Do we understand this??? Productivity is causing the high unemployment. The GOP does.

[CK_John]

Even Glen Beck knows this and made it his main talking point. Don't let the GOP define the problem for us and come up with a solution.

Early retirement is the key. Expand Soc Sec to age 50.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Shorten the work week with full salaries and benefits.

[CK_John]

5. The only jobs in play are being cut below 30hrs so they don't have to give benefits.

IMO it is not a practical solution and would need 50 state law changes.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. It could be done at the Federal level

just like Min. Wage & Unemployment.

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. It would require a trivial change to the FLSA laws.

Search and replace every instance of "40 hours" with "32 hours".

[woo me with science]

37. +100000

[CJCRANE]

2. I don't think so. The banks appropriated all of our taxpayer money in the bailouts.

And before that Bush gave the surplus to his 1% buddies with the tax cut and p****ed the rest away on his wars.

[madokie]

3. No, we'll be paying for his wars for a long time yet

he pissed it all away by giving it to his friends.

[grahamhgreen]

4. increase wages, decrease CEO pay.

[CK_John]

6. Do you mean pay the robots more, productivity increases replace people with automatic devices.

[grahamhgreen]

18. No, pay the people who make and service the robots, all

ancillary work, people who answer phones, retail sales, website builders, etc.

And of course, more money for unemployed workers.

[woo me with science]

38. Absolutely.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. better to shorten the work week. nt

[CK_John]

8. When an industrial welding replace 9000 people in 1 plant. The only people working load

welding rods into the robots. How would it help if 5 or 6 people work less hours?

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. Non sequitur.

The 5 or 6 people are already working on the robots. If the workweek were shortened 20% there would be 6 or 7 people working.

There are easily 20% of the workforce that is unemployed or underemployed. Employ those people and wages will rise. Alternatively, mandate 3 or more weeks of paid annual leave.

Wages rise because labor is constrained. If an employer can't find that 7th person to service the robots, he or she will offer a higher wage.

[CK_John]

19. I think it is 20% without counting minimum wage jobs and undocumented.

IMO, more likely 35% and heading to 50%.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. depends on how you measure, I guess.

[mike_c]

9. tax wealthy people and profitable corporations sufficiently to force downward redistribution....

That will increase spending and demand. AND I agree with you about extending social security to age 50. Raise the caps on annual FISA payments to cover the additional costs.

The Danes have a saying about social justice that I can't quote verbatim but that goes something like "few people should have too little, and even fewer should have too much." The biggest economic lesson of the 20th century should be that preventing the accumulation of disproportionate wealth and inequality is the best way to create vigorous economies. Do it with legislation, or do it with torches and pitchforks!

[CK_John]

11. We are facing a new world that requires less and less people keep the system running.

Living without an assigned function will be very scarcy for many.

[reformist2]

30. Yep. This is the truth that we need to deal with. It should actually be good news, except for

our stupid backward economic system based on scarcity, not abundance.

[Taitertots]

10. That myth is fundamentally untrue. Nothing but a meme to defend our pathetic economic policies

The problem is that the productive gains have gone to a tiny cabal of very wealthy people.

The truth is the only reason we have persisting high unemployment is that Republicans have blocked any government spending increases to put people back to work.

That said...
I support the 30 hour work week and decreasing the Soc Sec age for completely unrelated reasons.

[CK_John]

14. This is a world problem look at Greece, Ireland, Iceland and how come only 1/2 college

grads can only find mac jobs. This is bigger than petty politics.

[Taitertots]

28. The EU problems are just the result of their own self-destructive economic policies...

And claiming productivity causes high unemployment is just a cleaver distraction.

Greece is suffering from much the same problems as the US. Political opposition (Germans and others in EU) preventing them from Keynesian expansion during a depression. They are doing so much worse because they also have a central bank that is intentionally practicing beggar thy neighbor economic policies with their currency.

"how come only 1/2 college grads can only find mac jobs"
The answer is that petty politicians are refusing to increase government spending to create jobs for them.

[bhikkhu]

26. Productivity gains is production per employee, not profits

where the profits go has nothing to do with productivity itself.

For example; years and years ago I worked in an office doing telephone surveys. I might have completed 50 surveys in a day. In an office nowadays there might be one person operating a computer bank performing automated surveys. That worker might be responsible for 5000 completed surveys in a day.

Another example; an old-style automobile manufacturer might have employed 1000 people, producing 100 cars a day. A modern automotive manufacturer might employ 100 people running an automated assembly line, producing 100 cars a day.

In all sorts of ways, in all kinds of different areas of commerce and business, the "myth" is fundamentally true.

With that said, there is no necessary disadvantage to automation or high levels of productivity. People with all the things they need still enjoy spending their money on all kinds of services, and our quality of life has more to do with the services we can afford than the things we possess, at some moderate point of income. The problem is, as it usually is, one of fair distribution.

[CK_John]

27. Productivity is a measure of product by machine or people. A driverless taxi

may or may not be more productive than a taxi with a driver.

