40 Hour Work Week In Peril?

[Callisto]

Oh well duh, that's where I've been going wrong, how silly of me to not just start my own conglomerate.

[Xajii]

Callisto you are the man. I'm laughing at my phone alone in the bar. (Don't judge.)

[Correction]

Oh well duh, that's where I've been going wrong, how silly of me to not just start my own conglomerate.

BOOTSTRAPS SON

[Callisto]

Whew, Google had me covered, America is amazing http://www.ehow.com/how_6368118_star...rporation.html

[Drex]

We have more people than jobs, because industrial efficiency has increased to the point where we do not need everyone slaving away at manual labor 12 hours a day just to keep themselves fed and clothed. This is a good thing.

We have more uneducated people than jobs that don't require education. This means we have managed to mechanize our most brainless and boring jobs, which is a good thing.

Both of these factors create a surplus of humans, humans that do not *need* to do anything specific in order for society (including themselves) to keep running. Why is this surplus a bad thing? Why do we need to lower the minimum wage so that our unskilled laborers can compete with third world unskilled laborers, and eventually with machines? How could we use this surplus of humanity to increase happiness?



How about dramatically increasing the number of artistic public works programs? Make it some kind of a grant application process where you write up your idea (including proof that you can actually do it), apply, and get a living wage with the stipulation that you share your work in some way. At the end of the year, each person would submit their project and review three other projects. Feedback would return to the applicant/government and the application would either be renewed or terminated.

We have a surplus of dissatisfied humanities majors. How many would forgo their current shitty minimum wage jobs/welfare to practice their art? Would this not make our country a more interesting place? I think most art is crap and I would still willingly pay more taxes if such a system was adopted.

Or we could stop subsidizing humanity majors since it's obviously such a poor investment of social resources. Eventually, with luck, we'll draw the appropriate conclusion that the college system as it stands is a poor investment of social resources, invest our resources in more viable and modern forms of education, and try again.

Or not, because that would be real change.

[Helm]

Or we could stop subsidizing humanity majors since it's obviously such a poor investment of social resources.

How do you figure?

[Plow]

To an extent if their profits were being held down simply due to inefficiencies(they were capable of meeting all of the same production goals with less people the entire time) then laying people off is the correct thing to do, and rightfully should drive greater if not record profits.

If the company made a short-sighted snap judgment to lay people off but the remaining staff aren't as capable of meeting all production goals as the executives had intended, that problem will more or less rectify itself as the company either realizes it needs more people than or calculated and is forced to hire again, or it it fails. That said, either scenario fucks the everyman laborer and benefits the executives regardless, so yeah...

the vast majority of layoffs are not directly related to efficiency at all, it's simply a matter of demand

i.e. boeing lays a bunch of people off when not enough people are buying to use all the labor, wages aren't directly related aside from there being no reason to pay them at all

that shit happens on a month to month basis, it's way more common than just businesses failing and being forced to cut back due to mistakes and things

which just reinforces the point you've been making the last couple pages even further heh

[Drex]

To an extent if their profits were being held down simply due to inefficiencies(they were capable of meeting all of the same production goals with less people the entire time) then laying people off is the correct thing to do, and rightfully should drive greater if not record profits.

If the company made a short-sighted snap judgment to lay people off but the remaining staff aren't as capable of meeting all production goals as the executives had intended, that problem will more or less rectify itself as the company either realizes it needs more people than or calculated and is forced to hire again, or it it fails. That said, either scenario fucks the everyman laborer and benefits the executives regardless, so yeah...

It's rarely a snap judgment. It's more like they decided 6months-a year ago that they wanted to lay off X% of the workers but can't because of the bad publicity. Finally, an excuse (market downturn, bad quarter [sometimes manufactured if they get impatient]) comes along and the guillotine drops.

Second half is also unrealistic: the executives will set new production goals based on lower expectations until enough time has passed that they won't be blamed for the shortcoming (it's the market! demand isn't there!). Then they will quietly start rehiring. Bonus points for posting job ads that they don't intend to fill, interviewing a token number of applicants, and then bribing a politician's SuperPAC for an h1b permit (no americans with the qualifications we asked for!).

[Callisto]

It's rarely a snap judgment. It's more like they decided 6months-a year ago that they wanted to lay off X% of the workers but can't because of the bad publicity. Finally, an excuse (market downturn, bad quarter [sometimes manufactured if they get impatient]) comes along and the guillotine drops.

