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How Technology Is Increasing the Number of Jobs We Have (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An article at The Guardian takes a look at the way in which we hold jobs as technology as changes. Its central thesis is this: "My father had one job in his life, I've had six in mine, my kids will have six at the same time." This may compress the generational changes a bit, but it's an interesting point; the average time people spend at one job has been trending downward for a long time. As technology enables the so-called "gig economy" (or "sharing economy," if you prefer), we're seeing many more people start to hold multiple jobs, working whichever one happens to give them something to do at a given time. Economist Jeremy Rifkin says, "This sharing economy is reestablishing the commons in a hi-tech landscape. Commons came about when people formed communities by taking the meager resources they had and sharing then to create more value. The method of regulation of these systems is also comparable. If people are trusted and vouched for they are accepted as part of the sharing economy group. If they behave badly they are excluded. Your social capital means everything in this new economy."
And at what point can we reevaluate this and say "six jobs at one time is not a job, it's being taken advantage of". If everyone is complicit in it then it's nothing but being taken advantage of by mob mentality.
I hardly find that reassuring.
I think you mean Increasing the Number of Jobs We Need
just to make ends meet etc
In which case vote for Bernie
At least thats what I've found in IT in the UK. Unless you're in management then you're generally ignored when it comes to above inflation pay rises (and sometimes ignored for WITH inflation rises). You may get a small end of year bonus but generally not unless you work in the financial arena and this IMO is why IT has such a high churn rate.
This trend has been driven quite awhile, and not by technology, but by pure greed.
People who are working six jobs at once are unlikely to feel secure about their financial and social position. The people I actually know in the "gig economy" are doing it out of some combination of insecurity and desperation. If this is really the future, look for extreme political instability in our country.
Forget for a moment that the sharing economy is based upon some very wrong assumptions about human nature - things that any parent can tell you are not a normal part of human nature, and focus upon the inspiration for this new economic model - Feudal Europe, the village commons, the Great Depression. Nothing in the article is hopeful or progressive - it's all been done before by desperate people trying very hard not to starve to death. How many jobs did people have during the Great Depression? Lots. They just lumped them all together and said "We did what we had to do to survive." This is just another rich asshole's version of "you are poor because you are lazy - now get another low paying job." This goes completely away if wages are required to be livable.
The concept of the Sharing economy is stupid at its core. This "panacea" is ignoring the basic human territoriality regarding property. Children have to be FORCED to share. They will throw a temper tantrum when required to share. Adults are little different. Smoother, less prone to emotional outbursts and more prone to murder than toddlers. The idea of a "sharing" economy is as dumb as any other Utopian vision that makes assumptions contrary to human nature. Every sharing economy is based upon an outside requirement - men with weapons making unarmed peasants work the land in the Feudal "Sharing Economy." Starvation in the Great Depression. Otherwise, people revert to their nature of territoriality over property.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
The summary states "The average time people spend at one job has been trending downward for a long time.
but the site that is linked to this statement http://www.marketwatch.com/sto... shows the opposite: it says the average time people spend at one job has been slowly trending upward, rising from 3.5 years in 1983 to 4.6 years in 2012, the last year for which figures are available.
The article linked seems to think that the upward trend is significant, but I think it's easily explained. Younger workers change jobs more frequently, and hence the length of time spent at a job increases as a worker gets older (according to the same site, "Over half of workers age 55 to 64 and those age 65 and over had 10 years or more of tenure in 2012, compared with fewer than 10% of workers in their 20s and 30s."). So that upward trend is just the demographic bulge (the "baby boomers") getting older. I expect that number to drop when more of the baby boomers retire, and the people who started working in the 2000s start making up more of the workers surveyed.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I for one welcome our robotic overlords who always have a very high social capital, are willing to work day and night for almost nothing and don't cost a penny when you shut down the power supply.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
One reason people have so many jobs is because some quit as soon as they have a bad day or applying for a job that is not suited for them. I have worked for 16 years, and have had 4 jobs, the first 2 were part time while going to school.
At my current employer, there was someone to applied and put on the resume that he had 17 jobs in the last 4 years. We wondered why he would put that on a resume and tossed it in the trash, no point in hiring someone who is going to quit after a few months.
I don't know who is pushing this "gig economy" meme, but it is probably the employment companies like Dice, who would LOVE to see lots of turnover. The average time people spend at a job is currently 4.6 years and is trending UP, not down. So just stop it, Dice.
Oppose gun control?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've seen several negative comments already on here, and instead of replying to each of them, I thought I'd just share my experience.
For some of us, this way of doing things "scratches itches".
I think I've always done this. If something interested me, I learned more about it, or I'd learn something because I had a need for it. Then I'd find out someone I knew needed something based on what I'd learned, and suddenly, I was making money doing it. In fact, this has helped me greatly in my life, because now I can be a stay at home dad and still work and do things I enjoy and that fulfill me. Currently, if you include being a dad, I have 4 "jobs". I'm about to add on a 5th on the advice of someone.
Each of these jobs is enjoyable for the most part in different ways. I still work a few hours for my old job, so I keep up those skills. I have a totally creative design job which I love because I get to be creative, and I usually end up teaching students as well. I have a coding job that allows me to use those logic and problem solving aspects of my brain. I have my horde of kids, which is fulfilling in numerous ways. And I have the new job, which is filling a niche not many realize or know about. It's small scale, but that works for me.
The key to all these things is prioritization and time management, and keeping your customers expectations reasonable. Yes, there are bad weeks when EVERYTHING hits at once and you have some really late nights. But this is a rarity if you are up front with your clients and explain the situation. A little honest communication goes a long way.
Now, admittedly, I'm not the best by any means at any of these jobs. But honestly, even if I spent every hour of every day at that job, I still wouldn't be the best. And I'm ok with that. I don't feel this desperate need to be the ultimate, because there will always be someone better than me. However, if I make the lives of others better, give a good service that they need for a good price, get to stretch myself while still managing my family, and get to learn new things constantly, where is the negative here?
