Today in unprecedentedly dire signs that the world economy is in a permanent post-employment phase comes a story from the New York Times about Potemkin companies.
That's right, there are over one hundred totally fake companies in France designed to give the long-term unemployed (or long-term underemployed) confidence and skills training in administrative and other office positions. There are literally over one hundred companies that do not make or sell anything, or conduct any actual business in the economy, but have lots of desperate people come in to play-act at having a job.
These are mainly administrative, coordinator, and data entry jobs that will be almost entirely automated within about the next decade and a half. We're creating fake companies to provide fake jobs to people, because those jobs are so scarce and valuable and to get one you need to be ready to do impeccable work because there are thousands of people desperate to take even the crappiest office job, and these jobs won't even exist in a few years.
The article is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how the Times, in true Times fashion, reports the story as if the rise of fake companies designed to give the millions of permanently unemployed/underemployed some kind of daily dignity is a vaguely quirky, interesting, positive thing, rather than the clear death knell of our traditional economic reality.
This trend of Potemkin companies is also mostly presented in the article as an odd tick of those whacky Europeans, saddled with the irresponsible and damaging economies of Greece and other southern nations of the Eurozone. It is made clear that such a thing won't catch on in the prosperous United States, since our long-term unemployment situation is much rosier than Europe's: "By contrast, the share of the long-term unemployed in the United States — defined as people looking for work for at least six months — is falling as a recovery takes hold. Last year it was 31.6 percent, down from a record 45.1 percent in 2010, according to the Labor Department. The share of those unemployed for a year or more was 22.6 percent in 2014."
Of course, since this is the New York Times, the actual direness of the economic situation cannot be even hinted at. The reason, the obvious, clear reason, that the long-term unemployment number in the U.S. has been "dropping" steadily since its record high is that you only count as part of the long-term unemployed if you are eligible for unemployment benefits, meaning that you are actively seeking employment. The prospect of finding a job, any job, let alone that rarest thing, a full time career type of job with wild, exotic things fit for only the luckiest dukes and lords of the land, like health and dental benefits, are so bleak that millions have dropped out of the labor force entirely.
The long-term unemployed are the most likely, the next in line, to just drop out of the labor force altogether--it's one rung up from totally giving up and checking out. People in this group are face to face with the hopeless reality that these wealthy economists and journalists write about so blithely. So as the official long-term unemployed numbers in this country "drop," this is not a sign of some sort of phantom recovery--which should be obvious seeing as how a recovery shouldn't be jobless! The drop in long-term unemployment is simply the byproduct of the labor force participation rate shrinking.
These brilliant status quo economists and journalists will keep telling us how great our economic recovery has been, as millions more keep giving up participating in the economy entirely. It's unclear how monstrously high the real unemployment rate has to get before the well-paid, highly educated, comfortable mainstream economists and journalists begin to acknowledge the reality staring everyone right in the face. If you factor in underemployment with the official unemployment rate, you get something close to 12.6%, and add that to the 37% of the population not participating in the labor force at all, you're right about at 50% of the total population.
It will be interesting to see how much higher than 50% we can go before the reality of the post-employment economy, and the need for a universal basic income, are acknowledged.
There is some cause for hope to be found in this despicable article about this disgusting practice of creating fake office environments for sad human beings to salvage some sort of self-respect.
It signals how this way of doing things must be close to its end. First and foremost, it shows how completely out of ideas we are for what makes a human life valuable and worthwhile. We have all leaned on the idea that work is what gives a life meaning and value, that when the need for work has so clearly and beyond all dispute dried up, we create fake work environments for people.
How insane is that? Are we really so unimaginative as a species that we are creating living museums of a crumbled socioeconomic system for people to while away their lives in? Can we really think of nothing else that a human being might do? If this isn't the tipping point of the absurdity of our situation, I don't know what will be.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
Brooklyn Botanic Garden: A Review
If you live anywhere near the 2/3 line in Brooklyn and don't have a membership to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you should probably consider reevaluating things.
If you are over, say, 23 years old and have developed a moderate sensitivity to the most pressing type of pollution in New York City--noise pollution--you will immediately love the place for being an outdoor oasis where noise is drastically reduced. Sure, Prospect Park is right next to the Garden, but if you go to parks to sit peacefully to think or read, moments that approach actual quiet are far too fleeting in Prospect Park.
Individual admission to the BBG is $12, and yearly membership is $50, so it's one of the best deals in a city with precious few of them. It pays for itself in about four visits. The quiet alone is well worth the price, but the plants, ponds, turtles, fish and birds are impressive too.
