Limits to the Useful Workforce

[Plecostomus]

No one needs two snowcats, three ATVs, a motorcycle, TV and entertainment system in every room, sports car as graduation present for each of the five children and two SUVs parked in the driveway. That's not a "living wage" that's far far FAR in excess.

What did your parents do? O.O

My father is a nuclear engineer in a highly specialized area of plant operations, mainly that of service life extension, he has helped oversee the refurbishment of several plants. My mother before she went nuts worked as quality control inspector in an optical company long long before "optics" and "photonics" became the "next big thing." My stepfather is also an nuclear engineer, and he deals with refueling operations so he travels plant to plant as a consultant.

Grandparents on my mother's side worked in electronics, grandfather was an automation engineer at Zenith, and my Grandmother worked for a radio company. On my father's side, Grandfather worked was into the plastics and rubber industry as a moldmaker/process expert and Grandmother worked in a bag factory as line operator. Various uncles, aunts and other relations worked as machinists, technicians, and inspectors at factories around the New England region.

All said my siblings and I were raised in style thanks to the fact that both parents and grandparents were making at the lowest $50K a year. Once the Nuclear Industry underwent it's big change in 1988 my father and step-father both started bringing in six digits a year and they still do. Dad has 10 years until retirement and my stepfather has fifteen or so.

Take for example Aunt Verna (Grandmother's sister). She ran a lathe at an aerospace company, she made just over a thousand a week, she had full healthcare and a months worth of time off every year thanks to the union. She lost her job because said aerospace company couldn't compete thanks to the huge number of retirees it had to pay pensions to.... that was 1985.

Uncle Fred lost his shipyard job when the shipyard in Rhode Island closed down... High labor costs thanks to the union.

Uncle Tom on Dad's side of the family lost his job six months from retirement when the chemical plant he was working at was gobbled up by Dow Chemical back in 1986, they deemed him "redundent" and laid him off without any sort of package or benifit.

Uncle Norman on Mom's side of the family lost his job when Thermos discovered it could make its products in China for a fraction of what it cost to pay the workers in Taftville Conn. way back.

What I'm getting at is we as a nation are pricing ourselves out of the market. We cannot compete when our closest competitor is paying a skilled worker a quarter of what we pay same skilled worker.

Thanks to pricing ourselves out of the market, there is very little left for skilled tradesworkers like myself to do. Sure there are a few bright spots here and there as something flares up, and becomes the next big thing... but shortly therafter it leaves for overseas because it's cheaper.

 

[Ward Fowler]

The 40-hour work week is an artificial construct, wrested from factory owners by unions. It's not written in stone, and I'd submit it's been obsolete for a long time.

The idea that most white-collar workers have to be chained to a desk in a cubicle in order to get the job done is also obsolete. Many, many white-collar jobs can be done via telecommute, but too many managers still believe they have to stand over their employees in order to get the job done.

Flex-time, job sharing and onsite childcare would increase productivity, but most corporations are too hidebound to venture into these things.

People should be paid for the work they do, not the time they put in. That way lies progress.

You're right about all of that. However the problem is that if your employer sees that you can do your job from home, he may get ideas about outsourcing or offshoring it. Also, flex-time and job sharing may mean that a person has to accept a cut in pay. However, I agree that a person should be paid for the job, not the time they put in. Heck, my wife is in upper-management and she's paid that way. Only thing is, it's to her detriment.

By the way, I'm a big fan. Strangers From the Sky is one of my favorite Trek novels.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I'm glad my topic has stirred up some interesting conversation. I enjoyed catching up on the posts from the rest of you.

Another possibility is that the "useful workers" are asked to cut back on their work in order to provide useful work for others.

Ah. The Jetsons future, rather than the Star Trek one.

Decreasing the hours that an individual with proper training can focus on a particular task below a certain level decreases efficiency and effacy. I'm not sure what the minimum level you'd want to go to is (6 hours? 4?) and I suspect the correct answer would vary from job to job, anyway. My point is, though, that you could only carry that so far before it would be "clock in, clock out" with no real time to accomplish anything in between. And the population just keeps on expanding. (Unless it doesn't, as in my options 2 and 3 - but those don't seem to me to be the desirable outcomes. )

Part of the solution may be a guaranteed minimum income for everyone in the United States. It has been suggested before.

