Slashdot Mirror
A Tale of Two Countries
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Jon Bischke is troubled by the growing divide between Silicon Valley and unemployed America. While people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters are enjoying a boom/bubble, the number of unemployed now eclipses 14 million nationwide, labor under-utilization is 16.2%, and the mean duration of unemployment has spiked to 40 weeks. 'Which bring us to an important question,' writes Bischke. 'Should Silicon Valley (and other tech clusters throughout the country) care? After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about whether those same people are getting paid to do work in the real world? Is what's best for Silicon Valley also good for America?'"
People who DOESN'T want to work count in those statistics ?
Where should I send a check?
It's hard to call 10% unemployment is Silicon Valley a booming economy...beats 16.2%.
How's that hope and change working out for ya?
Many people don't need the latest OS, game, communication device, computer, or gadget. If your job is to develop, manufacture, or sell products that millions of people can no longer afford, then that ought to tell you something significant about where you'll be headed if things don't turn around.
For there to be The Rich, there must be The Poor !! All in favor of The Rick say Ay !!
AY !!
The software development, technology, and IT industries have been under attack for quite some time now. Automation, outsourcing, H1B visas, and now the cloud.
It is a testament to the technology-related fields that the workforce keeps adapting and evolving to keep pushing forward amidst adversity.
While I feel for all those unemployed, I have worked very hard to not only stay up-to-date and relevant, but to also keep pushing myself forward. I am not saying I am better than anybody else, but I have more than paid my dues and continue to do so. Perhaps the technology-related fields fare better because it has always been a moving target. Before you had worries about job security you had worries about your tools becoming obsolete or deprecated. The entire mindset is to keep learning new languages, concepts, and technology. Never rest on your laurels.
It's been discussed ad nauseam. The same things were said in the early 80s. Know what happened? People stopped worrying about it and got back to work and the country enjoyed a significant boom in production. What's unfortunate now is we have a president who's completely clueless. So enjoy a Republican in the White House in 2013.
Not to be purely gloating, but finding a job as an electrical engineering student from a decent school has been pretty easy. I personally don't know anyone who has had trouble finding a nice high paying job straight out of school, at places like Silicon Valley or Seattle. The trick of course, is to get some good internship experience on your resume. And finding those internships isn't too difficult either.
The scapegoat is hiding behind that MBA wall over there.
(Serious note: What a troll story. Of course, everyone should care about unemployment rate, but should software engineers (and you Flash idiots) care more than others about it? Probably not.)
From my outside (European) perspective, back in eighties during Reagan presidency, US abandoned European-style government assisted social welfare system. In my opinion that was really wrong, there is too little protection for _growing_ mass of angry unemployed potentially dangerous crowd. It will inevitably end in some really nasty situation. Hopefully I am wrong...
839*929
I remember back when granddad had a computer. He'd add up all the coins and do the math required for the accounting for the business. Then silly technology came along and now we have "calculators" and "computers". What happened to the real faces behind these jobs?! How many people are out of work that have the skills to do long division -JUST LIKE A COMPUTER-! It's a terrible thing and we should at once do away with progress. It's far too damaging to the economy.
look, no offense.
but a lot of people whose life is a never ending string of relatively well paying jobs, "interesting" work, conferences, tech seminars, etc, tend to lose their ability to empathize with the rest of us losers.
It would be prudent to move where the jobs are but those of us that got suckered in with a mortgage are now upside down and unable to move. We're locked into living in a dead/dying economy (Michigan) by a mortgage that is sinking further year after year. Those of us mortgage-locked would sure benefit from telecommuting positions but they seem more of a fairy tale than reality. If only companies would realize that they could give us VPN access to their infrastructure and we could do the work from home, we don't need always sit in a cubicle on-site. The lack of true leadership coming out of Washington continues to worsen year after year. Heck, remember last year the state department sending millions of dollars to train middle-eastern country (Pakistan?) Java programming? Why couldn't they spend that money and train us folks here?
