Good Economy? Tech Layoffs Are Up 293
Nerval's Lobster writes: If you look at the broad numbers produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy seems great, especially for the tech industry: The unemployment rate for tech pros currently stands at 2.1 percent, down from 2.3 percent in the first quarter. However, that dip isn't uniform for all sectors: The unemployment rate for Web developers climbed from 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent. Computer support specialists, network and systems administrators, computer & information systems managers, and database administrators also saw their respective unemployment rates rising slightly. Layoffs and discharges for the tech industry as a whole rose slightly in April and May (the latest months for which the BLS had numbers), to an average of 441,500 employees per month. That's higher than the first quarter, when layoffs and discharges averaged 424,300 per month. That's not to say we're on the verge of a collapse, bubble, or other economic shock, but it's definitely not great times for everybody.
Good (Score:3, Funny)
The more computer geeks end in the streets the better. They deserve it. When they helped destroying the lives of entire families because computers and robots were taking the place of people, they laughed "you can't stop progress, candle-makers". Now it's them getting the short end of the stick and we're glad. You ever see any of those stupid nerds asking for change in the street, knife him in the guts.
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>>Now it's them getting the short end of the stick and we're glad.
You are only glad tell you have to call for support on your new laptop. Wait on the phone for an hour to talk to someone you can barley understand in India. Then you bitch about the crappy support and outsourcing of jobs.
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Never needed any tech support, shit kid. Computers are among the easiest things to learn, it takes very little effort to learn anything about them and zero hands-on practice, unlike real jobs. That's why they appeal so much to egotists with little intelligence and who don't really like to work.
Your trolling needs improvement. This is too blatantly asinine to have an effect.
Tech is being automated away. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event, the fluctuations in the unemployment rate and layoff figures month-to-month are pretty meaningless. You still like to have the granularity of month-to-month datapoints, but the broader trends are revealed only in longer timescales.
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Actually, when it gets close to collapse, the people in power will just start a BIG war. It has worked numerous times in the past, and will work again in the future.
That doesn't seem to be that good of a way of doing things. Suppose you had a global conflict, and maybe 200 million people die. That's less than 3% of the population, not really enough to make a huge dent. This doesn't include all of the people injured by a war, who now need medical help, etc, which costs even more. War is one of the worst things there is for the economy, unless you're an arms dealer.
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War is one of the worst things there is for the economy, unless you're an arms dealer.
Or a bank. Someone has to provide the funds for war, and nations have foolishly delegated their monetary systems to private banks.
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When the global birth rate and graduation rate is higher than the number of jobs required and/or needed, wages -which represents labor- will continue to go down all while debt of a fiat currency continues to climb. Eventually, total economic collapse....as we know it. Life will continue to go on, but a new system/paradigm will replace it IMHO.
This guy gets it.
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We in the tech industry may be taking it for granted that, by and large, we can hopscotch from job to job however it suits us.
Yes, that's an artifact of the fact that the tech industry feels that it can fail to provide workers with a future. The only way to move ahead in this industry, in many cases, is to switch jobs. And employers are ruthless about using you up and throwing you away - after many days of pulling too many hours, and needing a refractory period and seeing performance suffer as a result, they can just shitcan you for poor performance and hire some other poor fucker they will overwork and never pay properly.
but the broader trends are revealed only in longer timescales.
BOHICA
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In no small part because we have politicians obsessed with the bottom line of corporations, as if a profitable corporation which is taking huge chunks out of the economy is somehow good for the rest of the economy. The reality is, it isn't.
It's short sighted thinking that somehow equates corporate profits with national prosperity, when in fact it's transferring wages to the bottom line of corp
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I can't speak for "tech workers" in general. But if you are a software developer with experience who is being overworked and underpaid, You're Doing It Wrong (TM)
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you must be young. I'll just leave it at that.
Re: Perspective (Score:2)
I'm 41 and started developing professionals at 22
Making bad news out of anything (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, seeing as an unemployment rate of 3% or less is considered "full employment", this story is just another bullshit blown-out-of-proportion negative hit piece.
The published unemployment rates are a blatant lie, and I don't know how anyone is stupid enough to believe them any more. It's been well-established that they are a dirty lie. Why do we (by which I mean you) keep using them in arguments like they mean something?
