convinced. Besides it's not like they could skyrocket worse than the housing market.
I think it would make sense to figure out what it usually costs for someone to illegally cross over (I've heard it's as expensive as $300). Just charge a bit less than that for a fast track work visa. take fingerprints and random DNA samples, photographs, etc. Give the work visa a 1 year expiration and hope that a vast majority of people go back to their country of origin once a year for christmas or easter or whatever. A valid non-expired work visa would enable a person to demand minimum wage and recieve basic services. To renew your visa you just go through the fast track again, it should be like going to the DMV. and the fast track ought to be a for-profit entity, the more effeciently you run it the greater your department profits. (give employees bonuses).
Obviously this will never happen because the government is incapable of doing anything constructive.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I run a small IT consulting business (it's just me) and two of my clients are in health care. Business is good, and these clients are growing like gangbusters.
Long term I worry though, as healthcare isn't fundamentally 'productive' in any sense. It's not making anything new, it's just chewing up a larger and larger percentage of our paychecks in the form of social security, medicare and insurance payments.
Nothing has been made because Aunty Tilly got a $20,000 bypass instead of a $5 bottle of asprin.
If a bottle of asprin results in her passing away but the bypass gives her 20 years more life, then (adjusting for inflation, etc) she merely has to generate $1,000 more wealth each year than she consumes for the operation to be "worth it". And, consider this: she has some dollar value of training and experience, valuable both during her hours working and her other hours contributing to the community. It could be that buying her a bypass would be like fixing the alternator in your car; sure it doesn't result in anything "new" but it is a small repair on a valuable item. You wouldn't throw away your car with a bad alternator; don't throw away (valuable) Aunty Tilly because she's got a bad valve.
Obviously, at some point people get old enough that society will never regain its financial investment in that elderly person (or lifetime-disabled person). S'OK. We're human beings; we take care of each other because we sympathize and empathize. It's part of the human condition, and it's a good thing.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Your disagreement stems from your arbitrary belief the GDP wasn't bullshit in the first place.
Many people think the GDP or GNP is a bogus, crude measure of economic health. There are a number of other measures which address the G?P's shortcomings. (The UN's "Human Development Index" (HDI) is probably the best known.)
As Robert Kennedy said in 1968:
Our gross national product -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.