According to the recently published Eurostat data, between 20% and 25% of all Poles aged 25-30 are NEETs (neither employed, in education or training). The trend is similar across Europe and it does not seem to be a temporary phenomenon. What do you think will be the outcome of this?
1. Poland isnt part of the West.
2. The answer is the downfall of civilization. When a culture creates such a gap between expectation and opportunity, nothing good can come of it.
I have no high hopes for Europe that's for sure. I think the most optimistic scenario is the EU becoming like Japan - stagnating, balancing on the edge of serious trouble.
Only North America seem to have the political unity and economic backbone to keep growing, IF they don't screw up.
There's a lot of mooches for sure.
As I've said before I really worry for the future.
We've reached a stage with industry where our ability to supply has drastically outstripped demand, completely the opposite of the natural way of things. What's worse is the amount of people needed to produce this potentially massive supply is a fraction of what was needed in the past, and it is dropping all the time. Annnd ever more countries are capable of meeting this global demand. Further messing things up.
The future will be a pretty grim place with mass unemployment being the norm and countries squabbling over the ever declining potential number of jobs. And there's no sensible way out of it that I can think of.
Quote from: Tyr on November 18, 2012, 10:27:41 PM
As I've said before I really worry for the future.
We've reached a stage with industry where our ability to supply has drastically outstripped demand, completely the opposite of the natural way of things. What's worse is the amount of people needed to produce this potentially massive supply is a fraction of what was needed in the past, and it is dropping all the time. Annnd ever more countries are capable of meeting this global demand. Further messing things up.
The future will be a pretty grim place with mass unemployment being the norm and countries squabbling over the ever declining potential number of jobs. And there's no sensible way out of it that I can think of.
It'll be just like Judge Dredd with 90% unemployment and the proles committing crime just because they're so bored with their meaningless lives.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 18, 2012, 10:30:43 PM
Quote from: Tyr on November 18, 2012, 10:27:41 PM
As I've said before I really worry for the future.
We've reached a stage with industry where our ability to supply has drastically outstripped demand, completely the opposite of the natural way of things. What's worse is the amount of people needed to produce this potentially massive supply is a fraction of what was needed in the past, and it is dropping all the time. Annnd ever more countries are capable of meeting this global demand. Further messing things up.
The future will be a pretty grim place with mass unemployment being the norm and countries squabbling over the ever declining potential number of jobs. And there's no sensible way out of it that I can think of.
It'll be just like Judge Dredd with 90% unemployment and the proles committing crime just because they're so bored with their meaningless lives.
Have you considered a job as a futurologist, you could work for some oxymoronic 'think-tank' and once a year go annoy the people of Davos ? :cool:
That's what the service industry is for.
I think one of the issues is the change in the job market in the last decades. 20, 30, 40 years ago, if you had little education, you could still find jobs - manual labor, sure, but a job nonetheless. Help on construction sites, do assembly line stuff, etc. These days almost everything requires education and certificates.
Occassionally I get as gloomy as Tyr but less and less so.
You see, that's the line of thinking the real luddites, and probably a lot of other people had during the industrial revolution. Were they right? No.
QuoteThat's what the service industry is for.
The service industry fills in a lot of the gaps but it can't cover everyone. I just can't see a place for the majority of the world's population in shuffling paper and passing around invisible money. The current economic mess put an end to the thinking that this could be feasible.
Quote from: Tamas on November 19, 2012, 02:58:53 AM
Occassionally I get as gloomy as Tyr but less and less so.
You see, that's the line of thinking the real luddites, and probably a lot of other people had during the industrial revolution. Were they right? No.
They were. It just took a longer time than they predicted.
I agree with Syt. The only basic job that is booming in the UK at the moment is driving a van to deliver products bought online.
But I do not see why there will be any systemic shortage of jobs. Manufacturing will go the same way as agriculture did in the past and end up employing a tiny percentage of the population, many of whom will be highly-educated engineering and IT experts. So it is very foolish to expect the manufacturing sector to sort the unemployment problems out in a rich country.
