Re: For Trucker


The Trucker wrote:
> "Negloid" <negloid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1123614724.541832.114960@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > The Trucker wrote:
> >> "Negloid" <negloid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> news:1123518459.252925.4690@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> >
> >> > The Trucker wrote:
> >> >> Negloid" <negloid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> >> news:1123223040.937492.49130@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> >> >
> >> >> > The Trucker wrote:
> >> >> >> Negloid" <negloid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >> >> >> news:1123182161.620609.87480@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> >> >> >
> >> >> >> > jrw wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> > I never
> >> >> > wrote anything about personal failures. Perhaps you need to figure out
> >> >> > what I mean by "marginal worker".
> >> >>
> >> >> Even better it might be good for you to tell us what
> >> >> you mean.
> >> >
> >> > The marginal worker is the last worker a company hires. A marginal
> >> > worker is not necessarily dumber, lazier, sicker, uglier, or fatter
> >> > than other workers. He is just the most recently hired. But there is
> >> > some reason he was hired most recently and in economic models,
> >> > typically he is the least productive employee. (The logic being, for
> >> > example, that the company will hire the most productive first and least
> >> > productive last.) The marginal worker, under low unemployment, often
> >> > is less productive just because he has *less experience*. He is a kid,
> >> > or he is not trained for that job, or he is usually a stay-at-home
> >> > parent who only entered the workforce because the pay was so damned
> >> > good.
> >>
> >> Using that definition (that is an economics thing and it
> >> refers to the workers at the "margins") then I retract my
> >> heated objection to the term. Obviously there will always
> >> be marginal workers. When the current marginal workers
> >> are removed from the board then they will be replace with
> >> workers that would be right up against the margin. And this
> >> "margin" thing works both ways. It not only includes the
> >> dudes that are not real productive, but the dudes that are
> >> not all that much in NEED of a job in the first place.
> >
> > ...following this, another way to characterize my point is to say that
> > in 1999 and 2000, many of those marginal workers were of the later
> > sort. Companies were recruiting extremely hard, offering stock options
> > to everyone. People who would likely have not even entered the
> > workforce were attracted by the promises of high pay or even better,
> > groud-floor equity in the next Amazon.com. These days its not nearly
> > as common for students to take time off school to get a job coding HTML
> > or for housewives to try to start up their own .com businesses as it
> > was a few years ago. They aren't in the workforce anymore but most of
> > the time they wouldn't be anyway.
>
> I suppose one of my big questions/reservations about
> what happened is the why of it. I could see many more
> office workers telecommuting instead of burning up all
> that gasoline. I could see FedEx like delivery vans
> bringing groceries and shirts made to exact specifications.
> I could see far fewer shopping malls and a lot more
> quality time at home or at the soccer field. But that
> didn't happen.
>
> I have my own assessment of why:
> Conservatives HATE progress. All that downtown real
> estate would have taken a horrendous hit, and the boys
> on the top floor would not have the minions to look
> down upon and the oil people would have been taken
> down a notch. We gotta stop this technology stuff quick
> or the people will get out from under the thumb.

Office workers do telecommute much more than they used to. I haven't
run any polls, but just from observation I would guess that people at
my company (at least in this building) are only here an average of 3-4
days a week and many of them only put in part of a day before going
home and working there. Typically people use laptops and VPN
connections to the company's intranets to do most of what they need to
do during the day. However in many cases there is just no substitute
for face-to-face meetings. There are still a lot of resources that can
only be found at the company. There is a lot of work that can only be
done inside the brick and mortar building. I think maybe you were a
bit rosey-eyed about telecommuting but I also think that it may have
made greater strides than you realize.

