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Hostess Saves Twinkies By Automating, Fires 94% Of Their Workforce (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Where Twinkie once employed 22,000 workers in more than 40 bakeries, their workforce is now down to just 1,170, reports the Washington Post, relying mostly on robotic arms and other forms of automation. "This 500-person plant produces more than 1 million Twinkies a day, 400 million a year. That's 80% of Hostess' total output -- output that under the old regime required 14 plants and 9,000 employees."
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
"We like to think of ourselves as a billion-dollar startup," Hostess chief executive Bill Toler said Tuesday, announcing that Hostess Brands, which had twice filed for bankruptcy, now plans to become a publicly-listed company valued at $2.3 billion.
bloody 'ell mate they taste like cardboard now.
You can still *eat* Twinkies better than us. KILL ALL HUMANS. Bender 2016.
They are all walking my neighborhood playing Pokenmon Go. Every freaking one of them.
But really, 22,000 humans making Twinkies and Ding Dongs is a major waste of humanity. I could justify having like 13,500 making Snowballs, cuzz those rocked.
I get really strange results in 2016 when I Google twinkie, snowball, ding dong, and cupcake. Mom!!!!!
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
that's what led to bankruptcy and buyout.
They didn't fire everyone because of automation. They fired everyone because the business was grossly inefficient and bankrupt, and it happened over several years. They automated because it was the only way to compete in their market and survive as a company.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
Before Hostess filed for bankruptcy, WSJ reported the delivery of Twinkies alone was controlled by two unions. Their work rules stated: "Drivers can't help with unloading, and products like Wonder Bread and Twinkies are not allowed to ride on the same truck." As a result, a one-man job has to be split into two or more. Now the new Hostess apparently doesn't have this trouble.
The moral is, if you realize you are a dinosaur, evolve now! Otherwise, extinction is guaranteed. Labor unions are so 19 century.
Thanks for the info, i will now boycott all hostess products. Twinkies suck anyways lol haven't eaten one in 20 years.
Go ahead and eat one of those still left in your pantry, 1996 was a good year for twinkies.
You do realise that the computer you're using is mostly made via automated processes, don't you? Are you going to boycott that as well?
If you're going to boycott everything that's made by a machine you're going to find yourself living in a cave and reverting to a hunter scavenger state.
Automation poses a lot of challenges for our society, but employing people just to give them something to do is not the answer. Personally I think we should reduce the standard working week by one hour per year until we reach a 20 hour standard week. That would allow society to adapt to the changes progressively over the period of a couple of decades while ensuring there are enough jobs for those who have been left unemployed due to automation.
Yep, it's better to have 22,000 laid off because they went out of business than it is to have 1,170 employed directly at Hostess, and others indirectly employed at the robot manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, shipping companies, distributors, packaging suppliers, insurance companies, and all the other entities that support a running business.
I never liked regular Twinkies they were just not good to me, but Chocodiles as they were marketed or chocolate Twinkies as they are now labeled rock. Come to think of it I am going to have one now. MMMmmmm
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
What's passed along is the cost of supporting the thousands of unemployed.
The old company went belly up, so those jobs were gone anyway. This is a new company and new hires, so nobody is "passing along" anything.
Even if that weren't the case and this had been accomplished by restructuring the old company, that's still good. Productivity gains are achieved by getting the same or more output using fewer resources.
While the Automation kick is an interesting angle, lets not forget what actually killed Hostess -- vulture capitalists. These are Mitt Romney style assholes who swooped in, loaded the company up with debt, then pawned it off after leeching all the money out. Somehow though, it's not embezzlement when an investment company does it.
But it gets worse. The unions that took the blame? They were having their workers give upwards of a THIRD of their paychecks just to try and save the company they helped build. And that just caused the vultures to trade the company around more and more.
So yeah, the automation is interesting, but lets not forget what brought us to this point. Vultures bought the company, embezzeled a shitload by loading on bad debt and pawning the company of as well as flat out stealing from the pension fund, and passing the buck to the next leech until they couldn't pass it any further. And now instead of having good quality Wonder Bread and tasty, if not exactly healthy, sweets like the Twinkie, we get mass produced automated crap.
The local Hostess bakery re-branded as a Franz, and the quality is really good. They also have a direct-from-the-baker storefront that you can go in and get bread at a huge discount. Oh, and they're union and pay their workers a good wage -- around $17 an hour starting.