I'm not saying this is for anyone. And to the person who feels that someone is being taken advantage of, seeing as you often choose how many jobs you have (people with more than 3 are usually by choice, not need, because those people would be working double jobs most often), so if you are being taken advantage of, it's only because you are taking advantage of yourself.
If you DO decide to do this:
A. Use a really good time tracking program (I use Time Recording for Android).
B. Know how to get your todo list organized (learn getting things done can be very helpful, and I use todoist to sync so wherever I have a revelation, I can dump it into my inbox).
C. Learn the value of honesty and integrity. Be straightforward with people. Honestly goes a long way, and if someone knows where they stand, often they will be more reasonable. And if you screw up, just admit it. Mistakes happen. Own it.
D. Know your worth. Know what is a reasonable amount to be making. Yes, we often make less than we think we are worth. But know what you are willing to accept.
E. Be reasonable with billing if you can. IE: you will likely work more hours than you get paid for (research, etc), either because you quoted a price and are held to it, or you know how much they are willing/able to pay, or whatever. But try baking that extra time into your price, or your expectation of self worth.
F. Accept you will not get along with every customer. Be really, really, really good to the ones you click with.
G. Word of mouth is still the best marketing for most small things. So, get good word of mouth.
H. Try to have a sense of humor and smile.
I. Know that life is short, and enjoy it. And don't expect work to be your self worth. That is where the danger lies. Use it to expand your world, but get your self worth from who you are, not what you do. And take breaks. I can take a month off if I schedule things right.
This will not apply to ev
>> If they behave badly they are excluded.
Except they aren't in today's society. For example, every time we try to "means test" welfare or food stamps or re-examine people fraudulently put on disability for life, there are a whole bunch of people who come out of the woodwork to whine about how unfair and mean all of us who pay the bills are.
Only a true socialist would refer to a simple policy question as a "loony raving".
Complete and utter bullshit. Uber, AirBNB, Taskrabbit, all complete bullshit. None of these are careers. None of these will be there for you 5 years down the line when your life has changed and you need stability. These idiots read "Snow Crash" and thought it was an ideal to strive for.
Technology may increase the number of jobs in the context of variety but it decreases the number of jobs in the context of volume.
And at what point can we reevaluate this and say "six jobs at one time is not a job, it's being taken advantage of".
It's not being taken advantage of. It's called being a freelancer. There is lots of work in the world that does not require being in a single place for 40+ hours each week. Just because it is different doesn't mean it is worse or that you are being taken advantage of. I've held as many as 3-4 "jobs" at a given time. It's normal if you are a freelancer.
I don't pretend to know what the future will look like but the one thing I'm certain of is that it won't look like today. The job market your parents had isn't the one you will have and the one your kids will have will be different still. Get used to it.
Call it multitasking or employment polygamy, but the "gig" economy doesn't necessarily mean people resigning from their jobs to apply for another. You could be jobless in the formal sense, or you could still have a "regular" job, but your "gigs" aren't meant to be stand-alone employment. You could use your gig to supplement your regular income, or chain together several gigs to earn what you would get from a nine-to-five job.
In this piece, the author invokes surrealism. Observe how the post appears to disagree with some opinion held by the parent post where no such opinion was actually articulated. Again, we see how the author reinterprets the common theme in this series, that of the powerlessness of the geek, by giving us a seeming non-sequitur.
The reader is thrown off balance and must scroll back up to confirm just which comment this piece responds to. The author has chosen the technique of engaging the political dichotomy completely out of context, and this piece boldly disregards the normal, realist discussion style common to Slashdot.
However, this work demonstrates an appreciation of absurdity. However, ultimately it fails to be a successful political troll. The author has pushed the bounds of surrealism in this piece, sacrificing an effective troll for the art itself.
--kurenai.tsubasa
The reason your dad (or grandfather) likely held the same job his entire life is because 50 years ago, employers were invested in, and took care of, their employees. My grandfather worked for GE his entire life (outside his time in WWII), and it wasn't because there weren't other jobs he could have gone to. They offered him a pension, which you just cannot find anymore. Today you get crappy health care, and if you're lucky a 3% pay raise every year, and if you are high enough on the ladder, a Christmas bonus that actually means anything. Employers just don't invest in employees like they used to.
It's all emotion and vitriolic exclamations with you dittoheads. What would you do differently from Adolf Hitler?
My son used to only work full time as an auto mechanic. He has a few ASE certs and his state inspection and emissions licenses. He was taking classes for HVAC at the same time. Now, he has a full time job doing residential and commercial HVAC work AND works part time and on demand as an auto mechanic at a shop. It works out great for him and both companies because they both have peaks and valleys. He also maintains the small fleet of HVAC work vehicles, either in their shop on the clock or at the auto shop on their clock depending on the type of work that needs to be done. Finding companies that would allow his arrangement is tricky.
The gig economy devalues the highly skilled labor of many professions. It drives earnings down and forces people to work much harder for much less money. There is nothing good about the gig economy for the rank and file. The websites listing the gigs make bank. It's a massive redistribution of wealth upward.
The thing is, unless you switch jobs, you are actually doing the same job. Why do you deserve more money simply for the fact that you have been doing the same thing longer than everybody else?
I realize that with people who do IT work such as programmers or system admins that there is an increased level of productivity you can get from those who have more knowledge of the code and/or systems that are dealt specifically at a single company, but after a point, you fail to actually provide more value than you did the previous year. Essentially, you plateau. Once you plateau, you probably aren't worth getting paid significantly more than you were before.
How long it takes to plateau is going to depend on the actual job you are doing. Something like a but driver, fast food worker, or assembly line worker, you might actually plateau quite quickly, whereas a job where having specific knowledge pertaining to where you work might take longer to reach a plateau. But you will reach a plateau.