However, we have the services sector. This will boom due to an ageing society that will devote far more of its resources to medical care, social care and education. So quite a lot of our current problem is what my old economics school textbook called structural unemployment. We have a mass of people who are still waiting to be given relatively simple jobs in a factory or steelworks, in general that is not going to happen, instead they need to get used to the idea that they need to get marketable skills or they will end up cleaning geriatric bottoms.
Yeah, I think service industry is going to grow.
For example, there is a lady who comes every two weeks to clean my flat and iron my shirts; I go to another on a bi-weekly basis for therapy; and see my personal trainer twice a week. Right now, there is a group of men doing shit with my new flat (the interior decor of which was earlier desgined by another person).
When my parents were at my age, they would not pay most of these people.
Quote from: Martinus on November 18, 2012, 02:20:22 PM
What do you think will be the outcome of this?
Combined with the rising costs of rent and near-impossibility of securing a first-time buyer's mortgage, it will mean people live with their parents until their 30s.
I'm more concerned about the other end of the scale. I already work in a young person's field and yet I'm somehow expected to stay in employment until I can finally draw a pension at 70.
The skilled service industry such as plumbing and electrical was a growing sector, but now this is all done by immigrant Poles so I'm amazed there's anyone left to supply Mart's material needs.
Actually, the level of service from the service industry has risen enormously here. The guys I hired (they did the flats of two of my coworkers earlier) do not come cheap but they seem very hard working and when I paid them a surprise visit on Thursday evening they all seemed sober. :p
You do seem to have sent us your drunks. I saw very little public over-drinking in Poland yet I quite often see Poles in work clothes drinking Żywiec at 10 in the morning, and a bunch of Polish builders out of their tree at 5pm sexually harassed me in the local shop so I had to call a friend to make sure I wasn't followed home.
Quote from: Tyr on November 19, 2012, 03:19:47 AM
QuoteThat's what the service industry is for.
The service industry fills in a lot of the gaps but it can't cover everyone. I just can't see a place for the majority of the world's population in shuffling paper and passing around invisible money. The current economic mess put an end to the thinking that this could be feasible.
You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.
Quote from: Martinus on November 19, 2012, 06:20:16 AM
Actually, the level of service from the service industry has risen enormously here. The guys I hired (they did the flats of two of my coworkers earlier) do not come cheap but they seem very hard working and when I paid them a surprise visit on Thursday evening they all seemed sober. :p
so much for the p0rn movie scenario you hoped for? :P
Quote from: Neil on November 19, 2012, 08:32:51 AM
Quote from: Tyr on November 19, 2012, 03:19:47 AM
QuoteThat's what the service industry is for.
The service industry fills in a lot of the gaps but it can't cover everyone. I just can't see a place for the majority of the world's population in shuffling paper and passing around invisible money. The current economic mess put an end to the thinking that this could be feasible.
You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?
Consider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.
Quote from: Syt on November 19, 2012, 12:32:20 AMThese days almost everything requires education and certificates.
That's how stupid people compete with smart ones. Build a framework where you can't just do something. You have to check all the right boxes first.
I think a problem in the UK is that some areas are stuck with generations of this. The FT did a really interesting series of articles about London's schools. The state school system in London is now, by some distance, the best in the country and especially if you come from a poor background - and it's equalising, the Banlgadeshi community has seen a huge shift from relative underachievement to overachievement based on the social and economic stuff.
There's loads of arguments for why it could've happened (investment helped) but some aspects are, I think, to do with London. I think it's possible for any kid who takes an interest in something to follow that up in London and often relatively cheaply (all the museums are free so from dinosaurs and spaceships to mummies they can see anything) - which helps. But two other things that I think help London don't exist in other parts of the country.
One is that London's a city with lots of immigrants who, unlike most British people, actually want to be in this country and come here out of some sort of hope. There's a belief, not shared by most Brits, that you can actually build a relatively nice life here. But there's also diversity which I think is a good in itself for kids and typical things like first generation immigrant pressure from parents to work hard.
