happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Mar 18, 2014 13:54:13 GMT -5
I certainly see how it would be attractive, too, to the right kind of person.
If you could garden and raise chickens to produce a big chunk of your own food, plus stay home with 2 - 3 kids rather than pay the day care costs, plus the reduced expenses of not having to drive as much and not having to maintain a 'work' wardrobe - this would be a very attractive option, compared to slaving away in a cube farm for a low salary, low prospects and lots of stress.
Heck, I've had the urge to buy some chickens myself, if I didn't think the neighborhood hill people would sneak over and steal them.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 18, 2014 14:29:40 GMT -5
here is what i am getting @, for those of you wondering: this WFP decline meme is being portrayed as a serious economics problem for the US, in that the "makers" to "takers" ratio is heading more in the direction of "takers" (i am not sure this conclusion follows from the data, at all, but that is what they are saying). this has implications for tax, spending, and deficits for the US, again, if it were true. the counternarrative that i am suggesting here is that this is part of a long term trend that has been in the male workforce since 1944, and is now in the female workforce: a trend toward self employment. this counternarrative does not suggest dependence, but MORE independence. what it's implications are for the US economy are far less certain, but it certainly does not portend any sort of crisis, just a slow erosion of our basic ideas of "employment". being a natural optimist, i tend to see the sunny side of most data.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2014 15:23:55 GMT -5
there may be someone, but if so, i dont know about them
the world has changed since the 70's
you either adapt or get left behind
i take interest in my employees....but, and it is a big but
"business is business, and friendship is friendship, and never the twain shall meet"
the company comes before any one individual
I would rather have to get rid of five people if i have to, than the 145 that work here
and cradle to grave jobs are still out there....but there arent many of them, and the benefits are not the same as they once were
DJ....as a finance guy, the numbers dont work for pensions with life cycles at 80-90 years of age
the math just doesnt work anymore
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 18, 2014 17:32:27 GMT -5
there may be someone, but if so, i dont know about them the world has changed since the 70's you either adapt or get left behind opting out of the workplace is "adapting" from where i sit. it is adapting to the new paradigm, where workers are 1's and 0's, and nobody is looking out for you other than you.i take interest in my employees....but, and it is a big but "business is business, and friendship is friendship, and never the twain shall meet" the company comes before any one individual I would rather have to get rid of five people if i have to, than the 145 that work here how about a 3% pay cut, and get rid of nobody?and cradle to grave jobs are still out there....but there arent many of them, and the benefits are not the same as they once were DJ....as a finance guy, the numbers dont work for pensions with life cycles at 80-90 years of age the math just doesnt work anymore sure it does. you just need to proportion it out.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2014 10:39:02 GMT -5
proportion it out....how?
lets take the military as an example
join at 20, stay 25 years, retire at 45
if they live till 80, that is 35 years of pay & benefits, for 25 years of service
dont get me wrong....i have zero issue for the military getting this....
but take any company in the s&p 500, and even increase the years worked to 30-35
so say at 35 years of working, you get what 50-60% of pay + benefits for another 25 years?
so now the expense of personnel doubles? maybe triples for that company
Can you afford to pay 3x what you are paying now, and still make any money?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 19, 2014 10:57:41 GMT -5
proportion it out....how? by life expectancy, of course. it is just like a depreciation schedule. if the life of something is 30 years, you can do a straight line depreciation over 30 years. if it is 7, you can do it over 7. it really doesn't seem to complex to me.lets take the military as an example join at 20, stay 25 years, retire at 45 if they live till 80, that is 35 years of pay & benefits, for 25 years of service dont get me wrong....i have zero issue for the military getting this.... but take any company in the s&p 500, and even increase the years worked to 30-35 so say at 35 years of working, you get what 50-60% of pay + benefits for another 25 years? huh? no. don't say that. say 20%. my dad's pension from his place of work was $113/month.so now the expense of personnel doubles? maybe triples for that company Can you afford to pay 3x what you are paying now, and still make any money? red herring.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Mar 19, 2014 11:00:43 GMT -5
Don't people who start their own business or otherwise work for themselves count in the "workforce participation" statistic?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 19, 2014 11:07:35 GMT -5
Don't people who start their own business or otherwise work for themselves count in the "workforce participation" statistic? according to what i have read, self employed people are treated separately statistically. you have to be employed to be part of the statistic, and self-employment is not considered employment for purposes of that stat. please correct me if i am wrong.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Mar 19, 2014 11:08:33 GMT -5
"really? my whole point for putting this up for discussion i DO see it. very vividly."
