On 01/25/2011 04:16 PM, Tom Pall wrote: > On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Bhairitu<noozg...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > >> Anyway here is the blog that reported it based on the January 7th >> employment report. Remember "full time jobs" are the operative words. >> There are a lot of people out there making ends meet by working two or >> three part time jobs. >> >> >> http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-23-2011-only-47-of-working-age.html >> >> They include the report link so you can play with the numbers yourself >> to see if your mileage varies. I always think the guvmint cooks the >> numbers to make things look better than they really are. Daily I hear a >> commercial with some gleeful announcer saying "now that the recovery is >> underway" and wonder what medical marijuana dispensary these people are >> getting their smokes from. >> >> > I'm not going to follow the link as I never, ever think of blogs as being > oracles of truth. > > There will ever be part time workers the way things are structured because > having a worker part time relieves the employer from having to offer > benefits. My heart goes out to these workers. I wish it was 2000 again > and there were signs along I-35 passing through Austin and Travis County,. > Texas, offering assembly jobs to hamburger flippers. Literally, scouts > honor. Those were full time benefited jobs with Dell.
The particular blog is not an oracle of truth but just something to think about and as you mention probably closer to the truth than not. At least looking around I see it that way. The benefits thing is a trap. That's why we need single payer health care. Try to remember before the health care bill was debating large corporations were saying their biggest expense was often their health care program. You would have thought they championed single payer. Nah their college buddies from the health care industry dragged them on board to support the convoluted piece of crap that profits the health insurance companies that we got instead. And one of the "benefits" of moving stuff off shore is they are often going to a country where they don't have to provide "benefits". When I took the only full time job I've ever had at a software company I was befuddled that instead of the nice salary I was about to receive were my relatives trumpeting the benefits. Seemed a bit misplaced to me. After all most of my life self-employed I had my own health insurance which I used little as I use my current grossly overpriced plan these days. And assembly line work? Can't think of anything more dehumanizing than that. Boring same thing over and over. Better sent off shore. Or better done by bots that won't make the mistakes the humans will make. Train the humans to fix the machines, the theory that makes them work and enjoy a 10 hour work week. We all remember that MMY had some talks with Bucky Fuller so I bought his books and remember one article he wrote about how we were going to come to the point that we would have more people than jobs and that people should pay to work. Or more reasonable pay everyone a stipend. Want more, then take a job. Talking the concept around most reasonable people whose mind does not shut down with the one-dimensional "that's welfare" meme suggest most people would prefer to live simply and not work but probably also engage in a much more social world face to face than we have now in this virtual world. And that might be a much more interesting world.