As I said the last time this came up, no American should EVER support Union Busting. Hostess is dead to me, and besides You can clone a twinkie pretty easily, which lets you do stuff like a fresh baked chocolate twinkie with cherry filling.
I'm sure they will fold up overnight due to your boycott.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You realize hostess was owned pretty much entirely by democrats, right?
There'll be a new sub-niche: Vintage Twinkies. Magazines will recommend years to get and which soda to eat them with. New fashionable eateries will pop up with a Twinkie list instead of wine: "Do you have the '96?" "Sorry, sir, we've run out, however I recommend the '01" "How about the '92?" "I'll need a credit card before I can serve you that"
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
It scares me that people with your level of understanding of economics vote for candidates that regulate the economy.
You realize hostess was owned pretty much entirely by democrats, right?
And eaten pretty much entirely by republicans.
When everything is automated, who will be able to afford Twinkies, or Big Macs, or any of this "cheap" food that low income wage earners currently purchase?
"How they’d do it? Cherry–picking top assets, modernizing manufacturing and distribution, doubling the shelf life of products...."
How did they manage to double the shelf life? Double the preservatives? Double to toxins?
Agreed. Automation is great, but if the product suffers, what is the point? I have wound up just going to local bakeries for their specials. Their pastries may not survive a direct nuclear hit like Twinkies or Peeps and emerge intact, but they are likely a lot better for you, and taste a lot better to boot.
I told my 7 year old nephew that he couldn't have anything sharper than a twinkie after he dropped something. He said "What's a twinkie?" which is way funnier I think.
The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
What would you prefer? Force the company to rehire 22000 people for 5 minutes before it goes bankrupt again? Force then to raise the price of Twinkees to $10 each so they can make money with 22000 workers? Force us all to buy these $10 Twinkees? Subsidize the company so they can afford to sell Twinkees at a huge loss?
Please let us know what the best choice is.
Just in case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That is more-or-less what happened. Yet we still hear much complaining and few real answers from so many people.
Thanks. I'll make sure and never EVER purchase one of their products.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
Oh brother, there's a bakery right down the street from me that sells the most amazing donuts, but they're pretty much sold out by about 9:30am (when they switch over to bread and sandwiches and stuff). One of their donuts is about the same price as a Twinkie, tastes like a kiss from a goddess, and it won't cause you to grow a third nipple, Fallout 4 -style. And, I can actually look at the person who's baking the donuts and have a high degree of confidence that she's getting a reasonable portion of the money I just spent on a donut and coffee. And, there's no plastic wrapping that has to be thrown away when it's over, I just have to lick my fingers and that takes care of the packaging in an environmentally friendly and tasty way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Nonsense, haven't you heard? Automation makes new jobs! Don't be a luddite! Look, Hostess is hiring people left and-"
*aide interrupts to whisper briefly* "Oh, 'firing'?"
You realize that your citation has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, right? Waving your hands and shouting "fallacy!" does not actually mean you automatically win every argument, despite what you may have learned on reddit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>"The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards."
I don't think the actual numbers are 18 fold. It is far more complicated than that. But in any case, say it was a 9 fold increase overall.... the reason the company failed is they priced themselves out of the market. They couldn't afford to operate [the way they were] on what they were able to charge for what they marketed. Now, apparently they can. That is a good thing. And they can now afford to charge less to stimulate demand and re-establish a market. So that is lost revenue. Plus there is a great risk, they NEED to make a lot more money to pay for all the new machinery and setup. They can build reserves, invest in themselves, and spend on researching and creating new products to be diversified so they can continue to survive in the long term.
Simple capitalism.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with them making lots more profit than before. That should be the goal of ALL companies. If a competitor comes along (which should happen if there is enough demand in an elastic market), it will force the prices down.
I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned.
Of course not. Productivity gains don't stay concentrated in one company, they are spread through society. Overall, American productivity has improved by a factor of 20 since the late 1800s. So has the average worker seen their standard of living improved by that much? Yes, mostly they have. Improvements in productivity not only improve living standards, they are the ONLY thing that improves living standards.
If you really feel otherwise, then you can go live in a country that has not seen productivity improvements. Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, and Afghanistan are good choices. None of those have greedy rich people suppressing the workers by investing in capital to make them more productive.