The only way to actually be worth more is to move on to another job, either internally or externally. Most smart companies will allow you to move up within the company so that they can continue to use the knowledge you have about how the company works. Others will try to keep you in the same position for as long as possible so they don't have to retrain somebody else.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's about as legitimate as asking someone when they'll stop beating their wife.
The same holds true in the game dev industry too. Switching jobs roughly about every ~2 years is the most effective way to get a pay raise.
If companies want to stop complaining about lack of "retention" then they need to realize they are part of the problem with people gaming the system.
Granted, it's not in person, but I'm a fan of Bernie Sanders. As for what he would do differently from Chavez? Well, for one he wouldn't abolish the US Constitution. He would have to work with Congress and within the confines set by the Supreme Court just the same as any other presidential candidate will have to. If you're asking about his specific policy stances, you should probably go to his website for those.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The thing is, unless you switch jobs, you are actually doing the same job. Why do you deserve more money simply for the fact that you have been doing the same thing longer than everybody else?
Because the cost of living has gone up (inflation), so paying you the same absolute amount of money to do that job is actually paying you a lower value. Why do you think that someone who remains in a job is worth less than someone with zero experience?
I realize that with people who do IT work such as programmers or system admins that there is an increased level of productivity you can get from those who have more knowledge of the code and/or systems that are dealt specifically at a single company, but after a point, you fail to actually provide more value than you did the previous year. Essentially, you plateau.
But again - you don't provide less value, which is what not giving you a pay raise in line with inflation reflects.
The first part of this article makes sense. The concept of accepting a career job with one employer, who you stay with through retirement, is pretty much over. (If nothing else, I think most people realize that doing so is a non-optimal decision, even when it's technically possible to do it.) For example, I used to work for a small manufacturing company doing I.T. for them. Honestly, I think there was a good chance I could have opted to stay there until either I retired, or until the company shut down. But swirling around in all of that was the fact that the owner of the business was at retirement age himself, and the other business partners were rumored to not have enough money to pony up to buy him out. On more than one occasion, I saw prospective buyers touring the facility, even though nothing came of it. Given that PLUS the economic downturn where half the staff was laid off, and I was forced to take a pay cut for a while -- I thought the smart move was to go elsewhere.
I have no doubt THAT trend will continue. Businesses will become more "fluid" in the whole hiring/firing process, as they realize it's a way to stay more competitive and efficient. (There's really nothing efficient about hanging onto your staff for decades when many of them are burnt out and just doing the minimum to hang on until their retirement day comes and they can collect a pension. Meanwhile, if you nudge those people out and force them to job hunt again, it pushes them out of their "comfort zone" they were coasting by in. Maybe it's "tough love" in a sense, but they're quite likely to do more useful work that justifies what they're getting paid when they land the next job.) And employees tend not to want to BE those people either. Many will take a look in the mirror and realize they're not that fulfilled staying where they're at for so long, and will voluntarily seek out something more challenging or simply something different that "changes things up" a bit and keeps it fresh.
All that is a BIG leap from assuming it means the future involves working a half-dozen "micro jobs" at once! That might be ONE way to earn a living for people who want to go about it like that. Plenty of online sites enable it as a possibility. (Even simply combing the "odd jobs" section of Craigslist, one can regularly find projects that last anywhere from 1 day to a few weeks. Software developers can do the same on sites designed to pair up available coders with people seeking to pay certain amounts for certain projects.) That doesn't negate the fact that there's huge value in retaining a steady, long-term workforce.
As a freelancer you will likely be bidding on jobs with other freelancers from impoverished countries willing to "do the needful" for pennies. Welcome to Hell.
Only if you are an idiot with no marketable skills. You have to be a weapons grade idiot to seek work that can be outsourced so easily and where the only condition in the negotiation is price.
Between free market and free for all.
Capitalism only works if you have enough capital on your side.
Free market works until someone gets too big and starts throwing their weight around.
Free market works until someone with more capital comes along and dominates your market.
Capitalism/free market works until you get a lawmaker on your payroll. We passed that point a long time ago!
It has become politically correct to be politically correct, being politically correct has gotten so politically correct that anyone who is not politically correct is arrested, ignored, avoided, or scoffed at as a nutter.
Rick B.
Outside of the hipster lifestyle in San Francisco and other tech hotbeds, the "gig economy" isn't being celebrated as a major achievement in labor economics. It's a major disruptor, and not in a good way. Doing freelance style work is fine for artists, performers and younger people with no responsibilities other than themselves. Try stitching together a living on 6 jobs at a time while being a parent. Hot internet startups are getting all the tech press lately, and I am worried that engineered PR for things like Uber, Airbnb, Etsy and other "sharing economy" companies is going to permanently shift companies' perception on their workforces. I worry that they're going to take the media's Millenial caricatures that are held up as being the new way forward, and conclude that people don't want to work stable jobs anymore. As a short aside, I'm seeing this in workplaces also; HR people are panicking that the image of a Millenial they've seen in the media (social, job hopper, entitled, etc.) isn't going to want to work for their stuffy old company, so they're slavishly copying Google and turning their office spaces into all-inclusive preschools. Our stuffy old company is doing this now and it's very humorous to watch them try to act like they cater to a bunch of hipsters -- it's like a life insurance salesman trying to market to a bunch of extreme snowboarder dudes.
Unless society reorganizes itself totally around people having a variable income, the resulting instability of more and more jobs being automated, outsourced or part-time "gigs" is going to have a major effect on economies. 30-year mortgages were developed when people had one or maybe two jobs in their entire career. Same thing with car loans and credit card lending -- all of these assume a steady stream of income to pay current obligations as well as a progression of income over a career. If things get to a point where unemployment or underemployment wipes enough people out, things are going to get pretty hairy. No one is going to want to buy a house, a car, or anything at all if they don't think they can pay for it. People will be moving their whole families around the country every few years military-style and whatever sense of community people have now is going to disappear.
