There is strong evidence that the global economy was deliberately frozen, not by the Covid-19 event but in order to protect the monetary system. This is explained most cogently by the investor and trader Jim Sinclair, here. That is a topic I will address in a separate post. Assuming most people are allowed to go back to work without the economy crashing, what will the workforce look like?
Just reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs after several people referenced it here. Remarkably the French version of Slate magazine wrote in 2013, “la bullshitisation de l’économie n’en est qu’à ses débuts", or the bullshitization of the economy is still in its infancy. How prescient. Is the Covid event a major step on the way?
This is not new. In economics class 40 years ago we were told that the challenge of the future would be to build enough leisure centers to occupy a bored population. It was already clear that supply was outstripping demand. As it turned out, that prospect must have terrified the billionaires because they decided, clearly, to keep people working ever longer hours. No wonder such discussions are held by Trilaterals and Bilderbergers in secret. Can you imagine the row if that was a public decision by politicians? As it should be.
Through the 1990s and early 200s, Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman, played his part by lying: that he foresaw rapid productivity growth and rising living standards. Neither was happening. Instead western governments and the European Union were massaging the inflation and unemployment statistics. People were working longer for less, except for the continental European experiment with a 35-hour workweek.
Here we are with lockdown and millions of businesses frozen. Is this the ultimate moment of vindication of Graeber's research? How many of those frozen jobs were actually producing anything much? As The Canary said:
The Canary suggests that insurance claims teams could be eliminated by universal healthcare. The financial services sector is also found to be wanting in terms of usefulness. Unfortunately for The Canary's analysis it is exactly the private healthcare and financial services sector that are set to make off with trillions in taxpayer money from the bailout that's been going on under the cover of Covid-19.
"The second question is: what goods and services are really necessary for human well being?" That's the biggie. With 36 million Americans laid off in two months, affecting 40% of low-income households, many people may not get their jobs back. Tens of thousands of companies will go bust. The promises of finance ministers to pay everything from government deficit spending are unsustainable, even downright untrue.
If we rid ourselves of the bullshitized economy, how many people would go back to work? The answer is more complex. Government bailouts will no doubt favor the bullshitters. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are in charge of the largesse in the U.S. That means it goes to sectors they naturally consider important, which are exactly the sectors that David Graeber identifies as B.S.: much of banking and finance along with all the support roles to convince us otherwise, such as compliance, sales staff, telemarketing, and advertising and much of the financial news media. The economists Steve Keen and John Kay also identified much as banking as parasitical after the 2008 financial collapse, showing they are not important to corporate lending, with the corporate sector largely bond-financed.
Governments are already rolling out teams of contact tracers. You can be sure they will be supported by an army of box tickers. Local government is already full to the brim of box tickers, as are the police and the state health services, including Britain's National Health Service.
Even those staff whose job is 'customer-facing' or 'frontline' in the jargon are burdened with box-ticking duties themselves.
Then there are the think tanks like the Behavioural Insights Team so effectively outed by UK Column. Ranks of dreamers, life-psyches and Lysenko pseudo-scientists who will need the support of web-designers, pollsters and data-crunchers and then the sales side of propagandists, online trolls and influencers, TED Talkers, bought journalists and paid content creators.
Universities will get research grants to find opportunities for pharmaceutical companies, as well as government research grants to come up with new ideas for policing, education and digital health mirage machines which promise to give you a health check from your phone.
Sadly I suspect we are on the cusp of a workplace revolution in which a shrinking cadre of productive workers will share the subway or commuter train with battalions of government persuaders and corporate make-workers. What the billionaire philanthropists and their private foundations have in store for the rest of us we can only imagine.
Just reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs after several people referenced it here. Remarkably the French version of Slate magazine wrote in 2013, “la bullshitisation de l’économie n’en est qu’à ses débuts", or the bullshitization of the economy is still in its infancy. How prescient. Is the Covid event a major step on the way?
