Jack Saturday

Monday, February 27, 2017

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1579-1581

...8 out of 10 people who work in law saying they find their job boring.
...
Not far behind, careers in project management and support are also among those ranked the most dreary followed by accounting, banking, engineering and sales.

1. Legal jobs (81%)

2. Project management (78%)

3. Support functions (71%)

4. Finance control (68%)

5. Consulting and accounting (67%)

6. Financial services and banking (67%)

7. Engineering (64%)

8. Sales (61%)

9. Marketing and communications (60%)

10. IT (56%)
World’s ‘most boring jobs’ revealed: From lawyers to accountants
Sarah Young
Thursday 23 February 2017
Independent

[emphasis JS]


In early 2016 Oxfam reported that just 62 individuals had the same wealth as the bottom half of humanity. About a year later Oxfam reported that just 8 men had the same wealth as the world's bottom half. Based on the same methodology and data sources used by Oxfam, that number is now down to 6.
Morbid Inequality: Now Just SIX Men Have as Much Wealth as Half the World's Population
By Paul Buchheit / AlterNet
February 20, 2017

[emphasis JS]




Exponential technologies are revolutionizing the future of infrastructure and disrupting the construction industry in the process. Dubai recently announced the opening of the first ever 3D printed office, and Amsterdam may soon be home to the first ever 3D printed bridge. With greater convenience, innovative design capabilities and reduced waste, 3D printing may dramatically bring down the cost of quality infrastructure. Given that funding has been a major bottleneck for enabling better infrastructure in many countries, including the US, this could be a liberating tool.
The Cities of the Future Are Smart, Green, Connected Innovation Hubs
Raya Bidshahri -
Feb 20, 2017
Singularity Hub

[emphasis JS]







Monday, February 20, 2017

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1576-1578

The average amount of parental help for the 20-somethings — roughly $250 a month — covers 29 percent of the median monthly housing costs in America’s metro areas.

The choice of career path matters. Those in the art and design fields get the most help, an average of $3,600 a year. People who work in farming, construction, retail and personal services get the least.
A Secret of Many Urban 20-Somethings: Their Parents Help With the Rent
By QUOCTRUNG BUI
New York Times
FEBRUARY 9, 2017




In 1964, the nation’s most valuable company, AT&T, was worth $267 billion in today’s dollars and employed 758,611 people. Today’s telecommunications giant, Google, is worth $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees—less than a tenth the size of AT&T’s workforce in its heyday.
...
 ...about one in six prime-age men today are either unemployed or out of the workforce altogether.
...
Since 2000, the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by almost 5 million.
...
More people are pursuing higher education, but the real wages of recent college graduates have fallen by 7.7 percent since 2000. In the biggest picture, the job market appears to be requiring more and more preparation for a lower and lower starting wage.
...
The most-common occupations in the United States are retail salesperson, cashier, food and beverage server, and office clerk. Together, these four jobs employ 15.4 million people
A World Without Work
Derek Thompson
the Atlantic




Avatar
The majority of 'workers' hate their jobs. Many are either pretending to be busy at work or work at meaningless jobs that have no real impacts on society.

The modern economy instigated by technology has denigrated the significance of work so people have become mere zombie automatons of labor.
   
    RetroPam MYR
But but but we're told that people are free to quit at any time they want!

    Puke. If that were true, there would be nobody hating their jobs.

 RetroPam MYR 
Exactly right. We now live in a make-work economy, because we have created such a monstrosity of helplessness that we are basically prohibited from accessing the needs of life without maintaining a constant flow of permi$$ion money, as if it were blood or something.

Modern technology was supposed to make our lives easier and create more leisure, but our outmoded system of economic dependency forces us to create make-work jobs that, for the most part, amount to little more than doing one another's laundry.

All this unnecessary make-work, just because we have to invent ways to keep the money pumps a'pumping - because, by God, only shareholders, heirs and property owners are allowed to idly collect money without toiling for it or made to feel guilty for receiving a "handout."

Discus comments for
WORK STRESS IS THE SADDEST AMERICAN STATUS SYMBOL
By Erin Coulehan / Salon
January 2, 2017




Monday, February 13, 2017

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1573-1575




The 2016 census has confirmed that Victoria has thousands of unoccupied dwellings. Out of 49,212 dwellings, 3,540, or 7.9 per cent, were found to be unoccupied in Statistics Canada’s survey. The total number of dwellings grew by 6,252 from 2011 to 2016.
Census:Thousands of unoccupied dwellings in Victoria 
Times Colonist 
February 8, 2017
[emphasis JS]



More than a fifth of American men — about 20 million people — between 20 and 65 had no paid work last year.


Seven million men between 25 and 55 are no longer even looking for work, twice as many black men as white.

There are 20 million men with felony records who are not in jail, with dim prospects of employment, and more of these are black men.

Half the men not in the labor force report they are in bad physical or mental health.

A huge number are on painkillers, including 43.5 percent of men who have stopped looking for work. Both physical and emotional pain — sadness, stress and dissatisfaction with their lives — were particularly acute among men without college degrees, the unemployed and those not looking for work.

... “It’s much more difficult now to say, I’m a real man,” he said. “A real man earns enough so his wife doesn’t have to work.”
Men Need Help. Is Hillary Clinton the Answer? 
By SUSAN CHIRA
OCT. 21, 2016 
New York Times 
[emphasis JS] 





Metaphorically speaking, basic income is not an app to save the industrial society, but it could be the start of a new operating system for the post-industrial society.  
Roope Mokka
Katariina Rantane
Sitra and Demos Helsinki 
[emphasis JS]









Monday, February 06, 2017

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1570-1572


Is America that bomb? It is a country that is full of profound and terrible rage, rage that is endemic and white hot and constant. Whites hate blacks, the old hate the young, the rich hate the poor. Perhaps you think “hate” is a strong word. But I am an economist, and I subscribe to the principle of revealed preference: actions speak louder than words. America‘s people choose to deny each other the basics of a good life — healthcare, education, safety, so on — when it costs them nothing, and benefits them everything, in net terms. What else can any sensible person call this but hate?

Rage, the bomb, the war. You can feel this rage in the streets. You can see it on American faces, if you look at what they are really saying. They are hard and bitter and cold now. Where did America’s rage come from?

America has seen a kind of social collapse in the last decade, and does not even really know it. It is not commented on, not discussed, barely even noticed. Everyday people have been turned into zeros, nobodies, invisible losers...
Umair Haque 



 There were more than 17 million factory workers in the United States two decades ago; now there are slightly more than 12 million. Some kinds of manufacturing, like textiles and furniture, have largely disappeared. And increased foreign trade did play a role in the decline.

But most economists agree that technological progress is the primary cause. The value of America’s industrial output is at the highest level in history, but those goods are produced by fewer workers, a trend that cannot be reversed by changes in trade policy.
Trump’s Grim View of the Economy Ignores Most Americans’
Reality
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM.
Jan. 20, 2017
New York Times

[emphasis JS]




The realm of freedom really begins only when labor 
determined by necessity and external expediency ends.
Karl Marx, Capital