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Well, seeing as an unemployment rate of 3% or less is considered "full employment", this story is just another bullshit blown-out-of-proportion negative hit piece.
The published unemployment rates are a blatant lie, and I don't know how anyone is stupid enough to believe them any more. It's been well-established that they are a dirty lie. Why do we (by which I mean you) keep using them in arguments like they mean something?
Because he's responding to the arguments presented in TFA?
Re:Making bad news out of anything (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been out of work since january of this year. I am over 50, I have well over 25 years in C (c++ came later), I do hardware, firmware, networking.
and yet, I can't get a job to save my life, almost literally.
go ahead, I'm waiting; blame it on me. I didn't so this or that right, I should move to some bumfuck area of the country instead of the bay area, etc etc. yeah yeah, its all my fault. you 20 and 30somethings will surely know that I'm 'no good at coding' and so its all my fault.
but I know what the real issue is. corporations are sociopathic led by people who have that 'feature' themselves. people are to be kept around just long enough but not longer. and if you are older, forget about getting fulltime (benefits, healthcare) as you will be told 'sorry, we only have 'contract to hire' for folks like you; and btw, that's a typo its really contract-to-FIRE).
I know I'm not the most brilliant guy in the room, when I'm at a software company, but I also know that I'm never the dumbest and I can pull my weight, do my work and solve problems as good as anyone else. I'm no genius but even with over 30 yrs in tech, with a whos-who list of companies on my resume, I'm unhirable (it seems).
there is MOST DEFINITELY something really wrong about our current tech employment 'style'. the eat-and-use-them-up (then fire them) mentality is hitting people like me, first and the hardest but you'll come next, don't worry too much about that! when its your time and you hit a certain age and experience level, expect to find all that I just explained HAPPENING TO YOU.
I didn't believe it when older guys said that to me, 10 or 20 yrs ago. but now, well, I'm living it.
employers suck and they've sucked more now than they have in the last 50 or even 75 years. only the turn of the century has been worse for workers than it is now.
but hey, that ceo got himself a 2nd or 3rd boat. woohoo! I'm glad to be penniless and nearly homeless just so some ultra rich white guy can get even richer.
Meritocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason there is increasing unemployment while also a shortage is because to become a tech worker you just have to collect a degree. To become a useful tech worker, you have to actually have some skills.
Lots of people want to become tech workers because of the promise of a quick fortune. A limited number will have actual skills (but without the passion) and might find a comfortable niche where they can charge out banker sort of rates for their services. A small number won't have any tech skills but will recognise this early and move into management before they are found out. A much larger number aren't even smart enough to figure out how little they know and get stuck complaining until they eventually attach themselves to a clueless corporation awash with money.
In the alternate world of people who work in tech because they enjoy it and can actually get things done, there is a huge shortage.
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In the last department I was in the development team had exactly ONE CS graduate... me. The lead developer is a former math teacher; the secondary a biologist... they gravitated to programming because they enjoyed it and are now pretty successful at it. I moved to a different department to do graphics work (which I enjoy a lot more), but I don't think any of the people in that division were CS graduates.
Why? Because the vast majority of CS graduates are exactly what you guys are describing - they went in
Re:Meritocracy (Score:4, Insightful)
I've worked my way into a comfortable position, and I still feel my career is moving up, but it's been slow and I've only had one employer in the past decade who would pay anything for training. Two if you count my current employer, who has alot of internal training information, but I wouldn't work here if I wasn't already good at what they hired me for.
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No, the reason there is increasing unemployment while also a shortage is because to become a tech worker you just have to collect a degree. To become a useful tech worker, you have to actually have some skills.
Lots of people want to become tech workers because of the promise of a quick fortune. A limited number will have actual skills (but without the passion) and might find a comfortable niche where they can charge out banker sort of rates for their services. A small number won't have any tech skills but will recognise this early and move into management before they are found out. A much larger number aren't even smart enough to figure out how little they know and get stuck complaining until they eventually attach themselves to a clueless corporation awash with money.
In the alternate world of people who work in tech because they enjoy it and can actually get things done, there is a huge shortage.