Two different grocery stores in my town will delivery groceries to your
door step, picked online from a web-based store. I'm sure they
probably do in your town as well, unless you live in a fairly rural
area. Just because one or two businesses modeled around this service
didn't make it back in 2001 doesn't mean that no one is providing the
service. But most consumers just aren't interested in it. For any
number of reasons, people prefer to buy at the grocery story. They can
see whether the fruit they are buying is fresh. They can drop off and
pick up their film (or memory stick) for photo processing. They can
browse. They get better prices. They have a better selection.
(Creating a web-store grocery can be quite onerous to suppliers)

As far as delivering shirts or any number of other items? Coburn, you
can buy custom-ordered widgets in just about any category imaginable.
In fact shirts in particular...I'd have a hard time guessing how many
companies out there sell fully customizable shirts to serve any number
of markets, all completely over the 'net. However no one is going to
shop for their entire waredrobe online. They want to try things on,
see the newest styles in the windows, browse, feel and touch... What
did you expect would happen? We would all just stay home all day
because there would be no need to ever go to a store?

It's not a conspiracy keeping web-based consumer sales from replacing
BAM. Many of the problem you are finding is that consumers demand
certain value that cannot be provided entirely over the web. It's what
people demand, not what "the man" is preventing from happening.

> > That is just my suggestion for why we have had a loss of jobs that
> > never produced quite the expected unemployment rate, as well as the
> > slower growth of the labor pool. There are always people who don't
> > work for economic reasons. Today I don't believe that level is high by
> > historical standards. The take home point is that the unusual
> > situation was in 2000, not 2005.
>
> I might even agree with your point but for the knowledge
> that the Bushies have tried to claim that making hamburgers
> is a "manufacturing" job, and to claim that someone
> who works 2 days a week is "self employed" though that
> individual WANTS/NEEDS more income than he can currently
> earn in his self employed role.

Just remember, these people *are* counted, just not in U-3.

> These things are changes
> in the qualification of "data" and they distort the time series
> correlation to the past. The Pinocchio regime is not the first
> to do this. Reagan did it even more, and Clinton somewhat
> less.
>
> There is also the sharp increase in illegals that are not
> accounted in the current statistics. Those that get jobs
> displace others who may be counted, but there are
> a great number of illegals that WANT work and can't
> find it and thus should be counted according to the
> definition of "unemployment". And _ALL_ of this
> depresses wages and creates more "I give up"
> unemployment that is also not accounted. To use
> your terminology, the marginal workers have been
> exorcised and a new set of workers have been
> marginalized. There are just one hellova
> lot of people that need an income and who do not
> have an income and a hellova lot of people who did
> have a good income that now have a lower income.
>
> >> I
> >> want to see a situation in which the people must be
> >> ENTICED into giving up their freedom in exchange for a
> >> J_O_B. Unemployment = 0.
> >>
> >>
> >> >> > I "left out" nothing. I *pointed out* that half of the drop in the
> >> >> > labor force participation rate occured because 16- to 19-year-olds
> >> >> > dropped out of the labor force in larger numbers. Do you dispute that
> >> >> > fact, or claim that it is meaningless?
> >> >>
> >> >> But you suggest that we leave out all sorts of data so as
> >> >> to make the numbers look good.
> >> >
> >> > I suggest only that we pay attention to some of the details. I do not
> >> > suggest that we ignore the 16-19 year old data. In fact I think we
> >> > should give it extra scrutiny. That's the point, "Look everyone, half
> >> > of the people who left the workforce were under 20 years old."
> >> >
> >> > Look at it, don't ignore it.
> >>
> >> Agreed. But think about what it ALL means. I always
> >> come back to the question: "In a totally capitalistic
> >> economy, what do you do with the people displaced
> >> by technology?".
> >
> > They do what they have always done: adapt. They adapt their skills to
> > a new application or they learn new skills.
>
> And all of that is well and good. But if less labor is now
> required to produce the "goods" then why are we all
> working even more hours

Well in manufacturing, we are working fewer hours, not more. This
number has been dropping pretty regularly since at least 1962, and I
would just guess longer than that.
http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm

> with our new "skills" than
> we were before the great leap in technology replaced
> us? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Do you know the history if iron and steel? For iron to be useful we
first need to get it really hot to turn the oxidized iron ore back in
to iron. But the process was extremely slow. First you had to get a
furnace up to a thousand degrees or so. After using up huge amounts of
fuel, you could pull out a mass of apparenly useless material that you
had to beat on, and beat on, and reheat, and beat on again, and reheat
some more, and beat on it some more until you got all of the slag out.
Now you had wrought iron. Now if you really wanted to put some more
time in to it, you could put it back in the fire and keep beating on it
in order to pound some carbon in to it. Now you had an early form of
steel. This is pretty much how we made iron for centuries. The
furnaces grew larger and hotter and the process more stream-lined but
throughout the history of iron and steel, it took extraordinary
man-hours and resources to produce tiny little chunks of steel until
one day a guy named Bessemer found a solution to mass-produce the
stuff.