So, what is he saying here? Everyone who works in an industry that produces only luxury items should feel sorry for those that dont and devote a portion of their income? That we should immedially stop producing all luxury items until everyone that desires to be employed is? All sports franchises are immeditly disbanded. All Television and Media production is halted. All motor vehicles greater than 20k USD will be discontinued. Yeah, I am sure that will help unemployment.... Yeah, it sucks that the economy is crap and people are unemployed, but does that mean everyone that does have a job needs to start living in a cardboard box? Our social services are designed to keep people afloat until they can find useful work. It may not be just and it may not be efficient, but its better than tossing everyone that missing a mortgage payment out on the street, surely?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Any private enterprise is good, especially if it does end up creating destructive technologies, because after all, wealth is not work, it's things we produce and can then own.
The real question that was left an-asked should be this:
Should the unemployed country care about where Washington DC is taking the country?
The real question is what is up with the divide between the public and private sectors?
Work in the public sector should be about sacrifice, it should not be a better place to make more money, instead the workers there enjoy very stable and secure working conditions. However this is not what the public sectors is or has been about for over a hundred years now.
Today working in the public sector is profitable, it comes with various perks - the workers are famous, they are swamped by armies of lobbyists, who are working on behalf of those, who are being regulated/taxed/subsidized based on the decisions made in the public sector.
USA sees values of its housing market decline except for places where there is high competition with foreign investors (N.Y., L.A.), but the most growth in every way is found in Washington DC. Growing housing market, growing salaries, growing everything.
Public workers do not pay income taxes.
That's right, they don't pay income taxes, because to pay an income tax, income must be made, something must be produced of value, so whatever counts for income taxes there is just what they don't get in salary. There are all sorts of perks being a public sector worker.
So what do you think, do public sector workers share the same problems as the rest of the country?
When a public sector worker talks about sacrifice, he does mean that everybody must sacrifice but him, because whoever does actual work - creates something and sells something, that person lives off his own labor. A public sector worker lives off the labor of others.
When a public sector worker strikes, he really is only trying to negotiate a deal between himself and some other politician, and that's definitely an Alien vs Predator situation, because it doesn't matter who wins there, the actual tax payers lose, either in money or in some way that has to do with policy.
The real question is what about these 2 countries: the government workers VS everybody else? It's not about employer VS employee, as the public sector worker wants you to believe.
You can't handle the truth.
There are still people with surplus money out there in Silicon Valley?
And as I recall, the weather there is pretty good for camping. Except it gets pretty hot in the summer...
And there are produce fields, and grapes, just down the roads...
Might be time to head back that direction...
Except... Have they done something abut the mosquitos there yet? They used to lurk in bandit swarms around the passes just east of the hills that are just east of Cannary Row...
to dole it out to welfare projects like the B-1 bomber, the space shuttle, and a host of other socialist, big government programs.
sounds like a damn good idea! bring back that reagan guy!
You could reverse this by asking whether people in Nebraska or Kansas should care about Silicon Valley or not.
And yes, both ways it should. The elitism inherent in thinking only "this part of America counts/matters" is what brought about the skullduggery that is "The Heartland" and "Real Americans."
Yes douchebags, thinking you're the heart of America and that you're real Americans while the people living in cities are "fake" Americans is elitist.
The central theme of the article is whether or not tech companies should continue try to grow their business, or should they decide to not compete with established industries. A specific cited example is that Apple created a net job loss through iTunes by ruining Tower Records. The summary makes it sound like the article is asking whether or not tech companies should feel bad for the fact people play Farmville rather than look for a job.
There are plenty of private charities they can send their money to. Or they can outsource a startup to Iowa - the big state schools do produce plenty of quality engineering talent, and you can pay them less, but it's still less of a headache than going to India.
All in all, America has pushed into a high-expertise economy. No matter where you are geographically, you can do pretty well for yourself with a competent tech background. It's less about Silicon Valley versus Iowa than it is the guy with the BS versus the one with the BA or the GED.
