Tag: jobs

There Will Never Be Enough Good Jobs Again

by Paul Rosenberg –

goodjob

It’s over. Except for a short moment or a wild and self-exhausting governmental mandate (both of which are doubtful), there will never again be enough “good jobs” to go around. That model is gone and we need to root it out of our imaginations.

Sure, there will be some good jobs, but nowhere near enough.

About half of the Western world is already on the dole in one form or another. 93 million Americans lack a decent job and have no real hope of getting one. And so long as the current hierarchies remain, things won’t get substantially better.

I’m sorry to dump that on you, but it’s better to face it directly.

But please bear in mind that I’m a confirmed optimist. Just because there are no “good jobs” doesn’t mean that we’ll all languish in a meaningless existence. Far from it. Once we get over our addictions to status, hierarchy, and dominance, a glorious future awaits us.

Why It Won’t Get Better

The standard response to what I’ve noted above is to call it “the Luddite fallacy.” That line of argument says that in the past, innovation has not wiped out jobs, that new types of jobs were created and filled the gaps fairly well.

And that statement is true. Individual jobs were wiped out, but new jobs came along and (more or less) picked up the slack.

However, that is not happening this time, and for a very simple reason: Adaptation is now against the law. Previous rises in technology occurred while adaptation was still semi-legal.

Please take a look at this graph and remember a simple truth: Regulation forbids adaptation.

The US government is currently spending $60 billion, every year, to restrain business activity. (And the EU is worse.) On top of that, reasonable estimates show that US government regulations cost businesses nearly $2 trillion per year.

And let’s be honest about this: The primary purpose of regulation is to give the friends of congressmen a business advantage. Why else would they pay millions of dollars to lobbyists?

So, the new jobs that should be spawned, will not be. Mega-corps own Congress and they get the laws they pay for. And mega-corps do not like competition.

Furthermore, the political-corporate-bureaucratic complex will bite and claw to retain every scrap of power they have, and small businesses will be their first victims. (They already are.)

Trapped Between Hammer and Anvil

So, the people who are hoping and waiting for a “good job” to pop up are trapped between hammer and anvil. Robots are starting to roll into the workplace while the job creators (small entrepreneurs) are in regulatory and economic chains. They can’t come to the rescue.

In the 19th century, all sorts of possibilities were open to entrepreneurs. This remained at least partly true, even into the 1970s, when I watched the business heroes of my youth having a gas while making piles of money.

It used to be that a clever person could get ahead, independently, and have a ball doing so.

Those days, alas, are over.

These days, to get rich, one needs to take government as a partner. If one does not, regulation and legislation are likely to destroy your business. At this point, many of us (myself included) have had businesses – good businesses that benefited everyone involved – crushed by legislation.

To avoid being crushed these days, you have to be smarter and fleeter of foot than everyone else. Not many of us can survive in that situation, and as regulations continue to rise, even that number grows smaller and smaller.

For the generation before of mine, independent success required ambition, but it was reachable. For my generation, only those of us blessed with unusual talent had a chance at controlling our economic destinies. For the young generation of today, it’s nearly impossible. These days, if you want to jump ahead, you need to be part of something big… and you need to start as a sycophant.

So…

So, if you’re looking for the proverbial good job, stop waiting for “The Hierarchy That Is” to sort things out and get everything back to normal. Good jobs get fewer and fewer every year, and those that are lost won’t be coming back.

But… if and when you’re ready to change your thinking – to seriously change your thinking – this is good news too: You can reclaim the parts of yourself that you were ready to sacrifice to the “good job.”

You see, the “good job” was nearly as much a curse as it was a blessing. Yes, I know, steady wages and benefits are a very comfortable thing, but they also play right into a ridiculous, predatory script.

You know the one: where you struggle to display your status to all the other worker-bees. You feel like you have to do what the ads tell you: Get the new car, the bigger truck, the video player in the back seat, the gigantic TV, the most “amazing” holiday parties, the expensive shoes, the designer bags, the organic veggies, etc., etc., etc.

I would like you, please, to consider this quote from the boss of Lehman Brothers, just as the World War I production surge was failing:

We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.

Would you agree that their plan worked?

As long as you follow their script, you’ll remain in a permanent deficit mentality. No matter how much you have, you’ll always feel like you need more. It’s life on a shiny gerbil wheel. The “good job” kept us from knowing ourselves; it allowed us to sleep-walk through life. We got a “good job” and never developed ourselves any further. Work, retire, die, ho hum.

Then What?

So, if we forget about having a “good job,” what happens?

Well, it might very well mean that you do what you’re already doing, but you stop feeling bad about it. It means that you get over the endless grasping after status… of letting ridiculous ads define what “success” looks like… of letting other people define your self-opinion.

