Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/08/chomsky_jobs_arent_coming_back/singleton/

by lewstherin • 14 years ago

38 54 14 years ago

jstalin6• 14 years ago

"It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair."

It's because we've been pacified through handouts and the welfare state. There's no longer a need to think about working hard and getting out of the unemployment morass we're in. Government will take care of you!

Food stamp spending is at all-time record levels. Millions more people have gone on "disability" since 2007. The number of people in the work force continues to decline. Participation rate in the workforce is at multi-decade lows. The government-created housing bubble has made job mobility much more difficult, and of course both personal and public debt levels have reached saturation.

So, why not get unlimited student loans, get food stamps, get yourself declared to have a disability, and then gorge on all the benefits of being "poor" like a free cellphone, and reduced cost internet.

We've turned into a nation of dependents!

knowtheory• 14 years ago

Unless you can a) point to numbers indicating that your claim is true, and more importantly b) justify how this isn't just a teeeeny tiiiiiiny drop in the bucket compared to defense spending, tax cuts and health care costs, your post is essentially irrelevant noise in the grander scheme of federal budget politics.

And come to think of it, even if food stamp spending is at an all time high, isn't that consistent with the idea that the economy is fucked and suddenly there are a lot more families dependent on food stamps because of the inability of the labor market to bring down unemployment?

jstalin6• 14 years ago

Food stamp usage breaking historical pattern of going down when joblesness decreases (and at an all time high): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/food-stamps-keep-go...

Two Charts Exposing America's Record Shadow Welfare State - Disability going up dramatically: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/two-charts-exposing-americas-r...

Oh, and I never said I support gigantic amounts of defense spending. I'm talking about dependence, not federal spending or budgeting. You've diverted what I said to another topic.

tnuc• 14 years ago

Given that the US spends over half its budget on "defence" I really don't know where you are getting your ideas from.

Maybe some numbers and a source?

jstalin6• 14 years ago

Where did I support current or additional defense spending?

Frankly, it's just another welfare scheme. Defense spending is largely a waste.

vsmatck• 14 years ago

Half is incorrect. It's about 20%. Still a large amount.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget (look at first graph)

I really don't know where you are getting your ideas from. (you were asking for this :)

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Did you even read what you are replying to?

He wasn't talking about the sum of money, just that it had gone up -- and he wasn't talking about how to finance it, just that it had caused more people to become dependent on assistance _even as more people are getting a job_. Meaning that it is not because there is no jobs.

dlokshin2• 14 years ago

Perhaps you should be checking your numbers? Defense this year is 24%, which is half of 50%. Welfare + Social Security + Medicare = 54%.

http://cl.ly/1x3D1W3Z2c3Z2G1w400g

nwj• 14 years ago

Don't know where you are getting the idea that half the US budget is spent on defense.

Estimates I've seen range from 20-40% depending on what you count as "defense". See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...

jbooth6• 14 years ago

jstalin? Really?

crusso• 14 years ago

Says jbooth? Irony much? :)

lotides• 14 years ago

Time to turn off the talk radio, buddy. People can't get jobs that don't exist. The people on unemployment, disability or other government benefits didn't conspire to ruin the economy. They're just trying to feed their families and survive long enough to find work. If you're looking for someone to blame, look at the people that got rich while the rest of America got poor. The ones the benefited from this disaster are the same ones that caused it.

jstalin6• 14 years ago

Did I say they conspired to ruin the economy? No. Did I say I blame them for the state of the economy? No.

And I don't listen to talk radio.

I'm blaming the excessive amount of debt in the system, both personal and public. It's crushing. Each additional dollar of public debt is having a negative real effect on the economy. Of course, the crushing level of bureaucracy and costs of running a small business are a big part of the problem as well. The economy is paralyzed by debt and regulatory uncertainty.

If Japan can manage as a majority-services economy, we can too. Manufacturing doesn't make the world suddenly better.

zerostar07• 14 years ago

That isn't necessarily true. In general, some agree that the state should provide the basics, and as the centuries go by and the world gets richer, those basics become more and more. Reasonable welfare equals to higher productivity rather than laziness. If you are not convinced, look at the countries that provide the most in terms of welfare such as northern europe or japan and yet they are equally or more productive than the US.

batista5• 14 years ago

>It's because we've been pacified through handouts and the welfare state.

I call BS. As far as welfare states go, the US has one of the smallest and less pervasive of any modern western country. Actually, it's like in that field you're living in the medieval ages.