Wow, this was one hell of a crap article. Who does this guy think he is, trying to guilt trip working americans in silicon valley because they are, well... working. I mean WTF?!
Silicon Valley should not only care that there are millions unemployed they should continue working to find better ways to make money off the fact that millions are unemployed. That's the type of caring you were asking about, right?
Income disparity was what made roman population lose interest, hope and eventually, participation in the roman republic, leading to deterioration of not only state but also culture in just a hundred years or so :
rich were flooding the market with cheap grain, causing the small farmers not to be able to make a living because the crop they produced ended up more expensive in cost than rich, big farm holders. in turn, they had to sell their farms to rich farmers and migrate into cities to make a living. increasingly roman agriculture had come under the control of very few, rich landowning aristocrats. these farms were called latifundia.
since the backbone of the country, the small free citizen landholders were gone, public services and military continually deteriorated. the 'barbarians' (non-romans) who were increasingly conscripted to the army had less incentive than a citizen soldier to defend anything. moreover, the disillusioned citizenry, who could get nothing out of the society at that point, cared much for any intruders - whomever invaded, they were just replacing existing elite with their own, little was changing in the case of ordinary citizens. (except for exceedingly vandal barbarians and similar - vandals were also a barbarian tribe, as a sidenote).
the rich, who held all the resources had little use for anything of the sort like republic or democracy. and when augustus and later emperors started to dismantle last vestiges of republic, noone cared. now, the citizenry had no say or share from society as a whole. and from that point on it all disintegrated.
the irony is, this process started around the peak of roman momentum - late republic era. the very era in which triumvirate (caesar pompei and crassus) were waging their civil war against each other. the empire didnt instantly disintegrate - it had momentum to take itself comfortably forward at least 100 years more. everything then started to directly crumble.
today is no different. back in roman times, the poor had at least the chance to engage in trade and arts/crafts. today, even those fields of life are 'latifundiated' by the rich just like how roman agriculture (then the backbone of economy) was consolidated in the hands of very few elite.
i would like to alert you to the fact that, this situation that destroyed roman empire, had later also become the causes that led to the birth of aristocracy in middle ages and on. in fact, the entire system of feudalism, is a system of property ownership - the difference with our current capitalist system is, now everyone is able to own property (land in this case), while back then, only aristocrats could. however this doesnt change one fundamental fact - this system eventually leads to a minority having and controlling everything (yes, including politics because resource is power - just like how senate had to accept subjugation in front of those who had the funds to muster legions), and ends up in an aristocratic hierarchical society.
in short - yes, they should care. for the sake of their own freedom too.
Read radical news here
people with talent and an ability to communicate get jobs.
Hope for the best for the economy. Plenty of theories and no proof as to what may work. http://www.meatgrindersnow.com/Home.html
let me know how your self motivated learning gets you past the "HR wall" where if you don't have x years of industry experience in language/environment y your resume goes to the trash pile...
When pretty much every entry level job is outsourced and ageism not being unknown in the tech sector, it seems really difficult for anybody in their 30s/40s to "self motivate" themselves into a tech/development career.
If I was trying to get into programming right now and had no prior experience I'd go the app store route: with a reasonable investment (say, a last generation imac + a last generation ipad + a last generation ipod touch, which could be purchased refurbished directly from apple for likely $1.5k or so) you can get in, and if you are able to create some good quality apps it would likely help a lot with the job search.
This said I remember the programs I wrote when I had learned how to program only a year before, and even taking into consideration that in the early 80s there wasn't really nearly as much learning material as there was now, still a year experience is IMHO only good for an entry level position, of which there are nearly none to be had as I was saying above.
And regarding the topic at hand no, I don't think it's good at all to have a "two speed" society where a small percentage of people rakes in the dough and a large percentage of people struggles to survive: that should be self-evident, not to mention the fact that a society where the only jobs to be had that enable a decent middle-class standard of living are "brain-type" jobs doesn't seem balanced either.
Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, or to sit in front of a desk all day and stare at a computer screen, other people are a lot better at painting, or woodworking, or construction, or teaching, or plumbing, or building bridges, or all sorts of other job types, and they should have the chance to make a living at what they are good at instead of being told over and over again that unless you have a certain set of skills you'll never be able to live comfortably (I don't mean being rich, I mean living comfortably, which is what a much larger portion of society used to be able to do in the 50s and 60s).
-- the cake is a lie
"After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about ..."
Not sure about the central valley of California, but the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in Nebraska is 4.1%, less than half the rate of the nation as a whole. Who needs virtual tractors when agriculture and other commodities are booming?
They'll start to care when they start being killed as food in the streets. In any event, people in the US have no idea what serious unemployment is like. In some areas elsewhere in the westernised world it's headed for the 50% mark and more.
an eloquently enunciated compilation of proceedings of the late republic - early empire roman history, with connections to early middle ages and later, on solid grounds (most of what i have told is mainstream in history scholar circles now), is downmodded. why ?
too irritable ?
Read radical news here
Silicon Valley, Boston, and NYC are full of jobs but people who want them can't move there because those cities don't grow, quality of life for their residents aside. Job clusters like those are a natural resource of sorts, not to be squandered by those who live there. Those tech centers appeared as a result of national policies - funding for nearby universities, open immigration, free trade, etc. We should be happy to help any part of the country grow but not if they are going to close themselves off to the rest of us.
"Never had so many worked for so little." That more or less summed up the der Fuehrer Shrub years. Unemployment was low, but alas much of those employed where earning minimum wage, which most would acknowledge isn't a living wage (unless working two or three jobs.) Yes, I still think der Fuehrer Shrub stole the election, TWICE.
The question "should someone care" is meaningless.
The question is, should they take action.
The effect of caring without doing is the same as that of not caring.
So, what is it that prospering hi-tech startups should actually do about unemployment such that it is in their interest, and not merely charity?
I can't think of it.
I imagine at the heyday of auto manufacturing in the US, people were saying the same things about Detroit.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Silicon Valley has still not recovered from the 2001 crash. Employment levels are still lower than in 2001!
I always have a hard time watching so many people make so much money producing exactly value. The tech industry in the US is a joke. A few companies are making useful things, and are making money, but from my point of view, most of it is people looking to make some quick VC cash or VC's looking to own the next Google. Living in a tech hub on the East Coast, I see countless tech companies awash in cash, but producing nothing, and certainly not bringing in any cash. Most of them are belly up inside of a year, but the founders walk away with untold millions every time, and go on to start another company that does nothing, whatsoever. At some point, the greedy VC's are going to learn their lesson and invest in functioning companies, and most of these tech people will be forced to get real jobs.
I don't respond to AC's.
SV's dream is to find and develop an idea for a product that's hugely useful to a community. Then they patent it, monetize it, and monopolize it/defend it in direct proportion to its usefulness. Their assembly line takes truly good ideas out of the public sphere and changes them into privately held things that are much less useful but much more profitable. The forces that benefit are mostly the forces that are wealthy to begin with.
If SV cared they would be trying to build systems that took ideas and kept them open and free to be used, shared, and built upon, that enriched the masses and not primarily the wealthy.
The main reason we're still seeing high unemployment since the "great recession", is that everyone is still paying back or defaulting on their debts. Before this financial crisis Americans were adding about 1 trillion dollars a year of private debt growth to the demand in the economy. Now the level of private debt is falling rapidly. So instead of having all that extra spending power fueling growth and jobs, we have lots of debts being repaid and a massive reduction in spending power.
It's the 1930's all over again. Well, almost. In the 30's it was primarily businesses who had accumulated large debts, and as they tried to reduce their margins, they triggered a deflationary price spiral. This time around, we don't have that much control over manufacturing, and there's not much room left for prices to drop. We've been pretty ruthless at reducing production costs for quite a while.
