Global Reality: Surplus Of Labor, Scarcity Of Paid Work

[FarCenter]

The global economy is facing a structural surplus of labor and a scarcity of paid work. Here is the critical backdrop for the global recession that is unfolding and the stated desire of central banks and states everywhere for "economic growth": most of the so-called "growth" since the 2008 global financial meltdown was funded by sovereign debt and "free money" spun by central banks, not organic growth based on rising earned incomes.

...

The Internet has enabled enormous reductions of labor input. A mere 15 years ago when I first learned HTML (1997), you had to code your own site or learn some fairly sophisticated website creation/management software packages, and you needed to set up a server or pay a host. Now anyone can set up a Blogspot or equivalent blog for free in a few minutes with few (if any) technical skills, and the site is free.

A staggering range of complex business services are available for low cost, enabling one person to perform work that a mere 15 years ago required a half-dozen people. Everyone talks about offshoring as the primary cause of jobs being scarce in the U.S., but the much larger force is technology in the form of Web-enabled software.

A mere decade ago publishing a book was a time-consuming, costly venture that required substantial capital and labor inputs. Now it takes less than an hour to publish a book on Kindle and the cost is zero other than the hour of labor. Not only that, but the cost of distributing that book is also near-zero, and the cost to the consumer is a fraction of the cost of print books a decade ago.

http://www.businessinsider.com/global-reality-surplus-of-labor-scarcity-of-paid-work-2012-5

[Initech]

1. People want to work. Employers don't want to pay real wages.

[FarCenter]

2. Employers need fewer people to do the available business

[DJ13]

4. Fewer working = fewer consumers with less money to buy

Where is the breaking point in that scenario, and are we sure it hasnt already been reached?

[FarCenter]

5. Fewer consumers with less money = less demand for resources and less ecological damage

The downward spiral has already begun, but it is probably for the good.

[Zalatix]

8. For the good of whom?

[TheKentuckian]

6. We will come to a time where in raw numbers there won't be enough jobs

even at zero wages.

There will of course continue to be high skill/high demand/high paying occupations and what jobs there are will demand specific skills but on the net we are looking at an extreme labor glut. Once the service jobs increase efficiency there will be few spots.

I have no clue why people think the square peg is going to fit into the round hole, the economic system is not sustainable. There is no tweaking it through another century or two other than into a horrible nightmare. In fact, we are about to push into an area where big advances can't move forward for civilian use because they'd kill profit centers.

[BOG PERSON]

3. The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production,

thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a capitalist society — where the labourer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the labourer — undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed thus: the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is the pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of existence, viz., the sale of their own labour power for the increasing of another’s wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that the means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increase more rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself, therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-expansion.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4

[leveymg]

7. This is true of production work that doesn't require high subject matter expertise

And anaytical abilty. Such jobs will continue and there is a real shortage projected in them, particularly in the US and Japan.

[Zalatix]

9. Stuff like this starts rebellions.

And this one will erupt on a global scale...

[Joe Shlabotnik]

10. The bubble machine is breaking down,

and smoke, mirrors and magical thinking isn't going to fix it anymore, nor is any amount of perceived exceptionalism going to save us. The 1950's ain't coming back and the rats are loosing the race. I've said it before, the concept of having a paying job is so 20th century and our pride in traditional work ethics is so 19th century. Like it or not, at some point as a species we're either going to have to embrace radical socialism and environmental sustainability or else kill each other. We have the resources to feed, shelter, educate and nurture everyone but we choose not to.