The Glade 4.0

Given unemployment jump back to 9.1% and the general drum beat of bad economic news, Fox news would like to provide this trip down job prediction lane courtesy of the seers Biden and Pelosi. Just wanted to get this in before Khross does a victory lap when they officially announce a double dip recession.

http://nation.foxnews.com/joe-biden/201 ... jobs-month

http://nation.foxnews.com/nancy-pelosi/ ... mmediately

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Ideally, 0 people would have jobs, since everything would be automated. So might not be a bad thing. If people were hand-picking crops then this unemployment rate would be lower. Way back in the day, jobs didn't exist. People just sat around having fun, chatting with eachother, and throwing rocks at trees for fun. They'd spend maybe 30 minutes a day foraging berries or gathering small game caught from their traps. I could find sources if necessary (except the rock throwing part). Jobs are a new thing and they will go away completely again. Nobody is starving as a result of our unemployment situation.

a 0.1% increase in unemployment and suddenly everyone's claiming some kind of victory?

It's not a victory, but it's not a recovery either.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I believe what little improvement we have seen is happening despite the government intervention, not because of it. So at what point will it be correct to say that this administrations policies are failing?

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/hal ... 73220.html

Half of the jobs are at the Golden Arches

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

So you're not bothered by the fact that unemployment is rising and participation in the work force is at a 30 year low, Aizle? Or, did you miss that the work force is contracting by approximately 500,000 a month and has been for the last 13 months? That's way outside "normal" recession behavior using BLS data. If one corrects participation rates for the number of people actually seeking work, U3 unemployment is 11.2% and rising.

But, you know ...

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My roomie finally landed an electrician gig after over a year.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

About time. Was it with that place I told him about?

Oh and I have $3 that says the administration changes the unemployment calculation AGAIN as we get closer to elections. That was the only way it got below 9% before.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

It was some place he found on craigslist I think. He starts monday and all rectification and new certification for commercial work is going to be covered. So really nice.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Anyhoos I'll update you tonight when we meet for foods.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Wow, government's got some competition. I wonder if they feel threatened enough that they'll start moving to nationalize McDonald's?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I honestly don't understand how the economy can be generating any kind of net gain in jobs with real estate prices falling as fast as they are.

I get the need for the administration to do the whole "keep calm and carry on" angle, but how many times does it need to be shown as BS before people start grabbing pitchforks? How many obvious obfuscation statics have to be shown before the people start looking behind the curtain? I want things to be "normal" again, but not so badly that I'm willing to put my head in the sand and expose my *** and wallet to their shenanigans.

Obama had the political wind behind him. He had a supermajority. He had the trust of the people. He could have fixed more his first term than any president before him. Instead he dove headfirst into the leftist wishlist with the countries credit card in one hand and a shield made up of media and blame bush rhetoric in the other. He's used both up, and has the balls to say we need to extend his credit line and his term.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Why do people care so much about working? There's plenty of food to distribute, plenty of energy to go around. During the Great Depression they had really shitty farm equipment, so it was different. The world won't end if most people lose their jobs. There's no need for pitchforks because you want to sit in a cubicle all day.

Cause farmers are evil and expect to be paid for that food duh!

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Its an interesting theoretical question though. You have a surfeit of shelter (homes), and, assuming Lex's hypothesis is correct, sufficient power and foodstuffs for the population.

Is there another organisational principle that could let you feed and house everyone, without requiring a capitalist work structure, while also preventing the rest of the world diving in and shitting on your society?

*If* there really is excess/adequate resource, and the problem is just organisational (demand/resource matching via the $), can a better principle be found?

Socialists have been chasing the dream you are describing for over a century and failed everywhere they've tried. In such a model there is no incentive to work harder than the guy next to you, since you are both going to get your bread and water at the end of the day.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You have surplus room in your car during your commute. You now must use that room to help others get to nearby destinations. You will still foot the total bill for repairs, maintence, fuel and insurance by yourself.
You have surplus space in your apartment. You now must share your extra space with someone who doesn't have a place. You will continue to pay the full rent, utilities etc on your own.
You have a 50mb internet connection. 5 other people near you only have 6mb service. We aren't going to adjust your bill, but we are going to take your "surplus" and distribue it among those less fortunate. In fact after we audit you, we are going to adjust the multiple surpluses we find in your life and better distribute those resources.

So feel free to keep working, paying your taxes and staying healthy so we can take your surplus and give it away.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

You're kind of jumping to a particular answer there, which I don't think anyone is advocating. The choices aren't capitalism, communism, or nothing.

(actually, practically thinking, they're pretty much capitalism or despotism right now, but this is a message board thought experiment )

Well the surplus concept is exactly the justification for Obamacare, and one of the main means of its operation. Combine that with an administration packed full of central planning proponents, and its not a leap to see where the slope gets damn slick. Hell it ain't even a shuffle.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Well then, putting labels aside (communism etc...), we can go back to the original question, but we still have the same problem:



Where does that food come from? Why is there "plenty" to distribute? Even assuming this is the case, most of that food is coming from large operations, fueled by machinery, petroleum, etc... These farms cost resources to operate. Assuming everyone's job goes away, where do you get the ability to run a large farm like that? Who does your planting? Who builds the infrastructure to hold your livestock? How do you transport the food? How do you regulate quality, stop disease spread, prepare for the marketplace etc... All these things don't magically happen, they occur because people work. Individual people still have to do specific tasks in order to make the larger system operate. Even if you go back to the idea of a small community exchanging goods and services without currency, currency is just an extension of the barter system anyway. It's a way to set a standard to exchange those goods and services.

Let's say you throw out the idea of a society that exchanges goods and services, and everyone goes back to subsistence farming. How many people own enough land that they could even grow or raise sufficient food to feed themselves? If you lost your job today, would you be able to feed yourself and your family on of your own labor? Do you have the knowhow, the physical fortitude, and the dedication it would take to start a farm? Do you think that you can do it by sitting around partying and throwing rocks at trees? Or do you want to go a step further back to the hunter/gatherer days? Do you think a half hour a day of foraging is enough to sustain you? Either way, if you run into a dry spell, or a locust swarm, you and your family perish without neighbors/society to fall back on. The reason we're where we are at today, large interdependent society, is that it works like a group insurance policy. Small localized failures are absorbed into the larger matrix.

Yes, there will always be the small percentage of society that have the charisma to work their way up to a position where the rest of society can completely support them (without having to work). However history teaches us that once the rest of society catches on to that idea, revolutions occur - that's generally not a stable system, especially on a small scale.

And yes, I know I'm feeding the troll here and I generally try not to respond to Lex, but SuiNeko's post drew me in to the discussion.

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This is probably 5-10% of the economy. So 90% unemployment is fine.

Lex fails at second stage thinking.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

So 5-10% of the population does the work, and 100% reaps the reward, with nothing in return from the 90%+? Even ignoring resource and throughput considerations, the only way you're going to achieve this is through slavery.

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