Not only do they have a worse product, they decided to put nearly all the workforce on welfare (which means that Apollo's just paying from a separate bucket).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The company had other choices than sabotage.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
U6 combined with the labor participation rate shows a very different, but more real picture.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
So it's society's responsibility when it's a matter of deference to business friendliness, but it's the fault of individual when they can't second-guess the desires of employers?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
People are rational in not doing negative/uncertain return activities. Offer something more than blind faith and most will learn.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Staggered hiring such that the entirety are brought back in a reasonable time - while reducing the effects of a bump?
They managed to get along with those 22,000 for quite a long time. Nothing says they couldn't survive by hiring them.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I think a good question is where do the increased profits go? If it goes to a lower cost product maybe it will create new jobs by freeing up more consumer money. If it goes to executives, it wont.
Another piece of advice, want this sugary stuff without supporting these big corps? Go to a locally run bakery and buy their pastries, if you still have them. They probably sell healthy products too perhaps.
... what's the point about Twinkies?
Who eats these? (That's an honest question!)
Maybe some native USian can explain? ... Mind you, we eat some strange and heavy sweet stuff here in Germany - and those in the Link are seriously borderline and sugary enough to put an elephant into a diabetic coma (think super-soft fluffy marshmallow fluff covered with chocolate) - but I really don't get this Twinkies thing. The cake is basically air barely held together by something remotely resembly french bisquite dough and the filling looks, feels and tastes like something scratched from the bottom of a septic tank.
Once again: Why are Twinkies a thing in the US? Please explain.
Thanks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Save your energy and put it behind a guaranteed income movement in your province or country. No point it people working in factories if robots can do it. Have you ever worked in a factory? it sucks ass!
-
Perhaps you should try an actual answer instead of bromides.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Tagged Insightful? Really? I'm gobsmacked. I'm trying to come up with a way of accurately describing the idea to " reduce the standard working week by one hour per year until we reach a 20 hour standard week." without being insulting, and I'm not sure there is one. This is a HORRIBLE idea. It is built on the flawed fundamental assumption that there are a fixed number of jobs. Look to history for a simple rebuttal. Global population has gone from 3 - 7.4 billion since 1960 and employment % is roughly the same. In the US 180 -320 million population while unemployment has stayed between 4-10% Technology has been eliminating some jobs while creating more new ones since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Reducing the work week to 20 hours is impractical. If you can't get almost everyone on earth to abide by 20 then the system fails. There are a lot of countries; a lot of global true poor; and a lot of people who enjoy work. Reducing the work week to 20 hours is immoral. The only way you can hope to achieve this, even within your own country, is by force. No one has the moral authority to tell someone else how many hours they can work. Reducing the work week to 20 hours is counter productive. By doing so you basically reduce the productivity of the affected region by half compared to 40 hr. weeks. This includes production of food, machinery, housing, and also things like scientific and medical discoveries, art, education, entertainment... everything. .
macroeconomically it doesnt have to create new jobs. It can literally leave no jobs left to do, so any freed up consumer money basically just has no where to go. IF the jobs do not increase proportionally to demand, its true, i mean, if 0 jobs are being created by demand, its technically possible to have really no need for humans. As well, if consumers decide they have enough things, they will just stop buying so even money freed up by automation just wont be spent.
Let's say this Twinkie represents the output of the factory prior to automation. According to our data, after automation it would be a Twinkie 35 feet long weighing approximately 600 pounds.
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
+1 funny. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is why we need people to start seriously considering a universal base income.
So don't buy the product. No one is force feeding you Twinkies.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Hey!
I only boycott things I will never buy anyway... makes it a lot easier. currently on the list:
Ferrari
Tofurky
Islands with an active volcano.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
You can't say that for certain. Running machines requires skilled labor to maintain and program them. Pulling trays out of an oven all day doesn't. Programming and maintenance skills have a higher value, not to mention that the employee generates more revenue per hour than the manual laborer.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
You do realize that's attacking a straw man with an irrelevant comparison? Unless you can point to the U.S. factory that was ran by HP, Dell, Apple etc etc that had employed tens of thousands of people, only to fire most of them to drive up "shareholder revenue", of course.
Another benefit not mentioned:
Now there are less humans stuck in a mundane dehumanizing job. Their Quality of Life will improve as they look for a more fulfilling job.
Its too bad the recipe was lost in the shuffle, the stuff has tasted nasty since the last hand over.
Automaton is great, but if you produce crap, does it really matter?
