The Eve Of Destruction

[poliphilo]

Bosses at the FTSE 100 companies saw their pay rise by 49% last year.

They know it's unpopular, they know it's antisocial, but they just can't help themselves. It's sad, really. They're addicts.

This can't go on, can it- the very rich getting very much richer as everybody else gets poorer? 

I know it sounds melodramatic- and I've been trying to avoid saying it for that reason- but I think we're living in pre-revolutionary times.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I am more and more impressed, and convinced, by lateral theories that the problem has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with the technological revolution; in the sense that other technological revolutions have removed jobs from the market, while replacing them with new ones (factory work, etc)... but that the current one involves technology replacing jobs... while not making any new ones.

This theory strikes me as something that needs far more examination than the usual "blame the social/political system/rich people/privileged people."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, the disappearance of jobs is part of the problem, but what about the people they're calling the "squeezed middle"- folk who are still in employment and used to be comfortable but are now finding it hard to make ends meet?

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

That I cannot say, but it feels related. I am reading quietly and waiting for the picture to coalesce.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Well... my brain is telling me that simple numbers... I don't see how this can actually be correct, though I do know it's something we talk about often (a la the "workers replaced by robots/machinery").

But, if there are 7 billion people on the planet now, then there are more people working now than there ever were before technological advances went into overdrive - otherwise, we'd have a worldwide unemployment rate in the double-digits, right? That would seem to disprove the idea that the problem stems from disappearing jobs. I don't know, there's just... something seems to be missing from the theory of disappearing jobs, somehow.

Which is not to say that I don't think "jobs" aren't part of the problem, because I do. (I think that's my biggest issue with what's happening, the way people want to find a single source of the problem, and the truth is there is no one source). I would say, however, it is not the disappearance of jobs (because how can that be, as per the above), but rather:

1. Developed countries, because of their economies, demand higher wages for a whole variety of reasons

2. Corporations, in all their greed (and in the individuals' running them greed) want more profit for their pockets. Thus, they do not want to pay the wages demanded in the developed countries. So, they outsource their jobs (including tech jobs these days) to countries where the workers don't demand as much money for their work.

3. Adding on to the above, corporations are downsizing and cutting back, not to save themselves, but rather to continue to generate more profits for their officers and big shareholders. One only has to look at the disparity between a typical American worker's wage and a typical American CEO's wage (I believe it's 1:456) - we have the highest disparity in the entire world. So yes, jobs are disappearing altogether, as corporations discover they can get more work out of fewer workers and still keep up the same level of production. This is because of the odious "salary" mentality. Instead of paying a worker an hourly wage, they put them on salary, and the expectation is that a salary worker will put in more than 40 hours per week. Those hours add up - and they also devalue the workers. If someone is hired at $50,000 and the typical work-week is 40 hours yet this person is putting in 60 hours... it's easy to see that they have just been devalued, and the company is getting 20 hours of work each and every week for free.

4. Jobs in America have become so specialized that if someone loses a job in one field, it is nigh impossible to find a job in another field without spending more money on education and training - money a lot of people simply don't have.

5. A lot of the jobs that are being created to replace the ones we've lost (either truly lost or which have been outsourced to other countries) do not pay a living wage. Rick Perry likes to tout how many jobs he's created for Texas - what he doesn't mention is that the majority of those jobs were minimum wage jobs, which can't feed and house a single person, let alone a family. So those unemployed, who used to make enough to be able to take care of themselves, now have jobs that don't pay enough to survive, thus forcing them to get a second job, or rely on social services/families/friends.

The whole thing is a huge mess.