[Waraji]

^FKIN LOL Did NOT see that coming. Play that sick shit filth again.

[Headspace]

Or we could stop subsidizing humanity majors since it's obviously such a poor investment of social resources. Eventually, with luck, we'll draw the appropriate conclusion that the college system as it stands is a poor investment of social resources, invest our resources in more viable and modern forms of education, and try again.

Or not, because that would be real change.

Cultured America is bad.

[Day]

lmao @ darksouls vid

[Drex]

Cultured America is bad.

I hope you aren't an English major because your reading comprehension is deplorable. My post is not a denouncement of the humanities; it's a denouncement of the cost we are paying to overproduce humanities experts that end up as a net drain on social resources (welfare).

This means two things:

1) We as a society do not value humanities specialists at the level that college students value specializing in the humanities
2) We are still pricing them the same as other degrees, regardless

College students are paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for degrees that will never make them close to that much (read: society encouraged them to do this and society will not pay them back as much as the student paid in). Some of this is subsidized by taxpayers, some is on them; all of it is everyone's problem. I know critical thinking is scary sometimes but just because something is valuable does not mean it is valuable at any price. This is especially true when much more efficient means of obtaining that something (in this case, education, especially in the humanities) are available but suppressed by the institutions already in place.

Or do you honestly think there is a significant difference between watching an MIT lecture online for free vs. paying tens of thousands of dollars to take the course for "credit"? Besides the piece of paper at the end of course. Do you think MIT cares if you take their classes for free online, as long as you don't earn credit for it? Do you think you're paying for an education when you go to class?

And your answer is hurr he hates culture?

[Seraph]

I feel like I need to beat Test to death with a damn supply and demand curve...

http://developingcatan.files.wordpre..._m33ae3f3f.png

[Waraji]

Fk that looks terrible on Black BG. But I took macro-economics in college, so I figure I remember what one them fancy S/D graphs looks like.

[Jaybar]

I guess since it's being brought up (about education, humanities, arts, etc) this video should be posted (again):



The guy has a way with words, that's for sure.

[archibaldcrane]

I hope you aren't an English major because your reading comprehension is deplorable. My post is not a denouncement of the humanities; it's a denouncement of the cost we are paying to overproduce humanities experts that end up as a net drain on social resources (welfare).

Please tell me you think that America has a "humanities experts on welfare" problem so I can laugh at you extremely hard.

[Drex]

Please tell me you think that America has a "humanities experts on welfare" problem so I can laugh at you extremely hard.

What should alarm you is that I wrote a relatively lengthy post about our archaic college system and you zeroed in on a word in parentheses.

Anyway when I say welfare I mean allocating 20 years of resources to a kid, encouraging them to take on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, to get skills we as a society don't value and won't adequately repay them for learning. Depending on your ideology, you can use that as an indictment of social values or the student or the parents or the teachers or the schools, whatever.

No matter what outcome you're looking for, the problem is the system in place being flawed. Any suggestion that involves working within the system we already have (lower student loan interest rates, more scholarships, make college free, blame the student, blame the boomers, blame bush/obama, incentivize/discourage certain majors, moar culture, etc.) instead of changing the broken system is therefore flawed.

Does it make you feel better if you replace "humanities" with anything? Because it's really a pretty big problem for college and grad students in general. The point is that we have all the technology we need to dramatically reduce the amount of social resources we need to spend on educating the next generation but plow forward with what we've got because we're used to it. It's long past time to iterate.

[kuronosan]

Drex is right about courses. An education these days is more about paying an absurd amount of money for a piece of paper that tells everyone else you paid an absurd amount of money for a piece of paper. There are ridiculous numbers of lectures, books, and materials available online for a fraction of the price.

If I am reading what he says correctly he is advocating that colleges should be pricing degrees based on value and not on "credit hours" because while two students theoretically pay the same amount for different degrees (same number of credit hours) they end up making vastly different sums of money (Marketing versus Fine Arts).

[Waraji]

The problem with that is, that it still costs(less profits) about the same to teach Fine Arts as Accounting, assuming broader same credit hours etc. I concede the point that both are drastically different in terms of return for the student, but there is still a cost associated with it. I fail to see the appeal for these degrees in today's technologically developing world.