People act like robots just shoving them in their mouths without really tasting them, so no, it doesn't really matter.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The more profit = more employees - trickle down effect doesn't really hold much argument in this example, eh?
you don't just "update your skills". Odds are you had a very minimal education. Enough to get you the factory job. That was kinda the point of schools. You do realize what the bells are for, right? Go read "A People's History of the United States" for a start.
Now there's nothing to retrain to. Seriously, you're not going to take someone that barely reads and turn them into a biotech worker. You're either going to let them starve to death or you're going to socialize. It's up to guys like you to decide. The guys who still say "It's their fault they didn't update their skills". Guys like me already know it's unreasonable to ask people in their 40s to do that.
Oh, and does anyone else thing it's funny that we're suppose to replace the drudgery of unending factory work with a never ending cycle of desperately retraining for new work?
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is owned by those same very, very rich people and they're pushing an anti-Union narrative so they can drive down wages. That's really all there is to it. What Fox News with a critical mind and it's scary as hell.
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it was intentionally run into the ground so that they could get out of paying pensions. It was just a bunch of rich assclowns running a scam to steal private pensions. Truckers are next. They'd do it to the army guys if they were afraid they might revolt.
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hostess has been dogshit for years. if it really was unions (as opposed to simple consumer preference or mismanagement or whatever) that killed it temporarily, then great. if it's resurrected by robotics, that's also great, but for other reasons.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
They wouldn't have this problem if the baker's union didn't decide to be dickholes back in 2012. The management wasn't bluffing; there was a big consumer craze at the time for weight loss so their sales tanked. Other pastry makers ran into similar problems but they didn't have a union making unreasonable demands that they had no choice but to follow. (Krispy Kreme had to close a lot of their restaurants, Dunkin Donuts has turned more into a coffee shop than a donut shop.)
Remember, the teamster's union saw what was going on with the market in general and chose to accept the terms offered by the management, which was a wise decision because, remember, if you price yourself out of the market, then you won't be in it anymore. But the baker's union leadership really didn't give a fuck about the jobs of their employees, and Frank Hurt, a very rich union boss (with one of those "Cadillac" health insurance plans that Obama granted special exemptions to just because he wanted to favor unions) effectively spun it as "it's all the management's fault" while he could go home still having a job while the people he supposedly represents lost theirs, all because he refused to budge in light of an obviously changing consumer mindset, and the management doesn't have the ability to change that.
People just don't buy twinkies and donuts like they did in the 90's, and it's not likely they ever will again because now people have a lot more access to information than they once did, which means they're going to make different decisions than they once did as well.
people are probably looking at the second derivative of "productivity improvements" with respect to time, not the overall historical gains. they're selfish that way, i guess. at any rate, it doesn't look particularly rosy. i wonder if slashdot's opinion about how the wonders of productivity improvement will change once the programmers are the ones being replaced.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
If any company manages to reduce their workforce by 94% in one swoop and still manage to produce, I'd say the real problem all along was corporate mismanagement. Perhaps the bankruptcy was due to too many management bonuses, poor quality, and failure to market properly.
Also, it's entirely possible that they do need that many workers, and the company has merely shifted its focus on short-term profits. They may be celebrating now, but what if things go sour in 6-12 months because they don't keep up with machine maintenance and cleaning? What if the move to automation causes quality to tank [even more]? What if the market changes and they need to produce a new product, but the machines can't be retooled in a way they need?
I doubt you have enough information to determine that bumping the price of a Twinkie to $10 is the only alternative. Sounds like the usual corporate scare tactics to me.
Read TFA. Hostess went out-of-business. There were zero employees. The buyers of the brand have a new business, and there are over a thousand employees.
It is best that governments and capitalist pigs be scared of the people. If it scares you that people do not embrace giving them a free ride, give some thought to why you feel that way.
Ok, but you didn't say which solution you were in favor of. Do you want the company to be forced to rehire all 22000 people or not?
So by your own admission the problem wasn't unions but good old American pride and stupidity.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
There, I said it.
Get your dogma outta my yard!
Does anybody other than a very stupid strawman of your own construction advocate for forcing a company to rehire all 22000 people?
These so called "vulture capitalists" usually tend to get involved only when a business is ALREADY FAILING and will cease to exist without some kind of non-traditional cash infusion. In exchange for providing the funding for the company to continue to exist (and taking on significant risk of losing much of their investment), they understandably want to get some kind of return, and they want the business to streamline operations and, if possible, become profitable. Sure, some are probably cooked, but quite frankly, people like Bain may have even done more good than bad overall if you actually take the time to look at things on the larger scale and in perspective.