But we're going to see high unemployment for a long time to come, as there simply isn't enough cash floating around the economy to pay everyone who was previously employed.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I think most people care, and maybe I'm being naive, but the subset that consists of tech clusters probably cares more in aggregate. The real interesting question is, what can be done about it? if you have no power (and the majority of tech people *don't* have much power), then it doesn't matter how much you care. I'd suggest asking the people who are outsourcing jobs and fucking over our economy how much they care, but I'm pretty sure they've already answered that question through their actions.
Nathan's blog
Stupid to ask such a question!
People should take care of himself. Not the rich.
Living well, as long as they do not break the law, does not need to feel bad.
Isn't it written in the Bible too?
Unemployment is what happens when you offshore you're manufacturing industry! Intellectual property ownership won't solve unemployment!
Being able to comfortably go most anywhere, trust most goods and services not to kill or hurt you and be safe without a security entourage is predicated on lots of jobs for lot of people with different brain power and different needs.
If we don't have them. life returns to what it was, clan/kin/tribe/gang and violence against outsiders, a scrabble for survival and everything being "No Trust" much of the world lives this way now, so it won't help them but we Westerners will not enjoy it.
It's partly because there are _some_ jobs around, but partly because recruiting companies get paid for finding workers, so they'll call anybody plausible. Being a recruiter is a better job in a good economy than a bad one.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This isn't a boom economy, and while there might be a bubble going on, it's a pretty small one. This is a "gradually crawling out of a hole" kind of recovery, not a "VCs throwing us billions of dollars again" recovery.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A quick Google search claims that Nebraska has a 4.1% unemployment rate while Silicon Valley has a 9.9% unemployment rate.
So... what was the point of your article again?
Pakistan is not in the Middle East. It is in South Asia.
Eat or be eaten
There aren't really any countries where average people adapt very successfully to changing economic needs. Only fairly exceptional people ever do so.
Europe handles this through a combination of massive welfare for the unemployable, major protections for existing economic needs, and professionalizing virtually every career, which helps keep workers up-to-date. Yet, they've created a systemic unemployment problem amongst the youth.
We'll probably eventually nationalize education and simply pay students to study what we tell them we need. At least then, all the unemployment can be blamed upon some government officials who're doing the bidding of lobbyist who want more unemployed cheap labor in specific sectors.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I swear that sometimes I think Ayn Rand was a prophet...
This headline is almost directly out of one of her books...
Nebraska and Central California in the same breath...ha. Nebraska is one of the few states that isn't broke. It has a single house of government (rather than the redundant two houses, which get less done). It has had less that 4% unemployment for most, if not all, of this recession. Given the work ethic in that state, perhaps you should welcome your future corn overlords.
If this is the best you can do? Do you count yourself as "People who DOESN'T want to work" or "People who IS UNEMPLOYABLE"?
Retarded and bigoted is no way to go through life.
How about refusing to work 50+ hour work weeks? 10 employees working 50 hours a week equals 12.5 workers working a 40 hour week. 2.5 less people are employed due to some people being afraid to say "no, I've put in my 8 hours today, sorry".
If unemployment is really going to be so high for years and years - in other words, if there just aren't enough jobs for everyone in the country due to things like automation - maybe we should be talking about reducing the work week to 35 hours or less. It's been 40 hours for a long time, even though productivity has increased quite a bit.
I personally think, that a large portion of jobs I did (unfortunately) did not add too much good to this world. Sure it made someone richer and paid the bills, but in terms of usefulness to society: 0.
Now that said, I would imagine that many of us could do a lot of useful things with their profession, but instead of creating cool and good and dreams, many times it boils down to what pays the bills. Then there is your extra time when you can try and work on your hobby projects.
Then try to explain it to your colleagues and people you know (I prefer to not refer to them as "friends") who ask you why you don't work on something that could make a lot of money instead of trying to build whatever you are building. On this @#$% planet and in this society.
