anyone else read ej's twits?

[cobben]

Re: anyone else read ej's twits?

where are the new jobs going to be? service jobs

. . .

John Joseph Mathews in his books on the Osage has maintained that the surplus energy in any society tends to flow into what he described as practically useless yet prestigious and extremely ornate embellishments, I forget his exact phrasing. For the neolithic Osage this was their complex rituals. Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" comes to mind.

[llanlad2]

Re: anyone else read ej's twits?

Labour may become so cheap that domestic servants and butlers will make a comeback. Along with chauffeurs and messenger boys. Saudi is like this already.

“There will never be a mass market for motor cars – about 1,000 in Europe – because that is the limit on the number of chauffeurs available!”
Spokesman for Daimler Benz


“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1876

. . .

John Joseph Mathews in his books on the Osage has maintained that the surplus energy in any society tends to flow into what he described as practically useless yet prestigious and extremely ornate embellishments, I forget his exact phrasing. For the neolithic Osage this was their complex rituals. Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" comes to mind.

[Shakespear]

Re: anyone else read ej's twits?

Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" comes to mind.

I will have to re-read this book as it has been several decades ago since I last read it. Hess is good.

[shiny!]

Re: anyone else read ej's twits?

I will have to re-read this book as it has been several decades ago since I last read it. Hess is good.

My thoughts exactly.

[GRG55]

Re: anyone else read ej's twits?

Labour may become so cheap that domestic servants and butlers will make a comeback. Along with chauffeurs and messenger boys. Saudi is like this already.

Most of the Arab side of the Persian Gulf is the same. This is because this region is a huge importer of cheap, almost slave, labour from labour exporting countries such as India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, with China in the early stages of joining that list (the main impediment to the Chinese is that English is the working language in the Arab Gulf countries, so migrants from Commonwealth or former USA protectorates have an advantage).

Saudi has huge unemployment, particularly young males, which is always an invitation for social unrest. The "Saudization" that followed Gulf War 1 (when professional expats bailed out to safety and nearly collapsed the Saudi economy) was supposed to address this, but it is difficult for countries like Saudi, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar to unwind the incredible welfare entitlement programs they have erected over nearly 50 years to buy peace. The locals won't do the construction, retail service and domestic help jobs that the imported labour fills, and there is no where near enough skilled and experienced nationals to fill all the professional positions in the energy, construction and banking sectors that dominate these economies.

I suspect we'll see something similar in the USA. Lots of low paid, unskilled jobs that go unfilled while an army of long term unemployed lack the education, experience and work habits to secure one of the growing number of skilled jobs in the economy. Unless the USA is willing to import a lot of labour from SE Asia (or Mexico?), I doubt that "domestic servants and butlers will make a comeback" in a big way.