The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

.. wide awake at twenty past five...:eek:

Thanks for the kind words, but surely no Yankee cow is worth the loss of good sleep .

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

Thanks for the kind words, but surely no Yankee cow is worth the loss of good sleep .

Wriggly,

I can assure you it was not the thought of you; (sorry about that), it was the thought of the challenge to describe the differences between my thinking and Phillip Blond and his Red Toryism.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

I would argue that the real estate employment picture is not as sanguine as the chart above would suggest. Many real estate professionals work on commissions. Is a broker who hasn't sold a house in a year really employed?

It's not just brokers who work on commission. Pretty much everything in real estate is commission based. I work in the commercial RE industry here in NYC, and everyone's numbers are down, except of course for the well connected brokers. For asset types where connections matter less, like retail, people are really hurting.

[cjppjc]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

It's not just brokers who work on commission. Pretty much everything in real estate is commission based. I work in the commercial RE industry here in NYC, and everyone's numbers are down, except of course for the well connected brokers. For asset types where connections matter less, like retail, people are really hurting.

How about those people on commission that sell cars, boats, large appliances. While they are still employed, their income is way off.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

What's your take, if I may ask, on Phillip Blond, author of an upcoming book Red Tory, director of the think tank ResPublica, and presently on a speaking tour in the United States. His proposals for community investment sound to me like your proposals, but I say that having only superficially considered either his or your work.

Wriggly,

Having boned up on Phillip Blond and given the matter some thought it is clear that in one sense, you are correct, there are parallels between his thinking and my own regardless that we have come to our conclusions from quite different origins.

Blond was born in 1968 in Liverpool to working class parents. What is particularly interesting is that I was in Liverpool in 1968 and found it very disturbing. Much of the old Victorian terraced housing on the fringe of the city was being knocked down and it seemed that on every corner was a Police Motorcycle, just sitting there. I was visiting a girlfriend and while sitting in my car at 10pm we were moved on by the Police. I came away from my visit with a very clear impression that the Establishment were at war with the ordinary people of the City.

Blond is an educated intellectual theologian; while I am an uneducated skilled artisan that discovered by accident that I can think. Blond was born into working class, I on the other hand came to working class from an entirely different direction. My Grandfather was a Jobber on the London Stock Exchange mid Nineteenth Century. My Father was an 18 year old Flying Officer in the Royal Flying Core in France 1917/18, lost his shirt on the Stock Market crash in 1929 and by the time I was born end WW2, we were, as a family, on a steep slide towards being working class too. So I have deep admiration for the way Blond describes the equally dramatic slide the UK economy has taken since he was born.

There are two documents created by Blond to debate:
Rise of the red Tories, 28th February 2009 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/20...ftheredtories/
The Civic State, 19, March 2010.
http://www.respublica.org.uk/articles/civic-state

At first sight, you might say an analysis of the UK is not relevant to the US viewpoint, but I will say; emphatically that it is. While the detail is different, the underlying processes have been exactly the same. Rise of the red Tories is a Free Document and I urge you all to download both it and The Civic State and read them in full. Between them they represent a very prescient description of how the United Kingdom, both socially and economically; has travelled to where we are today. Here I can only give you some snapshots:

Blond believes as I do that we must change direction towards a much more localised community solution. Where we differ is in detail. His viewpoint is a very effective description of societal change and rough ideas of where we need to change direction.

On my part, I have set out in great detail in The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective www.chriscoles.com/page3.html what I believe to be the small changes we need to implement, to get to where we both want to go; that we generally compliment each others viewpoint rather than differ.

We both agree about free markets. But I have taken that much further by describing detailed rules for such a free market. Again Blond has a vision for the use of a community based solution to the reinvestment of money back into local communities; where I have again set out detailed rules for such investment and linked that to another need; that the investment is made as free enterprise equity capital; leaving the recipient free from outside control.

On one point we do differ. I have been careful to remain independent from any political party. Blond on the other hand has closely aligned himself with the Conservative Party and David Cameron.

Sadly, I suspect that he may eventually become disappointed with the result of his alignment; simply because I do not believe the Conservatives are totally willing collaborators; and thus able to deliver the required changes. But of course I will be happy to be proven wrong.