Interesting. I've heard of the government providing housing, food, etc, directly, but this one is sorta new to me. A socialist method of propping up a sort of almost-capitalism. It has some inefficiency built in, but I can also see some compensating benefits - like keeping complete control over the populace's essential needs out of the government's hands, and providing a degree of competition for products, thus promoting product improvements.

No one needs two snowcats, three ATVs, a motorcycle, TV and entertainment system in every room, sports car as graduation present for each of the five children and two SUVs parked in the driveway. That's not a "living wage" that's far far FAR in excess.

I've joked with people recently that this recession hasn't had much effect on me - I hear people bemoaning the loss in their 401Ks, and I've never had one.

I'm married, with a 15 year old son and an 11 year old daughter, and the most I've ever made has been the $35,000/yr I'm making now. Most of that time was spent making between $20,000-25,000/yr. Neither my wife or I had much at all when we got married, so we aren't living off trusts or anything like that. We live extraordinarily well. We'd be in a bad way if anything happened to topple our apple cart, but we've been pretty lucky, and sometimes in weird ways. I got pnuemonia in 2005 and ended up with $40,000 in hospital bills - which were written off entirely by the hospital's charity group, since I was laid off from my job at the time!

I'd be happy as a mushroom in shit with guarenteed heathcare, a steady job that doesn't evaporate three months and affordable housing. I *want* ^ all that extra stuff but I *can* live without it. Hell all I really need to amuse myself is some books and a laptop.

Ditto. Clean, simple living makes up for a lot. I've never made much money, but I've never paid for cigarettes, alcohol, expensive vacations, or put myself deep in credit card or other debt like a lot of my generation has.

I feel this may be one of the benefits our economic rivals have over us. Between the things their religions regard as virtues, and the simple lives they've been used to living until their recent upturns, they are a lot better suited to accept that "the best things in life are free" than Americans and Western Europeans are.

This firstly assumes that there is a finite amount of capital in the world and there isn't - there's only as much capital as there is willingness to create it since most countries these days use fiat money.

I've been concerned for a while now that fiat money is a mistake. As long as their is faith in it and the government that backs it, it works very well. But if the wrong factors come together - like, say, 2 uphill wars, an unpopular administration in government, and foxes running the henhouses in the banking industry - and it all too easily becomes Monopoly money.

I believe all governments, if capitalism remains dominant, should ultimately move to money backed by their annual productivity level.

As long as the majority of society BELIEVES their work is useful, there will be no wide-scale disturbance.

Our current situation will not help that perception. When you are still doing the same job you've been doing, more or less, and your company is failing, and you are getting farther from "the American dream", it has to make you wonder what real value the job you are doing has.

That's why national governments are desperately attempting to bail out the financial sector. It threatens international stability in a way the collapse of other industries simply does not, because the free movement of capital is intrinsic to how we live our lives.

This reads to me as both true, and as a damning conviction of how we live our lives. It is inherently wrong to me that an industry that, if you get real about it, deals entirely in imaginary concepts, has more weight and influence on how we live than, say, the farming industry, which feeds us.

I think the most we can hope for is eventually being represented by people in government who might have a bit of conscience and throw us down a few more crumbs to get by on.

We can do a little better than that. We can get people who at least were once like the rest of us to run things. The two main places that I have worked for have been like a contrast study between a man who built his business from scratch, and one who is the third generation to have his handed to him. I wish sometimes I still worked for the former, even though I made less money there.

I believe Barack Obama to be such a man. He came from us, even if he is fairly wealthy now. Maybe that's good enough. We'll see.

My father is a nuclear engineer in a highly specialized area of plant operations

Me, too! Or at least, he was, until he retired due to mental stress at age 40, back in '89. The experience of being a nuke brat did strange things to my mindset - I'm a liberal who is pro-military and pro-nuclear power.

 

[USS Triumphant]

However the problem is that if your employer sees that you can do your job from home, he may get ideas about outsourcing or offshoring it.

Too true, and we've had quite enough of that done, already.

By the way, I'm a big fan. Strangers From the Sky is one of my favorite Trek novels.

...the hell? Are you saying this is M.W.B.?

I have eight big bookcases full of books, and more books in the attic and in the storage room. But Strangers From The Sky is one of the few that gets to live on the bookshelf in my headboard.

 

[Plecostomus]

...the hell? Are you saying this is M.W.B.?

I have eight big bookcases full of books, and more books in the attic and in the storage room. But Strangers From The Sky is one of the few that gets to live on the bookshelf in my headboard.