I sound like a relic, I know, but I do miss employer/employee loyalty. I'm fortunate to work for a good employer, but know many people who are willingly being taken advantage of by bad ones. I know that for companies to be loyal to their employees, there has to be some give on the employee side also, and a lot of people don't understand that. I've worked under people who have had 20 and 25 year stints at the same employer in the past. IBM was pretty famous for this, and although their corporate culture was weird and you had to make some sacrifices, if you worked hard they would make sure you were taken care of. Same with big companies like GE, defense contractors and others. I just hope companies realize that not everyone is a Milennial living in their Mom's basement or in an apartment with 6 other people. Some of us have real world/family responsibilities and aren't looking to hop jobs every 6 months for a 10% pay raise.
I think that if employees did show a little more loyalty (which is a huge ask in the current climate, I know) then companies would respond by training people properly, not firing them every time the stock goes down a few percent, etc. The problem is shifting the public perception away from the "entitled job hoppers" that the media loves to portray as normal.
The thing is, unless you switch jobs, you are actually doing the same job. Why do you deserve more money simply for the fact that you have been doing the same thing longer than everybody else?
I realize that with people who do IT work such as programmers or system admins that there is an increased level of productivity you can get from those who have more knowledge of the code and/or systems that are dealt specifically at a single company, but after a point, you fail to actually provide more value than you did the previous year. Essentially, you plateau. Once you plateau, you probably aren't worth getting paid significantly more than you were before.
How long it takes to plateau is going to depend on the actual job you are doing. Something like a but driver, fast food worker, or assembly line worker, you might actually plateau quite quickly, whereas a job where having specific knowledge pertaining to where you work might take longer to reach a plateau. But you will reach a plateau.
The only way to actually be worth more is to move on to another job, either internally or externally. Most smart companies will allow you to move up within the company so that they can continue to use the knowledge you have about how the company works. Others will try to keep you in the same position for as long as possible so they don't have to retrain somebody else.
While I agree with you in principal, you missed the point.
IT jobs are a supply and demand market. In my area the supply is low and the demand is high. As such I have worked at the company I am at for the last 2 years making 100k a year. Current companies looking for people with my skill set are offering 130k a year to start. That is a 30% raise for changing jobs, compared to the 0% raise I have gotten at my current job!
The value you are looking for is the market value of my skills compared to the value I bring to the company. My skill set is what I am selling in exchange for a pay check. If the value I bring to the company is not > the market value of my skills, then there is a good chance Ill move to another company who is offering more for my skill set. As such the company I was working for can search for a new person with my skill set, and pay them the market rate, or they can search for someone with a lower skill set and pay them the lower market rate.
By not providing raises at market value they are basically setting themselves up for a 2 to 3 year turnover. Where they get the added cost of training a new person and getting them up to speed in the environment.
It boils down to the simple question. Which costs more, giving me a raise at market value or bringing in a new employee at market value and adding the cost of retraining as well as the lost time for them to come up to speed?
This is the dumbest fucking question. You really can't find at least ONE if not a whole bunch of things different from Chavez from his speeches? Are you really that fucking retarded? Hang yourself.
Only an uneducated and uninformed neocon shitbag would not be able to answer this question about Sanders' policy plans after watching 5 minutes of his speeches or reading his platform notes.
Here you go, lazy fuck: http://www.ontheissues.org/Ber...
I worked more than 1 job before. IT SUCKS??!
When I was in college I worked two jobs, competed in Division 1 sports and got an engineering degree, all simultaneously. After grad school I started a consulting company and had multiple active clients at any given time. Right now I work a full time job, coach two youth sports teams during the winter and am very active on the board of a non-profit. My wife currently works as a MD at up to 3 different hospitals/labs in a given week. My mother worked a full time job, often a second part time job, got her college degree and put my sister and I through private school. Frankly the notion that it is impossible to do more than one job is absurd unless you take a job you physically cannot handle.
I never felt so humiliated and a slave and my body shutdown. My blood vessels were bursting at the soles of my feet and heels.
What the hell were you doing?
It means you have absolutely no security.
You can have plenty of job security as a freelancer just so long as you do something valuable. If what you are doing isn't very valuable then you won't have any job security no matter where you are working.
No benefits, no paid time off, etc. None of this is conducive to a proper work/life balance.
Welcome to being an entrepreneur. You want time off? You earn enough to take some time. You want work/life balance? You earn it. Sometimes getting there requires working pretty hard for a while. You talk about work/life balance as if it is something you are entitled to have rather than something you earn. There's nothing wrong with working for someone else but very few people can earn a substantial income without a lot of time, effort and risk.
This is fine when you are single and have a safety net to fall back on. But that doesn't work when hard times hit and you have no net and/or you have a family.
Working for a company won't protect you when hard times hit. In fact it tends to create a false sense of security. It's up to you to build a safety net. And having a family does not preclude starting a company or working for yourself. I've experienced all those things at various times.
Please, don't hate, you intolerant asshole.
Obviously, you've read it. Can you outline a few things, that he would not do — something, on which Chavez was, in his (and your) opinion, wrong?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
>Essentially, you plateau. Once you plateau, you probably aren't worth getting paid significantly more than you were before.
That's only if you believe there is a level where there is nothing left to learn. I don't believe that and I've been coding for 20+ years now.
Chavez was not particularly angi-gun. And he didn't abolish Venezuela's Constitution, he passed a new version (the 26th for the country).
Anything else?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
One would've thought, Hans Christian Andersen ultimately destroyed this rhetorical device two centuries ago. Are your parents so mean (or illiterate?), that you've never read the fable — nor had it read to you?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The supreme court abolished the Consitution long ago. The problem with the Constitution is that people are far too willing to accept illegal and unconstitutional laws/rulings if the result is an end they approve of rather than demanding the Constitution be obeyed and holding out for their goal to come about via an amendment or never. Amendments are hard, that was by design.
