2024 is only a decade away -- are you a gimme, or a dim?

[R. Star]

E-DUB wrote:

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According to today's statistics, there are 2.3 job seekers for every new job. Mathematics trumps ideology.

Quick, let's tax business owners even more! Then they can hire less people, lay off more people or even close down! That will create new jobs!

[Sindatur]

E-DUB wrote:

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According to today's statistics, there are 2.3 job seekers for every new job. Mathematics trumps ideology.

Sounds like pretty damned good odds to me, just barely under a 50% chance of getting each job you apply for. I can't imagine that is an "All Time high" or anything. I seem to remember some 4:1 ratios in Mid 2011

[robau]

R. Star wrote:

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Quick, let's tax business owners even more! Then they can hire less people, lay off more people or even close down! That will create new jobs!

They will be taxed to fund the government itself hiring everyone.

[E-DUB]

My point, which some seem intent on missing is that somebody is still gonna be left standing when the music stops.

[USS Einstein]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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We're coming up on 2024. Sanctuaries in every city are just around the corner, anybody who doesn't have money and is in desperate need is about to be herded into a walled off district.

So what side are you on? Are you a gimme, a dim, or are you a privileged person with a good job, thinking all the gimmes and dims belong there?

We already have mass unemployment now

[Melakon]

I've been on permanent disability for the last 10 years, and there's no known cure for the condition, so I guess I'm a gimme headed for the death camps. But I pay all my expenses (including non-subsidized rent) from a single monthly check, and don't qualify for food stamps.

[Edit_XYZ]

R. Star wrote:

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Quick, let's tax business owners even more! Then they can hire less people, lay off more people or even close down! That will create new jobs!

Do you actually have any argument relating to this discussion that's not a straw-man, rhetorical non-sense, or that wasn't contradicted by economic history (recent and ancient)?

If so, you have yet to post it.

[Sci]

So, I popped my head in out of curiosity.

Saw some privileged folks who have no idea what they are talking about insinuating that anyone who needs help is probably poor by choice, and justifying this nonsense with personal anecdotes instead of actual statistics.

Noted to my amusement that their attitudes towards the poor resemble the ideological justifications for the abuses hurled at the unemployed, homeless, and mentally ill in the Sanctuary Districts in DSN's "Past Tense."

Interesting side-note: The details are of course wrong, but "Past Tense" seems to have gotten a lot of the broad strokes of the early 21st Century right. Unstable economy, increased economic inequality, the criminalization of poverty...

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge

ETA:

Also, iguana_tonante for Prime Minister of United Earth!

[Leroy]

R. Star wrote:

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Quick, let's tax business owners even more! Then they can hire less people, lay off more people or even close down! That will create new jobs!

I don't get it the post mentioned that a lot of more people will be looking for and applying for jobs, nothing about taxation.

Sci wrote:

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Saw some privileged folks who have no idea what they are talking about insinuating that anyone who needs help is probably poor by choice, and justifying this nonsense with personal anecdotes instead of actual statistics.

Noted to my amusement that their attitudes towards the poor resemble the ideological justifications for the abuses hurled at the unemployed, homeless, and mentally ill in the Sanctuary Districts in DSN's "Past Tense."

How do we know they are privileged? Some people making those arguments admit to living in substandard conditions for a time. Another thing that a lot of people fail to realize is that there is just not enough jobs to go around, it's not that people are lazy and refuse to work is that work is just plain unavailable.

Working fast food and other jobs that maybe "beneath" certain people is also not a very good option as those places have also hired to capacity and only have enough positions and hours to go around not to mention the lower pay would not be enough to support a family on. But I guess that's just my "entitlement complex" talking.

[E-DUB]

What people have a hard time wrapping their heads around is that with computerization, automation, and various other factors viewed as “improvements in productivity”, whole classes of jobs have been rendered obsolete. To put it simply, in non-economist terms, we don’t need as many folks to keep the wheels turning as we used to. But the rub is that even though those folk aren’t needed as producers, with the slim margins that many businesses operate at, they’re still needed as consumers. Now some of those folks could eke out a marginal existence as low-level “entrepreneurs”, but how many cleaning ladies and pet-sitters do we need? In olden days, the surplus labor force was simply allowed to starve, but we, as a society, have decided that’s not who we are.

Don’t forget that Milton Friedman, the dean of conservative economist, was once asked: “What do we do with poor people?” His reply: “Give them money”.