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My dad had a similar comment as MLSfan. There's nothing more dangerous than the father of a hungry family. The social welfare system isn't perfect, but it's working. Cutting it out would be a huge mistake, especially for those in urban centers.
As has been discussed in so many other threads touching on the same basic issues the REAL problem is not about
HOW we manage our collective responsibility to the extant population of unemployable regardless of what we might call
the programs or costs of doing so (ie "welfare in some form).
The REAL problem is devising sensible workable policies that will a) limit that population from growing any larger
and b) to reduce their numbers. The first step is to jettison the current policies that actually promote their growth.
Stop digging the hole any deeper.
I live in a town which had a production-based economy as late as the 1980s; the last mill closed in 1994.
Now we're thriving. Why?
Tourism.
In reality, a tourist service job is about the same as a mill job used to be, pays about the same. Cleaner and healthier, really. People act like those jobs of the old days were all rainbows and lollipops. They weren't.
I think it's possible for small towns to find a niche.
Unfortunately, when jobs return from overseas, they will go to the areas where politicians and big businesses have done deals, not the communities with the highest need for employment.
As has been discussed in so many other threads touching on the same basic issues the REAL problem is not about
HOW we manage our collective responsibility to the extant population of unemployable regardless of what we might call
the programs or costs of doing so (ie "welfare in some form).
The REAL problem is devising sensible workable policies that will a) limit that population from growing any larger
and b) to reduce their numbers. The first step is to jettison the current policies that actually promote their growth.
Stop digging the hole any deeper.
Which is why it has always astonished me that it's been so hard to get free birth control to the people who need it the most.
I hope nobody already said this. I just saw the "hope that Trump brings back jobs from overseas" and had to respond:
Trump didn't save 1100 jobs at the Carrier plant. That number includes 300 jobs which were in no danger of being moved to Mexico. The real number is 800. Carrier is still moving 600 jobs to Mexico to make fan coils. Carrier also confirmed that a second factory owned by Carrier corporate parent United Technologies (UTX) is also still moving to Mexico. That move will cost Indiana another 700 jobs. In its letter to employees, Carrier said that laid-off workers will have the chance to transfer to open jobs at other United Technologies plants around the country. They'll also receive up to four years of tuition assistance to go back to school and train for another job.It's also possible that the company will offer someIndianapolis factory workers a buyout. For another view on this, read https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.67ac02df150e
One should never read news from only one source and think you have the story.
As for Ford, the layoffs have been postponed but Ford is still building a plant in Mexico.
The problem is that factories have become more efficient through the use of robotics. Robots don't get a salary, pension, benefits, healthcare. There's no way businesses would shelve robots upon the word of Trump or anyone except maybe Jesus Christ. Even then, it's a maybe. So when one robot does the work of 12 employees, who are now laid off, there's nothing Trump can do. The nature of manufacturing has changed. It's just desperate or naive to believe anything else. The only way to get former factory workers back to work is to retrain them for the jobs which do exist. But there are human self-limitations. People who haven't been to school in decades might not have the ability and/or the desire to go back to school for training to program or service the robots. I read an article which said that male workers don't want to work in the health care fields because they view it as womens' work. These jobs don't start out paying as much as factory jobs, but with seniority can approach that pay. And it's a sad, misogynist fact that men who go into fields which are traditionally populated by women are promoted more quickly and get raises more quickly than women with the same time and experience in the job.
The actual job themselves have changed, and will continue to change. Do we have anyone making a living shoveling coal into a steam locomotive engine anymore? Nobody has made a living lighting the gas streetlights in over a century. There's no more keypunch operators. Trump got elected by telling desperate people what they wanted to hear.
"I hope nobody already said this."You couldn't read the 8 posts first before posting? You just had to post anti- Trump because a person mentioned bringing jobs back from overseas.
Trump is not going to create more jobs in this country. It is all smoke and mirrors and we Democrats know this. The jobs that he wants to bring back are jobs from the past that are irrelevant in today's economy. Most Americans are going to college getting degrees for high skilled professional labor. The days of mining for coal and working in factories are pretty much done, at least in America. It's not because of China, either. These next four years in this country are going to be an unprecedented disaster. Heck, the past month was the most incompetent, corrupt first month of any presidency ever.
Part of these problem lies with a corporate culture that has not kept up with technology.
Many of today's best jobs are located in offices clustered in major metros areas. You can have dozens of six figure software engineers clustered in a small area on a floor. For many jobs, all you need is a computer, phone, and internet connectivity. VPNs and online conference calls/videoconferencing make being physically in a conference room for a meeting more unnecessary than ever. Oftentimes there is simply no need for those staff to be in a physical office.
Many companies have failed to embrace telecommuting at all. I worked for a firm in 2014/2015 that was a satellite office of about ten people then in the Midwest for a company in Boston. We were all technically "remote," and less than half the staff reported to an onsite manager. Still, no one was allowed to work remotely, unless there was a facility issue where the power or internet were out. I've also worked at/for three Fortune 500s, none of whom embraced telecommuting for anyone lower than a director. Simply allowing more people to telecommute would ease some of the burden in high COL major cities. I never wanted to live in Indianapolis, but it was where I found a job. I have no doubt that many people would move back to their hometowns or some other preferable small town destination if they could take their employment with them.
I live and work for a company based in my hometown and am doing fairly well here. However, I graduated college in 2010 and was unable to find anything making more than $30,000/year here. I moved to Indianapolis in 2014 and made $50,000 right off the bat for similar work, and was up to $60,000 within two years. Fortunately, I was able to bring my out of area salary back with me. That's another huge problem - even for skilled work, pay in smaller towns and rural areas is often significantly lower than mid-cost major cities (think Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, etc.) , even if you adjust it for local costs of living. While that $50,000 in Indianapolis may be equivalent to $45,000 here (COL in Indy, outside of state/local taxes, is not much higher), it certainly beats the brakes off the $21,000 I made in 2013.
I can see these areas making a come back in the future where jobs are largely automated and many people are forced back into a feudal subsidence type of lifestyle. Contrary to popular belief, there will not be enough programming or robot repair jobs created to absorb the millions of people made redundant.
I come from a small town in PA which reinvented itself as a bedroom community for commuters who work in high COL high tax areas but don't necessarily want to live there. A lot of the same businesses you see in larger cities were built to cater to those workers which helped boost the local economy and create jobs.
As for welfare, the politicians always promise hand outs because it helps them get elected.
2) Declare these places "Economic Disaster Areas" and buy out the people...
Demolish the towns or just leave them there. Close the highway exits to the towns.
Relocate the residents to areas where there are more jobs.
Remember that the bigger cities ALSO have a high number of "unemployable"
The issue is less about the number of jobs than the number of warm bodies available...
too many of which simply do not have needed skills, the capacity to be trained and/or
are beyond a practical age to be trained... even if there were jobs for them to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by s1alker
I can see these areas making a come back in the future where jobs are largely automated
and many people are forced back into a feudal subsistence type of lifestyle.
How about something in between these two... and with less of a draconian image...
for the remaining 10-30 years required until the extant population is beyond working age?
Get them out of the U3 (or even the U6) numbers altogether.
Create a market based supply:demand reason for the remainder to be paid better.
We're already paying through the nose to support this population...
lets do it in a sensible manner and we might even be able to reduce the costs.
Oversimplified -- but substantially the idea:
Allow/encourage the most able to get to the job centers.
Allow/encourage the least able to leave the job centers ...in much larger numbers.
Spend "welfare" funds to prop up those destination places for the duration.
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