Our Constitutional government is long gone. The supreme has made many rulings that blatantly contradict what the document says. Congress passes laws every day that do the same. Not one person advocating gun control is actually trying to amend the second amendment to do so legally. Nor are those who want to deny the right to privacy (mostly for abortion) trying to amend the portion indicating that not all rights are enumerated in the Constitution. Those who want to support waterboarding aren't trying to amend the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Those who support publicly available criminal records and sex offender lists aren't doing so either.
We have such a twisted interpretation of the Constitution that nobody even questions the legitimacy of Congress enacting a war without a Congressional Declaration of War. When the Constitution explicitly spells out the process and requirements for a congressional vote to go to war it is blatantly unconstitutional for the congress or our government to go to war without following that process and meeting those requirements. The intent is so clear that the foremost legal expert in the country could stand in front of a group of random citizens and say otherwise and every one of them would know he was full of shit. The Constitution is written in plain if slightly dated English, not the legalize of today. Anyone can read and understand it.
Tell me that any judge would accept the same sort of dodgy justifications, workarounds, and artificial constructs that supreme court justices have accepted to get around the constitution from a poor private citizen with a trust document and a tax debt and I might reconsider. For some reason congress, the president, and our judges don't get charged with treason when they violate the Constitution. If our US Attorney isn't hard at work on this what is he/she doing? Oh right, prosecuting hundreds of thousands of cases wherein people have violated laws which are outside the Constitutional authority of the federal government in the first place.
The people had two checks against their representatives and the founders gave government no authority to override them. The people reserved force of arms and the final say in whether any man/woman/child could be imprisoned regardless of law or circumstance. Both of them are long since dust.
You can spend 5 minutes of your time and fucking read it.
The article defines the "commons" as sharing the meager resources available to the masses. But if we are one society, the commons are the property of the society as a whole. As technology increases productivity it also reduces the need for labor. So the wealth moves to the owners of the tech. Society can't survive unless there is a mechanism to re-distribute that wealth. It will happen by progressive taxation (like the 90% top marginal rate in the Eisenhower administration) or it will happen by revolution. I think everyone (including the rich) would prefer that it happen by taxation.
Our country does not exist to serve the theoretical construct of the "free market" (which of course is highly manipulated and not at all free). It exists to serve the people who live here.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
lol - From the group that compares every republican to hitler
So, in response to a polite question to outline the differences you've posted several curses-ridden and abusive responses, none of them outlining the differences.
Either the differences do not really exist (as I suspected) or you personally are unable to see any. I think, we are done here.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Essentially, you plateau. Once you plateau, you probably aren't worth getting paid significantly more than you were before.
If that were true, you wouldn't be able to leave for more pay since you'd already be making your market rate.
And will keep getting easier.
Manufacturing jobs are long gone. Think about how much easier it is to offshore IT jobs. No physical stuff to store, ship, inventory, etc. just zap files back and forth.
Most Americans have never met a real socialist before. Bernie Sanders isn't a real socialist. He wears the label to stand out from all the other liberals, and knows that conservative media will go foaming in the month over the label.
Why do you deserve more money simply for the fact that you have been doing the same thing longer than everybody else?
That doesn't apply to CEOs. I worked for a Fortune 500 company where the CEO laid off 10% of the workforce, got a 60% raise for a lousy fiscal year, and bought a new yacht to keep up with his peers.
I'm not doing your homework for you. He spent the time communicating his platform so you can go read it instead of posting your witty zingers about Venezuela.
I'm yet to hear about a politician, who is accepted by Socialists as a "real" one. Maybe, Che Guevara?..
But, in any case, I didn't ask, whether he is a "real Socialist" — nor whether Hugo Chavez was one. I'm inquiring, what, if anything, in the good Senator's opinion, has Chavez done wrong. Some policy initiative of his, that Sanders would never consider...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's only problem if you really are in a supply constrained market. If you are offered more money at the firm down the street, then they definitely should be paying you more. What I don't like is that it seems like a lot of people think they should get more money simply for being at a company longer, without actually taking on any additional responsibility or providing any additional value to the company.
You see a lot of places with unions ending up in this situation. People get raises (and big ones) based simply off years of seniority. Even though they may not actually be as good as the younger employees, they still get paid substantially more simply for the fact that they have been there for a long time.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist. So asking him about Chavez is entirely irrelevant.
Must we keep using the labels and stereotypes? I'm about to get triggered...
Several people responded in this sub-thread of mine, some of them — multiple times. And yet, not one was willing (or able?) to offer a single policy difference...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Did your feels get hurt?
And yet, not one was willing (or able?) to offer a single policy difference.
Probably because no one knows and/or cares about Chavez and/or his policies? You might have better luck in asking where Chavez is located on a world map. Oh, wait. This is America. You better not.
"...we're seeing many more people start to hold multiple jobs, working whichever one happens to give them something to do at a given time. "
I have yet to see where Food, Shelter, and Clothing are ever optional, unless one is dead; is that what you're proposing?
All the risks of being a business owner with none of the benefits.
Your commentary shows no understanding of this.
That's decidedly not true about Senator Sanders' followers. Whether he is a real Socialist or not, plenty of people, who fancy themselves as such follow him. And Chavez was the world's number one Socialist just a few years ago. Indeed, he was once a special guest of the World Social Forum.
