Category Archives: Business

‘Labor Shortages’: Business Leaders Are Bitching, Workers Are Celebrating

Business, Economy, Labor, Outsourcing

Workers are happier than they’ve been for a long time.

“For the first time since data began to be collected in 2000, there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers.” By the Economist’s telling, “Fully 5.8m more Americans are in work than in December of 2015.”

Workers may be happy, but not businesses.

Big and small, business is nattering about labor shortages.  “Ninety percent of small businesses who are hiring or trying to hire workers report that there are few or no qualified applicants, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.”

Excerpted from, “Worker shortages could heal America’s economy: Why a scarcity of labor is probably something to celebrate”:

The shortage is reaching a “critical point”, read one recent CNBC headline. A lack of applicants for blue-collar jobs such as trucking and construction has received particular scrutiny, as have states like Iowa where the unemployment rate is especially low (it is just 2.7% in the Hawkeye state).
But portraying widespread labour shortages as an economic problem is misguided. While they may be bad for firms, they are a boon for society—so long as inflation remains contained. In fact, a labour market in which firms must compete for workers, rather than workers competing for jobs should help resolve three of America’s biggest economic problems.

* Inadequate wage growth.

* “Faster productivity growth, which has been disappointing in America—and in other rich countries—since the financial crisis. If less profitable firms have to fold because they cannot pay enough to attract workers, their labour and capital can be put to better use.”

* Wage gains accrued “to the poorest workers. Full-time employees at the 10th percentile of the income distribution are earning almost 4% more than a year ago.”

Thanks To Private Enterprise Ingenuity, Not Government Frugality, The US Is Not Venezuela

America, Business, Debt, Economy, Government

Venezuela’s inflation is 46,000 percent a year, “which in turn is largely caused by the printing of money to finance the government’s deficit of 30 percent of GDP.” (“Venezuelan cash is almost worthless, but also scarce,” Economist, July 12th, 2018.)

“In FY 2017, the federal deficit was 3.4 percent of GDP. This year, FY 2018, the federal government in its latest budget has estimated that the deficit will be 4.2 percent of GDP.” (https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/federal_deficit_percent_gdp.)

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the United States was worth about 19 trillion US dollars.

Thanks to private enterprise ingenuity, not government frugality (see US Debt Clock), the US is not Venezuela.

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UPDATED (8/13/018): Who Knew? Microsoft Is On The Side Of The Little Angels

Business, IMMIGRATION, Technology, The State

It was only a matter of time before Microsoft began to signal its virtue around the politically correct issue du jour.

The company came out to the world about its dismay at “the forcible separation of children from their families at the border,” and expressed support for “family unification,” which is, after all, its H-1B bread-and-butter.

When your CEOs are worth hundreds of millions, their “humble” dwellings have zip codes that place them far from the madding crowds.

As a company, Microsoft is dismayed by the forcible separation of children from their families at the border. Family unification has been a fundamental tenant [sic] of American policy and law since the end of World War II. As a company, Microsoft has worked for over 20 years to combine technology with the rule of law to ensure that children who are refugees and immigrants can remain with their parents. We need to continue to build on this noble tradition rather than change course now. We urge the administration to change its policy and Congress to pass legislation ensuring children are no longer separated from their families.

HERE.


UPDATE (8/13/018): On the side of the state:

UPDATED (7/9/018): Non-‘Shithole’ Countries Seem To Recover Quickly From Disasters, Natural Or Man-Made

Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Technology

In 2008, Iceland collapsed under the weight of its banking industry’s federal-reserve like excesses.

In 2018, Iceland’s is a red hot economy. The highly able population has shifted from finance to technology and tourism. No bailout—allowing the banks to collapse and a natural recovery take place—has a lot to do with it.

“… rather than stepping in with taxpayers’ money like the British and Americans did, the Icelandic government let its banks go bust.”

Likewise did Chile cope reasonably well with what was “one of the most powerful earthquakes in history.” We hear nothing of Chile’s struggles to recover.

Not so Haiti, the Africa of the Western Hemisphere.

Haiti is forever convulsed by political and natural disasters. It remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where four out of five people live in poverty and more than half in abject poverty (NYT).

It’s nearly two decades since a pair of earthquakes struck El Salvador in 2001. The US government granted Salvadorians a generous grant of privilege in the late 1990s, in the form of a temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 200,000.

Ditto the “Haitians who were stranded after an earthquake in 2010.”

To the din of protest, “the United States’ Department of Homeland Security had only recently revoked the so-called temporary protection (it lasted nearly 2 decades).

“Shithole countries,” a Trump coinage, don’t seem to recover very well from disasters, natural or man-made, do they?

SEE RELATED READING:

“Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed (Part 1)”
“Why Trump Pooh-Poohed ‘S-ithole’ Countries (Part 2)”

UPDATE (7/9/018):

Meanwhile in Haiti ...

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