Friday 30 March 2007

Millions of people without work in Europe

Hallo Chackavak and everybody who wants to read this - regarding joblessness, people having no work


Unfortunately, no government will be able to change this situation. We are living in the midst of a technical revolution due to the introduction of the computer.

You see it everywhere: 15 years ago, 15 people were needed for job that can be done now by two or three! No new or old government is able to change this! However they are able to talk about it and telling us "sleep tight, we'll arrange this for you, just vote for us".

Unfortunately, this technical revolution is accompanied by a social one: there are people elsewhere ready to do our job for about a tenth of the salary! So, in a nutshell, we Europeans have bad cards, for the moment. Maybe in 20 years the Chinese earn as much as we do, but in the meantime: massive loss of jobs.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, I can understand now what you mean ... besides making the life easier for the people, the technology & the computers have made life more difficult in the ways ylou've mentioned ... Yes there are lots of people like Chinese & Indians who get fewer payment for the jobs these days ... I've also heard about these people in Dubai that they get very few salary & for this reason they can get a got easier than others ...

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  2. Georg, my friend:
    Very much enjoy the blog, and the wonderful photography as well as the challenging thoughts you scatter in with the personal. Your point here is well-taken, and something I have been racking my brains about for forty years. It seems obvious that there will be a major economic rethinking and change, but exactly how it will come is literally unimaginable.

    Neither capitalism nor socialism has the answer because both are based on a 'things' economy, and we have gine beyond that, at least in the West. Making 'things' per se is such a small part of our economy, and it is true that so few people are needed in that segment. Our economy is based more than ever on 'paperwork' and 'entertainment' and 'communication,' all of which are much larger segments.

    To give an example. I'm not sure what the total GNP is here in America, but over $2,000,000,000 of the total salaries in the country go to the 1000 or so major league baseball players. Add in the total salaries of the other professional athletes, including the minor leagues. Then add the salaries of the support people for them -- office workers, announcers, ticket sellers, umpires, groundskeepers, reporters whose only job is covering sports, etc. Compare this to the total revenue for, say, farmers.

    Or take television, the salaries of the actors, directors, writers, cameramen, crew, announcers, etc. Again, a VERY substantial part of the economy.

    Take medicine. What percentage of the money spent here in America -- with our messed-up system -- goes to the doctors and nurses and stays there, and what goes to office workers, medical billing specialists, malpractice payments, hospital administrators and clerical workers, union reps, etc.

    I am not saying this is a 'good' or a 'bad' situation, I'm just saying that there is going to have to be a total rethinking of the economic system that may work out in several ways, but none of which are obvious today -- because facts have given us a new 'paradigm' that the theories and theoretical economic structures haven't caught up with.

    I'm optomistic that we'll come up with a new structure, and that we'll do it without a worldwide economic catastophe creating it, but what it will be, and how we'll get there I wouldn't guess.

    Oh, one thing, you haven't been hit by comment spammers yet, but instituting the 'word verification' system may prove to be a desireable idea soon.

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