Suddenly the world could produce iron in massive quantities. All of
those blacksmiths were out of business. But the improvement in
steel-making didn't represent an automation of the process. It didn't
mean that suddenly a bunch fewer people needed to work now. Instead
what it meant was that there were hundreds of new things to produce
with steel. You cannot expect that just because we revolutionize the
world by making processes more efficient that mankind will slow down
and rest on its laurels. We are driven by what can be acheived.
Speeding up one process means it takes fewer hours to produce the same
thing. Your argument, if I understand it, is that if it takes fewer
hours to produce the same thing then we should be working fewer hours.
But streamlining the steel-making process didn't mean that people were
satisfied being able to make their garden tools and swords in less
time. People wanted the new stuff that massive quantities of steel
could produce. If mankind acted as you seem to think it should have,
there would be no such things as a highrise buildings, modern ships,
automobiles, or trains.

Why are we working more hours? Because now we have microwaves,
computers, cell phones, online web shopping, heart transplants, and
flat screen TVs. People want that ***. That is why we don't go home
at noon. It's not as if we are more product with nothing to show for
it. All of that extra productivity is producing new goods and services
that did not exist before.

> > Do you think that there
> > are an unusually large number of such people today?
>
> Absolutely. There a great number of technologically
> competent people out of work. They are being told
> by "the market" to go back to school and get a degree
> in business admin or law (actually a degree in how
> to milk the government for privileges).
>
> > If there is going
> > to be technological progress, we have to expect that certain jobs will
> > become obsolete.
>
> the objective is for _ALL_ jobs to become obsolete:)

This will never happen. This is Utopian dreaming. Every time we make
one process more efficient, we make a new process possible. We don't
just keep making the same goods and services using less time to do it.
We use the extra time it freed up to produce brand new stuff. And then
later on we make that process faster and some new opportunity presents
itself. Blame it on consumerism if you want but I call it human
nature. If you ask someone if they would be willing to work less for
the same money, they would usually say "sure". Now throw in the caveat
that they can only use their money to buy something that was available
to the average consumer in 1904. Most of the people are going to
retract their answer. They like their turbochargers, DVD players,
microwaves, playstations, computers, web stores, air travel, pace
makers, and calculators and they do not want to live like people did a
hundred years ago, even if it does cut back on their work hours.

> This is one of the big problems in latter day capitalistic
> economics. It assumes that human wants are insatiable
> (that may not be far off the mark), but it also assumes
> that everyone "wants" more _stuff_. The fact is that many
> people "want" more freedom from drudgery and from
> prancing aristocratic "leaders".

You can have it. Hell Mike, you can live off 5-10k a year if you want.
All you need to buy is some food and some plywood to build yourself a
nice, retro living in the mountains. You won't have any "stuff" but
you can probably milk enough from the government to never work a single
day of your life. You just can't have any "stuff". That's the real
problem. Everyone wants stuff. They see my stuff and they want some
of it too. Most of them will work 8 hours a day so that they can have
some of that stuff for themselves. Now you might argue that fancy
packaging or advertising is all that really drives that demand but I
think you would have a tough time selling that line to the guy who just
bought his first microwave. He thinks there is value in owning the
item that you cannot argue was invented by a TV commercial. Im sure
where we will differ on this is in what drives "consumerism" but the
fact is that it is the driving force in our economy.

> Many people "want"
> to stay home and tend the yard, the garden, the structure
> itself, and to be creative and thoughtful. Many want to
> LEARN, to study history and literature, and to be more
> involved in the political system. Many want to learn a
> new language instead of seeing how much lip gloss and
> fancy cars they can manage to accumulate by organizing
> and directing the labors of everyone else. The true
> measure of economic performance is the amount of
> _leisure_ the average man has at his disposal.