The former Hostess had become an unsustainable business, period. Yes, this was the result of gross mismanagement over the years, but how can you not mis-manage a company with thousands of essentially unskilled workers demanding insanely above-market salaries and going on strike if they don't keep them? They were far more than 30% above market salaries and had very inefficient operations, so the products were too expensive and couldn't compete with Little Debbie, etc, especially in light of many people purchasing more "healthy" snack foods and less pure junk food.
While not quite as bad, you're really starting to edge closer to sounding like the equivalent of "Those awful emergency room doctors KILLED the patient, look how many of the people they treat end up dying!!! Something must be done to stop them!"
Gros Michel banana did not go extinct it just had the same problem as the Cavendish has now, I blame the world wide monoculture for bananas.
That's a distinction that exists largely on paper. Aside from the purged parts, new title, new owners, and worse product, it is the same essential company.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You can really taste the automation!
This story is nothing more than the natural progression of something that started in the early 20th century. We used to have people who held the title of 'machinist'. Now we have machines called 'CNC's which perform the same job to a better precision and produce identical parts. Being a machinist was an art form. Since the invention of 'machine tools' we have slowly moved away from the art to a repeatable process. Eventually factories will employ no one, or essentially no one. Stock will be dropped off and finished product will be picked up without ever encountering a human being. No lights, no breaks, no vacations, no unions, no variance. Perhaps a team of maintenance workers, but there would be no reason to house them at a single plant. This is the future of manufacturing.
Similarly we are automating the office. I am old enough to remember six-part forms and hallways filled with file cabinets. Now the same information can be housed on a single drive. I remember call centers which employed thousands of agents. Now there is a computer program which can get you through at least the front few interactions. As we continue along this line of reasoning, there are a number of jobs which will fall into oblivion just as the machinist has. The basic premise is if the human being is following a script, or a decision tree, or a detailed process; I don't need a human being for that. Humans are needed for exceptions, not wrote processing.
There is of course an impact to this move towards automation. We don't need unskilled workers who can absorb the necessary training through OJT. This then eliminates the need for a vast number of now middle class workers. They move into the poverty class and the societal divide widens. Not everything intended for good is limited to positive consequences.
If you are a factory worker now, how do you ensure employability? Learn how to repair robots.
If you are a low level office employee now what do you do? Learn how to automate your own processes.
For something a little closer to my own profession, if you are a Route/Switch engineer (Networking IT professional) what should you prepare for? Learn how to program. You job is nearly obviated now. It's called 'Software Defined Networking'. The days of troubleshooting OSPF/EIGRP are nearly at a close.
Automation is the natural outflow of specialization and advancement. As you work towards making your job more repeatable and predictive, you work towards ending your employment.
Cutting costs is called technical progress. It's why 30% of the median family's income went to food in 1950 (with 12.2% of America's labor force being farmers) and 11% goes to food today (with under 2% of America's labor force being farmers). The difference goes to suppliers (fertilizer, pesticides, machines, fuel, irrigation, seeds); farmers aim for a 20% profit margin, but typically make under 10%, as do their suppliers.
So we've gone from 12.2%+17.8% to 2%+9%, minus ~10% profits: the chemical industry and the machine industry have eliminated around half of their labor requirements per unit, while farmers have eliminated over 85%.
Up until the 1960s, the labor-force participation rate was between 58% and 60%; we're running in a labor-force bubble right now, with 4.9% (5.6%) unemployment, with 19% of the proportional jobs eliminated compared to an era where less of our population was working. How do you suppose we lost jobs but got more jobs?
Transitional unemployment is a real thing. The cost of producing goes down as you eliminate wages from the equation: 1/3 as many people means 1/3 the cost, and a bigger profit margin is made even as consumers only pay 1/3 the price. Prices don't rise as quickly as inflation (it's logically and mathematically impossible for prices to rise as quickly as inflation), and the remaining money can buy new goods. These new goods require new labor: even if everyone just bought twice as many Twinkies, we'd need *another* Twinkie factory, staffed with another 500 people, and supported by the energy, machine, steel, and transportation industry to keep those machines up and running; plus the logistics, transportation, and retail to decide which Wal-Mart to send those Twinkies to, move them there, and sell them to consumers. If you buy different goods (e.g. better healthcare, more video games, bigger TVs), the same applies.