[Taitertots]

32. Your response is focused on individual businesses and not the whole economy

If a more productive process reduces the number of employees at that specific place of employment, it doesn't reduce the number of jobs possible.

Your automaker example is perfect. The problem isn't that 1000 people are replaced with 100 people. The problem is that those 100 people don't make 10x as much as a result. The savings is corporate profits and it goes to a tiny cabal of wealthy people. If we assume that those people made 10x as much, they would spend 10x as much on goods, services, and locally available savings.

Even if we assume productivity increases cause employment decreases, keynesian expansionary fiscal policy could easily bring unemployment back to preferable levels.

[The2ndWheel]

13. They're not going to come up with a solution

Nobody is. There's never a solution. More like a temporary amalgam until the surrounding circumstances force yet another change. Early retirement will just cause another problem in need of a solution that won't be there.

[CK_John]

15. I just hate to admit the doomday survial groups were the only ones to get it and prepare.

[4 t 4]

21. Can there be a future for you if you make 8.25 an hour

do you have any kind of future for 8.25 an hour? If you get Any job in retail in any capacity that is most likely what you will make. A few exceptions, Cosco, Starbucks all the rest pay 8.25 at the most , try and live on that without help. Not sure where to go from here but is 100% unacceptable that this is a given wage, it's ridiculous. Retail is now the largest employer of employees.

[CK_John]

23. It doesn't matter the wage if there is no job for 50% of the population..

[4 t 4]

24. yes it does matter because 50 % can take care of a much larger number

50% can help much of their families . You are conditioned to believe it doesn't matter , every penny matters just like the rich and their pennies. They count every one just in larger increments.

[CK_John]

25. I don't think you understand the problem of productivity.

[reformist2]

29. And the pay for the 50% will collapse - labor supply and demand, you know.

[kelly1mm]

22. Lots of talk about a Basic Income (i.e. 10k or so to every person 18+) in the news

at least for us economic junkies. Not a totally new concept (heck even Nixon floated the idea in the 70's) but is being looked at again because of the problem you mention. Productivity is increasing and soon robots will take a larger and larger share of even 'mcjobs'. Even if you pay the robot handlers 100k per year, you still have 90% less workers. Need to do something about them.


Link to article about robotics and where it is headed:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/17/technology/enterprise/robot-business/index.html?iid=HP_LN

[DefenseLawyer]

31. That's utter nonesense

We have allowed corporations to ship jobs to the third world with no penalty. Those factories are gone. They aren't smaller and more efficient.

[jazzimov]

33. There are 2 types of "productivity"

I am talking from personal experience, although I'm certain that it could be statistically definable if someone actually took the time to study it. AFAIK, no one has.

There is temporary productivity, and there is long-term productivity.

Most companies only look at short-term productivity. This is basically "working someone until they drop". These numbers are skewed, because they only look at the things that are defined by the people requesting the statistics.

Then there is long-term productivity. Companies tend to ignore this, although this is the most important of all the stats. This is a measure of keeping employees happy, which is often performed with long-term benefits. By keeping long-term employees, the company maintains both experience and lowers the training costs. In addition, the long-term customers tend to develop relationships with the individuals and eventually come to see them as the "face" of the company that the employee represents.

So, in effect, there are at least 2 types of "productivity". There are probably more. Definitely, if one person is more productive they are not being fired - so that if they are doing the same job that it would take 2 or possibly 3 new people to do, then obviously they are keeping unemployment up -

If this person were to lose their job that would be 1 person on unemployment, and if the company had to hire 3 people to replace them then that would take 3 people off unemployment. A net gain of 2.

But does that really help productivity? And even if it does help short-term productivity, will it retain customers?

If the customer leaves, then that directly impacts revenue. What good is increased productivity if revenue is decreased?

[MFrohike]

34. No

The gains of increased productivity haven't been shared with the people who actually made them. The money has been funneled on an ever-increasing scale to the wealthy who, as always, use it to fund brilliant "products" like mortgage-backed securities. It's simply ignorant or dishonest to argue that productivity or "globalization" is to blame for the current economy. The present is the result of policy choices made by those in government and the people who bought them. Modern economies, and maybe all of any size, are the result of the laws that govern them, not some bullshit mystical hand.

[CK_John]

35. Good outline of the past but what do we do for the jobless going forward.

[grahamhgreen]

36. Unemployed workers should be compensated. Obviously, it is the system that has failed to provide

jobs for all.

[MFrohike]

39. One idea

Either directly or indirectly, the federal government should hire and train people to do the work needed to update and maintain our infrastructure. It's not an easy or quick fix, but we've largely ignored the state of our bridges, water systems, power grid, etc. for the last 30 years or so and it's beginning to show. I'd personally prefer to see it done indirectly, through a contracting process, but I don't much care as long as it gets done.

There are other things that need to be done in terms of medium- and long-term planning, but this is absolutely essential if we don't want to become a full-fledged two-tier country.