At 14:34 02/09/2011, Arthur wrote:
Subject: News Alert: Economy Showed No Job Growth in August;
Unemployment Rate at 9.1% Breaking News Alert The New York Times
Friday, September 2, 2011 -- 8:46 AM EDT
>>>>snip
Now that America has recorded no new employment in the past month,
perhaps the 9% figure can be regarded as the entree into long-term
depression, or a steady-state economy. Take you pick. It doesn't
really matter what it's called. Either way, and unlike most of the
last 250 years, there is no current list (repeat list) of uniquely
new consumer products enjoyed by the rich. Previously, such a list
was available to be selected from by the masses, one by one, as wages
grew. The lack of a list of wonderful new goods means there is now no
powerful motivation to drive the economy. Demand in the last 20 or 30
years has only been spuriously created by almost infinitely available
credit in what amounts to a conspiracy between governments and the
banking sector to keep the machine going at a spanking pace to
satisfy them both.
After all, each new technological era so far has had its own
characteristic level of unemployment. There is no reason why a new
one should be any different. Flint technology probably had around 0%
or 1% unemployment; seed (and animal breeding) technology, say 2% or
3%; machine technology, around 5%; computer-driven technology 9%. And
today's economy is still only partially computer-driven. If we
consider that automation still continues to make big inroads into
production, transportation and retailing then maybe (to follow the
previous exponential growth pattern) unemployment might proceed way
beyond 9% to 20%, 30% or even more in the coming decades.
Maybe politicians in the advanced countries are straining at the
education-jobs relationship the wrong way round. Maybe the really
interesting, fulfilling, usually well-paid jobs are already catered
for. This certainly seems to be the picture. The prosperous middle
class that newly arose in the 19th century, living within and between
the middling and the poor, has now become an almost distinct
meta-class of around 20% of the population in the top dozen or so of
the advanced countries. The children of this meta-class, mostly
educated in private schools who, later, tend to marry one another
almost exclusively after meeting in elite universities, already
populate almost all the decision-making jobs in business, the media,
politics, academe, judiciary, armed forces and the important
governmental bureaucracies such as the treasury and the central bank.
Even in the sciences, which is still the most penetrable by the
talented of the hoi polloi, almost half of research scientists are
already from the meta-class. Even in China, the most meritocratic
form of government that exists in the modern world, we can already
discern the increasing appearance at Politburo level of the of
offspring of the previous communist nomenklatura .
Actually, despite the present high fashion of democracy via the
ballot box (via talent shows on television by necessarily handsome
and socially engaging candidates), America & Co are already changing
to something much more akin to the older Chinese and Indian caste
systems. Both civilizations had a meta-class -- the Mandarins and the
Brahmins. As they had systems which lasted for centuries perhaps they
shouldn't be sneezed at as examples. If this isn't convincing then we
ought to pay attention to modern evolutionary biologists who tell us
that there is incontrovertible evidence that rank ordering is deeply
instinctive in almost all mammalian species, and particularly so in
the primates -- which includes ourselves of course, having almost
identical genes to the chimps.
So there we are. Perhaps the advanced countries are already
overpopulated for reasons other than hunger or shortages of
investment or resources which affect the rest of the world.
Obligingly, the non-meta-classes of the advanced world are already
doing their best to adjust to automated times by not breeding
sufficiently. The indigenous populations of all the advanced
countries are due to decline, some of them precipitously, in the
foreseeable future. As for the meta-classes, well, perhaps they won't
need to breed strictly at a rate of two children per woman in order
to replenish themselves at source, as it were. There are always
plenty of highly talented children of the masses, if selected early
enough and given fast-track promotion before the state education
system dumbs them down.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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