What is the "participation rate"? I'm not also sure I understand the "employment-population" ratio -- the ratio of number of people employed / total population?
I remember us having this discussion before about the all-volunteer economy, and what I'm still hung up on is: I don't think we're anywhere close to being able to automate for basic needs. I don't think anyone -wants- to work on a farm at the scale that would be required to feed the US. Hobby farmers, sure, but the scaling factor is way too small (he says, with absolutely zero data to back it up).
So while we might be 90% or maybe 95% the way there, I don't see us closing that last 5% anytime soon (i.e., in the next 20 years).
Labor participation is usually defined as the ratio of the people who want to be employed - that is, those employed plus those actively looking for work - to the total population. A drop in labor participation means that some people aren't bothering to look for work, so they don't show up in the unemployment statistics.
You are, of course, correct about basic needs. Agriculture in the U.S. relies heavily on illegal immigrants specifically because we don't have enough citizens that are willing to take those jobs, even if they are paid. That kind of indicates that we definitely wouldn't have enough people doing that kind of work if we didn't bother to pay them.
I wasn't advocating not paying people. To extend the analogy, the army is well-paid for the qualifications it asks for, provides helpful training, health care and other benefits. There is no reason that in a volunteer economy you couldn't compensate people on the basis of all the same things you compensate them for now. The only change would be whether or not it was compulsory to participate. Right now it is very, very difficult to opt out of the economy; the only people I know who have done it successfully are squatters in NYC, and they still do odd jobs for money for the stuff you can't find in dumpsters
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I'm not yet convinced that the majority of current unemployment is structural, since employment has declined across the board and in structural unemployment there are jobs that people could fill if they held a different skill set. Until those jobs exist, there's no benefit to retraining people (which is the main difference between structural and cyclical unemployment.) Since we aren't getting any fiscal stimulus either it's mostly an academic question. It only becomes a useful distinction when trying to design policy interventions. However, it is an open debate and I know smart people on both sides. It is also likely that even if I'm right, current unemployment has or will become structural as people remain out of work and their skills become out of date
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Note that what's happening now is exactly what happens in every recession: unemployment goes up, participation goes down. It's just that this recession happens to be deeper and longer because of bad government policies. There are two major relevant issues, which I'll summarize since I haven't had time to make posts on them yet
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Okay, so armed with psychohist's definitions, I think I'm reading that your point is: this is the first time that participation rate has significantly declined, meaning that this may be a tipping point from Old Economies to New Economies?
If so, I'm willing to follow that line of thinking. So your next point is: how do we change social norms? (Hmm, to me, that means changing the current fashionable thinking of "free markets solve everything!" to something different.)
Hmm. Tradeoffs. I feel like I want to look at a bunch of ideas, and then focus on their downsides, and start negotiating there. Do I want this bad thing -- wait, this really sucks! -- or this other bad thing? Ooooh, maybe this bad thing from the first idea isn't so bad after all...
But I can't get to tradeoffs if I don't know what new social norms you're advocating. Argh, chickens and eggs!
It's not the first time, and it will take a while to see if it remains low. It could also be that people are moving outside of the labor market; there are a rising number of one-income families with female heads of households, for example (which will take social adjustment of a different type
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If I'm understanding the idea, it will clearly require a large, relatively sudden shift in cultural practices and perceptions. To my relatively uneducated thinking, there aren't many things that can accomplish such a shift, with `war' being the most likely, followed perhaps by national collapse and contact with extraterrestrial intelligence (a steep slope, to be sure; probably there are other points on the graph that I'm just not anticipating).
If we assume that war is not worth causing just to provoke this shift, and that ET contact is really unlikely, then I wonder if there is anything in the current culture/economy of some place like Franc, Switzerland, or Canada that would be illustrative?
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I remember us having this discussion before about the all-volunteer economy, and what I'm still hung up on is: I don't think we're anywhere close to being able to automate for basic needs. I don't think anyone -wants- to work on a farm at the scale that would be required to feed the US. Hobby farmers, sure, but the scaling factor is way too small (he says, with absolutely zero data to back it up).
So while we might be 90% or maybe 95% the way there, I don't see us closing that last 5% anytime soon (i.e., in the next 20 years).
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You are, of course, correct about basic needs. Agriculture in the U.S. relies heavily on illegal immigrants specifically because we don't have enough citizens that are willing to take those jobs, even if they are paid. That kind of indicates that we definitely wouldn't have enough people doing that kind of work if we didn't bother to pay them.
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If so, I'm willing to follow that line of thinking. So your next point is: how do we change social norms? (Hmm, to me, that means changing the current fashionable thinking of "free markets solve everything!" to something different.)
Hmm. Tradeoffs. I feel like I want to look at a bunch of ideas, and then focus on their downsides, and start negotiating there. Do I want this bad thing -- wait, this really sucks! -- or this other bad thing? Ooooh, maybe this bad thing from the first idea isn't so bad after all...
But I can't get to tradeoffs if I don't know what new social norms you're advocating. Argh, chickens and eggs!
Reply
Reply
If we assume that war is not worth causing just to provoke this shift, and that ET contact is really unlikely, then I wonder if there is anything in the current culture/economy of some place like Franc, Switzerland, or Canada that would be illustrative?
Reply
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