Politics "Not Working" - under employment and our inadequate responses to it.

[Chief]

This show (haven't read the book) covers the issue of our unemployment rate not telling the real story.

The author presents his argument for "full employment" being more like 2.5% than 5% due to underemployment: people want more hours. Far from having too many "leaners" we have a lot of lifters with not enough to lift. Wages are not growing with a falling unemployment rate.

Whereas unemployment was traditionally x% have a job, x% don't, you can't notch up "citizen with a job" as a basically satisfied person any more. Depression and anxiety rise. Drug use as well.

Having the reserve fiddle with the interest rate is not going to be enough, and is likely too little too late. Tax cuts to the top income earners is also not going to work.

Broadly (I can't summarise in one sentence a book I haven't read, and be honest my uni economics stuff is from 1995) the argument is for a drop in GST/VAT, infrastructure spending, help for working people with things like free and subsidised child care.

Countries like the UK who haven't really got a functioning government are at the mercy of the economic troubles coming. Their reserve banks have run out of options, and the people who have control of other options are absent or ignoring the issues and blaming Johnny Foreigner.

Populists like Trump and Farage and others are taking advantage of this. Putin is knocking at the door. Unsurprisingly you have Trump now pointing to the US unemployment rate of 3-4% as a great victory, where he was calling the unemployment rate "more like 42%" when he was campaigning a few years ago. Little has changed but the noises being made.

The US has a great big hole in their labour market full of males in their prime working age. Some believe these guys are sitting at home on opioids staring at screens, many primed to erupt offline as they are online in seedy parts of Reddit. Many are already marching, burning stuff, and running cars through crowds.

Not working — why underemployment matters - ABC listen

Behind rosy employment figures in many countries, including Australia, lies the painful experience of underemployment — people working less than they want to. It could be the reason wage growth hasn't picked up.

www.abc.net.au

Low unemployment rates are usually a measure than the economy is doing fine — but this time, it isn't.

Leading economist Danny Blanchflower joins Richard Aedy to discuss how underemployment isn't appreciated by policy makers, why it's linked to low wage growth and how being underemployed is contributing to widespread despair.

Guest: David (Danny) Blanchflower, Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, Author of Not Working: Where have all the good jobs gone? Princeton University Press @D_Blanchflower

 

[Gethelred]

I think there is certainly a conversation to be had concerning casualisation's effects on the jobs themselves as well. Are you going to take a job in which a) is your second/third job, b) you can be fired at any time for almost any cause, and c) in which, due to the relative interchangeability between workers in some of these casualised jobs, it almost doesn't matter what you do or how your attitude is as seriously as you would your sole means of income, your identity and the place in which you are for most of your time?

I don't think you are, and so a progressively worse 'job' is done by an ongoing cavalcade of casual workers who all do just enough to continue their employment. It's necessary, when approaching this kind of problem, to observe it from both the macro and the micro sides of it, and the current malaise isn't really doing much more than making everyone care less about firing and being fired, and as a consequence their jobs overall.

 

[NSWCROW]

Speaking of not working......

MyGov crashes as thousands try to submit tax returns

The outage could also have significant impact on welfare recipients, who use MyGov to contact Centrelink

www.theguardian.com

MyGov crashes as thousands try to submit tax returns


Too bad if you use mygov to do your fortnightly reporting.



If it was a Labor govt it'd be the biggest scandal since the *en Khemlani affair but it's a lib govt.....and it's ok when the libs do it

 

[medusala]

Countries like the UK who haven't really got a functioning government are at the mercy of the economic troubles coming.

Makes little difference.

.

Their reserve banks have run out of options, and the people who have control of other options are absent or ignoring the issues and blaming Johnny Foreigner..

??? What other options?

.

Populists like Trump and Farage and others are taking advantage of this..

Meh, Farage is far sounder on economics that Corbyn and Sanders. Yet he is a "populist"?

Leading economist Danny Blanchflower

joins Richard Aedy to discuss how underemployment isn't appreciated by policy makers, why it's linked to low wage growth and how being underemployed is contributing to widespread despair.

ha ha. Danny. humour.

Former Corbyn adviser, believer in magic pudding nonsense and shockingly bad forecaster.

Tory public spending cuts 'could push unemployment to 5 million'

Public spending cuts proposed by the Tories could drive up unemployment to over five million, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has warned.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Professor David Blanchflower launched an attack on the economic plans of George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, claiming they would create a "lost generation" of workers.
He said that any cuts in public spending could force unemployment up from its current 2.5 million to four million over the coming years

 

[Frank Bunn]

I've been banging on about this for a while. Underemployment continues to rise while the government and media prefer to cite the unemployment rate.

