Posts by Kumara Republic
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to BenWilson,
The employer can’t find the person with the exact right skills at the price they’re prepared to pay, or someone close whom they will have to train for a bit. It’s as much a statement about their stingyness as it is about the availability of the people with appropriate skills. On the flipside for me it’s as much a statement about what kind of work I’m prepared to do, under what conditions, and at what remuneration, as it is about whether there is any work I can do around.
It’s a likely symptom of education and training, among other public goods, being reduced to a perishable good. Student debt is undoubtedly a driving factor in salary expectations for graduates, and for those who drop out or otherwise hail from blue-collar backgrounds, it’s even more of a liability. Again, Labour’s proposals – part of the Future of Work study – for an IT apprenticeship system are a partial solution.
The logical extreme of automation would be a techno-feudalist system where robots churn out flawlessly produced goods and the Internet of Things flawlessly carrying out services… and not enough consumers with the money to purchase them. Still, I'm of the view that automation in itself isn't a job-killer, but rather the real issue is cartellised automation where the robots and the IoT are dominated by the Marc Andreessens in our midst.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I don’t believe there is a major skills shortage in the IT sector.
I think there’s an unwillingness of some employers (going up the value chain to corporate purchasers of IT) to (a) pay the rate for the job and (b) develop staff skills rather than expecting to hire people with a 99% fit to their tech of the day.
It's part of the wider issue that no one can agree on how to fix the skills mismatch/'shortage'. A relatively deregulated labour market like New Zealand's favours those with capital or the very highest skills - and it provides little or no incentive to train people on the job, which a lot of people, myself included, are far more suited to than a traditional classroom environ.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
Well the only way you're going to be able to prove your point is if Auckland has a property crash. From your comments, your interpretation of the wealth effect is different to mine and that espoused by Robert Schiller.
Another thing to consider is that certain political leaders in Auckland who you'd expect to be pro-market and want the RMA abolished, suddenly become statist if something out of Manhattan or Dubai was proposed nearby. In other words, rentier-ism.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to BenWilson,
Of course. For most major combinations of demography and opinion there are some examples of people like that. But I was hoping to get an idea of any particularly significant groupings.
In my case, I'm tempted to vote Labour again, largely on the strength of the proposed Digital Apprenticeship Scheme. Because it attacks the problem three-fold: firstly, it's a genuine measure to extend the ladder of opportunity, as opposed to more of the same motivational psychobabble and ladder-pulling victim-blaming; secondly, it recognises a major skills shortage, in this case the ICT sector; thirdly, it partly addresses the issue of automation and technological unemployment.
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
What you are saying is quite right, but that's not how people actually think during bubbles. It also works in the other direction, when asset prices crash. And this is a scenario that the govt is terrified of.
In gambling circles, it's called 'double or quits'.
The overall point is that the FIRE sector has crowded out the productive sector in recent years. From historical precedent, it's sadly often taken an upending event like a pandemic, a World War, or a Great Depression for meaningful change to proceed.
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Does the term "jobless recovery" come to mind? Especially with scientific and economic commentators increasingly speaking of the "Luddite Fallacy" becoming less of a fallacy with each passing day.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Simon Lyall,
I have an attachment to (c) Centre party splits off Labour and picks up the 20% in the middle. I mean if they are neo-liberals who will never vote for Labour (again, since many probably did in 2008 or before) why not create another party to give them an alternative to National?
NZ political history is littered with the wreckage of such parties. United NZ, Future NZ, United Future, the Liberals (the 1990s one, not the 1890s one), the Social Credit/Democrats, Christian Democrats, you name it. NZ First is the only one that still survives, but it’s too populist for ‘Lib Dem’ types.
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Hard News: The Police Ten 7 State, in reply to Russell Brown,
And, perhaps even more notably, for placing it high on the Herald home page this morning.
I sometimes wonder if it's like the editor of the UK Indy and the Daily Mail jostling for the control stick.
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Hard News: The Police Ten 7 State, in reply to Russell Brown,
Last year, when Jarrod debunked Anne Tolley’s bogus statistics about gangs and crime – and got smeared on Kiwiblog for his trouble.
Now he’s coming in to bat for Dr Gilbert. On closer inspection, DPF previously put out a rare mea culpa. He denies smearing Dr Gilbert, but first impressions last.
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Hard News: The Police Ten 7 State, in reply to Thomas Beagle,
The Police Minister must take strong action to fix this problem and clean the rot out of the Police.
I hope that we don't have to haul Tony Fitzgerald out of retirement.