This even works with globalization. As we've moved manufacture jobs and other such out to China and Mexico, costs have come down. Everything made in China is backed by logistics, shipping, and retail here, and those loads are fixed: each truck carries the same amount of goods, and more goods means more trucks; and retail centers close down when they don't sell product (Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, K-Mart). If we shut down all our trade with China and brought manufacture back to America--all of it; the nuclear option--minimum-wage factory workers would nearly triple the actual manufacture cost of things like clothing, books, kitchen wares, the like. With the consumer base not actually having more money (because it comes from spending the money the consumers have; money does not trickle down and isn't created by employment), the number of goods bought shrinks. That means less to ship and less to sell, meaning literally more than 65% of truckers and retail workers lose their jobs; it'd be in the range of 15-40 million American jobs net lost.
Thanks to continuously creating transitional unemployment through technical progress, our population has expanded; it cannot sustain with earlier, less-efficient means. On the other hand, the reduction in cost has created new jobs through increased consumer buying power (demand-side economics); and the reduction in the costs of goods such as food, clothing, soap, and school supplies has made it easier for poorer families to afford basic needs goods.
Yes, it sucks to be the Child of Omelas; this is why we have welfare systems: for the lower- and middle-class to become more wealthy and for our nation to become stronger, for new technology to become affordable instead of costing $6,000 for a TV and $9,000 for a cell phone, and for us to increase access to health care and education and *food*, technical progress must occur, and that means somebody's job goes away. The new jobs can take months or years to come back around; we carry these people in the mean time, and the new jobs eventually come because the wealth of reduced cost is passed along to the consumer.
If this wasn't true, there would be no jobs anymore.
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The consumer pays wages. If it takes 100 hours at $10/hr to make a product and that product has a 10% profit margin, then you pay $1,100 for that product; if it takes 50 hours at $10/hr and that product makes a 20% profit margin, then you pay $600. What do you do with the extra $500?
With prices coming down like that, you don't *need* as much income to live at the same standard-of-living. Part of this difference goes upwards, creating the growing income gap; the other part stays with the consumer. This is why we $4,000 cell phones in 1983 (over $9,000 in today's dollars) with $250/month service to make 2 hours of phone calls each week (over $550 today) have given way to $350 smart phones with $60/month service providing unlimited voice and text plus a few gigabytes of high-speed data. It's why food, housing, and clothing got cheaper in the past few decades--and continue to get cheaper, aside from a localized fluctuation in house prices due to falling mortgage rates and bad lending practices.
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It sucks to be in the path of progress; that's why we have welfare. Unemployment is transitional, and it sucks to lose your job and wonder if you're going to spend 5 months or 5 years trying to find a new one; at the same time, unemployment tends to stay in the 4%-8% range, and 5% unemployment means either you or someone else is that guy wondering about where you're getting your next paycheck.
The difference is whether you stay in your comfortable seat and we all stay as poor as we are, or you get moved out of your comfortable seat and the other 95% of society enjoys growing wealth. The middle-class get to buy more toys (e.g. computers, cell phones, the things that made your programming job worth $144k/year in the first place); the poor get to eat more frequently, and maybe get access to medical care; you get to look for a new job, and a highly-wealthy society can supply better welfare to keep you from ending up as a beggar on the street with no job and no food while you do that. Probably less-good for you than not losing your job, but a lot better for everyone else at that moment, and better for *everyone* over time.
You would be wearing a loincloth and hunting in the wilderness right now, probably ill, with no healthcare and the constant uncertainty of where your next meal is coming from, if we didn't progress in this way. Your comfortable life today is built on the cycle of technical unemployment.
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That's a ridiculous argument. I make hard economic arguments about technical progress and the growth of wealth in society all the time; I don't say ludicrous shit like "these people are now unemployed and uncertain, so their lives are better because they can find a new job!" The reduction in employment reduces wages paid out by reducing human labor time involved in each unit of product, and that leaves more money in consumer hands as prices fall; that money will buy new things, dictating what new jobs exist--many of which will be mindless, mundane tasks that are just hard to automate.
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rofl
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
At last i have the balls to stand up for something i believe. Whats funny is getting down-voted as a troll for my opinion.
Jack of all trades,master of none
yes i have worked in a factory some of the best people ive ever meet in my life.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Or, as I stated, consumer tastes changed. The teamsters union acknowledged that, so why didn't the baker's union acknowledge the same?
