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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sweet If you've spare rooms, consider a lodger. Every penny they pay can be used to overpay the mortgage (less tax, of course).

At the moment, I'm in the spare room. Not everything in the garden is rosy... :(

Ah man, I'm sorry to hear that.

The U.S. added 224,000 jobs in June. While there are certainly signs of some headwinds (and while anything can happen), this doesn't seem like an economy obviously on the edge of catastrophe. No matter how much some people almost seem to be rooting for it...?

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

This is not a political thread, but an economics thread.

They're one and the same because, despite their protestations, economists are not scientists and economics is not a scientific discipline, it is mathematics enslaved by philosophy.

The nasty truth.......

.... however, politics is banned in the OT, NOT economics.

 gorgon wrote:
The U.S. added 224,000 jobs in June. While there are certainly signs of some headwinds (and while anything can happen), this doesn't seem like an economy obviously on the edge of catastrophe. No matter how much some people almost seem to be rooting for it...?

UK has been adding jobs. Or, at least.....lowering the unemployment figures.

I've absolutely no idea if the US is similarly massaging the figures - and this should not be construed as any kind of accusation or allegation against the US.

But in the UK, zero hour contracts (where one has a job, but not necessarily pay), gig economy (deliveroo etc, again, see Zero Hour issue), Carers all now count as 'employed'. It makes the figures look good, but is tarting it all up somewhat.

 Yodhrin wrote:
economists are not scientists and economics is not a scientific discipline, it is mathematics enslaved by philosophy.

I always felt like, from outside observance, Economics is what you get when you create the bastard child of sociology, mathematics, a tiny bit of history, and whatever field "wildly guessing about trends that change by the second that no one really understands but we're going to try and understand because no one pays us to say we don't fething know" falls under.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
economists are not scientists and economics is not a scientific discipline, it is mathematics enslaved by philosophy.

I always felt like, from outside observance, Economics is what you get when you create the bastard child of sociology, mathematics, a tiny bit of history, and whatever field "wildly guessing about trends that change by the second that no one really understands but we're going to try and understand because no one pays us to say we don't fething know" falls under.

Economics is philosophy fumbling with maths.
No seriously
Atleast non operative level economics.

 gorgon wrote:
The U.S. added 224,000 jobs in June. While there are certainly signs of some headwinds (and while anything can happen), this doesn't seem like an economy obviously on the edge of catastrophe. No matter how much some people almost seem to be rooting for it...?

Low employments levels have always preceded a recession which is why many people point to it as a warning. I believe, simplisitically, the thinking goes that it is economic productivity which is important overall not low unemployment levels. The concern is that increasing lowered unemloyment levels is an indicator that:-

People are getting more desperate and having to take (more) jobs to keep going (and you increasing tap into that desperate low paid group of people).
Worried businesses don't invest, instead they employ more people when there is low certainty. If you spend a £1m on new machinery you can't recoup that in a recession potentially driving the company bust. Instead you employ £1.25m worth of staff over a five year period because if you go into recession you can purge yourself of the staff fairly quickly and the overall cost is much less.

In effect you are already in recession but are using spare, 'desperate', people to keep things going and that extra money keeps the economy stable because. However, once you hit the point where there are no employees left in the system there is no room for growth and the economy falls back. As that happens businesses quickly fire these employees to maintain profit escalating the situation. Hence most recessions show a very low employment level suddenly jumping to much higher levels.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
economists are not scientists and economics is not a scientific discipline, it is mathematics enslaved by philosophy.

I always felt like, from outside observance, Economics is what you get when you create the bastard child of sociology, mathematics, a tiny bit of history, and whatever field "wildly guessing about trends that change by the second that no one really understands but we're going to try and understand because no one pays us to say we don't fething know" falls under.

Economics is the study of choices. How and why people do what they do, and how outcomes arise from there.

Unfortunately because people are, well, people, this requires pulling from basically every other discipline when attempting to study how and why they do what they do, because people do things for an incomprehensiblely wide array of reasons.

A lot of people hear the word "economics" and immediately start thinking GDP numbers and wall street and dollar signs, but the field at its most fundamental is "what motivated you to do X?". This inevitabily then drags other disciplines in by necessity.

gorgon wrote:The U.S. added 224,000 jobs in June. While there are certainly signs of some headwinds (and while anything can happen), this doesn't seem like an economy obviously on the edge of catastrophe. No matter how much some people almost seem to be rooting for it...?

Europe is more at risk, for example German manufacturing is not doing great and the auto market in general in Europe is not performing well. It's more likely at this stage that we'll see a shallow-ish recession in parts of Europe that gently dips and then recovers.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:But in the UK, zero hour contracts (where one has a job, but not necessarily pay), gig economy (deliveroo etc, again, see Zero Hour issue), Carers all now count as 'employed'. It makes the figures look good, but is tarting it all up somewhat.