I'm perfectly willing to admit I may be insulated from a lot of trends in this area. For one, I work for the government, which is a different animal than the private sector in most ways. It is very much stuck in the past in a lot of ways. It's arguably one of the only employers where you can still join at a entry level job and work your way up. Though in reaility I'd argue if you want to move up at any reasonable rate, you do need to change agencies fairly frequently. Also I work with mostly baby boomers, so again, that "old guarde" mentality permiates my work enviornment. Plus I'm not that exposed to people my age, and most of those that I am exposed to also work for the government so.
I'm just saying I don't see it, but that doesn't mean the trend doesn't exist. But still, I think it's a valid statement. At the end of the day, people gotta pay the bills, and there has to be money coming in from somewhere. If it's not work, then where? Where can a 25 year old get money to live on if not from working? From mom and dad? From the government? Are those permanent revenue sources?
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 19, 2014 11:15:54 GMT -5
"really? my whole point for putting this up for discussion i DO see it. very vividly."
I'm perfectly willing to admit I may be insulated from a lot of trends in this area. For one, I work for the government, which is a different animal than the private sector in most ways. It is very much stuck in the past in a lot of ways. It's arguably one of the only employers where you can still join at a entry level job and work your way up. Though in reaility I'd argue if you want to move up at any reasonable rate, you do need to change agencies fairly frequently. Also I work with mostly baby boomers, so again, that "old guarde" mentality permiates my work enviornment. Plus I'm not that exposed to people my age, and most of those that I am exposed to also work for the government so. I'm just saying I don't see it, but that doesn't mean the trend doesn't exist. But still, I think it's a valid statement. At the end of the day, people gotta pay the bills, and there has to be money coming in from somewhere. If it's not work, then where? well, i can give you two examples, and maybe others here can give you more. my first example is a guy who has a pot farm here in Sonoma County. it is arguably work, if work means monitoring your electric bills and hiring people to trim and hang your weed. it is an all cash business, and he is totally out of the economic "WFP" stream.
second example is Mitt Romney, who has been retired for over a decade. he is also not part of the "WFP" stream; he bragged about being unemployed on the campaign trail.
Where can a 25 year old get money to live on if not from working? From mom and dad? From the government? Are those permanent revenue sources? ibid
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Lizard King
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Post by Lizard King on Mar 20, 2014 10:17:44 GMT -5
Well, but a transition from employee to entrepreneur doesn't alter the WFP statistics. You're still Participating in the Work Force if you're self employed. The definition of "employed" covers:
You mentioned that male WFP has been declining for decades, and you're right. You also pointed out that female WFP approximately doubled over that time. It would be odd if females exclusively joined the labor market in newly-created just-for-women jobs; rationally, we'd expect some 'crowding out' to occur. The workforce in 1972 was 88 million; at that point, women accounted for 44% of the workforce. By 2012, the workforce had swelled to 155 million, and women accounted for 58% of that workforce (Source). I'd expect that to coincide with a decline in the male share of the workforce; it is pretty safe to say it's inaccurate to assert that the two trends are unrelated - the surge in female WFP doesn't just 'mask' the decline in male WFP, it at least partly accounts for it.
