generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

xp to something, sorry

BTW tons of services are internationally tradable, it seems silly to say otherwise.

In fact one of our problems is that a lot of those service jobs themselves have also become portable.

FWIW, the idea that "bartering" was ever the primary means of exchange in any society has pretty much been debunked.

so this is why that doctor treated me so rudely when I tried to pay for my check-up with three chickens.

Also in theory there is no reason why each country has to have manufacturing. You could hypotheize a (very simplified) world where one company did all the manufacturing and another did all of the, i don't know, web design, creative media production, financial services, legal services, etc. Both countries would have "something worth trading."

I mean the idea that making a physical plastic doohickey is somehow more fundamental than making a web doohickey seems like object fetishization.

we should also note that amount/cost of immediate labor is a bad measure of value. or even "value added".

i'm surprised that ppl are still acting as though the entire "new-economy" hasn't had the curtain lifted on it like two or three times now.

If you manufacture a physical product, and it costs $25 to make through materials, process, and labour, but nobody is willing to pay money for it when its finished, it isn't worth $25.

i'm surprised that ppl are still acting as though the entire "new-economy" hasn't had the curtain lifted on it like two or three times now.

― s.clover, Thursday, April 12, 2012 9:11 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark

We live in a world where a healthy number of people place all of this blame squarely at the government's doorstep. You shouldn't be surprised.

As I said above, the problem with the "New Economy" isn't really that you can't build an economy on service, it's that service can also be transferred elsewhere much more easily than the Prophets of the New Economy predicted.

i thought the outsourcing thing was thought of as good by boosters?
is friedman not in this camp?

50% chance to double my life savings

Iadmit I am being pedantic here, but the reason '0' and '00' are on a roulette wheel are specifically so that your chances are NOT 50%.

the 'old economy' doesn't really have any solutions either. unskilled factory labor only exists where and when it's cheaper than high-tech machines doing the same work. this is going to continue to be fewer and fewer places - how much unskilled labor will necessary to build a car in 2050? like who cares who is a 'booster of the new economy', the goal is a functional society, and pretending like well-paid unskilled factory labor can exist in 2050 is just pointless.

xp yeahhhh I know "47.37%" was just gonna be pointlessly confusing tho

'will be necessary to built a car'*

guys i'm reading all this and i'm starting to wonder...is there some sort of intrinsic problem with capitalism's sustainability???

well environmentally yes, but another problem is the fact that we assume people always have to have jobs and work 40 hour weeks

like maybe we should work 20 hour weeks

factory labor wasn't and isn't that unskilled. certainly not compared to the vast bulk of "service economy" employment these days. also i'm not just discussing industrial jobs but the actual value created by industrial production versus most service jobs, including many fairly skilled ones.

xpost

For most people, even 40 hour weeks would be a good start.

factory labor 'isn't that unskilled' because all the unskilled factory labor is now done by machines.

yeah. germany has an extensive trade training program that skillz up folk to run the new, advanced machinery.

probably the earliest, most portable, most outsourced form of factory labor was light textile manufacturing. which is actually -- to do efficiently -- extremely skilled. and it could actually probably be done more efficiently with machines than it is done now, but it's cheaper to hire lots of very skilled people, since you can get them for cheap in certain places in the world. the lesson, among many, is that skill doesn't correspond to size of machines necessarily.

well environmentally yes, but another problem is the fact that we assume people always have to have jobs and work 40 hour weeks
--iatee

why, this sounds familiar

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/04/15/the-bubble-within-the-bubble/

good article except for this

"Second, the Ph.D. pipeline will dry up as smart young people with the desire to work in higher ed will realize that it will boil down to a choice between their career and the rest of their lives, and choose the latter."

which doesn't seem like it's anywhere close to coming true. so w/ a very loose use of the term, you can say its a bubble in a bubble in a bubble because there's the general higher ed bubble, the phd bubble and the 'academic work' bubble... but the 3rd isn't unrelated to the 2nd or even the 1st

Yeah, I'd guess this realisation usually occurs during the PhD rather than before.

"While Robert Markley may be an outlier, I’ve heard many stories of faculty colleagues who routinely spend 90+ hours a week doing work, and seeing spouses and family only for an hour or so a day at the dinner table before disappearing to grade or work in the lab until 2 AM."

I certainly work 90+ hour weeks regularly, even normally, but that's only about 13 hours a day, & that leaves enough time to spend with family. But it's why I tell potential graduate students that you'd be better be sure you love what you work on more than you love anything else, & that's one thing tenure processes often try to suss out. That's problematic in particular for women who want to give birth during their time as assistant professors, but more & more universities are offering all new parents semester or longer tenure-clock extensions.

Well sure my work week days right now are basically seeing my spouse for an hour at dinner and then continuing work at home. But it's not like I'm doing that seven days a week every week.

but the "point" of that article is kind of idiotic. The insane demands placed on Ph.D's right now are in large part a by-product of competition resulting from oversupply. If the pipeline "dries up" as tens of thousands of would-be academics suddenly decide it's all not worth it (which I find doubtful would happen anyway) then there will be less competition and demands on PhD's will likely be lessened.

That's not entirely wrong, but I dunno: those of us in the game love the game, love the crush, love the competition. So I'm not sure the demands old go own, because those demands are largely self-imposed (provided you're competent & diligent enough to get tenure).

Argh, should read "demands will go away"

'competent and diligent enough to get tenure' is a changing game and a group that includes fewer and fewer people each year, which is the point

it's like saying 'well if you're *really* good at musical chairs, you don't have to worry'

nonsense

Uh

so what i get from this thread/euler is that being a trve cvlt professor is basically another version of being on the football team? i mean, it's cool that you're into being a spartan or an endurance sport champ or whatever but not everyone thrives on that. i mean, if that's basically the environment that grads are forced to jump into than yeah, higher ed is fucked and tbh i'm going to enjoy watching different parts of it start to crumble.

Euler, how does a 13h work day leave enough family time if you're sleeping 7-8 h/ night?

ppl at college I heard invented new time, they get an extra 4 hours a day to read and be nerds while the rest of us punch at our privates and wonder why our balls hurt all the time

my srs answer is lmao that anyone sleeps 7-8 hours

i do because if i don't i feel sick but i don't have time to do anything interesting between work/commute/sleep. i do not have a phd and will never have the energy or desire to give birth.

7-8 hrs of sleep a day, p much zero commute, 3ish hours of non-work a day, including meals with my family. Works fine for me!

OK. If that's what these constant moves for fairly low-paying contract positions are leading towards, I should perhaps start looking seriously at teacher's college or something. No dis, I'm glad it's working for you.

Well, I'm happily tenured at a research university, so I'm a freak. It's just worth being clear on what you want.

With a schedule like that, I imagine it's basically necessary to have a very accommodating spouse/partner, especially if you have kids.

My wife is incredible, but we both have Ph.Ds & in fact my wife will have an academic position of her own starting in the fall. I'm around the house a lot too, as I work mostly from home; I teach & hold office hours on campus but I write at home. & so I'm super flexible about being to get the kids from school (also a short walk). Location is key to pull this off.

I guess what I was saying is that she "gets" the insanity.

That makes way more sense, because I was pretty sure your wife was also an academic iirc and the whole only being w family for 3 hrs a day was...that's like stockbroker/Goldman-Sachs wealth manager levels of uninvolvement. And they pay people to do everything else for them, or so the movies tell me.

So when she starts her job will she continue to do everything except get the kids from school? I wish her luck.

But it's why I tell potential graduate students that you'd be better be sure you love what you work on more than you love anything else

haha