Jobs lost: Fact or Fiction?

My soon to be best seller about the growth of the self emploment craze of the 2000's

"The stripper next door"

 

hey , i wonder if the stay at home, small ebay business will be hiring soon?

i love to see entrepenurial spirit. the business model is simple..."be opportunistic"!!

hey, there is a good article in this weeks newsweek re: jobs and where they are going. a pretty accurate account with little bias...give it a read.

 

I think they are great. The "organic" nature of employment where people are more like mercenaries then employees is going to come as quite a shock.

There are so many regulations regarding hireing/firing etc.. one mans shows or a combination of them are going to be the norm.

Businesses are getting smaller so they get in "under the regulation radar" and big buisnesses are getting bigger just so they can afford to comply with the same regulations. The guys who get killed are in the middle. The painter with 3 employees is getting squezzed by this regulation and that regulation or GASP hiring illegal aliens

 

Yes, once again, we hear than anyone can be rich, anyone can get a new job or start an ebay business and buy two Ferraris when their job is outsourced. Sure. Any *individual* can accomplish this. But the society as a whole can't. Only a few winners can emerge. (Tifosi's friend's ebay success depends on the fact that most others aren't doing what he is doing: either they are too dumb, didn't have capital to start out, don't have the connections, or are too lazy. whatever the reason, success is directly proportional to lack of competitors in one's chosen field).

The appropriate way to look at the situation is to evaluate what is happening to the entire country and the odds of the entire unemployed group has for making a living now vs., say, 10 years ago. Art is the only one to post on this and I think his comments about the coming social unrest is something we should really be concerned about.


-Slim

 

A hugh corporation has told its employess that it wants to outsource every job it can to India, Red China, South America and former Soviet states. I know many folks who have lost their jobs to India. Some have already lost their houses, other had to relocate, and Bush's valued 'marital bliss' is going down the drain for many of these displaced workers.

NONE of theses jobs were lost as a result of becomming 'obsolete' - obsolete jobs go away, period. These were NEEDED jobs that went overseas to increase corporate profit margins, upon which the CEO's $8-10 million bonus is based.

As far as 'mass suicides' go, there will be a few, big crash of 1929 and 'black Tuesday' in 1982 had some, as did the engineering crash in the defense area in the 80's, but not a lot.

The early retirement programs that I have seen are good deals, and those participating can often get buy withou having to find full time employment.

The E-bay thing works pretty well if you can pull it off, I too know some folks who hit local garage sales etc. on then sell on E-bay. Off course they have no health insurance provided by an employer.

There will always be opportunities in America for the self initiated and go getters; and some of the best jobs I've had were working for small 5-20 person 'companies'. The worst job I've ever had is working for a big corporation, but the money, bennefits and 401K plans keep you comming in.

As for me, when its my turn to help the CEO reap an extra $ million bonus for firing Americans, I'm going to get into the fastest growing business in
America: scooping up other people's dog sh*t.

 

Executive pay is totally out of hand. For example, Bill Gates has taken about $2.1bil in income from Microsoft each year. If he instead paid himself only $70million a year, he'd still be loaded. But with the savings, the company could give every one of its 33,000 employees a raise of $60k a year. Gates pay would still be 500 times his average worker. Fair enough, one would think. Or instead of the raises, they could hire another 17,000 workers at $60k a year. (Maybe then their software wouldn't be full of security flaws and bugs, ha!)

I don't know the details about what Bill Gates currently does with his $2bil a year, but I suspect leaving it in the company to create jobs or increase salaries of workers would be better for the overall economy. The rapid increase in executive vs. worker pay in this country has led to the errosion of the middle class in a way that a country like Japan hasn't experienced.

 

The place where you got that figure is dividing his net worth by the number of years since he founded Microsoft. Or his percentage of stock out of MS's total profit. He doesnt "Take home" 2 billion a year. When he was on salary it was something like 400k a year. The rest is all in stock, which he would have to sell slowly to avoid causing a depression in price. Since it's likely MS will start "dividending" their massive cash pile, he does have considerable income coming in soon though.

 

Art, yeah, I'm sure the foundation does great stuff. I guess I'm just selfish and always like anything that suggests more jobs in the computer industry! So many people I used to work with are hurting these days.

 

I just realized today that there is a new, larger, improved, drive in bank being built near my neighborhood. There is also another different bank that is building a new branch office in the west part of town. About 20 miles away, a used car lot was leveled and a new branch bank is being built down there. I also passed still another new branch bank being built across the river.

If the economy is so BAD as many Chicken Little's would have us believe, then how can these multiple banking companies afford to be building all these expensive new branch offices and hiring the people to operate them?

I thought the economy was going to go downhill like a lead sled when the interest rates started plummeting. That's what the financial world would have us believe. Yet amazingly, even with such low interest rates, they somehow have all this money to build and operate new banking facilities.

Guess the economy isn't all that bad after all.

 

Isn't that area where all the 25 year old internet wonders with their VC and IPO millions based on a pre-revenue dream business plan leased new office space, only to default on their leases when they burned through the cash and never did get the revenues they predicted? After the bubble burst, they couldn't go back for additional rounds of financing, whether from the VC's or the public equity markets.

I'll bet that the market for ergonomic office chairs in Silicon Valley took a pretty big hit as well.

Fortunately I don't think that the Silicon Valley is representative of the U.S. economy overall, which actually is recovering (finally) fairly well.

John