There Will Never Ever Be Jobs Again
This explains pretty much everything today! Let's break down this "why there are no jobs" article, nearly every paragraph of which is either depressing or a bit fury-inducing. Here's a one-two punch that deserves to have its dots connected:
1. "We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor costs, especially when workers are getting even more expensive," says manager of company.
2. "Indeed, equipment and software prices have dipped 2.4 percent since the recovery began, thanks largely to foreign manufacturing."
Oh, I see. A supply-demand shame spiral! You can see where this is going. Anyway, then the poor manager is besieged by resumes when he posts a job—awww!—and then? He must "spend $150 for each drug test." (Which: stop doing that?) Mercy. It's hard to find a reason why anyone in America even wants to work!
(Bonus bit, from the chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business: “We don’t have 11 million unemployed farmers today because over time farmers and their children transitioned into different sectors." True! We have 2 million farmers who live in a completely bizarre hybrid socialist-corporatist country of their own.)
On the plus side, there's serious wage inflation right now in China. That, combined with the sinking dollar, will make manufacturing in the USA competitive again by around 2015-2020. Only 4-9 more years of living in an old fridge box!
@TheRtHonPM Unfortunately, in 3 years, nobody will be able to afford refrigerators. What then!
@boyofdestiny Living in an ice cube tray.
@deepomega Twelve guys in an impossibly tiny living space. It'll be like college.
@boyofdestiny At least this time there are walls instead of hastily hung bedsheets.
There are no dots to connect. It is called Globalization, and you know what, its working. This has been the plan all along.
Have you ever met an unemployed economist?
It's called Immiseration, actually.
@dntsqzthchrmn Bringing up Marx turns off people's minds. Use the lingo of the Thomas Friedman's and CNBC's of the world to make the same point.
But you did answer my question, Marx was an unemployed economist.
@Lockheed Ventura Bringing up Thomas Friedman turns off people's minds, hearts, gonads…
Also, I take it you didn't care for the Mazower piece on Marx in the recent Bookforum? or the awesome Hodge thing on unpaid labor?
@Lockheed Ventura Not sure if you'll ever read this comment, but Marx wasn't unemployed. Wrote for the New York Daily Tribune and various German newspapers here and there.
Pretty soon we'll all be making writer's wages.
@KarenUhOh Negative dollars?
You know, we'd have plenty of jobs cleaning up toxic trash if the damn Indians would stop taking them.
#dotnotfeather
@HiredGoons #slurpeenotcasino
Good thing today's my last day at work! Party-time
Oh, Business! I see what you did there! You spent millions lobbying for tax breaks and incentives to create an atmosphere of competetiveness in the US economy, Then you threaten if we don't extend the tax cuts, you'll have to start laying people off! Brilliant! And now that you got everyfuckingthingyiuwanted, you tell us that robots are cheaper, so go fuck yourselves, you obsolete pieces of shit!
Aren't we angry enough yet to start protesting in the streets ala Egypt?
@jackannapolis Maybe humans can get jobs as prostitutes for the robots? Just brainstorming here.
@Lockheed Ventura As with most skills these days, even humans prefer robots to pleasure themselves. With robots? We have no chance.
@jackannapolis Looks like we're all going to be needing some Old Glory Insurance around here.
Job idea…for the youngs, who like animals* and fashion…and for farmers who don't want to be socialists.
OPEN A FANCY ROOSTER FARM!
I keep reading trend pieces about a run on those feathers every 5th grade girl in town (and Steven Tyler) stick in their hair. And there's only one farm in Colorado that produces the correct roosters.
So open a rooster farm, unemployed people. You'll be a hit with pre-teen girls AND fly fishermen. It's simple.
*must kill roosters after they are plucked bare. Sad. But the good news is, the rest of the unemployed can be hired by the growing rooster burial industry. Yay for rooster death panels!
@hockeymom Secondary benefit: after the collapse of the dollar, feathers will be used as currency.
@boyofdestiny This is why I sleep all day, to keep my pillows secure.
@boyofdestiny Surely these feathers will be packaged in a box of some kind.
@ContainsHotLiquid Yes, and our jobs will be to clean and maintain the robots that make those boxes. Base salary is four feathers an hour.
@boyofdestiny: Put it in the feather stock market and you'll have enough feathers to make a comfortable bed soon enough!
@deepomega Don't you mean the Flock Market?
@boyofdestiny Another side industry…naked cock fights. (The roosters, not the viewers). Roosters fighting, in all their plucked glory. They're going to die anyway, might as well monetize it.
I bet someone is perfecting a free resume disqualifying cloud service at Google HQ right now.
Google Dream Crusher
I failed my drug test. The last question was, "What's the term for the hole in the side of a bong?" I answered "rush hole," but the correct term is apparently "carburetor."
@SidAndFinancy Great. Now what, they're going to outsource stoner positions to India?