Boooooo

I spend so much time trying to figure information management and information systems technology. Most people at work don’t give a shit about it because it’s not “making our product” and it’s entirely disheartening.

Then something breaks and nobody knows how to fix it or there’s conflicting document revisions in production and I silently sob/laugh. Apply that to a national scale.

Oh, yeah, I am absolutely on team “eat the rich”. two sides to the same problem, I think.

Am I...am I allowed to say I think an unhealthy portion of this country is pretty fuckin' stupid?

Granted, the reason they're pretty fuckin' stupid is they're pretty fuckin' poor. But, still...

Thank. Fucking. God. That wasn’t a McKinsey report, that would have been a great way of getting me to write 500 words of pure unadulterated hatred. The Bain study is exactly what I was looking for, need to reread that with current context. Thanks!

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee isn't structural unemployment so much fun

where's that article you posted way, way back about workforce retraining

No shit. I'm also from that area. It's weird - there's been some gentrification of Rochester and taking down the Inner Loop to me is still a net-positive, and there's been quite a few spinoff companies from Kodak (and Xerox) but...it's not enough. There's no easy way to entirely restructure a cities workforce like that.

yeah, 3rd party fabs and 3rd party warehousing is terrifying and i would be very interested in how the % of work allocated to those places away from in-house “1st party” had changed since the 80s.

l o l “hey why’s your automation engineer position open and posted for 6 months” “see this graph - see the far right side of it. fuck you”. that graph is also why i am going to move to mazama or twisp once i can afford a cabin up there.

But again, think about this from ground level. Under-employed factory workers don’t read a lot of economic analysis. They just know they can’t pay the bills, they’re in physical pain from a life of hard labor, and no one in power seems to care. Many go on disability, which is not even close to minimum wage, and massively discouraging for somebody who wants to work. For some it leads to depression and, tragically, overdoses or suicide. And it’s common enough to bend the curve in national life expectancy stats that had been rising for decades.

yeah dude. see, i work in a good factory, all things considered. trust me, it's humane and safe by all standards and exceeds those standards in ways it really doesn't have to. but there's still a premium in productivity and efficiency, task to task, widget to widget in a twelve hour shift. then you go home and do it again the next day. not my department, but i still see it. the constant flux of temp employment and people who eventually decide they've had enough. i cannot imagine what it must be like to be working in what i would consider a bottom-50 percentile factory. the labor conditions must be appalling.

For illustration, let’s apply Luke’s prices to a hypothetical self-employed person making $100,000 a year. The $1,286/month premiums add up to $15,432 annually. But you get no benefits (except a basic wellness exam) until you’ve spent another $12,500. That totals $27,932, or 27.9% of your gross income that will go to healthcare if anyone in your family gets even a minor illness. A lot of angst.

This, this right here is a major, major consideration in possible emigration to Oh, Canada. Our healthcare system is draconian and unjust to every patient, provider, and healthcare professional who isn't in the Insurance Industry or a politician. It's scary to think that a single bout of poor health is enough to bankrupt somebody or to alter their economic status for years on end.

Enjoyed the background post on the education graph posted in this article.

The evidence suggests the demand for college graduates has grown far less in the period since the mid-1990s than it did before then. This is difficult to square with contentions that automation or changes in the types of skills employers require have been more rapid in the 2000s than in earlier decades. Rather, automation has been slower in the recent period than in earlier decades as seen in the pace of productivity, capital, information equipment, and software investment—and in the speed of changes in occupational employment patterns.

yeah dude, honestly what's missing from a lot of places is skilled technical labor. at least from my (current) and relatively (recent) experiences that's where the bigger gap is. That or convincing an Engineer to take on a ton of responsibility for not a ton of money. shrug.

Think about the late 1930s… Hopefully with just economic turmoil, not kinetic war. It will be hard but without the kind of motivation, I really question whether we will do what it takes.

well that's encouraging. i don’t know how you make this better without

a. universal healthcare

b. fixing our education system

c. eating the rich

That Forbes article is amazing in the sense that it doesn’t actually say a goddamn thing.

A driver in WA state using his/her turning signal.

Hey, that’s fucking awesome that you have a clearly actionable and fixable problem. I hope that goes well for you!

Speaking from my experience and the experience of some friends, McKinsey is alive and well in the private sector.

Whaddya wanna do, ya know? Just got into my Intermediate Alpine Climbing Course so there goes 2020. Alpine climbing, endurance running, ski mountaineering...I’m excited for the now but I’m even more excited for the five years from now when maybe I’m competent at combining those passion and skills. Hmm. Kind of makes you wonder what the fucking point of it all is when you could just go play on a mountain.

Been listening to Modern Baseball again and thinking about 2013. A good year.

All of those people should be fined heavily or in jail. Fuck the Sacklers, fuck the low level salespeople and fuck Bresch (I hate paying $250 a year for my auto injectors, it’s a racket). Being too stupid or careless to think about what you’re doing while you get your quarterly bonus doesn’t absolve you of the role you played in creating a public health crisis and ruining lives.

You’re right that it doesn’t solve much, but if it makes some of these bad actors are example then I’m all for it.