A "welfare state" with your health system, close to a million people in the streets and tens of millions eating with coupons, is not a welfare state, it's a joke.

Nobody in his right mind would call your "food stamps" a welfare support that makes people "dependents".

We would actually think of it as an incompetent, half-arsed mockery of a welfare system... more like charity than welfare.

dkrich5• 14 years ago

I think there is an ongoing obsession in this country to always live in fear and convince oneself that things are always at their worst and the bottom is always about to fall out at any moment. Maybe it's human nature. But I just don't buy this doom and gloom nonsense. Yes the economy is bad, there is no question about that, but the economy has been bad before. Probably the last comparable period was the late 70's.

I think more than anything what's changed is our access to information. Before people never really knew how corrupt companies and politicians can be and they never had 24/7 access to the opinions of every person in the English-speaking world to reinforce their pessimism.

The U.S. is losing manufacturing jobs, but that could be remedied by a number of changes- import tariffs, a reduction or freeze on minimum wage, an unforeseen economic boost from a new industry (such as auto manufacturing in the 50's or the internet boom of the 90's).

One place where I wholly disagree with Chomsky is the unimportance of the deficit. That is a major, major problem. It is true that creating jobs would help shrink the deficit, but I think there is a lot of rampant spending by the U.S. government that does absolutely nothing to grow or maintain the economy or jobs and should be abolished.

jstalin6• 14 years ago

Prepare to get down voted like crazy for pointing out the negative effects of deficits and debt...

nhaehnle5• 14 years ago

Take a step back and note that you don't actually point out or argue how the deficit is supposedly a problem.

So there are spending programs by the government that you disagree with. Fair enough, I'm sure everybody has some government program that they disagree with. [1] That's what politics is about: disagreement about what the extent of government should be, and in which areas it should be active.

What that doesn't give you is an argument that the deficit is bad. If you genuinely think certain government programs are undesirable and should be cut, then it makes sense to simultaneously cut taxes somewhere so that the deficit remains the same. Otherwise you would effectively be squeezing the private sector by reducing the government deficit.

[1] Though it seems weird that you would only support government spending that grows or maintains the economy or jobs. What about national parks as an example of a pretty obvious good that has no economic benefit?

dkrich5• 14 years ago

Do you really need me to substantiate why it is bad to spend more money than you make? I guess I took for granted that the fundamental laws of economics were understood. I guess that was a mistake.

Everybody agrees that running a deficit is harmful. Most disagreement centers around which, if any, cuts in the budget should be made, and how much those cuts will hinder a recovery while the economy is still weak. The U.S. dollar is the worlds' reserve currency, and for that reason alone the U.S. is able to ignore a deficit for some time. But it is a huge mistake to get used to free money and not try to get finances in order. Greece made that mistake for many years and is now paying a huge price (along with the entire European Union).

National Parks are fine. They've been around a long time and that accounts for a rounding error of the federal budget. The greatest areas of concern are Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Of course the defense budget is up there too, and I believe defense spending should be cut. The bottom line is that the Federal Government has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few decades and its addiction to rampant spending is making the country poor. You can debate about what should be cut but no increase in taxes is going to pay for this spending spree we are involved in right now. Greece was forced into draconian austerity measures when there were no other options on the table. I sure hope the U.S. learns something from that fiasco before it travels down the same road.

dkrich5• 14 years ago

Upon reading this again I realize that you must not understand what a deficit is. A deficit occurs when you spend more than you make. It is the opposite of a surplus. If you earn $5,000 a month but spend $6,000 a month, you are running a deficit. The U.S. is doing this exact thing, but on a much larger scale.

locopati• 14 years ago

The first chart comparing productivity and income is pretty telling

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-american...

acslater00• 14 years ago

I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false.

See this: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS

And a prior discussion of the topic.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803022

Anybody who starts a discussion decrying the death of manufacturing in America is selling you something, and it's not a manufacturing job.

Sidebar: This quote!

"The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness."

Aside from the fact that this story is clearly made-up, the idea that a profit-seeking corporation would favor "shutting down" an asset rather than selling it because it fears an uprising of the working class is just about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

glimcat• 14 years ago

"Taking Any Rand seriously" seems to be something of a persistent folly.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>Aside from the fact that this story is clearly made-up, the idea that a profit-seeking corporation would favor "shutting down" an asset rather than selling it because it fears an uprising of the working class is just about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Profit-seeking corporations aren't immune to stupidity and pettiness. Another reason not to sell it is to prevent the emergence of a competitor.

r00fus• 14 years ago

Case in point - Yahoo deciding to shut down del.icio.us - at the very least the brand name and bookmark list was worth something to someone... why shut it down?

jbooth6• 14 years ago

Output is up, but employment is down in that same sector.

