Generation Vexed: Young American Working Class

     Generation Vex---this is not your grandfather's depression. -----lee
If these kids and their worried parents would get out and organize, march and demonstrate for an end to outsourcing, offshoring and illegal immigration, they would have decent jobs and decent futures.  It's worth the effort folks!---rng

Written by Brian Koenig

Friday, 26 August 2011 16:32

     Burdened with economic uncertainty, high unemployment, and a volatile investors’ market, young Americans are desperately seeking job security — while anxiously chasing the "American Dream." The economy simply isn’t what it was when they first entered the job market, or when they were finishing high school or working for their college degrees. The entire economic, financial, and social class system has changed. Indeed, the entire country has changed.
     They’re not Generation X, or Generation Y. According to the Los Angeles Times, they’re "Generation Vexed" — a struggling generation of "young Americans [aged 20 to 29] who are downsizing expectations in the face of an economic future that is anything but certain." As a result, "Career plans are being altered, marriages put off and dreams shelved." Young Americans are trapped under a stagnant economic umbrella, and, lamentably, they are left with no foreseeable escape.
     Twenty-year-old Alicia Thomas, a political science major at UC San Diego, thought she had the next 10 years of her life planned out: career at a nonprofit organization; married at 24; her first home at 26, and then children. But as the economy remains stale and the financial markets herald an unpredictable fate, achieving her American Dream seems a distant vision.
     "I've changed my major so many times, not knowing which will help guarantee a stable income, health insurance and the ability to put my kids through college," said Thomas. "It's made me realize that I could have my degree and be networking, but it would still be a challenge to find a well-paying job."
     Indeed, the "Vexed" generation is a social class in itself, a despairing class, and their perception of the future is anything but favorable. A Gallup poll in May posed the question:

In America, each generation has tried to have a better life than their parents, with a better living standard, better homes, a better education, and so on. How likely do you think it is that today’s youth will have a better life than their parents — very likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or very unlikely.

     According to the poll, only 44 percent of Americans believe it is likely that today’s youth will have a better standard of living than their parents — the lowest recorded in nearly three decades.

For more ...

One Million Robots to Take Over Jobs of Foxconn Workers

 

  I think the Chinese Communists Party has a lot of explaining to do. Robots are the wave of the future-even in China. -----lee

English.news.cn 2011-07-30 01:42:14

     SHENZHEN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.

     The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers' dance party Friday night.

     The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.

     Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions.

     The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland.

For more .....

How Robots Will Steal Your Job

     An interesting article about the future of working in America.

    ------lee

  

from wired.com

Joanna Glasner

08.05.03 

     Marshall Brain, founder of the website HowStuffWorks and author of Robot Nation, has a theory that in the future most of us will be out of work, replaced by robots.

     Listening to Marshall Brain explain the future as he sees it, it's relatively easy to suspend disbelief and agree how plausible it is that over the next 40 years most of our jobs will be displaced by robots.

     After all, it only takes a typical round of errands to reveal how far we've come already. From automated gas pumps to bank ATMs to self-service checkout lanes at major retailers, service jobs already are being replaced by machines on a scale of obvious magnitude.

     Fast-forward today's innovations another few decades, and it doesn't require a great leap of faith to envision how advances in image processing, microprocessor speed and human-motion simulation could lead to the automation of most current low-paying jobs.

     Factor in the historical speed of technological advancement in the modern era, epitomized by Moore's Law of semiconductor power expansion, and it starts to sound like a no-brainer.

     At least that's how Brain (yes, that is his real name) sees things unrolling.

     "We aren't realizing it, but it's only going to accelerate and magnify as we go forward," he said, segueing into a lengthier discussion on why job loss due to robotic displacement will be one of the key economic issues facing future generations.

     According to Brain's projections, laid out in an essay, "Robotic Nation," humanoid robots will be widely available by the year 2030, and able to replace jobs currently filled by people in areas such as fast-food service, housecleaning and retail. Unless ways are found to compensate for these lost jobs, Brain estimates that more than half of Americans could be unemployed by 2055.

Dire, indeed. But Brain, a Raleigh, North Carolina, father of four and founder of HowStuffWorks, is probably not the kind of guy one would expect to see sounding the alarm bells over a futuristic robotic revolution.

For complete article ....

So Much For Hollowing Out Japan's giants are investing in plants at home again. Why the switch?