I think that human history proves you wrong. You are entitled to your
opinion of what qualifies as economic performance but humans have
always desired "stuff" and they have always proven willing to work to
obtain it.

> >> You want to claim that a bunch of
> >> people stopped working because they _could_ stop.
> >
> > Oh they lost their jobs for economic reasons, not because they wanted
> > to. But that isn't the same as saying that most of the time these
> > people would be in the workforce and that today the jobs market is
> > historically bad.
>
> The jobs situation and the workforce situation do not
> need to be "historically bad" in order to prove that
> neoconomics is a failure. When we consider the
> technological innovation and capital development
> that has taken place over the last 50 years it is
> difficult to find any good reason for a work week
> that is not significantly shorter than what was the
> norm in 1955.

The manufacturing workweek aside, what this comes down to is a
difference in opinion between what you and I think drives human nature
and how that affects economic progress. I think people desire more
wealth and they are willing to work for it. You think people desire
more leisure and will sacrifice wealth for it. I don't know how we
could reconcile that since we are now talking about Sociology. But we
*can* look at how humans have acted in the past for a clue about what
drives us. I see a history of humans preferring more wealth over more
leisure.

> Capital creation is suppose to dramatically reduce
> the labor necessary to the provisioning of goods
> and services, yet we see the opposite situation.
> The only explanation for this seems to be that
> we are all working our butts off so that Pinocchio
> can prance around the world on a big white horse
> and so that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can each
> have more personal jets.
>
> But even the drab (it ain't so bad) economic numbers
> are based on borrowing and it is beginning to look
> as though the Gates era is ending and we will, instead,
> all be tending rice paddies for chaiman Mao's
> grandkids.
>
> >> But that does not "fit" the definition of unemployment,
> >> nor does it "fit" the reality. The unemployment statistics
> >> are supposed to show the number/percentage of people
> >> that _want_ work and yet cannot find work, and
> >> that _should_ include those forced to give up
> >> and join the folks down at the flop house.
> >
> > Well the metric does what it does. It provides an indication of how
> > many people are looking but unable to find work. There are other
> > official statistics available, just not as often reported. Right now
> > you and I are discussing the labor force participation rate, which is
> > one of those statistics. In addition there are different unemployment
> > numbers published by the BLS/census.
> >
> > http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm
> >
> > This gives you the option of looking at both the unemployed as well as
> > the marginally attached (want work but not in the labor force because
> > they stopped looking). You will note that about 1% of the labor force
> > falls in as marginally attached, which is about the same, or perhaps
> > 10-20 basis points higher than the rate in 2000. This translates to
> > about 1.5 million marginally attached individuals last month, versus
> > 1.1 million marginally attached individuals in July of 2000.
>
> But why has it taken 5 years of Republican "leadership" to _start_.
> perhaps, getting back to even?

The point is that we will never, or rarely ever see the kind of numbers
we saw in 2000. It was a unique situation and obviously it was
unsustainable.

> And why have we had to borrow
> tremendous amounts of money to prop up the economy? The
> statistics we are seeing are WORSE than the stats we had when
> the Republicans were not in control, and these stats are being
> produced on borrowed funds. While we give one another hair
> cuts in the "services" economy and import all the real "goods",
> the Chinese are buying our country out from under us.

Well we can start comparing numbers and policies of Bush and Clinton if
you like, but I prefer to take the intellectual high road and just
conclude that who happens to be President doesn't effect the economy
that much.