Secondly I think London's very meritocratic and so kids can see that people can succeed and they can see the high end of the service sector. So they can see the possibility of the city and the highly educated and the not so highly educated rich - and, of course, all of the people who are paid to look after them like courtiers in an ancien regime. But, if you're in Huddersfield or Liverpool, I don't think there a similar sort of hope and 'service sector' is ultimately aspiring to manage a Victoria Wines or working in a care home which is, of course, state funded.
So I think the whole service sector model works-ish in London but I don't think you can easily replicate it in other parts of the country. I think the optimism rings untrue in much of the rest of the country and if anything it's rather divisive.
I also don't necessarily buy the inevitable precipitous decline of manufacturing argument. In the UK we've had a larger decline in total and as a share of the economy than any other OECD country, I think we sort of embraced it for political reasons (by both parties). The problem is I don't know that we've necessarily done enough to make the transition work outside of a few pockets of success. So I think in some areas of the UK we're probably on the second or maybe even third generation where this is a problem.
QuoteYou realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right?
Yeah but there's also more than bankers who shuffle paper and move invisible money round. Every PA and HR department, all of the support staff that goes into the finance sector and their supporting industries.
QuoteConsider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.
Moron.
Quote from: Neil on November 19, 2012, 08:32:51 AM
You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.
Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.
Quote from: Tyr on November 19, 2012, 09:47:47 PM
QuoteConsider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.
Moron.
Quote from: Neil on November 19, 2012, 08:32:51 AM
You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.
Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.
If you believe that transporting goods from the place A to the place B, for example, or IP creation (such as web design) is just "moving invisible money around" and does not actually create wealth, then you are a bigger idiot than you would have been if you just thought the service industry is composed solely of bankers.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2012, 02:20:32 AM
Quote from: Tyr on November 19, 2012, 09:47:47 PM
QuoteConsider the source, and then ask yourself if you don't already know the answer.
Moron.
Quote from: Neil on November 19, 2012, 08:32:51 AM
You realize that there's more to the service industry than finance, right? The majority of the world's population is already in the service industry, doing things like working in restaurants, driving delivery vans, working for the government and so on.
Yet much of it still involves the same invisible money and not much actually being produced.
When you've a few countries with the majority of people in the service industry it can work. You've still got the rest of the world actually doing real work to exploit.
As more and more of the world develops though...I just can't see it being feasible for a world full of nothing but van drivers, waiters, web site designers etc... The supply of potential workers will always be greater than the demand.
If you believe that transporting goods from the place A to the place B, for example, or IP creation (such as web design) is just "moving invisible money around" and does not actually create wealth, then you are a bigger idiot than you would have been if you just thought the service industry is composed solely of bankers.
His point, I think, is that service industry by it's nature is relying on the production sector. Like it or not, you can have a (not too well) functioning economy without maids, personal trainers, couriers and marketing firms, but you can't have it without farmers, miners, industrial workers.
A lot of those have been covered by the third world for us 1st worlders. That is perfectly fine for me by the way, assuming that we can keep globalization running.
But his way of thinking is very 19th century.
In this day and age, production of goods is so automated and efficient, that goods (including agricultural products) needed to meet the global demand can be manufactured by a small percentage of the global workforce. This means that, unless you are introducing completely new type of products (that does not at the same time make another type of products obsolete), there is really no point in creating more production jobs.
This kind of mechanics does not apply to the same degree to various creative and/or service jobs, where an individual human "touch" is much more important - so the number of these jobs will grow compared to production jobs that will stagnate or dwindle.
Quote from: Martinus on November 20, 2012, 04:09:44 AM
But his way of thinking is very 19th century.
In this day and age, production of goods is so automated and efficient, that goods (including agricultural products) needed to meet the global demand can be manufactured by a small percentage of the global workforce. This means that, unless you are introducing completely new type of products (that does not at the same time make another type of products obsolete), there is really no point in creating more production jobs.
This kind of mechanics does not apply to the same degree to various creative and/or service jobs, where an individual human "touch" is much more important - so the number of these jobs will grow compared to production jobs that will stagnate or dwindle.
I agree with you, but let's not forget that for our present service-oriented society to work, countless millions toil away in very 19th century-like jobs in the third world.