     An asian perspective on hollowing out industries. Maybe it's time to learn a new lesson from the Japanese. Yes, its a rather old article, but an instructive one.  ------lee

By Ian Rowley, with Hiroko Tashiro, in Tokyo
OCTOBER 11, 2004

     Lying 800 kilometers south of Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, Oita prefecture is hardly the kind of place you would expect to find the trendsetting titans of Japan Inc. Until recently the biggest contributors to the economy in bucolic Oita were the hot spring resorts in the coastal town of Beppu.
     But this year, Oita is flourishing as Japan's corporate giants invest billions in new manufacturing plants. Canon Inc. (CAJ ) is building a 29,000-square-meter digital camera facility near Beppu Bay. Down the road in Oaza Matsuoka , Toshiba Corp. (TOSBF ) in October plans to open a semiconductor plant that's part of a $1.8 billion, five-year investment in Oita. And auto producer Daihatsu Motor Co. is building a factory in nearby Nakatsu, which will gear up production of Hijet vans and Atrai miniwagons in December. "These companies are activating the economy," says Kazuhiro Nakao, who oversees the prefecture's efforts to attract investment.
     It's not just Oita's economy that's being activated these days. After years of hand-wringing by authorities over the hollowing out of Japan's manufacturing industries, Corporate Japan is investing at home again. Expenditures on plants and equipment in Japan rose 10.3% during the first half over the same period of 2003, the Ministry of Finance reported in September. "These movements are very favorable for the Japanese economy," says Kenji Yumoto, chief economist at the Japan Research Institute. He expects capital expenditure to grow 10% in the current quarter and nearly 7% in the fourth.
     Sure, Japan's recovery appears to be losing some steam. Gross domestic product growth slipped from an annual rate of 6.1% in the first quarter to just 1.3% in the second, and the stock market has come off its recent highs. But the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in September increased its forecast for annual growth for Japan from 3.0% to 4.4%, despite the weak numbers of late. And confidence in the recovery is strong in the business community.

For more ....

NAIRU...and all that

This is from an English site.  Good info and questions, but seems to miss the crucial point that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Inflation is not caused by wages paid to workers any more than wages paid to owners (profits) causes inflation.  Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply beyond increases in goods and services.  Still, the threat is a very handy club for beating people into excepting starvation wages and high unemployment.---rng

from laborlist.org

NAIRU...and all that

By Peter Barnard

As the coalition government unveils its plans to “get people off welfare and back to work” via the introduction of the workhouse without the walls, there is a fly in the ointment prescribed by Mr Iain Duncan Smith, and it is to be found on page 77 (para B.15) in the Pre-Budget forecast published by the Office for Budget Responsibility earlier this year :

"The prospects for the trend employment rate can be split into the outlook for the ‘structural’ unemployment rate, or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), and the outlook for the labour market activity rate. For the purposes of the projection the NAIRU is assumed to be around 5.25%, which is broadly in line with the unemployment rate prior to the recession, and to remain flat over the projection period. "

The ‘projection period’ in the PBR was up to and including 2014/15.

In passing, the OBR also remarked (in the same paragraph) that the UK has “below average unemployment protection legislation”, but that’s another subject...

The remit (set by government) of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England is quite specific : non-accelerating inflation, with a target of 2.0% as measured by the Consumer Prices Index.

In other words, and as surely as night follows day, an unemployment rate of 5.25% is unavoidable : about 1.5 million people will be unable to find work between now and 2014/15 because the work and jobs just won’t be there.

If this is indeed the case,  government, and the Labour opposition, need to ask themselves a very basic question: if they are deliberately accepting one and a half million unemployed as a consequence of policy, is it equitable that those who find themselves in this unfortunate position should be denied the state-provided wherewithal to maintain human dignity?

to read full article and comments

What To Do About Those Lousy Payroll Numbers? Grow!

This is a good start. Keep thinking growth. But always remember economic growth without job growth means social chaos. Whatever you do, don't ship those jobs overseas---because paying off the debt with taxes provided by the corporations will take centuries-if that.  I find nowhere in this piece one iota of attention to protecting and nurturing stateside jobs. -----lee 

James K. Glassman

Ideas in Action
Jul. 8 2011 - 12:48 pm 

     “Small gain in payrolls very concerning.”