Letting go of the “good job” delusion means that you stop pining for the days when you could blow a third of your money on status crap. It means that you start taking pleasure in growing your own food, developing new ventures, and improving yourself.

It means that rather than begging politicians to ride in on a white horse and fix your world, you ignore them and start paying attention to your actual life.

Fundamentally, this means that we start using our own initiative, without seeking permission, and start building better things.

Rather than going on, I’ll leave you with two quotes, both from Erich Fromm. I think they are worth close consideration:

Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton – well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

The Scary Truth Behind Friday’s Jobs Shocker

by Bill Bonner – Bonner and Partners.com:jobs

On Friday, the Labor Department released a shockingly weak March jobs report. The feds and their cronies on Wall Street spent the weekend trying to put a bag over its head.

Former Pimco CEO and Bloomberg columnist Mohamed El-Erian gave this quick reaction:

The US employment machine notably lost momentum in March, with just 126,000 new jobs added – far fewer than the consensus expectation of around 250,000 – and with revisions erasing 69,000 from the previous two months’ total, according to the Labor Department. The lackluster result ends an impressive 12-month run of job gains in excess of 200,000.

Yes, the employment numbers were ugly. They confirm the other evidence coming in from hill and dale, industry and commerce, households and homesteads all across the nation, and all the ships at sea: This is no ordinary recovery.

Nip and Tuck

In fact, it’s no recovery at all. It is strange and unnatural, like the victim of a quack plastic surgeon.

But the damage was not an accident. No slip of the hand or equipment malfunction produced this horror. It was the result of economic grifters plying a fraudulent trade.

The Dow rose 118 points in Monday’s trading. A 0.7% increase, this was neither the result of honest investing nor any serious assessment of the economic future. Bloomberg attributed it to scammery from the Fed:

New York Fed President William Dudley said the pace of rate increases is likely to be “shallow” once the Fed starts to tighten.

His comments were the first from the inner core of the Fed’s leadership since a government report showed payrolls expanded less than forecast in March.
While data signaling rates near zero for longer have previously been welcomed by American equity investors, concern is building that economic weakness will worsen the outlook for corporate profits.

Get it?

“Shallow” rate increases. Translation: Savers will get nothing for their forbearance and discipline for a long, long time.

Instead, the money that should be rightfully theirs will be transferred to the rich… and to gamblers and speculators… as it has for the last six years.

A Frankenstein Economy

Back to El-Erian who, having seen the evidence of this botched operation, then goes goofy on us. He calls upon the authorities to “do something.”

As if they hadn’t done enough already!

The feds were the ones who injected the credit silicon, hardened the upper lip and created the Monster of 2008.

And then, when the nearest of kin started retching into the hospital wastebaskets, they went back to work. Now, the economy is more grotesque than ever.

But here’s El-Erian, asking for more:

The report is a further reminder of how much more the US economy could – and should – achieve if it weren’t for political dysfunction in Washington and a “do little” Congress that preclude more comprehensive structural reforms, infrastructure spending and a more responsive fiscal policy.

El-Erian is not the only one. One of our favorite knife men, Larry Summers, is suggesting more nip and tuck on the whole world economy.

It was Summers, as secretary of the Treasury between 1999 and 2001, who helped stitch this Frankenstein economy together.

He and his fellow surgeons are responsible for its unsightly lumps and inhuman shape. Their trillions of dollars of EZ credit leaked all over, causing bulges almost everywhere.

Does China have too much industrial capacity? Does the world have a glut of energy? Are governments far too deep in debt? And corporations?And households? Didn’t nearly every central bank in the world try to stimulate demand with cheap credit… thus laying on a burden of debt so heavy that it now threatens the entire world economy?

Poor Larry Summers

Now, Summers waves his scalpel in the air and can’t wait to get the patient back on the table.

He worries that the US should have given the International Monetary Fund more money, which would have “bolstered confidence in the global economy.”

He thinks the world’s problem is that “capital is abundant, deflationary pressures are substantial, and demand could be in short supply for quite some time.”

Poor Larry can’t tell the difference between capital and credit.

Capital – what you get from saving money and investing it wisely – is an economy’s real muscle. EZ credit – what the quacks pump into flabby tissue to try to make things look more fetching – is what has turned the economy into such a freak.

Alas, failing to give more money to the IMF, says Summers, may mean “the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system.”

That would be a real pity.

Article originally posted at Author Joe WithrowPosted on Categories Finance & EconomicsTags , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment on The Scary Truth Behind Friday’s Jobs Shocker

The Middle-Class is Fading

submitted by jwithrow.Fire Dollar

The middle-class is fading. Fast.

The jobs that have been lost since the financial system teetered on implosion in 2008 have not come back. Those jobs are not coming back. More education won’t bring them back. More laws won’t bring them back.