You know why? Robots.

Doesn't make the employment picture look any more rosy, in light of that increased output, does it?

Chomsky's pretty ideological and I'd always take him with a grain of salt, but the manufacturing output doesn't really rebut his main point about industrialists no longer needing workers as much as they used to.

vijayr• 14 years ago

This book talks about the same thing - http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Work-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/B000ILZ5...

output is consistently increasing, profits are consistently increasing - the only thing that is NOT increasing, is employment numbers. A big chunk of it is because of robots and automated systems.

huge population + huge unemployment = disaster

ArbitraryLimits• 14 years ago

> the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false.

It depends whether you count robots and computers as part of America, doesn't it?

bdunbar2• 14 years ago

Per wiki Chomsky is a 'linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and activist.'

I'm not sure how any of these qualify the man as someone to be listened on the topics of economics or manufacturing.

asset rather than selling it because it fears an uprising of the working class is just about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

It does tell us that Chomsky has an especially stupid view of the world.

batista5• 14 years ago

>I'm not sure how any of these qualify the man as someone to be listened on the topics of economics or manufacturing.

Maybe because neither economics, nor manufacturing nor any other field, are fields to be left to the "experts", to the exclusion of the citizenry in general (economics especially, as a soft science that leaches on Math and thrives on state power, is full of idiotic experts, with Phds and Nobels to match, whose aggregate predictive performance is closer to a coin toss, if not negative).

Not to mention that arguments are to be judged in themselves, not based on the expertise of who's making them.

batista5• 14 years ago

>I don't know why I keep bothering to point this out, but the notion that "America no longer makes things" is absolutely, empirically, unassailably false.

Too many things wrong with your argument.

For one, employment in that sector (as well as overall) is still down, because fewer people are needed to produce the same things.

Second, that the US produces, say, "more than it did 1985" is meaningless. A better metric would be what share of the domestic and international sold goods it produces, over time.

Third, an ever better measure would be the trade (import/export) deficit over time.

batista5• 14 years ago

"Made up"? Those kinds of stories play out all the time. Study a little international labour history.

leephillips• 14 years ago

It is Chomsky, after all: long ago exposed as a scoundrel and purveyor of dishonest pseudo-scholarship (in the realms of politics, history, and economics, not linguistics, where his ideas were considered important for a considerable time).

On another note, I don't remember Salon being this cheesy the last time I visited the site. The sidebar with links to other fascinating Salon articles includes pieces on gay porn, "Girls" sex, naked models, big butts, and more porn. That's five out of seven about porn and body parts. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it seems pretty desperate.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

I was going to add something similar. Chomsky and people like him pander to fear mongering about the 'loss of jobs' to a population of people who don't seem to understand that the number of jobs offered in this country has steadily and inexorably gone up. If technological progress was a net killer of jobs there would have been increasing unemployment from at least 1903 forward.

pudakai• 14 years ago

Peculiar article - I'd read a couple of sentences and think, "wow, Noam's spot on here". Then after the next few sentences or major point, I'd think, "what a moron".

Seems like there is something for everyone to love and hate in this one. Probably the one thing everyone can agree on is the concentration of wealth and stratification of society isn't a good thing.

Like a lot of these analyses, it is often hard to sort out cause/effect, I'm not so sure that this article didn't make some wrong conclusions in this regard.

I do have to say his contention that OWS is the first push-back against the concentration & corruption of power in the U.S. is sort of naive. There are plenty of people and movements that have been railing about this at least since the early 90's - I'm not going to mention specific ones because I don't want to seem like I'm touting them.

serverascode• 14 years ago

On one hand, I do feel like things are going fairly well compared historically, but it also, somehow, at the same time feels like everything is going wrong, and I'm not going to be able to have a job in my field very long, (retirement, what?), given outsourcing and companies moving jobs to whatever country has the cheapest labor this year.

I also feel like we, as a country (Canada), are going to lose a lot of expertise to outsourcing and multi-national job movement, ie. pay for the cheaper outsourcing in other ways later.

That said I am trying to do something about it by getting involved in the local startup community and try to create my own job, but that is quite difficult.

Chomsky - Jobs aren't coming back

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