A fresh analysis of the ruling ideological orthodoxy is required. Certainly, this new thinking isn’t going to come from the left. New Labour is intellectually dead, while Gordon Brown promises an indebted return to a now-defunct status quo. But, in truth, Brown’s reconversion from post-socialist free marketeer to state interventionist is only plausible because the Conservatives have failed to develop an alternative political economy that explains the crisis, and charts a different future free of the now bankrupt orthodoxies. Until this is achieved, Brown’s claim that the Conservatives are the “do nothing” party has real traction, and makes the result of the next election far from assured. (Rise of the red Tories)

Turning to The Civic State, these paragraphs stand out:

Under the dispensation of the market state, private replaced public monopoly and market entry was effectively and progressively denied to newcomers. The majority of Britons having being denied entry to the market lost any access to investment capital. Thus the ability to transform one's life or situation steadily declined as wealth flowed upwards rather than downwards and a new oligarchical class, asset rich and leverage keen, assumed market freedom was synonymous with their complete ascendancy. Market fundamentalism abandoned the fundamentals of markets. Prudent Chancellors promised no more boom and bust, the state sanctioned monopoly capitalism and sat happy on the tax receipts of unrestrained global gambling. As Labour stoked the engine of inequality - it abandoned the rest of the economy for the receipts of city speculation and the re-distributive power of welfarism . Thus the market and the welfare state merged into one as they both colluded in a system whose bankruptcy is now ongoing and self-evident.

The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures. The real merit of the current conservative renaissance has in some way escaped notice. Those on the now bankrupt left argue that the new Toryism is but a cover for Thatcherism Mark II, while those on the bankrupt right secretly agree and seem to want nothing more than a return to monopoly capitalism and the dominance of their kind of people.

No one reading Blond can deny his innate ability to describe what brought us to where we are today. Where we differ is in the fine detail of what is required to allow the majority to change direction; rather than the broad brushstrokes of the journey.

One thing stands out to me, perhaps I should also set off on a speaking tour. Any sponsors out there?

I hope that helps.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

But I have taken that much further by describing detailed rules for such a free market.

Hmm ... I have a concern here, based partly on times that I have composed detailed and (in my view) quite fine proposals, carefully thought through from varied perspectives, to meet some need or other of the company I was working for. Sooner or later, sometimes after a year of development and a year or two of active use, all such plans have been found to be too elaborate in some dimensions and unfit for long term application. Early on, any such careful plans on my part were always met with resistance, usually from people who had not really read or understood them. Only if I had the clout by way of position to force their implementation did they have a chance.

I am concerned that your specific plans and detailed rules might be more of a hindrance than an aid to gaining acceptance.

People don't look for detailed plans. They look for a vivid description of "what brought us to where we are today" and some broad, even vague strokes suggesting future action. Then they might tell you a detail or two they think important, and if you respond with understanding and agreement, then you might (if you gain the political upper hand) gain carte blanch to "do something" (so long as you continue to sell it as what they want.)

Detailed plans pushed too early can be a boat anchor on acceptance. People glance at them, don't see whatever they expected to see, and turn relatively negative. You risk looking both unsympathetic and inflexible too early in the "dating" process.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

In any case, for the decade of the bubbles the U.S. could boast half the unemployment rate of the euro zone, until the Housing Bubble Recession, that is. Now the U.S. has the worst of both worlds, high unemployment and tremendously costly extensions of unemployment benefits that are costing the nation tens of billions of dollars per month.

The U.S. bubble recessions had an inverse relationship to unemployment in the euro zone; unemployment fell in Europe as it increased after the U.S. post-tech bubble recession, picked up as the U.S. recovered during its housing bubble, and fell as unemployment in the U.S. spiked upward. This is not consistent with the story of “global recession” that has been playing on the airwaves in the U.S. for over a year.

Interesting - if one includes % of population in the prison system in the US vs the Euro Zone, one can see that there is an additional percentage point disparity here...

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

Interesting - if one includes % of population in the prison system in the US vs the Euro Zone, one can see that there is an additional percentage point disparity here...

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/

But prisoners are often employed -- just at well below minimum wage .

[LargoWinch]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

rabot10, what is wrong with you lately mate?

The above-noted post of yours, which in no instance even attempts to offer some sort of counter-argument to TPC's points, but instead proceeds directly with personal and very questionable statements to a fellow member, is totally unacceptable.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Bucking Bronco Job Market – Part I: Unemployment by industry - Eric Janszen

The above-noted post of yours, which in no instance even attempts to offer some sort of counter-argument to TPC's points, but instead proceeds directly with personal and very questionable statements to a fellow member, is totally unacceptable.

I found that post of rabot10 to myself to be a delightful bit of dark humor and not in the least bit objectionable. But then I do have a fondness for a touch of the dark side, so perhaps my opinion should carry little weight on this matter.