Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Left Has Won the Culture Wars

Democrats and others of the Left, a group I have felt solidarity with the majority of my life, I have a message for you:  Science, which "fucking love", has concluded (conclusively, to the best of my knowledge) that happiness and contentment is based primarily on Expectations.  This has pretty phenomenal consequences, if you stop and consider all the implications.  This is why humans who still live in hunter-gatherer communities are no less happy than those of us that live in modern societies.  This also means that as a privileged class loses privilege, which you know (supposedly) is inevitable due to demographic changes (no matter how desperately they try to cling, futilely, to power), it is as painful as your rise in power is joyful.  The only purpose served by your crowing about how pathetic they are is to slap each other on the back and whip yourselves up into a self-reinforcing frenzy, while simultaneously antagonizing your opponents.  Why can't we be Good Winners?

Monday, July 20, 2015

Labor Market Demand Predictions

Matching training to demand has long troubled me, especially as with each generation, the (supposed) amount of training required for "good" jobs increases, thereby increasing the lead time and ballooning uncertainty. I just heard that the best predictions by the best economists in 2000 was that IT jobs would grow from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 by 2010. As of 2013, the number of IT jobs? 3,500,000.

How to fix this problem? If businesses would TRAIN THEIR OWN WORKERS, the match between supply and demand would be more direct. We also would have a lot less unpaid student loan debt.

The most economically disadvantaged demographic groups are the ones most victimized by the current system, since they have to rely on market demand signals very far removed (and intercepted by parties with incentives to manipulate for short-term monetary gain) from employers. The people with relatives in the "good jobs" fields get insider information. This is anathema to a society which purportedly is all for economic mobility.