That really is an alternate world, though. The number of people who have a passion for tech is much smaller than the number of positions that need filling, as you say. I would consider myself one of those who have actual skills but without the passion. I'm pretty good at what I do and I think computer systems are pretty neat, but I'm not spending my free time reading about protocols or contributing to OSS.
I think we probably need more people like me (naturally!). What I mean is, passion can't be taught.
Sounds normal (Score:2)
OMG! (Score:5, Funny)
And a summer month at that, when I assume new grads are coming into the market.
Do you guys seriously have the gall to call that journalism?
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If you believe the BLS numbers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Many "web developers" deserve to be laid off (Score:2)
I'm afraid that a great deal of "web development" has become automated over time and done by other personnel. It's often cheaper and far, far faster for most sites to reduce their toolkits to a few well supported technologies and stop hosting their own storage, their own DNS, their own mail servers, and yes, their own "web server" farmss. I've helped various partners and clients reduce their developer head count by a great deal by discarding the in-house, only one developer in their own team knows it, propr
But....but....need H1B's (Score:3)
"We just can't find American tech workers anymore," repeated Mark Zuckerberg to Congress. "And here are some big campaign donations to prove my point."
Statistical noise and full employment (Score:5, Informative)
The unemployment rate for tech pros currently stands at 2.1 percent, down from 2.3 percent in the first quarter. However, that dip isn't uniform for all sectors: The unemployment rate for Web developers climbed from 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent.
A 1% or less change pretty much amounts to statistical noise. It is meaningless. That is almost certainly well within the amount of normal variation we should expect over short time periods. Furthermore those unemployment figures are roughly half that of the 5-6% unemployment rate currently enjoyed by the overall economy. Basically a 2-3% unemployment rate is as close as you ever get to full employment. It doesn't get better than that.
There's a definite split in the IT workforce (Score:2)
What I'm finding is this:
- Really good people with lots of experience are having an easy time finding work. (I get recruitment emails at least 2 or 3 times a week and haven't updated any of my resume/linkedin stuff in 3 years, nor have expressed any interest in a new job right now.)
- Lower-skill people or those with less experience are really having difficulty, especially new grads.
I attribute this to a couple of things. First, the nature of the work is changing somewhat, and companies are increasingly look
Baby Boomers have been the disaster. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to blame the last two presidents, but they're powerless compared to those who are really responsible for the current awful state of the global economy: Baby Boomers.
The Baby Boomers in the United States inherited one of the most successful, stable, equitable economies to have ever existed. Jobs were plentiful, innovation was rapid, inflation was minimal, and the economic machine ran very smoothly.
The earliest Baby Boomers started getting real influence within academia and government starting in the late 1960s, and within business starting in the early 1970s. The 1960s were a decade of wonder, even to the point of getting humans to the moon, not thanks to the effort of the Baby Boomers, but thanks to the effort of the generations who came before them. Almost as soon as the Baby Boomers started getting seriously involved in governance of the nation, of its academia, and of its businesses, things started going to hell.
Baby Boomers in general are best described as a "rotten" generation. They are very self-centered, with massive egos, and a complete lack of sensibility. They are sure they are right, even then they're obviously and hopelessly wrong, and will remain oblivious (or wilfully ignorant) to the point of disaster.
The 1970s were the first disaster caused by the Baby Boomers. Their Middle Eastern policies shot up the price of oil, harming the economy. They also managed to wreck the finances of cities like New York and Detroit. I know that some will say, "But Nixon wasn't a Baby Boomer!", yet in many ways he was very much one of them in attitude and mindset; he was just born somewhat earlier. That is why he was elected by the Baby Boomers, who made up the majority of the electorate at the time. His age aside, he was one of them, for all intents and purposes.
This progressed into the 1980s. The stereotype of the greedy, manipulative yuppie was nothing more than a description of the Baby Boomers who, due to their numbers, had taken control of much of business and government at that point. Economically, the 1980s were shameful, with major stock market crashes, recession, and finally at the end of the decade the imposition of "free" trade.
