[Lemmy]

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

You're still dancing around Khar. When the Japan and the Four Asian Tigers developed wages went up and the worst paying industries, cheap toys manufactures and that, moved to other countries. So far so good. In Canada you have immigration to the cities that have good economies that keeps the supply of labor up and the defacto minimum wage down. So you have Canadian cities with good growth but with a big McLabor sector. In any Canadian city you can drive down a main street and the road will be lined with fast-food, restaurants strip malls with hardly any customers. I call these weed industries. They are inefficient, subsidized by the nanny state and their workers live roughly. They are shit holes. So what to do?

What to do is nothing. It's good that we have shit jobs in Canada. It's a good life lesson to do some shit work.

Brucey wrote:

And never mind the story about first year university students doing good research. First year university students are 18 or 19 years old, not good researchers.

18 and 19 year old kids are not only shit researchers, they're shit workers. That's why they're employed in the McSector. If they improve their productivity, they move out of those jobs. If they don't, that's fine too. It keeps the unskilled sector viable and promotes competition. The economy needs a certain number of drive-thru coffee pourers and take-out taco-builders.

[Bruce_the_vii]

A good life lesson to do a shit job? Maybe, we should sent Ignatieff down to Tim Horton's for some reeducation.

A social problem is people have become inured to the bad jobs problem. In Canada you used to be able to get a living wage job. Good jobs was our philosophy. However, it's sort of the elephant in the room. Everyone has friends and family working a shit job. They look the other way. Pensions are unmentionable in polite society because people don't have them.

[Lemmy]

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

A good life lesson to do a shit job? Maybe, we should sent Ignatieff down to Tim Horton's for some reeducation.

Brucey wrote:

A social problem is people have become inured to the bad jobs problem. In Canada you used to be able to get a living wage job. Good jobs was our philosophy. However, it's sort of the elephant in the room. Everyone has friends and family working a shit job. They look the other way. Pensions are unmentionable in polite society because people don't have them.

In Canada you can STILL get a living wage. Sure, we all know people who are doing shit jobs. The reason why they're doing those jobs is usually pretty simple: that's the best they're capable of. We can't all be brilliant or beautiful. Most of the folks doing shit jobs are either lazy, stupid, young, unskilled or some combination of the four. No government policy, wage or other, will change that. If they guy filling my burito or pouring my coffee wants a better job, it's out there and available. The onus is on him to qualify himself for that position. The biggest problem with shit work in this country is that minimum wage laws make people OVER-PAID for these tasks. When you over pay someone you create a disincentive for them to get out of those jobs. It becomes cozy. Minimum wage laws also restrict employment, which worsens things further. It'd be better to pay more people less money to do unskilled tasks. It creates more incentive for people to improve their productivity and employability, it makes low-paying industries more profitable and it eases competition in the labour market.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Actually, socially, low wages are considered a womens issue. The Moms of the world go back to work in retail, which is all low wage. So were talking about Mom here.

Also the low wage sector is very large and it's a wall. It's hard to get over the wall as the competition for better jobs is everywhere. In Canada the 2007 statistic is some 23% if jobs are below $12 an hour.

The Mom working the check out till at your grocery store doesn't really know how to escape. That's their thanks socially for being dedicated to bringing up family.

[Khar]

Thanks Lemmy.

Quote:

You've taught a university? I worked in R & D, not as an inventor but rather as a specialized computer programmer. I saw a lot of engineers working on bad projects. The universities will be the same, not many Professors will be doing R & D work that makes a difference. Actual good R & D is a little special. And it's getting harder and harder to come up with a new idea.

And never mind the story about first year university students doing good research. First year university students are 18 or 19 years old, not good researchers.

Bruce, you made disparaging or incorrect remarks about everything from medical research (saying the math is harder than it is, saying sample sizes are larger then they ever are) through economics (phone poll comment and science discussion), then tried to focus on what I am rather than what I was saying.

The point of my response is that you cannot look down on students from some pillar of manufactured brilliance -- you've brought up your sources to four, none of them were actually academic (and you falsified what information was available from at least two of them, and another one just being a list of stats I had provided you an actual analysis for), and you have not demonstrated skills beyond what I have seen from university students in this discussion.

Trying to smack down someone by building a negative image of them in some form is a conversation stopper. I don't appreciate topics being polarized. Just because you saw others perform research (although it sounds like it was more of a development capacity) does not mean you get to pass muster on anyone doing research (professionally, academically as a student, or recreationally) as a whole. The mass majority of papers out there went through a review process without you, you know.

