Well as the world progresses from a mine it burn it economy to something sustainable there will be a lot of people who risk being left behind, partly governments need to help them move forward but also they need to do the same. The old arguments of I was a ______ so I'm a _____ don't hold. We are heading for a change that will be huge in terms of how developed economies work. It will take a lot of political balls to deal with it rather than just prop up the current house price bubble that makes everyone think they are safe in retirement. for those of us with 30-40 years of work left it's going to be challenging and very different, so many of the old and wise benefited from huge growth and an economy based on manufacturing and natural resources with massive trade barriers and zero competition. Times have changed, not only are raw materials competed for but energy is expensive and intellectual property is global.
OK, Maybe I was a bit flipant. It's relevant to understanding the global ecomony and how changes but it is entirely irelevant when discussing quality of life and purchasing power as we are now.
Well we shall agree to disagree. 😉 understand these trends and new opportunities open up for us all, ignore them and.........
If they can make a Robot that can drive, test and commission power boats that's will be cool and then I can just test and commission them instead but probably get paid more. Win win
Well we shall agree to disagree. understand these trends and new opportunities open up for us all, ignore them and.........
OK. Maybe rather than saying it's irrelevant I should have said it's irrelevant in isolation. Increasing global inequality is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. But falling global inequality combined with rising national inequality is not a good thing.
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Chineese incomes may be rising faster than those in the west, reducing global inequality and the rise of the Asian middle clase is an economic effect that will impact the whole world, but it's not good if you live and work in rural China. Income inequality is rising in China.
This is an interesting ariticle regarding income inequality
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-income-inequality-isnt-about-the-rich--its-about-the-rest-of-us/2014/03/20/0afe81ea-b040-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html
Income inequality isn't about the rich. It matters not how much richer the rich get, but how many opertunities exist for the poor to get richer.
A name change is hardly going to affect behaviour of people who are holding the reins
Oh well, bloody revolution it is then.
The booming middle class in sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most powerful developments in global economics/finance. Ignore it at your peril.
Picking and choosing, again the global trend is that within country inequality is increasing. It doesn't matter if sub-saharan Africa or parts of Latin America are bucking that trend.
No one is disagreeing with that Tom, bury that bone!
Anyway plenty of money (income and wealth) to be made by focusing and addressing these trends rather than moaning about them. But then again, that's been part of my job for ages!!!! Happy to remain in isolation in that respect.
(Another small point, in the past few years income inequality has been falling again - another FACT - but let's not let that get in the way.)
I bet you robots won't be able to have an argument like an STW argument. Question is, how do we monetise this collective skill? 😀
Picking and choosing, again the global trend is that within country inequality is increasing. It doesn't matter if sub-saharan Africa or parts of Latin America are bucking that trend.
Working a lot on SSA the income is not trickling down, there's just a small niche uber class who are absolutely minted and then a mass lower class who still are only one case of malaria away from starvation...
Very similar to South Africa were very little has changed other than the ruling class is now all ANC rather than Boers. The poor still live in shanty towns swimming in their own shit when it rains...
[b] Working [/b] a lot on SSA the income is not trickling down, there's just a small niche uber class who are absolutely minted and then a mass lower class who still are only one case of malaria away from starvation...
Economist?
Anyway plenty of money (income and wealth) to be made by focusing and addressing these trends rather than moaning about them.
I agree, you're still not making your opinions as clear as you usually do though.
FF, we must work in different parts of SS Africa then!!! Sack your economists.......
Reminds me of a trip made in late 1990s with thick US investor to an African mortgage provider. Cue question from said investor, "why do these people need mortgage when they live in mud huts." Took me 12 months of apologising on HIS behalf before we could get another meeting with a better informed investor. And I was doing it as a favour - that was a lesson learned. Don't take other peoples clients to meet companies without checking that they are not pig-shit ignorant!!!
They're gonna want a union soon
Oil break that's dead on noon.
"why do these people need mortgage when they live in mud huts."
Is it to pay for the digital satellite TV ?
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I bet they have a huge flat screen TV in there. And that they spend all their cash on fags and cheap lager.
I bet you robots won't be able to have an argument like an STW argument. Question is, how do we monetise this collective skill?
I dunno, ask Mark 😉
I bet you robots won't be able to have an argument
Actually, argument theory and argument graphs are quite a useful part of AI/agent reason, some light reading on the matter:
Monetizing argumentation, well there are a few problems you can apply it to.. it's basically a way to structure and validate reasoning through simple logical rules. Effectively you can argue withyourself to decide how to do something...
Of course not. But try putting yourself in the shoes of a highly skilled person of advancing age whose entire industry suddenly disappears.
Sorry - I'm sympathetic to the 55 year old miner etc etc but surely the majority of them wasn't "highly skilled" in the sense that that term is used in the labour market? (And is 55 that old...?)
It's one thing to say "get another job" when there's a strong job market. But we're not seeing large scale job creation any more in the west, and so it's not as simple as moving to a different career path (as if that were ever very simple).
I don't know if that ^ is supposed to be a response to my post.
That's a response to everyone who says "just get another job".
Depends which sector though, engineering in the UK is crying out for people. I just had a quick look on a couple of companies websites one had around 100 vacancies across the UK and the other around 120. I bet we are short in other areas also, like science teachers. There are jobs out there but no one is going to gift them to you.
No it depends on priorities. There's always work to be done if the commitment is there. There aren't enough people in the world to do all the things which could be done and which could make the world a better place.
For example the skills shortage in construction despite what some would like us to believe is fairly minimal, it's certainly been far far higher in the past, and yet there is now a desperate shortage of housing quite simply because the commitment to build housing isn't there.
There could be a huge increase in employment in the construction industry if more homes were built, the fact there isn't is because our priority is not to build more homes, even though they are needed.
The same is true across a whole range of industries and professions - schools, the environment, energy, public transport, etc, could all employ vastly greater numbers of people if the priorities lay there.
Economics is always about choices and priorities, although we are told that it is about scientific fact and truths, by people with their own agendas of course.