When I read Joel Kotkin’s piece at Quillette about the “post-work society”, of which this is a snippet:
While Asian countries are focusing on future work, Western societies seem determined to eliminate gainful employment for blue-collar and middle-management workers. Many jobs that could support families have disappeared, and most new opportunities tend to be low-wage service work. One widely cited reason for the recent labor shortages relates to a post-pandemic reluctance to accept low wages, including those in the “gig†economy, where pay and hours are often uncertain.
Some low-paid workers have also found state support during the pandemic to be, in some cases, more profitable than work, and a way to remove the risks associated with crowded offices and public transport. Yet, although the pandemic was the trigger for this withdrawal, high levels of public welfare delinked from work have also been associated with the persistently high unemployment that has plagued countries such as Italy and Spain.
Not everyone sees mass idleness as an unalloyed negative. “Post-work†fits neatly with the de-growth philosophy pushed by climate activists today. This notion seeks to ratchet down consumption among the masses by reducing the size of homes, cars, air travel, and air conditioning. Particularly hard-hit would be millions of working-class people, particularly those in well-paying manufacturing, construction, and energy jobs. UBI would provide the basics for a properly austere ecological lifestyle.
I was immediately reminded of Cyril M. Kornbluth’s influential science fiction story, “The Marching Morons”. I’ve got a copy of it sitting around in an old Galaxy magazine around here somewhere. I wonder how long it will take for people to come up with Barlow’s solution to the problem raised?
I just read “Marching Morons” about two weeks ago. It resonates very strongly with current events. It’s linked below if someone wants to read it.
https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v02n01_1951-04/page/n129/mode/2up?view=theater
Sometimes, I wonder if it isn’t already in action. Other times, wonder if Space Merchants isn’t the more relevant book.
An inspiration for “Idiocracy”.
Yes, the basic concept for Idiocracy was pretty obviously cribbed from “The Marching Morons”. Idiocracy doesn’t have the elite though.
” persistently high unemployment that has plagued countries such as Italy and Spain.”
Other than the fact that we have low unemployment by historical standards sure, this is a great analogy.
Steve
Perhaps you’ve missed it but there is an ongoing debate between those who believe that welfare should be connected to work and those who don’t.
Presently, the labor force participation rate is the lowest it has been in 40 years (other than at the height of the lockdowns):
One endpoint is deindustrialization where a small residual world population of about 500 million lives a medieval lifestyle. Well over 90% of the people are illiterate serfs, tied to the land, who eke out a living via hard-scrabble manual farming. A hamlet might share an ox team for plowing. They are ruled by a small self-selected caste, also largely illiterate, who also maintain a small, literate priesthood.
The other possible endpoint, actually the goal of radical environmentalists like Paul Erhlich and John Holdren, is a few million paleolithic hunter-gatherers. No science, no medicine, no reading or writing, no mathematics.
All the readily available resources are gone today. To get a valuable resource like oil or iron requires a high-technology society. So once out current hi-tech world is dismantled, it cannot be rebuilt.
The author chose UE as the metric not me. Well aware of LFP which has been in a long term decline so that now it is the same as 1976.
Steve
Comparisons of the current unemployment rate to historical rates will be suspect for quite some time due to near term covid issues – including helicopter money encouraging or enabling people not work; early retirement due to disease fears; and perhaps even a change in basic work ethic (gussied up as “lifestyle issues”) – and of course longer term demographic issues related to the baby boom bulge passing through retirement age.
But one never expects real insights from steve.
The deindustrialization of America due to overwrought environmentalists and out of control globalist politicians and manufacturers has resulted in the second cousin of Barlow’s solution: the meth crisis.
But I wonder how many realize that their fave Apple products are funding the very issue.
Can you really separate the two?
Yes, you can separate them. There are times that is a good idea and other times it is not. The point here is the author, not me, chose UE in those particular countries because that is the number which is most awful. We are not close to Spanish levels of UE AND our LFP is better. It looks to me like he has carefully chosen to avoid LFP as we dont compare well to much of the world on that metric. Guessing there is a reason he did not choose France or any number of other OECD countries, the lot of them being socialist hellholes.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/labour-force-participation-rate
Steve
Just for the record I’ve spent extended periods in several OECD countries other than the U. S. (not as a tourist) and, contrary to the opinions of some Americans. they’re not hellholes. I do prefer the U. S. or at least I used to.
You can read this piece on drivers, driver training and recruiting, trailer manufacturing and the effects on the supply chain if you like:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/whats-tougher-finding-drivers-or-trailers
But I think its BS. The word on the street is that retailers are using ports as warehouses to avoid inventory holding costs……….
“…and, contrary to the opinions of some Americans. they’re not hellholes.”
Of course they are not. But imagine if their politicians had to make hard decisions about allocating the output of their economies, shouldering much more of the burden of their defense at the expense of their social spending priorities.
They have made the decisions—they’ve decided to let us do it.
I read the link you supplied, Drew, and did a little digging on why there is a chassis trailer shortage but, unsurprisingly, it’s complicated. Reasons include problems getting materials, tariffs, and inflation. As it turns out one Chinese manufacturer had 85% of the chassis trailer market which it had secured via dumping. When anti-dumping tariffs were imposed it created a bottleneck. That’s a pattern by the way—the Chinese have been doing that in one industry after another for decades.
What does inflation have to do with it, you ask? Manufacturers are reluctant to take large advance orders on product they have no idea how much it will cost them to produce.