The 1990s saw the beginning of the unravelling of the economy due to the mismanagement of it by the Baby Boomers. Some may see most of the 1990s as having been economically good years, but the reality is that they were much worse than they could have been. The rise of the PC and the Internet during this decade could have improved the economy drastically, had their economic effects not been neutered by Baby Boomers.
The 2000s saw the complete unravelling of the economy due to the terrible management of the Baby Boomers. The price of a basic academic education spiralled out of control, thanks to the Baby Boomers who poorly managed such institutions, as well as the student loan industry. The economy was in tatters, with jobs being sent out of the country rapidly, yet without any sort of replacement jobs being created. Despite their earlier resistance to the Vietnam War when they were at risk of being sent to fight, Baby Boomers were very eager to start multiple foreign warzones now that they were in command and sending others off to die. We're all very well aware of how poorly the Baby Boomers ran the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; they were complete disasters, and we're still dealing with the fallout even today.
Now half-way through the 2010s, we still see the Baby Boomers doing damage to our institutions, businesses, and economy as a whole. One thing to consider now is that their offspring, born in the 1980s, are now themselves getting into positions of power. Bred to have very much the same "rotten" attitude and mindset of their parents, we'll only see the disasters caused by the Baby Boomers prolonged by the Millennials that the Baby Boomers spawned.
Half a century ago, it would have been unimaginable for an entire generation to have been given so much, yet to have turned around and systematically squandered and destroyed it. But that's exactly what we saw the Baby Boomers do!
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If you 'saw' them do this, you must be one of them!
That's a very stupid argument, which only a very stupid person would make. By the time the Boomers were in a position to ruin the world, the next generation was old enough to recognize they were doing it.
Honestly, what a pile of steaming drivel.
You are however right about that, because every generation is responsible in its own way. For doing the wrong thing, for not doing anything, whatever. It's a team effort, throughout history.
Re:Baby Boomers have been the disaster. (Score:4, Interesting)
There were generations before them, you know. I belong to what has been called the Silent Generation, which preceded the Baby Boomers. We're among the ones who put Armstrong on the moon, who developed the computer and networking technology you're using today, and who helped build up what the Baby Boomers ended up destroying.
This may surprise you, but some of us are very capable users of technology, even in our old age, having pioneered so much of it. I'm 86 years old, if you must know. We've witnessed first hand how the Baby Boomers ruined the many gifts that we, and the generations before us, gave them. In the span of one generation they have undone the work and contributions of centuries of previous generations.
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We've witnessed first hand how the Baby Boomers ruined the many gifts that we, and the generations before us, gave them. In the span of one generation they have undone the work and contributions of centuries of previous generations.
And the obvious rebuttal is that you raised the Boomers up on TV. You fucked up. [*] [*] "You" being a stereotype of someone from your generation who probably doesn't exist any more than the Boomers described in this thread do. This post also has been shown to promote heat death of the universe and as a result should be consumed sparingly and with a degree of caution.
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This may surprise you, but some of us are very capable users of technology, even in our old age, having pioneered so much of it. I'm 86 years old, if you must know.
That's why I never got the old joke of "old people can't use technology." Dennis Ritchie would have been 75 this year. Linus Torvalds is 45, Theo de Raadt is 47.
Not only can old people use technology they created it. I'm in my 30s now and get this from 'kids' all the time. "Man he's old he must not know how to use anything." It's my hacking peers from my generation that took stuff that used to be expensive and in industry to a hobby. I would have killed for an Arduino type board for $10 when I was 10.
The be
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The oldest Baby Boomer was 24 in 1970 and the youngest was six years old. I assure you, that neither the 24 year old nor the 6 year old was in charge of a goddamned thing.
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I like how you made Nixon an honorary baby boomer. He's kind of the universal villain when Hitler is too much, right?
The main fault of the Baby Boomers was not recognizing that the post-war economy they were born into was finite, and that they were going to have to deal with setbacks and recover from them gracefully. Instead, many bought into the endless prosperity gospel of the Keynesians and used government to manipulate the system. Hey, it worked for FDR, right? Wrong-- that was the wartime economy.
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Bred to have very much the same "rotten" attitude and mindset of their parents, we'll only see the disasters caused by the Baby Boomers prolonged by the Millennials that the Baby Boomers spawned.