Rumor has it she posts here under this name or one just like it. On the off chance she is THE MWB, I too enjoyed Strangers From The Sky. A very nice piece of first-contact "what if."

Originally Posted by Plecostomus
My father is a nuclear engineer in a highly specialized area of plant operations
Me, too! Or at least, he was, until he retired due to mental stress at age 40, back in '89. The experience of being a nuke brat did strange things to my mindset - I'm a liberal who is pro-military and pro-nuclear power.

The pre-1990s nuclear industry was a very very difficult field... dominated by ex-navy "nukies" and monitored to the Nth degree because of a series of mishaps stretching back past TMI (which was simply THE WORST of the incidents.) The politics involved nearly killed the industry, ex-military people tend to be of one mind, "civilian" profit minded power companies tend to be of another mind and the Government getting in the middle... *shiver*

Post-1990 things have been much different and I honestly wish I had stuck with it in school, they are in the process of getting ready to build a new generation of plants.

 

[Ward Fowler]

Yeah, garamet is MWB. I had the chance to communicate with her briefly over in the TrekLit forum when Burning Dreams came out. That's also a very good book.

 

[Ward Fowler]

I'm glad my topic has stirred up some interesting conversation. I enjoyed catching up on the posts from the rest of you.

Another possibility is that the "useful workers" are asked to cut back on their work in order to provide useful work for others.

Ah. The Jetsons future, rather than the Star Trek one.

Decreasing the hours that an individual with proper training can focus on a particular task below a certain level decreases efficiency and effacy. I'm not sure what the minimum level you'd want to go to is (6 hours? 4?) and I suspect the correct answer would vary from job to job, anyway. My point is, though, that you could only carry that so far before it would be "clock in, clock out" with no real time to accomplish anything in between. And the population just keeps on expanding. (Unless it doesn't, as in my options 2 and 3 - but those don't seem to me to be the desirable outcomes. )

Part of the solution may be a guaranteed minimum income for everyone in the United States. It has been suggested before.

Interesting. I've heard of the government providing housing, food, etc, directly, but this one is sorta new to me. A socialist method of propping up a sort of almost-capitalism. It has some inefficiency built in, but I can also see some compensating benefits - like keeping complete control over the populace's essential needs out of the government's hands, and providing a degree of competition for products, thus promoting product improvements.

Agreed on both counts.
Also, I'm pro-nuclear as well. I believe it will become the primary baseload power later in this century. That is if people will educate themselves and overcome their fears.

 

[Holdfast]

I'm glad my topic has stirred up some interesting conversation.

It's a quietly thoughtful, yet still political in nature, thread. Definitely a rarity here, so I'm very grateful that you started it and the usual "characters" haven't ruined it yet.

This firstly assumes that there is a finite amount of capital in the world and there isn't - there's only as much capital as there is willingness to create it since most countries these days use fiat money.

I've been concerned for a while now that fiat money is a mistake. As long as their is faith in it and the government that backs it, it works very well. But if the wrong factors come together - like, say, 2 uphill wars, an unpopular administration in government, and foxes running the henhouses in the banking industry - and it all too easily becomes Monopoly money.

I believe all governments, if capitalism remains dominant, should ultimately move to money backed by their annual productivity level.

It all rather depends on whether one fundamentally believes in capitalism as a model. If you do, and I do, then money backed by a gold standard or even productivity creates a real problem. The issue is one of flexibility. When things go wrong, you need the ability to manipulate the money supply to loosen things up. Your scenerio is that fiat money is potentially OK in good times but dangerous in bad. I would say that money backed solely by a hard standard actually takes that to an even more extreme level - it's easy to have a hard standard in good times and really dangerous to have one in bad times. Fiat money is "less-worse" (again, provided you believe capitalism itself is the "least-worst" economic model).

As long as the majority of society BELIEVES their work is useful, there will be no wide-scale disturbance.

Our current situation will not help that perception. When you are still doing the same job you've been doing, more or less, and your company is failing, and you are getting farther from "the American dream", it has to make you wonder what real value the job you are doing has.

Yes, indeed. This is precisely why recessions are dangerous to governments. Of course, representative democracies cleverly diffuse the anger by allowing the population to vent its anger in a non-revolutionary manner, while not really fundamentally effecting any change in who rules them.

Oh well, I am a bit of an amused cynic at heart, so take my sardonic opinions very lightly.