So unless you consider adding to the GDP and paying the bills useful, you could consider most jobs on this planet useless and ignorant behavior.... ahm ..
If you go to Disney you can see a show ( I forget what the name is) that tells us that the 'promise' of computers was to create more leisure time for our families . . . . . .so doesn't that MEAN that computers do the the work that humans used to do? What were we thinking?
Companies that do business internationally or those suppliers or vendors to said companies are doing great. Retailers with international sales are fine, those without are hurting. Apple for instance makes 50% or more of it's sales internationally.
China's economy is booming, as is Korea, Germany, Australia, Brazil.
If you want to find work, look at the companies with greater than 30% of revenue coming from outside the US. The company I work for has 200+ open positions in the US. The majority of those are not tech related, ~40 are (ecom, IT, logistics and data). We just hired a language specialist for QA we're doing so much translation work.
There are jobs, and yes you may have to relocate to find them. Sign on with a staffing company and check that travel box. Agreeing to travel is your best bet to get work.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Hiring someone is much better philanthropy than just giving money.
Why would a tech industry be worried about proping up the rest of the country? It seems to me that a business is there to survive and to hopefully keep its own employees employed. Isn't it governments job to look after its citizens? Personally, I don't see it as any business's responsibility to take care of those that are not directly connected to it. The it is the responsibility of government. If the government wants to raise taxes on a specific sector of the work force, it has the right to do so, but asking a private company to just out of the blue start helping others isn't realistic in my opinion. You might as well get all the unions to take 25% pay cuts with the proceeds going to some charity, not likely to happen when it starts coming out of people's pockets rather than some anonymous "IT industry" There are lots of businesses out there that make money, why would you want to go after some sector just because a few businesses are "successful" Hell, if you want to do that, go after the damn banking industry, they seem to have all the money, and if they mess up the government bails them out.
I'm sure that we could lower the unemployment rate if we just didn't allow outside products into the united states, since it would kick start manufacturing again. As long as we are at it, we could ban all computer and electronics and go back to manual bookkeeping. That would drive paper prices up allowing us to hire more lumberjacks and get rid of all those pesky forests we have laying around. Sure quality of living would go down, but so what people would be employed. Heh, seriously though, I know that it costs me far less time and money to pay my bills, correspond with others, do research and get entertainment than it would be without technology. In my mind, the tech industry is doing its part to foster a better standard of living. The fact that people are out of work says more about the way government and the economic system runs than it does about tech companies destroying people's livelihoods. Tech companies are successful because people want the products they produce. The way to stay in business is by producing products and developing new products. There are plenty of tech companies that fail as well, what do we do about them? Cherry picking successful companies and saying that the industry as a whole should support give up its income and give that back to people that have no relation probably isn't the best way to go about fixing the economy. Perhaps, since the writer of the article is making money, he should be giving his income to others rather than paying his house note, rent, groceries, etc.
It seems to me, that if you're asking people who are actually innovating to give up the rewards of that innovation, you're punishing those that should be getting rewarded.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Nothing really surprising in the article, but the best quote from it is this:
From the original article:
In a low-tech society you don’t see much variation in productivity. If you have a tribe of nomads collecting sticks for a fire, how much more productive is the best stick gatherer going to be than the worst? A factor of two? Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a computer, the variation in what they can do with it is enormous.
Unfortunately the author doesn't go into the consequences of this observation. If one person can become wildly more productive with some tool, his work will simply be devaluated so that his higher productivity doesn't earn him more than the stick gatherer.
It was this case with teamsters of old, who probably were able to do 30 to 50 km a day with an ox-cart. Now a lorry-drivers transports 100 times as much 20 times as far away in a day, but they still are paid as measly as teamsters of old. What was gained for those teamsters who figured out to become 2000 times as productive? Nothing. Same pay, work still sucks and they aren't better of after a day of work.