Or maybe this is more evidence, as if we needed it, that there's no real difference between "generations" and the generation blame game is a silly waste of time?
And seriously what is the point of whining, pathetically, about someone just because of when they were born? Are all the bad people born between 1946 and 1964?
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Blaming people is easier, I guess.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
GDP is up ~8.5% since 2008.
DJIA is up ~18.5% since 2008.
Unemployment is down ~2% across the board since 2008.
Average hourly wage is up ~4% (Although the MEDIAN seasonally adjusted wage is down slightly, perhaps indicating a widening gap in wages?)
Perhaps the reason tech related jobs are doing relatively poorly is because they are too easily outsourced. If it doesn't matter where you are physically when you do your job, then you are literally competing with the entire planet for that job.
=Smidge=
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Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
With meaningful, uncooked figures. I don't care if GDP is up if the profits are going into the same old pockets. The published unemployment rate is based on who is eligible to collect benefits: it is just made-up bullshit. Stop believing it.
Average hourly wage is up ~4% (Although the MEDIAN seasonally adjusted wage is down slightly, perhaps indicating a widening gap in wages?)
Yes, we will never care about the average wage. Only the median wage and the minimum wage are relevant. Why would you think an average was notable?
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Only the median wage and the minimum wage are relevant.
As an aside, the minimum wage has always been $0 an hour.
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Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
GDP is up ~8.5% since 2008.
DJIA is up ~18.5% since 2008.
Unemployment is down ~2% across the board since 2008.
Average hourly wage is up ~4% (Although the MEDIAN seasonally adjusted wage is down slightly, perhaps indicating a widening gap in wages?)
Perhaps the reason tech related jobs are doing relatively poorly is because they are too easily outsourced. If it doesn't matter where you are physically when you do your job, then you are literally competing with the entire planet for that job. =Smidge=
I would start by not using the low point of the greatest recession in living memory as my reference point.
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Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
There's the rub. Government and Economists use different metrics than the voters do. Just because corporations are doing well doesn't automatically mean that the people are also doing well. When you're fearful for your continued income - that it may be interrupted or reduced, then you don't feel that the "real" economy is in such great shape. And while trickle-down wealth has pretty well lost all credibility, there's plenty of evidence to show that bubble-up poverty is real. If I don't know if I'll have a p
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Well, how do you want to measure economic health? GDP is up ~8.5% since 2008. DJIA is up ~18.5% since 2008. Unemployment is down ~2% across the board since 2008.
Slowest economic recovery since the great depression. GDP going up 8% in seven years is less than 1% per year, not very good. And unemployment still sucks, especially when you look at the underemployed.
I don't blame Obama for this, the president can't single-handedly fix the economy, just pointing out it hasn't been too great.
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Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
GDP is up ~8.5% since 2008.
A solid 1.1% per year, well below the historical average post WWII... Not sure I'd count that as a good thing, given it's within the margin of error of calculating inflation (meaning - we may have some real GDP growth or we may not, it's so close to the error we can't tell).
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Also there are always winners and loosers in the sector as times are changing.
Web Developers: Decline in the need of Web Developers is expected as right now, much more sales and marketing are happening on social media sites. So there is less need for Web developers to keep corporate billboard sites.
System Admins: The the rise of cloud, there is less of a need for small-medium sized data centers.
Now just because there is less of a need, it doesn't mean these are bad careers, just there is less demand then th
Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama has done a pretty good job
...of lying about unemployment, just like his predecessors before him. The published rate is not based on the inverse of the workforce participation rate. It is, frankly, invented, by ignoring large swaths of people who are out of work but not eligible to collect any unemployment benefits.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently you do not realize that anyone's definition of the unemployment rate is flawed and either includes or excludes people. It isn't a real number, it is something like the bill in an Italian restaurant (if I recall Douglas Adams correctly).
And Obama didn't come up with the prescription the government uses, it was in use well before him.
I admit Obama isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this isn't his fault, he isn't lying about this.
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Apparently you do not realize that anyone's definition of the unemployment rate is flawed and either includes or excludes people.
When the goal is to lie, and you repeat the lie, and you know what the goal is, then you're a liar. It doesn't matter how many excuses you have.