     That’s the understated way Moody’s Dismal Scientist website headlined the news from the Labor Department this morning. Employment had increased just 18,000 last month – after an anemic 25,000 in May. Unemployment jumped to 9.2%. The stock market, which had risen every day since June 27 — a total of about 800 points on the Dow — quickly took a dive.
     These new data stand in stark contrast to the debate going on now in Washington, which is concentrated, to the point of obsession, on various plans to reduce the projected federal deficit (the annual shortfall between revenues and expenditures) and the debt (the accumulated deficits). 
     Let’s stipulate that a smaller debt would be helpful and that cutting unnecessary government spending is always a good idea. But the focus is all wrong. What the U.S. economy needs is growth. The lousy employment figures aren’t a function of high debt; they’re the result of an economy that isn’t growing nearly as fast as it should. High growth leads to low unemployment.
     Inherently, the U.S. is a boiling cauldron of growth. Unfortunately, government policies in recent years have kept a lid on that cauldron. To get back to job growth American innovation, animal spirits, and human creativity must be unleashed.
     If we can get faster growth and reasonable constraints on spending, the debt problem will shrink as the economy expands. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that every percentage point of extra growth in Year 1 reduces the forecast debt by more than $700 billion over Years 1 through 10.     
     An extra point of growth in all 10 years cuts the debt by many trillions. Alex Brill ran the numbers and concluded that simply boosting growth to 4% by 2017 and maintaining that level for five years would cut the debt in 2021 by $3.7 trillion.
     Four percent is not a figure plucked from thin air. It is eminently obtainable. The U.S. has grown at 3.3%, on average, since World War II and hit 4% in one-third of the past 40 years. The problem is that forecasts by the CBO and a consensus of economists see growth in the range of just 2% to 2.5% for the long term.
     Just as bad, economists’ short-term forecasts, which have been far rosier, aren’t being met. For this year, the CBO in January projected 3.1% growth, for next year 2.8%, and for 2013 to 2016 an average of 3.4%. After that recovery up-tick, projections are that the economy will settle into a sustainable – and disturbingly low – growth rate of 2.4%.
     But, in fact, the U.S. economy grew by just 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011, and The Economist magazine’s poll is predicting 2.5% for the year.
     The debt arithmetic works both ways. If growth is a point lower than expected, then the debt over 10 years will grow by more than $700 billion.
     But enough of these numbers! What the United States needs to do is not change the math but change the debate. Every policy change should be judged by a single criterion: Will it increase growth or not?
     The array of pro-growth policies is vast – and begins with changes with fiscal policy. Lower tax rates – both on businesses and individuals — encourage more savings, investment, and work by increasing incentives. Cutting unnecessary government spending allows enterprise to thrive by leaving more money in private hands and by reducing the drag of debt. Smarter policies on immigration and education increase the stock of human capital – the source of innovation and growth.
     The Bush Institute, which held a major conference in April on what’s called the 4 Percent Project, will soon release a blueprint for achieving that level of growth. But our ideas will, we hope, be a few among many. The greater goal is to get America focused not on green-eyeshade tinkering with budget numbers but on the more inspirational and more critical matter of getting the U.S. economy growing to its 4% potential.

For more ...

The Rise in Structural Unemployment in the US Recession

As usual, the real solution is overlooked--end the outsourcing, offshoring and illegal immigration, and create a tight labor market.   Then, end the unemployment extensions, and start eliminating welfare.  Voila, you have high wages, low unemployment and the return to American greatness. (Also, stop printing funny money; but that's another story.)---rng

from forbes.com
Jun. 21 2011 - 10:24 am 

     I regard this as really rather sad.

     Felix Salmon notes that there’s been a rise in structural unemployment in the US in the recent recession. Which indeed there has been. As long as we accept the similarity between structural unemployment and long term unemployment, a connection that in the world of economic wonkery is generally accepted.

What’s going on here is pretty clear. For short-term unemployment, little has changed: the structural rate has been around 2% for decades. But look at any of these charts and they show structural unemployment at an all-time high, with the situation getting much worse the longer the duration of unemployment. Overall, the structural rate of unemployment is now more than 8%, which means that we’ll only dip below that level temporarily, during cyclical upturns.

     All entirely true however Felix is overlooking one major point:

And what I fear is that the Great Recession has moved the US towards European levels of structural employment, without any kind of Euro-style social safety net.

     Ah, but in one crucial respect, during this recession the US has moved much closer to having a Euro-style social safety net. Recall, unemployment benefits were extended from their usual 26 weeks to 99 weeks. Now one can argue about whether this should have been done or not but the effect was always understood, even if denied in some parts. From Richard Layard, the English economist and expert on this very point of long term unemployment:

The evidence for the first proposition is everywhere around us. For example, Europe
has a notorious unemployment problem. But if you break down unemployment into short term (under a year) and long-term, you find that short-term unemployment is almost the same in Europe as in the U.S. – around 4% of the workforce. But in Europe there are another 4% who have been out of work for over a year, compared with almost none in the United States. The most obvious explanation for this is that in the U.S. unemployment benefits run out after 6 months, while in most of Europe they continue for many years or indefinitely. The position is illustrated in Figure 1. The vertical axis shows how long it is possible to draw unemployment benefit, and the horizontal axis shows how long people are actually unemployed, as measured by the percentage of unemployed who are out of work for over a year. The association is close, and it remains close even when we allow statistically for all other possible factors affecting the duration of unemployment.

For more ...