Same with most other businesses that improved due to technology. The first generation who figured out how to become more productive reap some benefits from it, but after that, the improved productivity becomes the norm and people will toil on as usual. At the end of the day, the time people spent at work is paid, not their productivity. If the produce much, the value of their product is just reduced proportionally.
This should be obvious to everybody. I expected to see it. I expect it to get worse, too.
Look, we're now fully involved in a worldwide economy. We're competing internationally for international markets. The price of shipping and communication has dropped to next to nothing, and will continue to drop. Many, many jobs are just as easily done elsewhere, and there's more competition for those that remain.
So, if the most valuable skill you can bring to the table is the ability to make tables in Word, or the ability to snap together car parts in a factory, or follow a tech support script, then your pool of competition has grown massively. You're not in competition with the other folks in your neighbourhood for jobs. You're in competition with everyone in the world, and they have lower costs and standards of living.
If, on the other hand, you've learned skills that are rare and valuable worldwide, then, well, you face less competition and a worldwide economy that is growing massively every day. So you'll do well.
This shocks people? Really?
Blaming tech workers for this seems insane. They're the most valuable asset you have. They're helping to keep the economy afloat. The correct course of action is not to attack tech workers, it's to encourage education, in subjects that result in (*cough*) valuable skills. It's to encourage and support tech companies. Encourage immigration by skilled workers. Don't waste the last head start you've got.
China's economy is booming, as is Korea, Germany, Australia, Brazil.
I'm not sure that a booming economy is really a good measure of future success. The US had a Booming economy only a few years ago, and now they are struggling. China's economy appears to be on a similar or far worse path, with an economic collapse looming overhead. Germany's population is aging and shrinking, both of which have historically been detrimental to the economic stability of the a country. South Korea's population is not only showing signs of shrinking, but it's norther neighbor is still out growing them, which in the case of Korea could mean political instability. Australia and Brazil are certainly going to be interesting to watch. historically neither has been significant in the global economy, but certainly that can change very quickly in troubled times.
At some point, we could just consider that working to get an income is not required anymore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_dividend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
It is disturbing to me that only dotcoms are mentioned in this article. There are a lot of American technology companies that produce actual technology not just put some HTML in front of a database.
Oh, but that requires actual engineering skills. Never mind. Carry on.
Huge tech center. Among the highest per capita income in the nation... all built on taxes paid by the underemployed and the soon to be unemployed.
Silicon Valley makes their own bed. DC sleeps in the beds of others.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
To help people Silicon Valley should mind it's own business and leave all worries to the invisible hand which resides in Wall Street and leads the world in the present era of extreme(peace, security and prosperity). All things are becoming extreme these days.
So... what's the unemployment rate like "within a few blocks of" of Wall street ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What's a pension? /jk, I remember hearing grandpa talk about them...
These modern days, we're told that we need to take responsibility for our own retirement and invest in our 401Ks. In the stock market. Which they've turned into a casino. A rigged one. yeah, that's much better...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's reasonable, and interesting, to ask whether well-off people living in California should worry about their fellow-citizens elsewhere in the USA who are much worse off. After all, you are all citizens of the USA, which has certain values and aspirations.
But it does suggest taking the same argument a little further, and asking whether Americans - on average the wealthiest nation in the world, perhaps with a few limited exceptions - should worry about their fellow human beings in countries where many or most people go hungry, and $100 is a small fortune.
It's one of the big paradoxes of modern politics that the politicians who run the national governments of relatively rich countries (mostly "the West", whatever that may be) feel compelled to make frequent comforting noises about international aid and their duty to the poor abroad. While at the same time, they and the voters who elected them know damn well that "it's the economy, stupid" - that is, the politician's first and foremost duty is to increase (or at least maintain) the standard of living of their voters. If they do that, everything else can be forgiven. If they fail to do that, nothing else can redeem them.
