Death By Loneliness

PurpleThrobber

YellowSnow said:

creepycoug said:

I think it's hard to argue that any kind of a soft-landing will lead to more people "opting out" of working. If it's work or starve, or at least lead a miserable existence, it's amazing how much that can do inspire people to get off their asses.

If someone has a fundamental health (mental or physical) problem that legitimately keeps them from working, that's one thing ... if it's bona fide.

Otherwise, while it's probably true that there are fewer good paying labor jerbs available (I don't actually know that to be true but it sounds good), the fact that it's easier to not work today than it was 50 years ago is probably not helping anything.

Back in the 1960's you could be a HS drop out and shovel coal into a furnace at a steel mill in Indiana or PA and buy a house and have wife that didn't work with 2 kids. That kind of existence just isn't possible anymore.

Fun Fact: US Steel Production today is more than in 1970, yet in that year the industry employed 600,000 and today around 130,000. Robots + much of the steel today is recycled from old building, rather than coming as raw ore on the Edmond Fitzgerald from Lake SuperiorGitche Gumee.

If you give folks the option between working poverty and idle poverty, they are usually going to chose the latter.

Corrected for the red man @Swaye

Pitchfork51

PurpleThrobber said:

YellowSnow said:

creepycoug said:

I think it's hard to argue that any kind of a soft-landing will lead to more people "opting out" of working. If it's work or starve, or at least lead a miserable existence, it's amazing how much that can do inspire people to get off their asses.

If someone has a fundamental health (mental or physical) problem that legitimately keeps them from working, that's one thing ... if it's bona fide.

Otherwise, while it's probably true that there are fewer good paying labor jerbs available (I don't actually know that to be true but it sounds good), the fact that it's easier to not work today than it was 50 years ago is probably not helping anything.

Back in the 1960's you could be a HS drop out and shovel coal into a furnace at a steel mill in Indiana or PA and buy a house and have wife that didn't work with 2 kids. That kind of existence just isn't possible anymore.

Fun Fact: US Steel Production today is more than in 1970, yet in that year the industry employed 600,000 and today around 130,000. Robots + much of the steel today is recycled from old building, rather than coming as raw ore on the Edmond Fitzgerald from Lake SuperiorGitche Gumee.

If you give folks the option between working poverty and idle poverty, they are usually going to chose the latter.

Corrected for the red man @Swaye

Don't know what this means
Have a chin

YellowSnow

SFGbob said:

YellowSnow said:

creepycoug said:

I think it's hard to argue that any kind of a soft-landing will lead to more people "opting out" of working. If it's work or starve, or at least lead a miserable existence, it's amazing how much that can do inspire people to get off their asses.

If someone has a fundamental health (mental or physical) problem that legitimately keeps them from working, that's one thing ... if it's bona fide.

Otherwise, while it's probably true that there are fewer good paying labor jerbs available (I don't actually know that to be true but it sounds good), the fact that it's easier to not work today than it was 50 years ago is probably not helping anything.

Back in the 1960's you could be a HS drop out and shovel coal into a furnace at a steel mill in Indiana or PA and buy a house and have wife that didn't work with 2 kids. That kind of existence just isn't possible anymore.

Fun Fact: US Steel Production today is more than in 1970, yet in that year the industry employed 600,000 and today around 130,000. Robots + much of the steel today is recycled from old building, rather than coming as raw ore on the Edmond Fitzgerald from Lake Superior.

If you give folks the option between working poverty and idle poverty, they are usually going to chose the latter.

Do think that importing millions of low skilled legal and illegal immigrants has any negative impact on the wages being paid in low skill jobs?

Truck driving isn't exactly a high skill job and right now you have companies begging for truck drivers. Will you get rich driving a truck? No, but you can earn a middle class income especially when you combine that income with the income of working spouse. You definitely won't be living in poverty.

It will be interesting to see how the robot menace affects employment in trucking. Right now there’s something like 2 million households that rely upon a truck driver as the primary bread winner.

RaceBannon

In 2019 you can be a high school dropout and learn a construction trade and end up owning your own business

YellowSnow

RaceBannon said:

In 2019 you can be a high school dropout and learn a construction trade and end up owning your own business

Imagine if coastal CA let people have more new construction.