I admit Obama isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this isn't his fault, he isn't lying about this.
Either he's an idiot, which I don't believe, or he knows the figure is a lie but he's repeating it as if it were the truth, which is just a different kind of lie. Which would you like? Or do you see a third way?
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While no fan of Obama, he is using the same yardstick that every other President was measured by in the last 15 or so years.
Yes, it is a lie, but it is a lie we agreed on as the standard. Changing the goalposts in the middle of the presidency for arguments sake is also disingenuous at best.
Anyone who live through the Carter recession, Regan boom, Bush 1 recession, Clinton boom, internet bust, Bush 2 boom/bust cycle, knows this one is fundamentally different. In part because the industrial age continues to f
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Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Workforce participation rate" is a scam. Why are we better off when larger percentages of the population are working? Would we be better off as a society if every adult man and woman was working full time? The "workforce participation" rate was much lower in the golden '50's and '60's than it is today, yet we somehow managed to survive as a society.
When did a desire for 100% workforce participation become the new normal? You've got to know when you're being played.
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I think his point was, in the 1950's half the population wasn't working, which is to say, women mostly stayed at home.
Today, we have closer to full participation and wages are lower in a relative sense.
It is great that women are now working, but it may have been a better world for us when only one person was working in a household.
Further, the point of technology is that people should not *have* to work. The problem is that the gains we are making with automation are just being used to simply not pay worke
Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Informative)
You shouldn't include children or college students or retired people or stay at home mothers in the unemployment rate. These are people who do not participate in the workforce because they are doing other things instead.
That's why they don't affect the workforce participation rate, which measures what percentage of people who normally work aren't working. Try again.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Informative)
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He didn't take them out of the labor force (Score:4, Insightful)
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Credit where it's due: Obama has done a pretty good job, in spite of the unprecedented obstructionism he had had to put up with every step of the way.
Put me on the "nay" side. He's done more than his fair share of fiddling while Rome burns. The fossil fuel stuff is a good example. Maybe right after the worst recession in 80 years is not the best time to try to reduce fossil fuel consumption (for example, blocking off shore drilling and putting huge constraints on coal burning plants). Same goes with the Obamacare crap (we still don't have significant parts of the legislation active yet). He also completely blew the Keynesian spending strategy (such as TA
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For his first two years, we were lucky we didn't up in a 2nd great depression. Fraud in bond ratings associated with what should have been mortgage junk bonds singlehandedly brought business lending to a halt.
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For his first two years, we were lucky we didn't up in a 2nd great depression. Fraud in bond ratings associated with what should have been mortgage junk bonds singlehandedly brought business lending to a halt.
I wouldn't say single-handedly, but it certainly was a major contributor. Unfortunately no one was really punished for all that fraud; not just by the ratings agencies but by loan originators and the banks that sold mortgage backed securities. Eric Holder institutionalized "too big to jail", basically saying that since the crimes were so immense, and their effects so far reaching, we couldn't hold anyone accountable for fear of destroying the system. He is now back at his old firm Covington & Burling
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Unfortunately no one was really punished for all that fraud; not just by the ratings agencies but by loan originators and the banks that sold mortgage backed securities.
I remember the savings and loan crisis and that's the reaction I wanted to see. Prosecutions in the hundreds and thousands, enough to send a giant shudder of fear through the financial industry and get them back to a more conservative posture. Instead we gave them a big pass, so of course the lesson they took from that was "go ahead and do it again, the profits outweigh the consequences".
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So, we need to contact the Tok'Ra.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
look to the republican debate last night: "less government regulation"
the democrats have been complicit in the failure that led to 2008 only when they have gone along willingly with the republican wet dreams about how less government regulation makes magic better world: of companies not punished for polluting, companies not punished for tanking the economy, companies not punished for screwing up the food supply, etc.
the democrats bear about as much responsibility as the guy who handed the murderer the gun. who is the real culprit here? which party loves, loves, loves less regulation?
that doesn't mean all regulation is good. some regulation sucks and needs to be thrown out. but the people behind the purse books don't fucking care about healthy environment, food, economy, etc., they want all regulation destroyed, evne the good and important parts. they just care about making as much money as they fucking can right now, fuck the rest. fuck your grandkids, fuck the poor and middle class. fuck them all: i'm making money, screw you. and which party do such people give most too and which party whines loudest about "evil regulations?"