The government’s job report says that more and more jobs are being created, but guess what? They are mostly low paid part-time or temporary jobs; they are not the middle management jobs in the high rise buildings.

As for why the middle-class is being wiped out, it’s no mystery. This very same scenario has occurred all throughout history. One can look back as far as the time of the Roman Empire and see that there is nothing new under the sun. History rhymes and those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

You see, every time the currency of the land has been inflated and debased, the middle-class has been destroyed. Inflation transfers value from those who must work to earn currency to those who control the currency supply.

They don’t tell you this in school. They don’t tell you this in college. They don’t even tell you this if you major in finance or economics. They probably don’t know themselves. So most people never understand what is happening. Their paycheck gets bigger and bigger so they can’t figure out why they can never get ahead. They don’t realize that their bigger paycheck is buying less and less. They don’t understand the difference between nominal income and real income.

In Roman times it was the government that controlled the currency supply. The Romans would collect taxes and tributes from citizens and conquered peoples and they would then melt the precious metal coins and add in cheaper metals such as copper to re-mint more coins of lower value. They would then pay the Roman army with these cheaper coins and pretend that they had the same value as before. The general market caught on to this process and began to charge higher prices for food and goods in response. The middle-class was destroyed over time and eventually the economy collapsed. Then the Empire fell.

In modern times it is the Federal Reserve and the other central banks of the world that control the currency supply. They do this by simply creating currency units from nothing and using the new currency as they see fit. They inject some of this new currency into the banking system, they use some of the new currency to buy government debt, and they inject some of the new currency into the IMF and foreign central banks. This directly leads to more and more debt and an increase in consumer prices across the board.

They are printing currency at will so why is the middle-class working so hard for 2% annual raises?

The rules of the game have changed and those unable to recognize this and adjust accordingly will be wiped out with the middle-class – just as has happened throughout history.

Opportunity

submitted by jwithrow.Opportunity

Too often we associate the word opportunity with the availability of jobs. We tell our young folks to go where the opportunity is so they march off to the nearest metropolitan city to join the rat race.

How come we never tell our young people that they have the ability to create the opportunity themselves?

We think that the answer to this question is largely because we have been shaped by centralized government education. We refer to it as government education because the Department of Education has gradually imposed itself upon our school systems over time. Whereas we once had school systems that were beholden to parents and local communities, we now have federally mandated curriculum, Department of Education approved textbooks, and compulsory education laws bullying parents into compliance.

Our government subsidized educational system is focused on itself, not those it purports to serve.

The primary educational system (K-12) is focused on molding kids into obedient students that can one day be productive cogs in the wheel. Creativity and critical thinking are subverted by the centralized curriculum and the centralized structure. Students are taught to be dependent on the ‘expert’.

The higher educational system focuses on selling degrees at an enormous price made possible by the abundance of government student loans. The system touts the ability of college graduates to obtain high paying corporate jobs after graduation as justification for the high costs.

The result is that we are conditioned to be obedient worker bees that do not question authority and we base success solely upon income level.

And the rat-race perpetuates.

Even if the college graduate is able to obtain a high paying corporate job, the cost of servicing student loan debt offsets some of this income. And speaking from experience we can say that most of these corporate jobs do not offer a very rewarding experience.

Most of these jobs represent nothing more than a cog in a giant bureaucratic wheel in which employees are required to perform the same menial tasks repetitively day in and day out. Their input is not welcomed and their output is not appreciated. These jobs require employees to sit in a small cubicle under a fluorescent light for at least forty hours every week. And it is not uncommon for commute times to be greater than an hour for many employees also.

The quality of pay is high with these corporate jobs but the quality of life tends to be fairly low.

This doesn’t sound much like opportunity to us.

It’s time to re-examine the way we think about what opportunity is. Technology is rapidly changing the marketplace and the jobs that traditional education prepares us for are diminishing.

But this is a good thing! The diminishing jobs are centralized and boring. The new opportunities are decentralized and exciting! One but has to recognize opportunity knocking.

A Frank Letter to the Homeless Man Under the Bridge

By: Paul Rosenberg,

letter-to-homeless

I see you standing here, asking for help, about once a week. You are always polite, and I respect that. I’d like to do something for you… something that would matter long-term. Giving you a few notes or coins now and then may be fine, but I’d really like to improve your situation more permanently.

In other words, I’d like to give you a job.

I used to hire people, and I especially liked hiring people who had been denied breaks. I did that whenever I could. If you and I could be transported back in time, I’d hire you. And I’d feel good about it, because I think having a job would do you a lot of good.

That fact is, however, that I can’t hire you, and I’d like you to know why.