Quote:

You're still dancing around Khar. When the Japan and the Four Asian Tigers developed wages went up and the worst paying industries, cheap toys manufactures and that, moved to other countries. So far so good. In Canada you have immigration to the cities that have good economies that keeps the supply of labor up and the defacto minimum wage down. So you have Canadian cities with good growth but with a big McLabor sector. In any Canadian city you can drive down a main street and the road will be lined with fast-food, restaurants strip malls with hardly any customers. I call these weed industries. They are inefficient, subsidized by the nanny state and their workers live roughly. They are shit holes. So what to do?

I don't get how I can say stuff like "let it occur naturally" or "encourage good growth (which I defined repeatedly)" and it's dancing around, but you do catch it when Lemmy says it.

You can't see it right now but I'm crossing my arms in a huff.

"Your plan reads to me like "first we dump a bunch of jobs, and reduce growth, and then have growth replace those jobs" rather than just letting our current growth build on currently available jobs."

"Now, the only way I can see you doing this is by saying that low wages are fine, and industralization drives these low wages until we begin seeing an improvement in wages as they move on to other industries. This is fine."

"What I would bet is that the problem, as I alluded to previously, is due to structurally unemployed, given that we are in a recovery. If a certain industry has failed to provide strong enough economic returns to really support itself, then we are going to see it slip a bit and have unemployment go up as those industries begin to go under. Identifying the places with the most recent structural unemployment is the best way to go in my books. I am betting also that due to the modern age and necessity of training, the failure of an industry is likely due to the time it takes to adequately train someone for a new position. Not to mention those who likely have gone back to school for another type of job. The only point I agree with you most definitely is the training one, with a focus on access and promotion of education in areas Canada needs. That seems to me to be the largest barriar of entry for people in adverse employment conditions. I feel this is reflected in the longer lag time in recent slowdowns, and the progress Canadian society has made towards different industies over time."

"Yes, the idea of moving away from some industries to others is what happens."

"The panacea "they" believe in does involve the theory you brought up here. The difference is that they recognize that growth does play a role in the reduction of poverty and improvement in human development."

"The reason the Asian Tigers got rid of those is indeed because of economic growth. Note again how this panacea is based around growth (which you were aruging against previously). More and more factories and low income places were made until reserve labour was used up, and then competition for workers began."

"The fact we have seen this real improvement in our own low end of working shows that over time the low end does improve on it's own. The Asian Tigers didn't get rid of sweat shops by cutting the bottom few jobs and boosting minimum wage, they got rid of sweat shops by making more sweat shops, which is in line with my posts."

I even went over minimum wage a few times too.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I can't respond to all that. I note for example you argue that medical research math is not as difficult as all that. Oh boy. It maybe that a drug for cancer should produce dramatic results and be mathematically sound but the multi-variate nature of health makes pin pointing causes of cancer very difficult. Multi-variate analysis, in biology.

My father was the manager of a research center in the Sheridan Research Park here in Toronto. A good job, well respected in the community - but my wife points out the place never invented anything in his whole life. That's excellent Dad. Research is very difficult, becoming marginal in many fields, and the population knows this full well. Your assertion that all these papers by professors and that are peer reviewed are good research is a bit behind the times.

May I make a suggestion to you Khar. Less emphasis on academia and more emphasis on human nature. I'm a computer nerd at heart but learned this lesson over a life time. Lemmy, for a local example, is a government employee that advocates training - ignoring that training will not change the nature of jobs in the economy. He argues the classic bit that the poor should take responsibility for capitalism. On the angle-of-the-dangle Lemmy has little to say. And so goes the country.

[Khar]

If you can't respond to all that, stop making claims I'm dancing around. Quite clearly, I have not been -- your last few examples of me dancing around have fallen flat.

Your medical sciences response also falls flat. Many (hell, most using scientific methodology) fields use multivariate analysis. Economics uses many forms of it. Hell, both fields usually teach undergrads miltivariable analysis in various forms before the end of third year, if not before the end of second year in university. "Mathematics in economics is by far more difficult than the math in cancer research," as I said previously, continues to hold.

Bruce, there is a fundamental difference between research and invention/development as we are discussing it. The definitions and context alone show that. I also said that the "mass majority of papers out there went through a review process without you," not that the process is perfect. I recently made a point in one thread of showing that a professor had questionable work, and proved it by the writings of other researchers in his field. You cannot use a few bad apples as a case to dismiss everything else produced by researchers.

However, I have provided you with about 20 references to peer reviewed articles. Axeman, Proculation and others have likely provided you with at least ten more. None of these managed to be good enough? Compared to what you have provided in turn? I have already stated my thoughts on this before the last time it was brought up.

