Raise the Hammer

RTH published three useful, contemplative articles today. Personally, and perhaps unusually, I have no 2 cents that can add to the sentiments expressed. I'll be contemplating and rereading these stories while struggling with similar issues in my own writings. Thanks to our authors.

It is instructive to compare these (along with Allen's previous piece on electricity) with today's Spectator. Which do commenters here think provides a citizen reader with the best guidance for next week, next month, next year and next decade?

http://www.thespec.com/

Hmm, i wish i knew how to freeze today's Spec Headlines. Maybe someone knows how/ can post a proper link. No matter, probably not much different tomorrow or next year anyway! Which is why i gave up on MSM.

I'm not so sure that Western civilization is in nearly as much trouble as you make it out to be, at least not due to resource depletion or pollution. The resilience you advocate is in fact a key feature of Western societies and it is one of the elements, along with work ethic, representative government, low levels of corruption, and other characteristics, that has served to make Western societies the ones that still enjoy the highest standards of living in the world.

If in years ahead we have to make do with less it will have less to do with oil scarcity and more to do with our ability - or inability - to compete with China and India. Our future prosperity and ability to provide for ourselves and our children has far more to do with higher education and innovation than it does with learning how to grow our own food or develop other, more practical skills.

Adrian: here's something that supports your point above, from BBC 4.

As a 23rd year old post-grad student, I have shocked by the increase in unemployment among individuals my age and older. It is a sad and scary truth but the major shift in the economy and the reduced number of retirees has caused many young students coming out of college or university to have difficulty finding work. Although we are told that college and universities degree will become a great advantage to us, successfully acquiring a degree has not helped us to find jobs or careers. As a result of not being able to find long-term jobs, many students are forced to go back to school and add to their qualifications, but still there is no guarantee of finding a job once they are done. Spending more time and money on schooling has caused young people to get more into dept which can cause frustration, anger and even resentment. Parents are remaining longer in their careers while their kids are living longer in their homes.

Is there any hope for our generations future in the job market?

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/...

I'm not so sure that Western civilization is in nearly as much trouble as you make it out to be, at least not due to resource depletion or pollution. The resilience you advocate is in fact a key feature of Western societies and it is one of the elements, along with work ethic, representative government, low levels of corruption, and other characteristics, that has served to make Western societies the ones that still enjoy the highest standards of living in the world.

As an anthropologist and a historian, I'd disagree. The resilience is certainly a key feature of many Western societies, but the same could just as easily be said of Africa, Asia or the Americas. Our living standards, though, are pretty clearly linked in large part to the few hundred years of global conquest undertaken by Western governments. And in that sense, you could also say the same of many African, Asian or American civilizations - most of which now lie in ruin.

Civilizations tend to follow relatively similar patterns of explosive growth and collapse, from the ancient cities of the Middle East to Rome, and then a few hundred years later, the major civilizations of the Americas such as the Maya or Anasazi, most of which saw major transformations around 900-1100 AD. In most of these cases, we don't even totally understand today what happened, or which of many worsening factors (population, water, land, social stratification, militarism etc) did it - only that in most cases, a century later, the most powerful cities were virtually abandoned. New centres emerged in some areas (the Mayans turned toward more compact, market-based cities, and never again had a God-King), in others, people returned to the "old ways" of hunting and gathering, with the help of some of the technologies brought by fleeing immigrants (ie: corn).

In almost every one of these cases, these great civilizations reached their peak in terms of things like territory, population and economics shortly before they faded back into the deserts and jungles. Does this sound familiar at all? I'm not saying we're doomed - only mortal. And that if we don't learn from the past, we're going to repeat it.

>> the longer their elder peers take to retire, the longer it takes to free up those jobs.

Anyone can find a job, as long the government eliminates price controls on labour. For example, if there was no minimum wage in Ontario, young people could choose to be unemployed and make zero dollars, or they could choose sell their labour to employers at a market rate. Like everything else we buy, ALL labour has some economic value and will be bought by employers, just so long as doing so makes a business more money than it costs.

The minimum wage law distorts the labour market because it attaches high wages to workers with low skills. Without the ability to make a profit of young people's labour, the only option businesses have is to not hire them at all. The result is higher unemployment amongst the low skilled, reduced output in the economy, reduced standard of living for society, reduced tax revenue and more kids hanging around.

All of these great things are due to the government thinking it can outsmart the laws of supply and demand by passing a law. Perhaps in addition to setting a minimum wage, they should also set a minimum unemployment rate and force businesses to hire people. If they are concerned about helping young people, why haven't they done that?