While I feel sorry for the workers who lost their jobs, there was no way they could continue to operate at their previous costs. There is a side of me that is relieved to know that I can still buy a box of twinkies to enjoy with one of my favorite Zombie movies.
Too much of my childhood was spent with twinkies and it was depressing to think that future generations would be denied that opportunity.
You know, an obviously communistic idea in your sig line completely negates any validity your argument might have had. Better yourself to stay in place, better your ability to better yourself to get ahead. Do the same thing as you always did, and you are passed by.
I'm surprised, are you? I'm surprised...
This is a larger issue which requires a larger discussion, but essentially as we continually automate, eventually a point will be reached where most people aren't needed for work. It's fine and dandy to say "well, just educate yourself!", but not everyone is smart enough to do that. And you need to deal with those people.
Because, left unchecked, if we end up with a lot of poor unemployed middle intelligence people with not enough food, bad things will happen.
Also, if we end up with social distribution fixing the food part, but still have lots of people unemployed with too much time on their hands, bad things will happen.
I have no solution for this, but I can certainly see it coming.
Housing has gotten pricier, not cheaper. My parents bought their home in 1963 for 20K. Current market value, $450K. Inflation doesn't begin to cover that. And that's STANDARD for the area--suburb in California.
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/...
Are those Twinkies, et al, really edible?! Surely the gov could outlaw them for kids, as a step to curb the obesity epidemic in the USA.
Now they may even get cheaper!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The Citizen's Dividend is a capitalist solution and relies on facilitating a profit motive for markets to provide service while reducing state services and decision-making processes. I've analyzed the markets, determined that they are capable of providing an excess of modern welfare goals for less than the cost of welfare, and thus produced a plan which ensures the profit motive is there; the market will figure out how to make it affordable--I've checked, and it already has.
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I'm more scared of anyone using the term "capitalist pig". I thought that went out with Rumble Seats.
The average single-family house in 1950 was 983sqft, and the average household spent 28% of their income on it; in 2003, it was 2,300sqft, and the average household spent 33% of their income on it. Roughly half of that expense is the actual rent or mortgage.
Housing prices do not equate to housing cost. The same $120,000 house in a 14% interest rate market is a $350,000 house in a 4.25% market. That is to say: it's a $1,085/month 30-year mortgage. I'm working off what people actually spent per square foot of living space.
Even so, house prices did increase marginally in the past decade and a half. Falling interest rates don't just adjust the price of housing; people were conned into this idea that low interest rates mean a buyer's market, and the willingness to spend a greater proportion of the household income on the same amount of housing increased.
In case you're wondering, here is a chart for the United States median household spending shares. These represent the proportion of income spent on each good, with housing and utilities represented per 1,000 square feet of living space.
Rent-seeking behavior in an area doesn't reflect the national trend, and also isn't sustainable. We also have concepts such as gentrification (we throw all the poor people over there, and bring all the rich people over here, and then jack up all our prices for the same shit).
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and I was sad that I had done so. I don't know if it's my aging taste buds, or if it's changes in the product, but man that sucked.
Sadly, since my last Twinkie was probably 20 years ago, I REALLY don't know if it's me or them. I suspect it's mostly them, though.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
For instance, a waiter or a cashier. Those are pathetically low skilled jobs, but that makes up millions of people careers.
Please. Go do that. and be friendly and create an environment that makes people say " I like that place and will be coming back, they're so nice". It's a social skill job if done right. I bet you'd have a hard time with it.
They won't replace everyone, just maybe 100 million of you or so.
Fallacy: You write that as if it's beneath you to be one of the replaced. Here's a hint: You're probably one of them too.
I don't know. That's why I'm asking what people think is the right thing.
the optimal solution would be to pay people to make them, and have robots consume them.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Fair enough. I'm not sure if I've ever met anyone who would advocate that and I've met some utter fruitcakes that like to pretend they are Trokski's ideological lovechild. They would still not go that far.
The U-3 number doesn't account for such realities like:
* Lowered labor participation rates
* Amount done by citizens vs. non-citizens
* Regional differences
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That link really says nothing.
Never mind that the new company went all out against these people, contracts be damned.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That doesn't relate to the snarky comment, much less the hate expressed by the new company.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Nothing says that I've forced that or used anything of that bent.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yeah, because the people causing the company to go bankrupt is the company's fault...clearly they should have just paid more and made negative income, that would have solved everything.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You're relying on the assumption that such rehiring is done by force. I suggest a potential means for such rehiring that has a lowered impact on the company.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.