So, no, you aren't going to succeed playing "Chavez who?". You yourself have now replied thrice in this thread, and yet can not point at a single thing, Sanders would do differently from Chavez... Figures...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And this is the rub...those who have wealth to invest will do well in economies where the workers need access to the resources that wealth can buy. For instance, at the very minimum, the wealthy purchase real estate and then charge rent according to the market. So by tightening up lending practices, this means that real properties that would normally be purchased by first time buyers are instead being purchased by long term investors and leased to those potential first time buyers because they don't qualify for the mortgage, but still need a place to live. This becomes an even nastier double whammy, because as more people are forced into the leasing market, demand for lease properties pushes rent higher, though the real prices stay low because the number of investors with cash is limited. In the end, this leaves the wealthy even wealthier, and the poor sods who are renting with nothing to show for paying month after month.
The investment structures in this economy favor those who have wealth (obviously) but do not offer better mechanisms to build wealth. In fact, those products that are advertised to "build wealth" are more often likely designed to separate you from your money. The best way to build wealth is the old way...invest wisely in long term, stable mechanisms and build up wealth slowly over time, or gamble in risky investments and hope you don't lose your shirt. Either way, in the end, plan for someone else making more money off your labor that you do.
Sadly I think the West is fcuked. Its equalization with the developing world. The owners of Capital will remain wealthy as ever but the population will equalize globally and currently that means a long way down for Westerners.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
And this loony brought to you by George Soros.
You yourself have now replied thrice in this thread, and yet can not point at a single thing, Sanders would do differently from Chavez... Figures...
I very much doubt Bernie Sanders will re-write the U.S. Constitution to keep himself in power indefinitely. As his age, he'll probably keel over a month into office like President William Harrison.
great comment. I would add that another benefit of being "longterm" in a company is that you can also start to think longterm. for example, planning large (or even being part of) projects that take years to build and that see impact for much longer. there is some satisfaction in knowing you helped play a part to build something big and useful. of course, it goes without saying that as an employee one always has to think about themselves and not be taken advantage of, but what i'm saying is that it is not all bad. related: the longer you are at a company, if you are good performer, people start to trust you and your opinion on important matters. it doesn't matter what your position is in the food chain.
Typically for every one of those jobs that was created, at least 2 jobs (probably in another field) had to be destroyed otherwise they wouldn't have made that job.
And the jobs replaced typically paid better collectively than the new job created. Which still doesn't address the point that you shouldn't need to do that many jobs to survive and if you are, than you are getting taken advantage of, even if you enjoy doing it, you are taken advantage of and you effectively screwed others out of a living in the process as you lowered the collective job pool which is already lower than those who need work as is.
What needs to happen is they need to do that automation to reduce the labor required and then adjust the wages and hours required to ensure that the people still have the ability to survive and the benefit of all those increases in productivity are spread around. The overall hours required to work SHOULD be trending downwards for the average person while the hourly pay should be trending upwards to keep their overall pay at a minimum of where it is. Instead we have more and more people out of work while we have the remaining ones with more and more work piled on top of them with no real corresponding increase in wages anymore to compensate for it.
The average worker I see nowadays either is working multiple jobs because the jobs dodge paying benefits or they are working a salaried job working 48 hours or Walmart where they have them salaried at 48 hours per week but unofficially require them to be there 52 hours per week if they want to keep their jobs.
So, in response to a polite question to outline the differences you've posted several curses-ridden and abusive responses, none of them outlining the differences.
Either the differences do not really exist (as I suspected) or you personally are unable to see any.
That is shitty logic of the highest order. And you did ask a stupid, loaded question. What would your preferred candidate do differently than Hitler? See how stupid that is?
What similarities do you see between their policy positions?
Your a temp. Gig makes it sound hip and cool, which is why the ass hats that are screwing you out of a stable life use that term. You'll never win as long as you let then control the terms you use.
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We are just going back to the way things were before the industrial revolution drug everyone in from the country to work in factories.
My grandfather worked three jobs. His father worked at least six, and his father probably worked a million. We were all "freelancers" and "gig workers" in the past.
Just think of all this as a slow death of the oligarchy. You just need to stop letting intermediaries, like Uber, squeeze in as middlemen, taking a cut of YOUR money. The internet was supposed to bring The Great Disintermediation. This is Slashdot for Crissakes! Disintermediate already!
how about you die in a gutter when you're bankrupted by medical bills?
Why has no-one objected to this bullshit? "Taking the meager resources they had and sharing then to create more value" is the Marxist/proletariat dream so why don't more towns build this dream? Because contractors/freelancers don't share their labour, they sell it to someone else, thus losing all control and rights to it. Everyone on slashdot should know how that affects intellectual property: There is no sharing, there is a massive bun-fight with the corporations changing the rules (meaning laws) to earn perpetual profit, better known as rent-seeking. This is a way for corporations to buy everything from a town, at a discount and leave it worthless.
That would be wonderful if we got paid like CEOs: Get $30 million to grow the company 4% but when the company growth is 2%, either blame someone else, do something dishonest (but probably legal), or take the money and change to a job earning $10 million growing another company at 2%. There is no failure for the modern CEO.
Selling social capital is just another way to enforce individual bargaining on the labour market. At the moment, a fixed amount of labour is worth a fixed amount of money for a large swathe of the labour market. That disappears when employees are not measured in hours but in popularity, obedience and conformity. As 'Malcolm in the middle' noted, you can never save your reputation, only destroy someone else's. When your reputation is your salary, wage control and wage-fixing becomes sinister indeed. Such things will happen because corporations must limit costs.
Corporations must limit costs, so on-demand employees are the perfect solution but it has 2 problems. Employees must be trained: Corporations have successfully avoided most of these costs for a decade now, making it difficult to get new staff, thus forcing someone else (namely the taxpayer) to pay for training before the job appears, a situation which creates much waste. Employee costs are permanent: An employee can't stop living because he's no longer valued, so unwanted employees must be killed (see "Logan's run"), or prevented from consuming goods like food or phone service. No country enforces these policies, which creates massive waste as the taxpayer must pay the cost of protecting devalued people.