It needs to be discussed alongside other factors.

Record immigration numbers has created a structural mismatch between the jobs that are available and the number of people looking for work. This has led to both wage rise stagnation and the casualisation of many jobs. The government can try to hide it but if we keep going that way long term the economy is ****ed. The exception to both wage rise stagnation and the casualisation has been the growth in public sector jobs and public sector pay. But it's unsustainable.

The reason why both major parties, federally and at state level, love high immigration is that it boosts GDP. Higher GDP enables them to claim 'economic growth'. Of course, state governments love high immigration because it boosts their GST distributions and stamp duty revenue. It gives them money to spend on infrastructure to make it look like they are 'doing something'.

GDP per person is the real indicator is whether we are getting better off and it's gone nowhere for several years.

It's probably closing the door after the horse has bolted but a good first step to fix this is to drastically reduce the immigration rate and so called skilled visa immigration, and clamp down more on dodgy student visas being an avenue to residency and employment entitlement.

 

[Steinfreo]

I've been banging on about this for a while. Underemployment continues to rise while the government and media prefer to cite the unemployment rate.

It needs to be discussed alongside other factors.

Record immigration numbers has created a structural mismatch between the jobs that are available and the number of people looking for work. This has led to both wage rise stagnation and the casualisation of many jobs. The government can try to hide it but if we keep going that way long term the economy is f’ed. The exception to both wage rise stagnation and the casualisation has been the growth in public sector jobs and public sector pay. But it's unsustainable.

The reason why both major parties, federally and at state level, love high immigration is that it boosts GDP. Higher GDP enables them to claim 'economic growth'. Of course, state governments love high immigration because it boosts their GST distributions and stamp duty revenue. It gives them money to spend on infrastructure to make it look like they are 'doing something'.

GDP per person is the real indicator is whether we are getting better off and it's gone nowhere for several years.

It's probably closing the door after the horse has bolted but a good first step to fix this is to drastically reduce the immigration rate and so called skilled visa immigration, and clamp down more on dodgy student visas being an avenue to residency and employment entitlement.

How can you possibly blame the government liberal or labour? these are structural problems with the neo-liberal capitalist system. They are problems that were identified 40 years ago but we chose to ignore it.

during fordist capitalism the fundamental location of production was the factory. in the mid part of the 20th century a factory work force that was 20000 dropped to 2000 in less than a decade. All the dumbies and bigfooty posters in the 50s and 60s would have worked in factories producing useful products on good wages with bosses that earned maybe 10 to 40 times what they did, they would have all been in labour unions (some of them would have liked them because they felt empowered by being part of something and some of them would have been dumbies and bigfooty posters that would have hated them because the boss told them to), they would be living in houses that they chose because they wanted to live in them oblivious to the idea of substituting their stagnating real wage with debt and credit, feeling secure and optimistic.

Enter Thatcher and Reagan and the problems with capitalism we see now are set in motion.

 

[Power Raid]

What do they teach at school?

There is more work than Human Resources. The issue is getting people and those opportunities together.

This is a failing of our education and employment services.

 

[Evolved1]

The decline in trade union membership combined with long stints of LNP leadership of the nation since the Howard years have resulted in an erosion of workers rights. There needs to be political leadership on this issue if we're to make progress against the trend towards workforce casualisation.

 

[Chief]

Makes little difference.

.

??? What other options?

.

Meh, Farage is far sounder on economics that Corbyn and Sanders. Yet he is a "populist"?




ha ha. Danny. humour.

Former Corbyn adviser, believer in magic pudding nonsense and shockingly bad forecaster.

Tory public spending cuts 'could push unemployment to 5 million'

Public spending cuts proposed by the Tories could drive up unemployment to over five million, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has warned.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Professor David Blanchflower launched an attack on the economic plans of George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, claiming they would create a "lost generation" of workers.
He said that any cuts in public spending could force unemployment up from its current 2.5 million to four million over the coming years

You didn’t listen to it, did you?

 

[medusala]

You didn’t listen to it, did you?

Why would i waste my time listening to Blanchflower?

About as pointless as ethics lessons from James Hird.

 

[Nuggs Bunny]

The decline in trade union membership combined with long stints of LNP leadership of the nation since the Howard years have resulted in an erosion of workers rights. There needs to be political leadership on this issue if we're to make progress against the trend towards workforce casualisation.

People just don't really give a * about workers rights anymore though, many would probably catch an Uber to a trade union rally and totally miss the irony in what they've just done. We've spent the last twenty years willingly trading security for convenience and few affected genuinely care about the scenario they've found themselves in, definitely not enough to warrant political leadership.