There are some issues though, of course, since this is New York City and no experience can be totally free of jarring unpleasantness. Since the entire world is just an open playground for obnoxious children to run and scream in now, and adults have no place in the world, the BBG is of course rife with screaming, running children. This is just the cost of living in New York.
Most days the child groups are tolerably sparse, but some days seemingly every school in Brooklyn has taken a field trip to the BBG. If you visit and this seems to be the case, you're better off just leaving entirely and trying your luck a different day.
A seemingly more controllable issue is the noise generated by the nearly constant lawn and plant maintenance by the dozens upon dozens of staff. Between the hordes of screaming children and the menacing industrial roar of mowers and trimmers, moments of actual quiet are fleeting--not as fleeting as in a public park, but so much so that it is all but impossible to sit outside and think without being interrupted for any meaningful stretch of time.
This need not be the case. There are plenty of products available for even domestic use that operate close to noiselessly. The maintenance equipment used by the industrious staff at the BBG seemingly haven't been updated in decades--they rival the overhead airplanes in noise pollution.
A final issue is the striking disjunction in energies between tourists and members. Tourists, often in somewhat large groups, rush through the place crunching their maps, talking loudly, and generally storming around. They paid $12 a pop to get in, so they are damn well going to march around to every crevice of the place to pose for cell phone pictures in front of every moderately intriguing item. They are damn well going to treat it like an open air museum in which they have vowed to extract every last ounce of gawking value, rather than a serene, green outdoor space where moments of sanity-nurturing quiet may be greedily horded.
Not to sound like an elitist, but there should be a members only space to the BBG, where people who come multiple times a week for the peace it provides can retreat. The difference in energy between people who are treating it like a purchase they want to extract maximal value from, and people who treat it like a home away from home, is simply too stark to be permitted.
The BBG has all the makings of a truly invaluable oasis in an evil city lousy with noise pollution, but it fails in a variety of ways to make good on its tantalizing promise.
If you are over, say, 23 years old and have developed a moderate sensitivity to the most pressing type of pollution in New York City--noise pollution--you will immediately love the place for being an outdoor oasis where noise is drastically reduced. Sure, Prospect Park is right next to the Garden, but if you go to parks to sit peacefully to think or read, moments that approach actual quiet are far too fleeting in Prospect Park.
Individual admission to the BBG is $12, and yearly membership is $50, so it's one of the best deals in a city with precious few of them. It pays for itself in about four visits. The quiet alone is well worth the price, but the plants, ponds, turtles, fish and birds are impressive too.
There are some issues though, of course, since this is New York City and no experience can be totally free of jarring unpleasantness. Since the entire world is just an open playground for obnoxious children to run and scream in now, and adults have no place in the world, the BBG is of course rife with screaming, running children. This is just the cost of living in New York.
Most days the child groups are tolerably sparse, but some days seemingly every school in Brooklyn has taken a field trip to the BBG. If you visit and this seems to be the case, you're better off just leaving entirely and trying your luck a different day.
A seemingly more controllable issue is the noise generated by the nearly constant lawn and plant maintenance by the dozens upon dozens of staff. Between the hordes of screaming children and the menacing industrial roar of mowers and trimmers, moments of actual quiet are fleeting--not as fleeting as in a public park, but so much so that it is all but impossible to sit outside and think without being interrupted for any meaningful stretch of time.
This need not be the case. There are plenty of products available for even domestic use that operate close to noiselessly. The maintenance equipment used by the industrious staff at the BBG seemingly haven't been updated in decades--they rival the overhead airplanes in noise pollution.
A final issue is the striking disjunction in energies between tourists and members. Tourists, often in somewhat large groups, rush through the place crunching their maps, talking loudly, and generally storming around. They paid $12 a pop to get in, so they are damn well going to march around to every crevice of the place to pose for cell phone pictures in front of every moderately intriguing item. They are damn well going to treat it like an open air museum in which they have vowed to extract every last ounce of gawking value, rather than a serene, green outdoor space where moments of sanity-nurturing quiet may be greedily horded.
Not to sound like an elitist, but there should be a members only space to the BBG, where people who come multiple times a week for the peace it provides can retreat. The difference in energy between people who are treating it like a purchase they want to extract maximal value from, and people who treat it like a home away from home, is simply too stark to be permitted.
The BBG has all the makings of a truly invaluable oasis in an evil city lousy with noise pollution, but it fails in a variety of ways to make good on its tantalizing promise.
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