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Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
you completely glossed over the part where the republicans want less regulation the most. since reagan this is their wet dream. that you can point to democratic morons who go along with their fantasy does not absolve the party most responsible for the deregulation push
"the republicans have been shouting the most about deregulation for the longest time, by many multiples"
"well, i found some democrat morons who went along with that, so let's shift all blame to them"
partisan blindness: negate all critical thinking on the topic, just shift all blame to the party you hate the most, forget actually making sense or intellectual honesty on the topic
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you mean like social issues? (abortion, gay marriage, marijuana, etc.)
the guys bankrolling your congresscritter do not want laws which effe
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so is this alex jones flavor herp derp or are you a free agent crackpot?
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i don't even know what the fuck you are talking about
do you understand the fucking topic of the fucking thread? do you have the mental wherewithall to do that?
nevermind that changing the topic is usually the sign of conceding a point, dishonestly
or changing the topic randomly means you're such a moron you don't even try to understand what the fucking topic in front of you is, you just think throwing random crap is supposed to be coherent in any way or that anyone is going to fucking listen to you. a scatter
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A weak recovery beats a recession every single time. Slow growth beats contraction and half a loaf is better than the loafer who was in the White House before him.
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And do not claim it was because the recession was so bad, because previously the worse the recession the stronger the recovery.
If you're going to compare you really need to use the great depression as your benchmark, this was on that sort of scale and the recovery there was pretty slow.
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Because he wants to accomplish some of his campaign points and 8 years really isn't that long.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Informative)
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Right, by kicking the can down the road, and making exactly ZERO reforms, increasing the perverse incentives that caused the crash in the first place, we have made everything better, FOREVER.
You talking about the simultaneous emergency appropriations to finance a two front war, plus tax reductions at the same time?
Oops, sorry, wrong timeline.
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Re:2 years full control of house and senate made w (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't blame that on republicans obstructing his agenda when his party had full control of the house, senate, and white house.
You can blame it on Republicans obstructing the Democrat agenda when they were pushing Single-Payer Health care. This was actually the Republican health reform plan, which makes it hilarious how hard they fought against it. We couldn't have proper national health care because of the Republicans — the Democrats already tried that and the Republicans successfully stopped it. No big surprise; the insurance companies were never going to go for that, and it's corporations which truly run this country. One dollar, one vote.
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You can blame it on Republicans obstructing the Democrat agenda when they were pushing Single-Payer Health care.
Democrats couldn't get single-payer because Democrats didn't favor single payer. Enough Democrats opposed it that they couldn't get it through. What Republicans wanted really never came into play.....it didn't need to because Democrats completely controlled congress, and they took advantage of it.
Again, it was Democrat opposition to single-payer that prevented it from becoming a reality.
The president doesn't conrol the economy (Score:2)
In his first two years, when the dems had full control,of the houee and senate, he made the economy significantly WORSE.
Neither the president nor congress controls the economy. The economy went in the tank due to events that occurred during the Bush administration. Lehman Brothers and the rest of it occurred prior to Obama taking office. But as much as I might dislike either of those presidents neither of them were responsible for the economy tanking and their tools to help fix it are limited. Arguments that this president or that one "made the economy worse" are by and large stupid and ill informed.
The logical fallacy y
Economic policies have economic consequences (Score:2)
Lots of things happen, for lots of reasons.
And economic policies have economic consequences. When you make it more expensive to hire people, fewer people get hired.
> Just because things happen in a temporal order doesn't mean they are causal.
Repeated experiments are good for seeing if two events are coincidence or if they are causal. Keep doing A and see if B keeps happening as a result. This chart was made before Obama was elected, but it does show 40 years of trying dem policies and trying republican
gdp is measured in dollars, growth in percent (Score:3)
The size of the economy is measured in constant dollars, growth is measured in percent. That's how it's always done, so labeling it is a bit unnecessary and redundant.
