Sunday, November 27, 2011

surplus labor and the inevitability of the cull...,

NYTimes | AMERICA, like other modern countries, has always had some surplus workers — people ready to work but jobless for extended periods because the “job creators,” private and public, have been unable or unwilling to create sufficient jobs. When the number of surplus workers rose sharply, the country also had ways of reducing it.

However, the current jobless recovery, and the concurrent failure to create enough new jobs, is breeding a new and growing surplus pool. And some in this pool are in danger of becoming superfluous, likely never to work again.

The currently jobless and the so-called discouraged workers, who have given up looking for work, total about 15 percent of the work force, not including the invisible discouraged workers the government cannot even find to count.

In the old days — before Social Security, welfare and Medicaid — poverty-caused illnesses killed off or incapacitated some of the people who could not find jobs. Even earlier, some nations sold their surplus workers as slaves, while the European countries could send them to the colonies.

In addition, wars were once labor-intensive enterprises that absorbed the surplus temporarily, and sufficient numbers of those serving in the infantry and on warships were killed or seriously enough injured so that they could not add to the peacetime labor surplus.

The old ways of reducing surplus labor are, however, disappearing. Decades of medical and public health advances, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, have reduced the number of poverty-related deaths. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have left many more service members injured than killed.

Over the past quarter-century, one very costly way of decreasing the surplus has been the imprisonment of people, mostly dark-skinned men, for actual and invented offenses. Felons are not often hired when they leave prison. Many, at least those who do not become recidivists, become surplus and then superfluous labor. As incarceration becomes less affordable for financially strapped states, inmates will reach surplus or superfluous status at a younger age.

Meanwhile, new ways of increasing surplus labor have appeared. One is the continued outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries; the other is the continuing computerization and mechanization of manufacturing and of services not requiring hands-on human contact. Continuing increases in worker productivity add yet more to the surplus. So does the unwillingness of employers to even consider hiring people who have been unemployed for a long time.

When the jobless recovery ends and the economy is restored to good health, today’s surplus will be reduced. New technology and the products and services that accompany it will create new jobs. But unless the economy itself changes, eventually many of these innovations may be turned over to machines or the jobs may be sent to lower-wage economies.

In fact, if modern capitalism continues to eliminate as many jobs as it creates — or more jobs than it creates — future recoveries will not only add to the amount of surplus labor but will turn a growing proportion of workers into superfluous ones. Fist tap Nana.

12 comments:

nanakwame said...

Taught - Always keep on eye on production rates, and quality of the product. America's is still off the hook. There are additional factors that are measured in the count, b/c of global.  We are not good with constructive leisure time, and fast addictive toys.

umbrarchist said...

The technology of the 20th century changed production.  The psychology of the 19th century kept people from using that technology in a truly efficient manner.  Some people would rather use the technology to play economic power games than use it to liberate people.

Where is the 3-day work week?  NO!  Make more useless variations in stupidly designed junk to play status games with each other.  My smartphone is better than yours.

CNu said...

Some people would rather use the technology to play economic power games than use it to liberate people.

lol, "some people" look so sweet tending to and caring for their supper http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/terminal01/2009/4/28/12/pig-looks-like-sheep-22761-1240937747-17.jpg

umbrarchist said...

How do people evaluate the quality of products they do not understand?  Oh no, back to the education problem.

umbrarchist said...

YUK!

CNu said...

education problem is a bit of an oversimplification I'm afraid. this is an all-encompassing question of culture, plain and simple. what I have heretofore termed "dopamine hegemony" at the micro and machinic levels of expression - I believe I will henceforward refer to at the macro and collective levels - politically at least - as a "politics of comfort". 

these humans understand everything that they want to, need to, and are willing to make efforts to understand. these humans are - by-and-large - powerfully averse to making anything more than the bare minimum necessary levels of effort. realization of that fact is how farmer brown (the Top) has gotten so far ahead, and, why farmer brown has no moral or ethical qualms whatsoever about implementation of the cull.

Uglyblackjohn said...

But Umbra, what would most people DO with four days off from their jobs?
Garden?  Read? Volunteer? Learn a new skill?
Nope, most would get another job so that they could buy more stuff they don't need and that they really don't even want.

umbrarchist said...

So you mean our problems won't go away until we destroy the psychology of consumer culture.

They were given the wrong books in grade school so we have adults with heads full of nonsense.

Ultima Thule by Mack Reynolds
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30334/30334-h/30334-h.html

Dale Asberry said...

Destroying consumer culture will never happen due to human cognitive errors that result in dopamine hegemony. Since you are likely a neuroatypical, those particular errors hold no sway over you. Reading different books will not solve the issues for them just like telling an obese person to eat less doesn't work.

CNu said...

Livestock/prey is best taken and most easily savored plump, comfortable, and snoozing...,

Dale Asberry said...

lulz

umbrarchist said...

But were they obese when they were 5 years old?  What were they reading at seven?  When I was selecting my own material at 9 years old I had no concept of what those ideas were doing to my brain.  I would be thinking about stuff from those books long after I finished reading them, so they have more of an effect on a young brain than one might expect.

The reading would not have nearly the effect on people over 20 years old, their brains are probably already misprogrammed.  That is what television is for.  There wasn't nearly as much TV stuff when I was a kid.

So I do find it really curious that we don't have a reading list for grade school kids.  Or that there are lots of reading lists with nearly random junk.  And then we want to talk about STEM education for high school students.  ROFL

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