As someone who has both worked zero hours and employed people on zero hours, that's a bit of a misleading representation. "Zero hours" in the UK context just means "zero fixed hours". It means I can't guarantee you say 20 hours of work every week. But in practice I can offer you a certain amount of work and some weeks you might get a bit more, some you might get a little bit less. Companies do not typically retain large numbers of people to just sit at home on the off chance they might have a sudden splurge of work, it's normally more measured than that. As for the people taking the work, despite the odd scare story that pops up in a newspaper or gets brought up by some MP, the majority of people doing such work are doing it because it fits their lifestyle, e.g. they have a job already and are looking for bit work on the side, students who have flexible periods in their week, people who will hoover up any and all extra hours you can throw their way.

I guess the economic question is, why are these types of labor:

the majority of people doing such work are doing it because it fits their lifestyle, e.g. they have a job already and are looking for bit work on the side, students who have flexible periods in their week, people who will hoover up any and all extra hours you can throw their way.

in the market more in the last decade than previous decades? Didn't these types of labor always exist? Therefore, what is different about it now and why are we tracking it differently now?

 gorgon wrote:
The U.S. added 224,000 jobs in June. While there are certainly signs of some headwinds (and while anything can happen), this doesn't seem like an economy obviously on the edge of catastrophe. No matter how much some people almost seem to be rooting for it...?

A recession isn't a catastrophe, but some of the circumstances in place could make a recession into one. The last recession didn't hit China very hard. The next one may well. Between zombie corporations and real estate scams (ghost towns and buildings that fall apart in 5 years), there's a huge potential for job loss and economic ruin if China makes a single mis-step, or gets into a serious trade war because of politics (Trump, Hong Kong).

 Easy E wrote:
Didn't these types of labor always exist? Therefore, what is different about it now and why are we tracking it differently now?

Because politicians and their supporters need a constant supply of new sticks with which to try and beat each other up. "Oh, employment levels are at record highs now? Yeah, well, err, it's the wrong type of employment!!" etc, etc. The reality of what is happening in an economy and mere matters such as peoples jobs and their right to do whatever the hell employment they like are a secondary concern to making sure an MP looks good at Prime Ministers Questions and gets on the 6/10 clock news.

More people are working, but from my view it seems like the work is harder and pays less than it has in quite a long time, relative to previous times where the economy was good.

bouncingboredom wrote:
- It's quite light, so you can carry a decent amount of it around in a purse all day without it weighing you down.

I'm going to quibble with this one, because gold is actually quite HEAVY. It's close to four times the weight of iron per unit volume.

Employment in the UK for example is very high ... and it has room for slack.

That's true NOW. The problem is, once you start talking about actually being IN a recession that changes in a hurry. Businesses hear the word 'recession,' before it can possibly have had any effect on their bottom line (much less put them in the red at all) and they cut expenses like a mad barber... and the production employees always seem to take the brunt of it. Now you've got a bunch of unemployed people so there's a LOT less spending... and BAM! A minor blip that could easily be weathered becomes a major problem.

Not least of which for the companies who just effectively fired their customers.

 Vulcan wrote:
Not least of which for the companies who just effectively fired their customers.

I think the caveat is that, to a single company, this math makes complete sense and protects the business.

The problem is when every company does it. They're effectively cutting the legs out from under one another. But of course, they don't care because all the people running those companies and making those decisions today will get their millions either way. The marking position of the cut employees tanks. Increasing wages becomes massively disincentivized. The next few years are spent regaining lost income and making up missed opportunity. The guys at the top never missed out anything except maybe a higher payout to stockholders, who still get their due.

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

bouncingboredom wrote:
As someone who has both worked zero hours and employed people on zero hours, that's a bit of a misleading representation. "Zero hours" in the UK context just means "zero fixed hours". It means I can't guarantee you say 20 hours of work every week. But in practice I can offer you a certain amount of work and some weeks you might get a bit more, some you might get a little bit less. Companies do not typically retain large numbers of people to just sit at home on the off chance they might have a sudden splurge of work, it's normally more measured than that. As for the people taking the work, despite the odd scare story that pops up in a newspaper or gets brought up by some MP, the majority of people doing such work are doing it because it fits their lifestyle, e.g. they have a job already and are looking for bit work on the side, students who have flexible periods in their week, people who will hoover up any and all extra hours you can throw their way.