You'll notice that economic growth has ALWAYS gotten worse under the EVERY democrat administration's budgets
> The actual facts [cnn.com] show you have that backwards
Did you LOOK at that page before linking to it? Your CNN link says that median income improved under Reagan, Bush, etc. So if you choose to trust that CNN is giveaway you co
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Neither the president nor congress controls the economy.
That's not entirely true. Congress spent about 20 years whittling away the regulations that had been put in place to forestall another Great Depression. Although the "less government is better" mantra belongs to the Republicans, both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in this erosion.
The President cannot pass laws, but as a single focal point, he can act as a "cheerleader" for the nation and Congress is likely to consider his veto powers when drafting legislation, shaping it accordingly. GW Bush was c
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No, not always directly, but one of the biggest factors in the US economy is consumer spending, and consumer confidence predicts spending... and the President's actions directly impacts consumer confidence. Carter malaise speech/Reagan "New Day" speech being a prime example of the effect. Nothing changed, but public perception that things were going to get better helped make them get better.
Besides, when you add in that the President can declare war, and the Congress can control taxes and regulations, the g
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When unemployment is high is not the time to focus on adding historical new burdens to hiring, such as Obamacare.
I have to agree I was disappointed with his choice of focus.
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I'm neither democrat nor republican, but looking at how democrats and republicans act, the confirmation bias for "their side" is absolutely astounding, and you can't point it out to them - they go nuts.
Just looking at all the comments above this point pretty much proves your point. :^)
I've stopped voting for the two main parties myself. My votes have been pretty fairly spread between Reps, Dems, and third party. For the last presidential election I went with the Green Party choice. Maybe next year I'll finally go Libertarian, if they field a better candidate than usual.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
The "get over it" comment wasn't very diplomatic, but on the other side you already had Republican leaders explicitly stating that their primary goal was to prevent a second Obama presidency. When politics trumps good government, that's not good for the nation.
Truth is, the Republican Party has pretty well committed to ensuring that nothing Obama proposes should get done and everything that he does do should be undone to the point that it seems that they want his historical legacy to be as if he'd never been. And when it comes to "uncompromising", most of the people who brag about being "uncompromising" seem to be on the Conservative side. Uncompromising isn't the virtue they pretend it is. We're trying to run a country, not fight Satan himself. Although listening to some you'd be hard-pressed to tell.
The partisan spiral seems to have started with Newt Gingrich and the (uncompromising) Moral Majority. Both sides have taken their turns as their respective stars rise and set, but it really needs to stop.
Re:Great Economy? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed - he said he wanted to work with the other side, but then whenever they met he was like "hey, I won, get over it!" and wouldn't compromise at all.
I'm a Libertarian, and that's not how it looked to someone who wasn't part of one of the major parties. Sure, he staked out a position on things he wanted, but as best I could tell he bent over nearly backwards trying to broker some kind of deal. The Republicans were so focused on not working with him they gave up an opportunity to get legislation passed that would actually move things farther towards their philosophy. Democrats are horrible negotiators because they believe in government, that always leads them to make compromises which often times give away too much.
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Re:Great Economy? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. By almost any metric you choose to use since he came into office, with possibly the exception of the national debt, we are better off now. I remember the end of Bush's term well and it was quite fucking scary.
What a lot of people do not understand was that in 2008, we were on a precipice.
The years of using risky mortgages as an investment vehicle
The years of running the presses for emergency appropriations
The years of people living off their credit cards and re-fi's
And even though that was insanity enough, fighting war on two fronts at the same time as reducing taxes (for some) ranks in my book as fiscal attempted suicide.
2008 could have been the year that the Great depression of the 1930's could have been dwarfed.
So yes - despite some folks visceral hatred of the "Magic Negro" and his appointees and cabinet, something amazing happened. Despite an amazing amount of money that vanished into thin air, despite a decade of financial voodoo, we got through it with a lot less pain than it looked like we were due.
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Yeah as we all know a topic That starts with "Good Economy" is not about the economy.
Why what could be the reason for the off topic mods.
Give credit where credit is due, or at least go back to whining about the confederate flag, his birth certificate, or how gay's getting married dstroys the sanctity of your 5th marriage.
Quick" Mod this down to show you dia
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#include <thrive.h>