> >> The
> >> statistics do not show this. And taking jobs away
> >> from teens while raising the cost of education is about
> >> as Republican as it gets. How would you "work your
> >> way through college" if the costs are astronomical and
> >> there are no jobs?
> >>
> >> >> >> I too have a religious perspective. But I don't
> >> >> >> manipulate the "data" around whatever
> >> >> >> conclusion I have already adopted.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > There was a major drop in labor force participation amongst teenagers
> >> >> > over the past few years. That is a fact. Do you not see the
> >> >> > difference between a 40-year-old dropping out of the labor force and a
> >> >> > 16-year-old not entering the labor force?
> >> >>
> >> >> I see the difference between teenagers working at Mickey D.
> >> >> and old people working at Mickey D. The oldsters have to
> >> >> work if they want other than dog food for dinner.
> >> >
> >> > This is pretty much what I was getting at. If a 40-year-old drops out
> >> > of the labor force, that tends to be more indicative of labor market
> >> > problems than if a 16-year-old does. The kid doesn't need the job that
> >> > bad. Heck you might be able to prove that lower participation amongst
> >> > kids indicates that parents feel more secure in their own abilities to
> >> > fund their kid's activities so they don't force their kids to go get
> >> > jobs. Maybe, maybe not. But certainly if fewer kids are in the labor
> >> > force this year than last year, I am much less concerned than if they
> >> > were adults.
> >>
> >> All of that is fine and good, but what about education for
> >> those not born with the silver foot in their mouth?
> >
> > Well this is a whole new discussion. I seriously doubt that fewer kids
> > are going to college these days, though I have not looked up any
> > studies on the matter. Perhaps they are more willing to borrow.
>
> When you bring up the loss of teen jobs it is not a "new
> discussion".

The new discussion would be one of college attendance by American
youth, which is indeed a completely different. I do have a hard time
that attendance rates are dropping, at least for any meaningful amount
or period of time.

> >> > Think of it the other way, Coburn. What if the labor force
> >> > participation rate for kids had risen substantially? With your
> >> > ever-cynical view of the labor market under Republican leadership,
> >> > wouldn't you think it was significant that labor force participation
> >> > for people aged 20+ was even lower than the one being promoted?
> >> > Wouldn't you want to point that out in your effort to prove that even
> >> > more bread-winners than we realize are dropping out of the labor pool?
> >>
> >> I would be raising hell about kids in the work force and
> >> the parents using them as income generators. But I would
> >> like to see the labor force participation numbers go WAY
> >> down across the board while the wages/income of the
> >> lower and middle class INCREASES. The unemployment
> >> numbers (being a reflection of those who _*WANT*_ a
> >> job and cannot find one) should also fall as the economy
> >> IMPROVES.
> >
> > They have improved, by several different measures.
>
> They have only "improved" when compared to how
> bad they were as Pinocchio restarted the "supply side"
> horse*** again. What happens across the board is
> that people settle for less and go back to work for
> whatever wages they can get in whatever job they can
> get. The S&P 500 looks really good and the unemployment
> stuff looks better than it did, but the middle class just
> got kicked in the teeth.

Well you seem to want to compare presidents' records and try to blame
the recession on Bush. If you really want we can dig in to those
figures. We have done it many times before. But I think that deep
down somewhere you know that Clinton didn't "make" the '90s economy any
more than Bush "made" the recession.

> >> A really good economy is one in which
> >> very few family members (maybe even just ONE family
> >> member) need to be employed outside the home in order
> >> to see to the needs of the family (includes education) and
> >> to the needs of retirement. The numbers we are seeing
> >> seem to be misinterpreted and/or misrepresented. The
> >> neoconomist WANTS more labor participation and lower
> >> wages. The neoconomist WANTS everyone working their
> >> butts off just to get along because the unemployment numbers
> >> would look better
> >
> > Now hold on a second. Women and children entering the work force does
> > not necessarily make the unemployment rate go down. It may help
> > economic growth or certain measures of productivity but I fail to see
> > how having more potential workers translates in to a greater percentage
> > of those potential workers having a job.
>
> Ok. You win on the "unemployment" thang, but you
> don't win the labor participation point, the GDP point,
> or the "inflation is under control" point, or the "wages
> are not sagging point". Oh but that S&P 500
> profit sure does look good.
>
> >> and the serfs have no time to think about
> >> how they are getting the wrench. The problem with the current
> >> numbers is at least two fold: The data are controlled to some
> >> degree (spin) so as to put a better light on things
> >
> > Perhaps, (I would argue that many of the problems you might cite are
> > unavoidable,) but the important thing to remember is that we still have
> > a time series. We can compare today's flawed data to yesterday's
> > flawed data and still get a pretty good idea of what is going on in
> > America.
>
> No. The data are more flawed under Republican control
> than they are under Democratic control.