Unfortunately it might have worked for you in these cases but for a lot of people it's barely past desperation exploitation. I have friends / family that have been consistently exploited by zero hours contracts. All in the catering industry. In one example for example where the person was a chef the company used the zero hours contracts to pay for only the hours needed. So hence they might pay for 8am to 9.30am, 12pm - 2pm then 5-8pm. The problem with this is that there is simply not time to fill that spare time with something constructive (e.g. another job). It's effectively a 13 hour shift. but paid for only half of it. They also tended to take the approach that you could be called in or dropped at very short notice. Not needed for the 12-2pm shift, they could do this even to point you've walked in the business's door to be told you are not needed. Now you've got to wait even longer. They also took the approach that if you turned down a shift because it wasn't convenient they tended to get 'punished' by being given far less work over the next couple of weeks to make a point. It's not really very far from exploitation but some people do this because they have no choice. Now for certain groups (e.g. students) it works and historically that's what it was used for. But then an evil git worked out they could start pushing it on a larger portion of population than it was ever intended to be used for (in the UK at least).

Pretty much everywhere, TBH.

Man the "Those jobs are for students" argument always hurts. Never mind most places are deliberately understaffed as apparently desperate flailing is efficiency, we've also got to talk down to anyone management has decided to pay as little as legally allowable.

And then people wonder why things take longer than expected and service often sucks. Not enough people to do things and not getting paid to close the gap is generally enough to ensure that.

Better part of my generation is still stuck in those jobs, we're in our 30s.

Yup.

Zero Hours and Gig Work aren’t inherently exploitative. But, people on them are being counted as employed, regardless of how often they actually get hours.

Theoretically, someone on Zero Hours Contract could be given no hours over a month but still be 'employed' for the purposes of Government Statistics.

Shall we talk about internships and unpaid probationary periods next?

I heard Economics is about who gets what.

I have heard that this thread was about the Next Recession....

Is it true, that Employment often peaks prior to a large recession?

 Easy E wrote:
I have heard that this thread was about the Next Recession....

Is it true, that Employment often peaks prior to a large recession?

Yes, but I think it's more of a side effect of things.

Someone earlier in thread gave a really good explanation for why companies hire lots of employees in times of uncertain growth, which probably plays into it and honestly is there a better definition of "uncertain growth" than the current economy? It's basically propped up on hopeful stilts while everyone has one finger on the abort button. Employees are a good sink in uncertain growth, cause if things go south you can just hand out pink slips and you never overinvested in anything. Employment rises. Economic watchers look at high employment and assume inflation will set in. So they turn to the Fed to regulate interest rates to keep the dollar stable. But then they complain, because when interest rates are "high" companies have to pay money to other people (heaven forbid anyone but the middle class American family ever be expected to pay their debts). So they get antsy, because the Fed is only suck their dicks 23/6 instead of 24/7. So they start eyeing that abort button harder, which is really tempting what with tariffs, and trade wars all around and no one really having a solid idea how it'll play out for the greedy corporate investor. Eventually the tension reaches it's boiling point. Either someone stops being able to pay their debts, or investors hit abort, or something and the economy stops growing while everyone runs around like headless chickens because the "uncertainty" has become so high than everyone enters "save myself" mode all at once and actually ends up burying each other. Except for the people at the top. They win no matter what.

Honestly it reaches this point where you realize the whole thing is kind of an impromptu scam.

The economy does well because people think it's doing well. It does badly when people think it's going to do badly. It's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy from one end to the other, the only difference is that the people at the top win no matter how it goes.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I have heard that this thread was about the Next Recession....

Is it true, that Employment often peaks prior to a large recession?

Yes, but I think it's more of a side effect of things.

Someone earlier in thread gave a really good explanation for why companies hire lots of employees in times of uncertain growth, which probably plays into it and honestly is there a better definition of "uncertain growth" than the current economy? It's basically propped up on hopeful stilts while everyone has one finger on the abort button. Employees are a good sink in uncertain growth, cause if things go south you can just hand out pink slips and you never overinvested in anything. Employment rises. Economic watchers look at high employment and assume inflation will set in. So they turn to the Fed to regulate interest rates to keep the dollar stable. But then they complain, because when interest rates are "high" companies have to pay money to other people (heaven forbid anyone but the middle class American family ever be expected to pay their debts). So they get antsy, because the Fed is only suck their dicks 23/6 instead of 24/7. So they start eyeing that abort button harder, which is really tempting what with tariffs, and trade wars all around and no one really having a solid idea how it'll play out for the greedy corporate investor. Eventually the tension reaches it's boiling point. Either someone stops being able to pay their debts, or investors hit abort, or something and the economy stops growing while everyone runs around like headless chickens because the "uncertainty" has become so high than everyone enters "save myself" mode all at once and actually ends up burying each other. Except for the people at the top. They win no matter what.

Honestly it reaches this point where you realize the whole thing is kind of an impromptu scam.

The economy does well because people think it's doing well. It does badly when people think it's going to do badly. It's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy from one end to the other, the only difference is that the people at the top win no matter how it goes.