"If 37 percent of jobs are bullshit, and 37 percent of the remaining 63 percent are in support of bullshit, then slightly over 50 percent of all labor falls into the bullshit sector in the broadest sense of the term. If you combine this with the bullshitization of useful occupations (at least 50 percent in office work; presumably less in other sorts), and the various professions that basically exist only because everyone is working too hard (dog washers, all-night pizza deliverymen, to name a few), we could probably get the real workweek down to fifteen hours—or even twelve—without anyone noticing much." -- David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs.
This is not new. In economics class 40 years ago we were told that the challenge of the future would be to build enough leisure centers to occupy a bored population. It was already clear that supply was outstripping demand. As it turned out, that prospect must have terrified the billionaires because they decided, clearly, to keep people working ever longer hours. No wonder such discussions are held by Trilaterals and Bilderbergers in secret. Can you imagine the row if that was a public decision by politicians? As it should be.
Through the 1990s and early 200s, Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman, played his part by lying: that he foresaw rapid productivity growth and rising living standards. Neither was happening. Instead western governments and the European Union were massaging the inflation and unemployment statistics. People were working longer for less, except for the continental European experiment with a 35-hour workweek.
Here we are with lockdown and millions of businesses frozen. Is this the ultimate moment of vindication of Graeber's research? How many of those frozen jobs were actually producing anything much? As The Canary said:
"Government intervention to deal with the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has exposed the right-wing lie that progressive reforms are ‘unaffordable’... The first big question is: what jobs does society really need? Could it be that some are not only unnecessary but also harmful? And if so, could we just get rid of them?"
The Canary suggests that insurance claims teams could be eliminated by universal healthcare. The financial services sector is also found to be wanting in terms of usefulness. Unfortunately for The Canary's analysis it is exactly the private healthcare and financial services sector that are set to make off with trillions in taxpayer money from the bailout that's been going on under the cover of Covid-19.
"The second question is: what goods and services are really necessary for human well being?" That's the biggie. With 36 million Americans laid off in two months, affecting 40% of low-income households, many people may not get their jobs back. Tens of thousands of companies will go bust. The promises of finance ministers to pay everything from government deficit spending are unsustainable, even downright untrue.
If we rid ourselves of the bullshitized economy, how many people would go back to work? The answer is more complex. Government bailouts will no doubt favor the bullshitters. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are in charge of the largesse in the U.S. That means it goes to sectors they naturally consider important, which are exactly the sectors that David Graeber identifies as B.S.: much of banking and finance along with all the support roles to convince us otherwise, such as compliance, sales staff, telemarketing, and advertising and much of the financial news media. The economists Steve Keen and John Kay also identified much as banking as parasitical after the 2008 financial collapse, showing they are not important to corporate lending, with the corporate sector largely bond-financed.
Governments are already rolling out teams of contact tracers. You can be sure they will be supported by an army of box tickers. Local government is already full to the brim of box tickers, as are the police and the state health services, including Britain's National Health Service.
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| https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/the-composition-of-the-nhs-workforce-september-2018 |
Even those staff whose job is 'customer-facing' or 'frontline' in the jargon are burdened with box-ticking duties themselves.
Then there are the think tanks like the Behavioural Insights Team so effectively outed by UK Column. Ranks of dreamers, life-psyches and Lysenko pseudo-scientists who will need the support of web-designers, pollsters and data-crunchers and then the sales side of propagandists, online trolls and influencers, TED Talkers, bought journalists and paid content creators.
Universities will get research grants to find opportunities for pharmaceutical companies, as well as government research grants to come up with new ideas for policing, education and digital health mirage machines which promise to give you a health check from your phone.
Sadly I suspect we are on the cusp of a workplace revolution in which a shrinking cadre of productive workers will share the subway or commuter train with battalions of government persuaders and corporate make-workers. What the billionaire philanthropists and their private foundations have in store for the rest of us we can only imagine.
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