Obama Eats The Rich--Yummy, Yummy, Yummy

Bon Appetit

Kill the Poor...(and then eat them!)

It would be interesting to see the pre-WWII recessions as well.  Notice how the last 2 were much longer in length than the others...

very interesting chart. it seems like in every instance there is a time of apparent recovery, then another significant drop. i think they call that the bear-trap. the census may have created an artificial recovery so we might be in the middle of a bear-trap right now.

oh... and everyone should eat more vegetables.

I think computers and automation caused this recession really. There is still millions of people employed doing things that I believe the current state of software and computers have made totally redundant.

It's never was about not having enough money to keep these people employed mind you. That's why you have profitable companies laying off people.

oh... and everyone should eat more vegetables.

And fibre. Lots of dietary fibre. It helps keep people regular.

To my understanding,

Democrates typically likes to screw the rick and Republican likes to screw the poor IFF they are extreme on their side. For middle class like us, we are always get screwed by both until they try to stand in the middle. When democrate wants to help the poor, middle class in not included (higher tax and still no healthcare). When republican wants to help the businesses and drive employeement, middle class is also not really included (slightly lowered tax, but, hardly benifitial, and no promise on better employeement).

2 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

To my understanding,

Democrates typically likes to screw the rick and Republican likes to screw the poor IFF they are extreme on their side. For middle class like us, we are always get screwed by both until they try to stand in the middle. When democrate wants to help the poor, middle class in not included (higher tax and still no healthcare). When republican wants to help the businesses and drive employeement, middle class is also not really included (slightly lowered tax, but, hardly benifitial, and no promise on better employeement).

Many Republicans also support a flat tax, which would also hit the middle class hardest.

@brian.shapiro:

Yeah, either way, no loves to middle class.

15 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

@brian.shapiro:

Yeah, either way, no loves to middle class.

"That's the problem with being middle-class. Anybody who really cares will abandon you for those who need it more." (A Simpsons quote, but true nontheless).

I feel slightly outraged when I hear people protesting about "the middle class": the middle classes are inherently privileged. Granted, they aren't totally loaded, but they aren't starving poor or having their fundamental freedoms trampled over either. They seem to be complaining about the rising cost of living, as though the opulent cheery lifestyles seen in 1960s American TV sitcoms were a permanent thing, as though even a brief period of state-mandated austerity is somehow equivalent to an eternity of living behind the Iron Curtain

Suck it up. You have no real right to complain.

@Bass: I have a sneaking suspicion that bankers lending ever increasing amounts of money to people who couldn't ever have afforded to pay it back, leading to a significant portion of the western world living way beyond their means, may just have had slightly more to do with this recession than the introduction of automation in factories. If anything, computers and automated systems have probably created far more jobs in the long run. They may be a different type of work, more skilled in many cases, but it's jobs nonetheless.

If automation created more jobs then it destroyed, it wouldn't be a good business proposition. The point is to reduce labor costs. Naturally that means by reducing the size of your workforce. When everyone is reducing the size of their workforce, well, that's where unemployment comes from.

In my experience a small group of software engineers can write a software system that puts thousands of people out of work. If it was as simple as a credit crisis I don't think it would last this long.

i think it's a bigger problem as well.

we used to build things. we used to do things. we now have entire industries that create no real output. this can't sustain.

i think the past 50 years or so (thanks to deregulation) has seen the rise of the value vampire. these people add no value to a transaction. they only sap value and artificially inflate prices so their sap can be bigger.

insurance as purely a financing entity adds no value.

any kind of "broker" in a vertically integrated market adds no value.

these types of jobs (not blaming the people who perform these jobs.. they're just trying to do the best for their families) create bubbles as their industry grows.

bubbles pop.

@Bass: Automation creates jobs elsewhere. A small group of software workers work in an office, they probably have a secretary, maybe even a marketing person. They pay cleaners to clean the office, they use more electricity requiring more power stations with more employees. Elsewhere somebody has to design the machines that do the automation. They have offices. Those offices have staff. They order the parts to build their designs from elsewhere. Those people have offices. Those offices have staff.... etc

If automation put people out of work, the industrial age would have left the world many originally feared it would. It's all been going on for a long, long time and all the evidence points to the contrary. Automating certain types of work just creates a different kind of work elsewhere.

@Bass:

The start of the market downturn wasn't just the credit crisis, it was an increase in gas prices. That had a cascade effect on the entire market, because gas prices effect food prices. It also had an impact on American car companies which weren't producing fuel efficient cars. That of course, was also following the tail of the dot com bust.

I also think politicians and media figures on both sides had a role in driving down the market. You had doom and gloom talk from people on the right like Glenn Beck and people on the left like Obama, who sought to turn the economic downturn into a political advantage.

I don't disagree that the loss of industry hurts the country's ability to sustain economic problems, though. But a lot of the industrial and agricultural losses that have occurred since the 90s have been documented to be because of trade agreements and not because of increasing automation. When a company closed down a factory here in the US, they usually opened a new one in Mexico.

I also would blame the politics of trade policies on the power of the unions in the auto industry. As unions conceded the trade issues, they then turned their attention to pushing for increased job security.

1 day ago, AndyC wrote

@Bass: Automation creates jobs elsewhere. A small group of software workers work in an office, they probably have a secretary, maybe even a marketing person. They pay cleaners to clean the office, they use more electricity requiring more power stations with more employees. Elsewhere somebody has to design the machines that do the automation. They have offices. Those offices have staff. They order the parts to build their designs from elsewhere. Those people have offices. Those offices have staff.... etc

Right, but ultimately for automation to be cost effective, it has to cost less to produce then what it is automating. That means trading more jobs for less jobs. The software house might cause the employment of 500 people adding all the secretaries and what not, but they put 5000 people out of work... etc

If automation put people out of work, the industrial age would have left the world many originally feared it would. It's all been going on for a long, long time and all the evidence points to the contrary. Automating certain types of work just creates a different kind of work elsewhere.

Right but the problem is the people who ARE being made redundant are often not going back to school and getting training in a career that is still relevant in the 21th century.