Regulation of the community by whom? In the labour market, the community doing the policing will be the corporations which already do some policing by not giving jobs to ex-convicts, checking work history, stealing employee's facebook accounts, using polygraph and drug testing, and employing HR personnel. Given the leverage corporations have, they will increase the level of policing will increase exponentially and set the price of all social capital held by their employees.
Stop talking nonsense.
You can have plenty of job security as a freelancer just so long as you do something valuable.
There are literally thousands of workers in your country, and millions abroad, who can perform the job. As an employer, I can assure you that in today's labor market, your "value" is only equal to the hassle it'd take to fire and replace you.
You want work/life balance? You earn it.
At a minimum wage of $15 / hour, there is literally no way for many people to earn a work/life balance. I pay my freelancers better than that, but I don't have to. There are literally thousands of workers ready to replace them.
It's up to you to build a safety net.
I don't know about you, but I was only able to found my company (after I married and had children) with a significant amount of money from both my family and outside investors. It's a modest business built on a foundation of generations of hard work on the part of many different individuals, available to me through the accident of birth. It's one hell of a safety net most people don't have.
And crime will probably increase together with the insecurity and "no fixed abode" lifestyle.
640 jobs oughta be enough for anyone
Table-ized A.I.
A freelancer is hardly a true entrepreneur. A freelancer is effectively an employee without benefits.
A distinction without a difference. A freelancer is merely a form of consultant and they definitely are entrepreneurs. They are selling their time and expertise. A freelancer IS an entrepreneur whether or not they acknowledge this fact. Your notion that freelancers are somehow something fundamentally different somehow simply isn't true. In fact if a freelancer doesn't think of themselves as a small business owner and entrepreneur then they are probably going to do very poorly financially. You think entrepreneurs enjoy benefits? Ha!
Freelancers are capped by the market rates for staff plus the cost of providing them benefits.
That's true for any business, particularly consulting businesses.
This is quite different than truly being an entrepreneur making the value of what he is producing.
See that's where you are wrong. The freelancer IS producing something (services) and they are getting the market value of what they are producing. Per your own argument freelancers get the market rates for the services they provide. I run a manufacturing company in my day job. Do you think I can charge whatever the heck I want? Doesn't work that way. When I sell engineering services (and I do) I can charge market rates for that. There is NO difference.
The comment has been made before that the better analogy is to a tossed salad (or salad bowl), rather than a melting pot, as the ingredients tend to maintain their individuality, rather than becoming homogenized. A lot of it is bland lettuce, but one also has everything from olives to jalapeños to spice things up a bit. (Extra credit for identifying a good analogy for the salad dressing.)
I just through up over my keyboard.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Does curating cat videos for my girlfriends vines account in exchange for oral sex count as a job?
Essentially, you plateau. Once you plateau, you probably aren't worth getting paid significantly more than you were before.
If that were true, you wouldn't be able to leave for more pay since you'd already be making your market rate.
it's quite stupid. it costs a lot to hire somebody, starting with the search and ending with the learning curve; and yet they pay new hires more than the old guard most of the time, and stiff the current employees which inspires them to move elsewhere instead of paying them a bit more, to avoid the higher costs required to replace them.
you don't suppose HR departments aren't performing their jobs optimally, do you? naaah. invisible hand of the market and all that.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
That's only problem if you really are in a supply constrained market. If you are offered more money at the firm down the street, then they definitely should be paying you more. What I don't like is that it seems like a lot of people think they should get more money simply for being at a company longer, without actually taking on any additional responsibility or providing any additional value to the company.
You see a lot of places with unions ending up in this situation. People get raises (and big ones) based simply off years of seniority. Even though they may not actually be as good as the younger employees, they still get paid substantially more simply for the fact that they have been there for a long time.
actually a lot of recent labor news has been about the unions trying to get rid of this kind of practice; the two tiered system, where the grandfathered members of the workforce get to keep their higher salaries and rates of pay increase, but everybody hired recently gets a lower starting pay and a lower rate of increase. http://www.ueunion.org/stwd_tw... http://portside.org/2015-08-04... http://www.corporatecampaign.o... http://www.nomoretiers.org/two...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The thing is, unless you switch jobs, you are actually doing the same job. Why do you deserve more money simply for the fact that you have been doing the same thing longer than everybody else?
Because the cost of living has gone up (inflation), so paying you the same absolute amount of money to do that job is actually paying you a lower value. Why do you think that someone who remains in a job is worth less than someone with zero experience?
I realize that with people who do IT work such as programmers or system admins that there is an increased level of productivity you can get from those who have more knowledge of the code and/or systems that are dealt specifically at a single company, but after a point, you fail to actually provide more value than you did the previous year. Essentially, you plateau.
But again - you don't provide less value, which is what not giving you a pay raise in line with inflation reflects.
Oh, after you've been there a while, you probably are worth less; because you've seen enough to management's idiocy to not be motivated to participate fully in the self-deluding self-aggrandizing posturing so vital to their financial compensation, yet so destructive to the function of the organization. And worse yet, the newbies all catch that attitude from you.
At least thats what I've found in IT in the UK. Unless you're in management then you're generally ignored when it comes to above inflation pay rises (and sometimes ignored for WITH inflation rises). You may get a small end of year bonus but generally not unless you work in the financial arena and this IMO is why IT has such a high churn rate.
Raises for IT folks and other actual workers at the cutting face? Haha, funny. might as well give raises to the machinery.
I heard, that Senator Sanders has fans, but never encountered one in person. A burning question I have for him — and his — is, what exactly would he do differently from Presidente Chavez, should he gain the same office in this country as the late paratrooper held in Venezuela?
Off-topic? Hardly...
Probably not going to complain about "the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" dominating the world as Chavez did.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Actually I blame accounting. Failure to account for the added value of current employees and the costs associated when they leave is what drives these sub-optimal decisions.