"I said they were “thorough,” “proper” and “jurored.” This means that the methodology within has passed a level of expectation above and beyond what you have presented here."

This was when I provided you with six peer reviewed articles on the topic you were discussing at the time, showing how your calculations and theirs differed significantly. You dismissed them as a social problem within the economics profession revolving around a "facade of empiricism" using "people's opinion" and "isolated statistics."

Then you stated you didn't read them anyways.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I have read a certain amount of them. They are atrocious, not worth reading. As an activist I've talked to rather a thousand people and this is the consensus.

[Khar]

Number two and number three.

I'd suggest reading some of the others, then, personally. There is no shortage of papers which have been cited in this discussion, or in the other aforementioned The Seventh Billion thread. One or two are somewhat related to one of your ideas on hidden unemployment from way back when, but your numbers do not match, nor does your method match what they have found.

They also have a much more fleshed out model... using some of that multivariate analysis you mentioned before.

May I ask how these papers were atrocious?

[Bruce_the_vii]

I'm not going to read your posted papers. I don't have time. I recall glancing at the ones on the variability of the participation rate but they didn't address the idea people do other things in a bad economy so what was the point of reading them. They missed the point. Next Christian.

In my student days I worked for the Traffic Division of the City of Toronto and counted cars at traffic lights. There is a study on the capacity of a road with a traffic light done by civil engineers. The mathematical model has 11 parameters. Now that's the vehicle traffic at a red light. That's something you can attempt to measure. Just how many parameters would a model of the economy of a city have? Economists have no where near the data base to do a multi-variate study. They get by with a few simple correlations and that.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Any way thanks for arguing with me Khar. I have some simple ideas at root and these have gone to Parliament. If I ever have to defend these ideas in a public forum as an activist I have to have pre-packaged answers. So I can say, for example, Khar says the hidden unemployed are doing other things like going to school. And I will have to answer these students preference is to be working and they can be called hidden unemployed.

I actually have wide support for these simple ideas. The support is energetic and the unpublished book I've written details what the reaction has been. It's an interesting, readable story as some of the on going is illegal. So this may come up in Parliament, maybe a scandal.

[Bruce_the_vii]

I'm wondering if anyone saw the "transaction" on this thread, if anyone kept their eyes and ears on.

While I was arguing with Khar Lemmy popped up and said that dirt cheap labour was good for people, good for the country. Lemmy, if I recall correctly, is an economics professor with an expertise in Labor Economics. So here on CKA you have a labor economist arguing for exploitive wages. Here you have a picture window view on just why Ottawa doesn't not seem to have a compass to steer the country by. The MPs would be wondering just what an economist is doing arguing for exploitation. That's how things work. Khar will say what is statistical significance to your claim that Ottawa doesn't have a proper gyro.

[Lemmy]

Bruce_the_vii wrote:

Lemmy, for a local example, is a government employee that advocates training - ignoring that training will not change the nature of jobs in the economy. He argues the classic bit that the poor should take responsibility for capitalism. On the angle-of-the-dangle Lemmy has little to say. And so goes the country.

I'm not a government employee. I don't "ignore that training will not change the nature of jobs." I am, however, a realist. And I don't say the poor should take responsibility for capitalism. What I say is that there will ALWAYS be demand for unskilled labour. That will not change. Ever. You can live in fantasy land, believing that some government scheme can make these jobs better, but that ain't gonna happen. You can believe that restricting immigration will make these jobs magically better, but that's nonesense too. So what to do? It comes down to a single choice: minimum wage laws or not. In my professional opinion, minimum wage laws do more harm than help. Restricting immigration also does more harm than help. It's preferable to have a larger pool of lower paid unskilled workers, creating incentive to improve ones skills and promoting competition and profitability among the companies that hire unskilled work.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Guilty as charged: Your punishment will be a life time of turning a blind eye to friends, family and associates that don't make it "in", to a good job. This includes a lot of university students these days.

[Bruce_the_vii]

There's another transaction going on in this thread that is illustrative.

I've stated that the emerging countries are trying to industrialize in low tech and then move up to better industries to improve their standard of living. It's the world plan and is illustrated by Japan, Hong Kong and Korea. However you can't talk to the likes of Lemmy and Khar about it - academia will interfere.

Meanwhile up in Ottawa our Prime Minister has a reputation of running a tight ship, that only a few senior Cabinet Ministers are allowed to argue with him. He's bunkered in. They can't discuss much with him either. The working class will explain, "You can't tell a College Boy anything."

Eventual Harper will screw up because one man cannot handle all the responsibilities of the massive Canadian government. It can't be done. Watch for the screw ups because Harper can't properly run a team, the Cabinet.