I used to run my own contracting firm. I enjoyed the work and I liked being able to drive past a building and say, “I made that.” Having employees, however, was torture. I liked having them in some ways, of course – I liked the guys and it made me happy to see them take care of their families with paychecks that I signed. That was very gratifying. But it wasn’t enough, and there are three reasons why:

#1: Making Payroll

My first problem was simply cash flow. I was solely responsible for having enough money in the bank every week, and that could be nerve-wracking, especially when customers weren’t paying their bills on time. It’s not fun to think that a family won’t be able to buy groceries if you can’t collect your invoices.

Still, that part didn’t cause me to give up on employees. It was hard, but so long as my employees were working, we were making money, so there was always something coming in at some point. Somehow, I was able to pull it off.

#2: Being Hated

Over time, some of my employees became jerks. This seemed to grow from envy and from stupid ideas about labor versus management. These guys decided that I was getting rich off of them, and demanded I pay them more – more than they deserved and more than the company could afford.

And the really nasty part was this: It was always the guys I had done the most for who hated me most. And as soon as I sat down with them and explained why I couldn’t pay them more, they started stealing from me.

I fired the thieves, of course, but these experiences really soured me on employees. I had not only given these guys a job, but I had legitimately felt good about helping to feed their families. In return, they hated me, called me names, and stole from me.

By itself, that was almost enough to make me swear off employing people, but not quite.

#3: The IRS

What really drove me over the edge was dealing with the government and the IRS in particular. They were abominable.

I had to file forms with every payroll, and if anything on them was wrong, they penalized me – heavily. And if I paid them a single day late, they penalized me – heavily. And if they said I did something wrong – even if I didn’t – there was no way to change their verdict. Reason and evidence simply didn’t matter.

I eventually talked to a tax lawyer who explained the situation to me. He said:

Forget about fighting, Paul. There is no ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in tax court. You’re automatically guilty, and you have to try to prove yourself innocent… which is very hard and very expensive. Just pay them. I know you hate that, but you have no other choice. Fighting them would ruin you.

It wasn’t just the money that got me about this – it was that they were nasty, arrogant, heartless tyrants. Having the facts on my side didn’t matter. Intelligent arguments didn’t matter. Either I paid what they demanded or they would hurt me worse.

In many ways, it wasn’t much different than the local gang of street thugs demanding protection money.

So, that’s why I can’t hire you: Having employees locked me into a single role in life, that of a despised slave. When I finally realized that, I walked away.

I was lucky that I had the ability to move into specialties and to thrive in difficult niches; other guys probably couldn’t have.

So…

What I really want you to know is this:

I’d like to help you. You deserve a chance at a decent job. I’d like to be the guy who gave it to you, but the system demands that I must live as a slave in order to do so. And I won’t do that.

I very much wish that things were different, and I feel sorry every time I drive by that I can’t hire you. But I would never ask anyone to live as a slave, and I won’t live that way myself.

I wish you well, and if life in these parts should ever pull back from the present reign of oppression, I hope to run into you. And on that day, I hope to either hire you or do business with you.

We would both have much to gain from it.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

Minimum Wage Cannot Fool the Free Market

submitted by jwithrow.Fed Printing

An important facet of a dynamic market economy is a flexible pricing system where prices can freely adjust in response to changes in supply and demand.

Wages are no exception to this rule. You see, wages are simply the price of labor and this price fluctuates with supply and demand in the marketplace – just like any other price.

When it comes to the jobs market, employers seek to hire employees at a wage which will allow the employer to profit on an employee’s labor. As such, the employee’s salary must necessarily be priced lower than the total value of his or her production. Otherwise the employer would not have a need for the employee’s services.

If this seems callous to you then please ask yourself a question:

Are you willing to pay someone $100 to do a job that is only worth $50 to you?

Well most employers aren’t either.

So, employers are willing to offer a salary within a specific value range according to the nature of the job function. The employee may be able to negotiate a higher salary but only up to the employer’s ceiling price beyond which the employer would not be able to justify the hire.

Minimum wage laws, however well-intentioned they may be, have no place within a free market system. Minimum wage laws distort the market pricing system and they fail to achieve their stated intent – they serve only to increase unemployment. Employers will trim their workforce to account for forced wage increases and individuals who would otherwise be willing to work for pay beneath the minimum wage will be priced out of employment.

What’s lost in the clamor for an increased minimum wage is the fact that wages are not the common man’s problem in the first place. U.S. median household income in 1970 was $7,651. It was $22,109 in 1985. And $41,262 in 2000. And median household income in 2012 was $50,099.

Wages have skyrocketed!

But wages don’t buy nearly as much as they used to, do they? Sounds to us like inflation is the common man’s biggest problem – let’s pass maximum inflation laws!

Or better yet, let’s End the Fed and get back to Sound Money.