You're just being partisan.

> Reagan was the
> first to include military people as "employed"

The military is not considered employed. It is completely excluded
from the unemployment rate.

> so as to
> improve the unemployment numbers. And, of course, we
> have Pinocchio's Iraq war sucking a lot of otherwise
> unemployed people into the military.
>
> >> but even
> >> more significantly, the numbers are then presented in a manner
> >> that does not really reflect desired reality. The labor participation
> >> numbers are the prime and shining example. I see liberal
> >> Democrats ranting about a fall in this number as an indication
> >> that there are insufficient jobs, and Pugs, instead of being
> >> informative and straight forward about it are cringing over it.
> >> Ridiculous. If productive effort were rewarded MORE and there
> >> was less flow to the rentier then the labor participation numbers
> >> would fall. If rent redistribution allowed every family to spend
> >> more time on home and family in a decent place to live, then the
> >> number of people looking for jobs would fall very quickly and
> >> so too the unemployment rate when properly assessed.
> >> People left the farm and moved to the city so as to
> >> reduce their drudgery per mouth full of food. The next
> >> move is not so easy. It will require a loosening of the bonds
> >> of pure "capitalism".
> >>
> >> >> There are
> >> >> also those that were in technology that now work at Mickey
> >> >> D.
> >> >
> >> > ...as well as those who were in technology that are now staying in
> >> > school until they graduate.
> >>
> >> That may be true and that's a good thing. But coots like
> >> me won't be going back to school. When you are 60 it don't
> >> make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, I see far too many young
> >> people out here driving trucks (and far to many coots for that
> >> matter). Trucks are a pretty inefficient way to deliver stuff over
> >> long distances.
> >
> > Probably the greatest advantage of trucks is being able to choose exact
> > delivery dates and locations. Blame the American consumer. They would
> > rather pay more for the item to always be in stock at a store down the
> > street. Trucking is actually a compromise for most shippers. It is a
> > relatively quick way to transfer stuff without being nearly as
> > expensive as air freight. Shipping via boats or trains is just not
> > acceptable for quite a lot of freight.
> >
> > What do you propose as an alternative?
>
> I propose some _real_ capital development like a
> very high speed multihubbed rail system.

I think that there are probably obstructions to such a plan that you
haven't considered. There are limitations on rail freight that are
just plain insurmountable. The kind of capital you would have to
invest to create such a system would far outweigh the time and
resources you would save on trucking. And if you wish to break it all
out in to man-hours, while your plan might reduce the work load of the
trucking industry, it is going to increase the workload of workers in
rail-building, bridge building, tunnel building, train building, and
maintenance of everything involved. You aren't going to save any
man-hours, you are going to use a helluva lot more of them.

We transport with trucking because it is the most efficient way to get
stuff from 2347 180th street, NY to 14745 W. Maple Ave, Miami. There
is no rail that goes between those points. That point I see that we
both agree on. What I think you fail to see is that trying to build
enough rails to substitute for the limitations inherent in rail
transport would be incredibly *less* efficient.

> Local
> trucks (no sleeper), bring loaded trailers from
> points less than 300 miles to a hub where the
> trailers are placed in the high speed system and
> delivered 600 to 3000 miles away. The trailer
> is then removed from the high speed system and
> delivered by local drivers within a radius of
> 300 miles. With a high speed rail system you
> are looking at two day transit times in most cases.
> But we have a problem here: Such a system is
> too large for corporate America or Global
> corpotopia. Creation of the system would require
> eminent domain and real government power.
> And such a thing will not happen in Republican
> America unless we can find a way to give
> Bill Gates, Tom Delay, Kenny Lay, and
> Halliburton a large piece of the budgeted
> funds.
>
> --
> "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
> of society but the people themselves; and
> if we think them not enlightened enough to
> exercise their control with a wholesome
> discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
> them, but to inform their discretion by
> education." - Thomas Jefferson
> http://GreaterVoice.org

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