36 comments on The solutions to the problem are not always simple
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However, we might expect fewer to heat their offices or homes to the borderline-sweltering temperatures that are not uncommon. And maybe the the usually-sweltering winter temperatures on busses and trains could be cranked down to something reflecting the way people actually dress in wintertime. And maybe a few people might close off some rooms in their palatial houses (compared to any other part of the world, even many of the "poor" live in huge digs). And no one needs to travel a hundred miles to a fifth-grade hockey game, maybe some monumentally egotistical coaches ought to be fired. And maybe others would make many other adjustments. None of this would be bad, though, of course, many adjustments are not indefinitely scalable.
And in the meantime, high prices might stimulate supply, or stimulate alternative sources. Not one of the alternatives yet proposed is cheap when it is done on a large enough scale to make a difference. Alternatives aren't going to happen at low prices. Nor will they happen anytime soon as the result of subsidized government projects, since those seem to exist mainly to provide travel money for "researchers" to fly around to endless "conferences."
Good point about the bad-news good-news thing - amazing, isn't it?
Not only are Engineering disciplines expensive, they are Politically Incorrect. These days, we have the IDEA Act and the Disability Act and so on, so everybody is supposed to get a diploma even if they cannot, in a timely fashion, accomplish the work the diploma says they can do.
Now, that may be OK in the more obscurantist branches of the humanities, where the Sokal hoax proved that no one can tell the difference anyhow. But alas, in the real Engineering world, that sort of thing causes fury and multi-billion-dollar lawsuits. People expect results. After all, the glacial Federal response to Katrina passed the Untimed Test with flying colors: New Orleans is now swarming with Guardsmen and emergency-service providers tripping over each other. And yet everyone is thoroughly disgusted.
The solution is to move Engineering shops overseas to any place where they are allowed to hire competent people. Too bad FEMA couldn't have been moved overseas as well. But it will cost us dearly in the end, and the folks who were supposed to be "protected" by the fraudulent diplomas and other ego-assuaging apparatus will go unprotected as well. Sigh.
I got a degree in English, which is hard to use, since in my jobs the people I've had to please have had English so bad they can't see what the problem is with how whatever incomprehensible copy is written. I currently work at a temporary contractor job for a Large Software Company (yes, that one), where hundreds of people with those ostensibly advanced degrees from India have put the project months and millions behind schedule, and made it a fucked up ugly mess.
Computer science departments have been contracting at almost 20% a year for several years now, because students figure what's the point of working hard to lose out in future work to some unwashed visa holder who'll work 20 hours a day for peanuts. Might as well do something more fun and work at Target.
I didn't know how well I really was doing in math and science. If I'd known how competent most people with those degrees are now I would've squeaked through college calculus with confidence.
There are 6 BILLION people on this planet. 5.9 billion of them work for either Target or Wal-Mac. Therfore you are an infinitessmely small element in the overall squeeze of things. As we grow to a population of 9 BILLION by year 2050, the planet will be pushed to new "limits" and it will "converge" toward its ultimate solution.
Cheers.
Absolutely: the social attitudes and dodgy degrees are not necessarily exclusive to particular subjects. It's a fairly safe bet that some of those responsible - at each and every level of government - for the hurricane-related failures held very expensive MBA or Finance degrees. And even "hard" degrees like Computer Science don't necessarily guarantee competence these days.
There is a huge difference between a person who is "book smart" and a person who will be productive in the real world. In my current field (CS), lots of people come out of school with horrible problem solving skills, and couldn't think outside of the box if their lives depended upon it. They apparently managed to pass their classes simply by rote memorization, and have trouble stepping back and getting the big picture.
I have had many discussions with people about whether problem solving is an inate ability, or whether it is something that can be learned. We have never really come up with a satisfactory answer, but tend to lead towards the "inate ability".
I imagine it to be the same in many other fields. People who can merely learn by rote, and parrot stuff back are always going to be at the bottom rungs. Some recognize their limitations and become managers (the pointy-haired boss) :-).