This handy infographic gives a useful breakdown of how the working population has evolved since 1970.
www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/visual-history-us-workforce-1970-2012
The number of full time workers in 2012, 115.6 million, was exactly the same as in 2004. There were 3.5 million more part-time workers over that eight-year period, 12 million more 'not in the workforce,' 4.2 million more unemployed, and 0.4 million more 'discouraged.'
Over eight years, in other words, the population grew by a shade over 20 million people, but the number of full-time jobs stayed exactly the same.
Dj reckons that this is because millions of Americans woke up one morning and realized they were independently wealthy, and they'd been going to work for years without actually having to. He may be right, but I'm skeptical of that explanation.
The same graph shows that the decades from 1980-1990, during which time the same declining trend in male WFP was going on, saw the following changes:
* 16.2 million more full-time jobs * 3.2 million more part-time jobs * 0.7 million fewer unemployed * 2.4 million more 'not in the labor market'
From 1990-2000:
* 17.1 million more full-time jobs * 1.3 million more part-time jobs * 1.7 million fewer unemployed * 7.3 million more 'not in the labor market'
Granted, the comparison is between whole decades and an eight-year span, but it's still possible to observe that something has dramatically changed in the full-time jobs column. Unemployment, which trended down for the preceding two decades, has trended up since 2004 (and in fairness, since before then). The flight to 'not in the labor market' status started to accelerate in the 1990s and has gathered pace since - it's very tempting to ascribe that to the Baby Boomers and accept dj's reasonable interpretation that those guys are cashing out into retirement, although the fact that the retirement cohort is seeing its WFP increase creates problems for that analysis.
It seems to me that this is perhaps less about the American worker making different decisions, and more about the American employer making different decisions. I don't look around and see a glut of unfilled positions with queues of potential workers saying "no, thanks, I want something more permanent." I think that mentality contributes to the very high unemployment rate among new graduates, but there's more to it.
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djAdvocate
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Post by djAdvocate on Mar 20, 2014 10:30:40 GMT -5
You mentioned that male WFP has been declining for decades, and you're right. You also pointed out that female WFP approximately doubled over that time. It would be odd if females exclusively joined the labor market in newly-created just-for-women jobs; rationally, we'd expect some 'crowding out' to occur.
if you are implying that this is the reason for men leaving the workforce, i will grant that this is a reasonable conclusion, in the absence of contrary data. the problem is that the WFP among males declined at a steady rate between 1944 and 1972, when WFP among women was relatively stable. it has also declined steadily since 1997, when women have been leaving the workforce. therefore, i conclude that the trend among men is independent of the trend among women. there are different social and economic drivers for each group. but thanks for the information on self employment. that shoots that one down. Dj reckons that this is because millions of Americans woke up one morning and realized they were independently wealthy, and they'd been going to work for years without actually having to. He may be right, but I'm skeptical of that explanation.
that is a trivialization of my perspective. what i stated is that people desire empowerment, and if the workplace won't offer it, they will find it in their own way. It seems to me that this is perhaps less about the American worker making different decisions, and more about the American employer making different decisions. I don't look around and see a glut of unfilled positions with queues of potential workers saying "no, thanks, I want something more permanent." I think that mentality contributes to the very high unemployment rate among new graduates, but there's more to it.
i think that has typically been the case, tho. so, your explanation is no better than mine, and it is probably some combination of both. but the fact still remains that the decline in male WFP has been a fairly steady 1/4%/year since 1944. during that time, we have had two booms (when employers were, in fact, hungry for workers) and two major recessions, with little impact in that steady decline. between the two of us, i am not sure who is more skeptical of the explanation.
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Lizard King
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Post by Lizard King on Mar 20, 2014 10:34:09 GMT -5
Well argued, sir.
The full-time employment booms in the 1980s and 1990s were fueled by exactly what you're talking about - people empowering themselves, setting up their own startups, creating new enterprises and new ways of doing things.
What's astonishing about the current situation is that this isn't happening, despite the fact that the deal being offered the worker is quite possibly cruddier, and more transparently so, than it has been in decades past.
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