Honestly I don't know what policies that Chavez advocated or enacted. I know who he is, but I don't know what he's done. I also know of some of the policy stances of Sanders and find them agreeable. Saying that anyone who supports Sanders needs to know *everything* Chavez has done is a bit unreasonable as Chavez hasn't really affected the day to day of an average American. An argument can be made that policy X supported by Sanders has caused issue Y when enacted by Chavez, but expecting an average person who agrees or support Sanders to even know the situation in Venezuela is a bit silly. (Why should I know about Venezuela more than say France or Sweden or South Africa? How do you pick which countries to fully follow and understand? There's a bunch of them out there. Feel free to give reasoning on why you feel that as a Sanders supporter I should be inherently interested in Venezuela.) It's requesting justification without providing a problem or requiring far more work from the person you are arguing against than yourself. If you want to parallel Chavez and Sanders you need to draw the parallels yourself and have people agree or disagree and discuss those parallels. Doing the opposite, demanding that the opposition draw the parallels for you, is lazy and a bit of a pretentious ass hole move that shows you aren't really interested in actually having an honest debate.
Probably. And he may even be nicer to Israel than Chavez was and than his own core constituency are. But that's not something, that has much bearing on economic and other internal policies... And it is those policies — not the anti-Semitism and not the anti-Israel denunciations — that stalled Venezuela's economy (even while oil was still expensive), destroyed its infrastructure, and quintupled the murder rate and other violent crime.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think that if employees did show a little more loyalty (which is a huge ask in the current climate, I know) then companies would respond by training people properly, not firing them every time the stock goes down a few percent, etc.
I can tell you from direct, repeat experience that what you think bears no resemblance to reality.
This goes completely away if wages are required to be livable.
If you can simply dictate that wages shall be livable, why stop there? Why not require wages to be extraordinary? If a $15 minimum wage is good, isn't a $40 minimum wage better? Isn't a $200-per-hour minimum wage far better?
Now back to reality. People who earn more than the minimum wage do so, by definition, not because a law requires their employer to pay them that much, but because there is significant demand for the kind of labor they provide. That significant level of demand arose organically, because the economy grew. A minimum wage can be dictated by fiat, but demand for labor at that wage can never be dictated by fiat. So additional economic growth is the only thing that will organically create additional across-the-board increases in wages.
Why is it important to have "organic," across-the-board increases in wages?
Working-age people fall into four groups:
(1) The tens of millions who have no job at all, because to employ them at the current minimum wage would be to the net detriment of any employer.
(2) Those currently earning minimum wage, who would lose their job and fall into group (1) if the minimum wage were increased.
(3) Those currently earning minimum wage, who would retain their job if the minimum wage were increased. This is the only group that would benefit from increasing the minimum wage.
(4) Those currently earning more than minimum wage. These folks tend to receive a marginal after-tax wage cut when the minimum wage is increased, because the funds expended on increasing wages for group (3) -- and on increasing public assistance for group (2) -- have to come from somewhere!
All things being equal, raising the minimum wage causes economic contraction, which in turn reduces the overall demand for labor. Certainly a move in the wrong direction.
By its effects on groups (3) and (4), raising the minimum wage also reduces income inequality (for those who still have a job). But that matters only to sheep who believe that "income inequality," the buzzphrase-of-the-left du jour, is a problem. I can prove that income inequality is not a problem.
Consider World A, where everyone has exactly the same tiny income. Everyone is malnourished, living in tiny dilapidated shacks, and wearing tattered rags. But hey, this world has zero income inequality!
And also World B, where the poorest person -- who, being disabled, live solely on the charitable contributions of others -- can afford to own two new cars, dine on excellent food, and live in a 5000 sq. ft. house. At the same time, the richest person has an income five orders of magnitude higher than the poorest person; thus, this world "suffers" from enormous income inequality.
Any sane person would choose to live in World B over World A -- proving that income inequality is not the problem. Poverty is the problem.
A New York Times reporter recently published observations about how the nature of poverty in Mississippi has changed. 50 years ago, the poor had no shoes and hunger was rampant. Today, they wear Nikes, and their #1 heath problem is obesity. Thus, we have already made enormous strides toward eliminating poverty, and the credit goes to organic economic growth, not minimum wage hikes. If we had the patience to pursue a few more decades of organic economic growth, we would arrive in World B. Instead, it looks like the voters will eat our seed corn, party hearty, and opt for short-term illusions like minimum wage hikes and more exponential growth of the national debt, which can only move us closer to World A.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I figure a solution could be to move from a 7.5/8 hour day to a shorter day with the same pay and continue down this path to match the employment opportunities and pay.
So you want to work less while keeping the same paycheck. How? Nobody is going to do that just because of "moving" to shorter day. You'll earn less and that's all.
IT jobs are wholesale shipped off shore. Your children will never see a job in the U.S. in I.T. Time to move to another country if you want your children to see any future in IT.
That does not work when the number of positions is not at least equal or greater than the number of job seekers.
All the common goods and products people use are already provided by large multinationals automizing and seeking new options to get rid off people.
Furthermore these multinationals seek subsidies to no end. Taxpayers are left holding the bag when all profits go into overseas treasure chests.
Never to be seen again in the local economy in a human lifetime at least.
Furthermore due to economies of scale the individuel has no realistic way to compete or even start and earn back their investment.
It's how a market rolls.
Things don't always scale in favor of people willing to do work.
Same impression I have got.
Due to less supply of jobs people are getting desperate.
American companies will hire outsourced help for these new jobs, because they can get away with paying them less. The current rate in India is, 2.3 million people apply for every 368 job openings. So they'll be headed here, and be happy making $5 and hour. Already, when American companies want their products made, they send them to be manufactured in other countries, like China, very inexpensively... and those people are happy to get the work for a buck an hour (plus, no requirement to provide them with medical insurance). We're doomed by greed.