Yet to make Americans relatively better off, the US government must strive mightily to deprive other nations of natural resources and other forms of wealth. Hence the tendency to appear with weapons in hand, bestowing things like "democracy" and "freedom" that cost nothing, while quietly abstracting things like oil and scarce minerals, which are extremely valuable. While "foreign aid", when examined closely, either doesn't materialize at all, or turns out to be tightly linked to purchases of American goods and services, or political and economic policies that suit the USA.
(I use the USA as the most obvious example; however everything I have said applies to other rich nations such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, etc.)
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If you want to work, change countries and adjust your lifestyle. You will still live very well, and be able to send yourself and your children to university, especially your children. And you could learn a second or third language too, and learn about other cultures by living there.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
So while we here in Nebraska appreciate the concern, get your ducks in a row and remember who has been stable through the mess the rest of you created. In the meantime, our economy will continue to kick ass despite the best efforts of the coasts.
References:
Blog and newsweek:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/andie531/nebraska-bucks-recession
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/18/why-the-midwest-fared-best-in-the-recession.html
Happiness:
http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/happiness-index-nebraska-nabs-top-spot
Silicon Valley
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/17iht-valley.4.20255686.html Silicon Valley Foreclosure rate
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2011/02/10/calif-posts-nations-3rd-highest.html
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
The problem is not the advancement of technology, the problem is the social structure, the production relationships. Our current capitalistic system is not fit for the information revolution. It was fit for the industrial revolution. Capitalism will start blocking real productivity, as best explained here: http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s._p2.html/ As the classics speculated, the new socialist society will emerge from the advanced capitalistic societies.
No, socialism always fails.
Capitalism NEVER blocks productivity - Socailism always blocks progress as it strives to keep things exactly as the way they exist right now.
You are a complete idiot who has never had to work a day for anything in your life!
Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up,
So I keep hearing, but where did you think all the crap loans that the CRA didn't force the unregulated non-banks to make would wind up? You know, the 50% of the subprime loans made by mortgage brokers and non-bank companies like GM (ditech.com)? What about all the CDOs that were bought up by investment firms like Lehman Brothers?
You're missing an additional 30% of subprime loans that were made by uncovered affiliates of CRA-covered institutions. So yes, about 80% of subprime loans had nothing to do with CRA. And it's also been documented that the subprime loans made by CRA-covered institutions were more affordable, had more conservative credit standards, and have performed better than the average subprime loans from this period.
Are you adequate?
One of the key components of a healthy economy is healthy manufacturing. I don't mean the manufacturing of intellectual IP like programs or television shows, but the creation of cars, washing machines, lathes, and shower curtains. The US has been leaking this economy for years. All of the production that can be done outside of the US (and much of Europe) is being done so because of advantages for doing so. Yes lower wages, lesser environmental controls, but also low energy costs and less taxes. We need to bring manufacturing back. We need to value the industrial infrastructure, and to improve it. I live in Boston - trying to find a place that will sell me simple mechanical parts for a decent price is difficult - everything is eventually manufactured in China, it seems. Without a strong industrial sector, good jobs will disappear.
Economic recovery requires and appreciation of industry, and accommodation of it by government. I don't mean giving into demands of large corporations for tax breaks and so forth, but rather that there be a sincere effort to attract and hold industrial concerns, particularly those which are international in nature, and will bring in more money as the dollar declines in value. There also needs to be low cost, plentiful, and reliable energy - I believe new generations of molten salt nuclear reactors are the best solution. There needs to be an effort to make the populace want to be an engineer or technician and other jobs in industry, rather than lawyers, programmers, musicians, and drug-dealers. There also needs to be tariffs and prohibition against countries that do not support population with the similar or better rights than those in the US & better EU countries. I'll explain that in details later.
When some guy comes along and says you need snake oil. He has a shill that tells you how good it was. You believe them and waste some money. That's getting suckered.
Same story, but instead of some guy, it's bank bigwigs, and instead of some shill, it's everyone you know and all the media you see. Same thing though. GPPP clearly didn't need his house and could not afford it, but got smooth talked into it anyway: suckered.
Suckers aren't blameless, just screwed out of money.