I was a working stiff engineer (hardware/software interfaces) for many years. Then I "defected" and went into a field where adherence to the laws of Mother Nature is not required. All you have to do is "persuade" other humans in order to consider yourself as being "successful".
Most of our "modern" society (Adam Smith society) is based on one human being B.S.ing another human being.
Many of us negotiate "fair" prices for stuff. Very few human beings do "real" stuff anymore in the USA. We are all virtual. Your plumber deals with the real stuff, and your other craftsmen do too. However, very often you will run across massive populations of people where no one knows how to pick up a screwdriver and turn it in the right direction or what makes the car "go".
In the computer field, I am astounded by how many practitioners do not understand that their "code" is usless unless there is physical hardware to execute it. We have each become so "specialized" as Adam Smith suggested we do, to the point that we are clueless as to how the world comes together into an operative whole. It all seems to happen by "magic". After a while, we and the bozzos we put in the White House start believing in "magic" and "intelligent design". We/They have no clue. How sad.
Schools don't and shouldn't teach for jobs that no longer exist.
We let "They who are in power" dump their psycho-babble on us about what a great job "they" are doing managing the Gulf Coast and others of "their" assets in this "ownership society". Alan Greenspin keeps crowing about improvements in "productivity" and big gains in GDP. But all those "productivity" gains mean that McDee can run a store with fewer and fewer people, thereby increasing "profits" for the corporation and screwing the little people out of yet more jobs. Soon, no more jobs for any of the people, no matter what your skills set is.
Remember when the government advised your little brother to go get the education for that "high tech" job by studying computer science? He followed their advice didn't he? They gave him a loan to do it, right? Then someone grabbed the money in the "education" sector and ran away. Now where are all those noble folk who value "values" and evade evaluation of themselves for all their screw-ups? Oops, they are in the White House.
It'll be interesting to see what the bankruptcy rate is a year or two from now. There's a lot of folks living in homes with mortgages larger than common sense, and a declining market, would suggest having.
I haven't figured out which of two scenarios is the most likely.
One scenario is a declining market, where housing prices actually fall, unemployment rises, and people are pushed into foreclosure.
The second scenario is much higher inflation, driven in no doubt by high energy prices, coupled with stagnation of wages and housing prices, and rising unemployment. Even here, with the adjustable rate mortages will be forced into forclosure.
There are common elements to both of these of course, but the distinctions can become important as time goes on. My guess is the higher inflation scenario is more likely in the short term, but that's just my guess.
Rising oil prices will put upward pressure on pretty much all prices. The actual change in retail prices, though, will vary a lot, because people's purchasing decisions will be different for each different product. The result will be a squeeze on corporate profits for producers of the things that people end up buying less of so they can still afford the minimum energy products that get them to work and keep their houses warm. Those prices increases, though, are not, strictly speaking, "inflation." They're a decrease in everyone's standard of living.
Decreases in standard of living are unpopular, of course, so there will be pressure to do something. One thing the Fed might do to respond to falling corporate profits and a general decline in the standard of living, would be to boost the money supply. That would give you your inflation.
So the reason you can't "figure out" which scenario is more likely, is that it is really an intractable question. It turns on who is on the Fed's Open Market Committee when things get bad, what they can see in economic statistics that are never as timely or complete as they'd like, and what political pressures they face from their various constituencies.
The Fed could take a hard-to-understand realignment of prices combined with a general decrease in the standard of living, and turn it into a hard-to-understand realignment of prices combined with a general decrease in the standard of living plus inflation. (And, if they're too careful to avoid that, they could instead turn it into a general decrease in the standard of living plus deflation.)
Who is this asshole?
I work for the DOE as a research scientist and the bastards are so stingy regarding foreign and even domestic travel that it is truly stifling scientific advancement. You pretty much have to beg to go to a conference, and by the way conferences are how you share your work and learn what other people in the field are doing. It isn't "fun" it is work. When you have to beg to do your job it is time to tell them to blow it out their asses.