In a way the employment line is behind the line of the economy so to speak.
Companies first know what was ordered, then they asses their capability and then start hiring, which takes line and makes the curve lag behind as capacities are generated later then needed and often get hired into the start of a recession, were many companies see overapacities and start panic firing.

Things going well generally peak before things go badly. That's just how reality works in a lot of ways.

The worst part is that if the big employers WOULD NOT PANIC FIRE, the investors would quickly see it's just an unjustified panic and everything stabilizes quickly.

But no, everyone panics and does stupid things as panicked people tend to do and NO ONE learns from history so we're all doomed to repeat it over and over again...

 Vulcan wrote:
The worst part is that if the big employers WOULD NOT PANIC FIRE, the investors would quickly see it's just an unjustified panic and everything stabilizes quickly.

But no, everyone panics and does stupid things as panicked people tend to do and NO ONE learns from history so we're all doomed to repeat it over and over again...

This is honestly in my eyes the nature of the beast.

Base your value assessment system on confidence, and you suffer the consequence of value tanking when confidence tanks, which is just the snake eating its own tail because deep down in some way or another, everyone knows that the system is built on smoke and mirrors so everyone knows that it'll "tank" eventually.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The worst part is that if the big employers WOULD NOT PANIC FIRE, the investors would quickly see it's just an unjustified panic and everything stabilizes quickly.

But no, everyone panics and does stupid things as panicked people tend to do and NO ONE learns from history so we're all doomed to repeat it over and over again...

This is honestly in my eyes the nature of the beast.

Base your value assessment system on confidence, and you suffer the consequence of value tanking when confidence tanks, which is just the snake eating its own tail because deep down in some way or another, everyone knows that the system is built on smoke and mirrors so everyone knows that it'll "tank" eventually.

I agree with your guys’ points except that I don’t think it’s panic induced behavior I think it’s just calculated math and a convenient excuse. When recessions hit or market demand weakens for any other reason it has become nigh impossible for CEOs and boards to tell shareholders that they’ll weather the storm, work through the lower earnings and reposition themselves to be stronger when conditions improve. Corporate leadership doesn’t want to tell investors/shareholders any bad news or miss their earnings projections. The tail wags the dog and the incentive structure is unbalanced to favor short term thinking. When forces beyond their control hurt earnings they focus on costs they can control and try to reduce them enough to offset losses. Labor is the cost most easily controlled so any downturn is met with layoffs, automation, selling off property/closing locations, etc because the company is dependent on its stock price staying high so that major shareholders like hedge funds and pension funds don’t wreck the company by dumping the stock. The system is a snake eating its tail because the short term pursuit of profitability helps the company at the moment but the layoffs exacerbate the weak demand and fees the panic and naysayers in the media and the public perception. It’s not a healthy pursuit of efficiency and best practices for the industry it’s just an excuse for massive cuts that only make growth in other areas harder to achieve.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The worst part is that if the big employers WOULD NOT PANIC FIRE, the investors would quickly see it's just an unjustified panic and everything stabilizes quickly.

But no, everyone panics and does stupid things as panicked people tend to do and NO ONE learns from history so we're all doomed to repeat it over and over again...

This is honestly in my eyes the nature of the beast.

Base your value assessment system on confidence, and you suffer the consequence of value tanking when confidence tanks, which is just the snake eating its own tail because deep down in some way or another, everyone knows that the system is built on smoke and mirrors so everyone knows that it'll "tank" eventually.

I agree with your guys’ points except that I don’t think it’s panic induced behavior I think it’s just calculated math and a convenient excuse. When recessions hit or market demand weakens for any other reason it has become nigh impossible for CEOs and boards to tell shareholders that they’ll weather the storm, work through the lower earnings and reposition themselves to be stronger when conditions improve. Corporate leadership doesn’t want to tell investors/shareholders any bad news or miss their earnings projections. The tail wags the dog and the incentive structure is unbalanced to favor short term thinking. When forces beyond their control hurt earnings they focus on costs they can control and try to reduce them enough to offset losses. Labor is the cost most easily controlled so any downturn is met with layoffs, automation, selling off property/closing locations, etc because the company is dependent on its stock price staying high so that major shareholders like hedge funds and pension funds don’t wreck the company by dumping the stock. The system is a snake eating its tail because the short term pursuit of profitability helps the company at the moment but the layoffs exacerbate the weak demand and fees the panic and naysayers in the media and the public perception. It’s not a healthy pursuit of efficiency and best practices for the industry it’s just an excuse for massive cuts that only make growth in other areas harder to achieve.

Then perhaps that's part of the system that needs changing. By legislation, if nothing else. Perhaps really painfully big fines for companies that cut payroll but not dividends (and executive bonuses).