Alessandra - Thanks for your comment. It's exactly that feeling of frustration and hopelessness that I think needs to be the subject of serious public policy discussion.

And even if you had the option of selling your labour to the lowest bidder, the types of jobs that would be created, and the remuneration you would get would foster as much anger and resentment as being unemployed in the first place.

To my mind, the crisis of youth unemployment is on par with the massive disenfranchisement of black men in the U.S. It's a major social problem that nobody is really talking about.

And like I said, the solutions aren't clear cut. Massive job creation/spending programs are unsustainable and mandatory retirement would either be politically untenable, or plunge older workers into poverty at the other end of their lives.

I'm not sure what the answers are, but it's a policy debate that needs to happen before somebody comes along with a 'clear solution' that involves scapegoating a particular group and blaming them for the malaise. Many young people will be too smart to fall for that particular brand of idiocy, but if enough are swayed, it could be the recipe for serious social conflict.

Interesting comments/voting. Adrian's sunny comment got upvoted, as did Alessandra's darker one. Browsing around Adrian's website gives an idea of why a youthful can-do optimism that ignores problems is entirely understandable, even healthy, just as it undermines political will necessary to overcome the problems Undustrial describes. Despair, pessimism, anger provide the juice needed for political action. Criticism, even if insulting or negative, helps to provide clarity as to what the problem actually is. Even our board Libertarian has a useful perspective. How useful has yet to be seen but the bottom of this meltdown is nowhere near. Soros talks about imbalances that must be rectified. But as long as folks continue business/entertainments as usual, MSM ignores reality, manipulates the truth and their readers keep lapping it up, the debate is stilted and Jason's great extreemism worry remains valid. In this debate, i believe downvoting is for the closed minded.

And this is exactly what we need, Bob. To discuss this stuff. The problem is that the "status-quo" option is extreme and militant. As resources decline, this will only get worse.

I don't like the term "Extremist" because it's a relative view. Everything is extreme compared to the status quo somewhere. There are fundamentalist Quakers, Buddhist monastics with very "extreme" views, but in real terms they are far more peaceful and moderate than those of most centrist liberals.

What we need to do is separate radical and simply extremist perspectives. Radicals, such as those of myself, or A Smith, form coherent sets of solutions based on deeply questioning our basic premises. Others, especially militant and authoritarian ideologies like Fascism simply promise to solve everyone's problems through absolute power over all of us. The next step, though, is far more difficult - comparing these extreme (and often rather sketchy) viewpoints to more traditional status-quo viewpoints of Liberals and Conservatives.

Though I thoroughly disagree with A Smith's perspectives, I deeply appreciate them. The libertarian right has proposed a set of policies based on logic rather than power. And because of people like the Mises institute or Taxpayers Federation, I've learned far more about classical economics than I ever had from the conflicting and self-serving drivel put out by the Business community. Understanding the world means understanding many perspectives, how they overlap, and what, which is valuable, to take from each. From Karl Marx to Noam Chomsky, Adam Smith has a pretty good reputation with anti-capitalists, and that says something very interesting.

I'd highly reccomend the work of Kevin Carson and the Centre for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org) to more than a couple people on here, especially A Smith as they present a very up-to date economic vision of an anarchist society based on free markets, collective ownership, networking, and decentralized production.They talk a lot about intellectual property and the open source movement, and make a very convincing argument that things like patents cost far more money than they make. And they're not afraid to pull punches against the left or right.

Jason's article and Undustrial's comment inspired my riffoff, an answer of sorts to part of Jason's essential question. Enjoy

http://www.robertinnes.ca/blgExtremism.h...

Why lump in the Oathkeepers with this article? What is so extreme about them? That they pledge to uphold their oaths to protect the Constitution? What is so extreme about that? Perhaps the author is the extremist, and perhaps the author should have their ethics evaluated, as he seems to believe that those who keep their oaths are somehow extremists. On that basis, I would entrust my life and the lives of my family members with the Oathkeepers before I entrusted the same to some unethical extremist by the name of Jason Allen.

I have a question.
At a time when we (Banks & Governments) are discouraging people who are not in a position to pay back a large debt, why are we increasing University tuition frequently, & providing no incentive to middle or lower income students other than:'Take out a huge student loan'-?
I don't know if it's still the case, due to the European economic crisis, but as far as i know, Ireland is still paying tuition to any & all students who have good marks & a desire to get a post secondary education. It's called investing in the future of your Country.
I think it's criminal the way this country squanders intellect, & ability. Pretty soon, post secondary education will once again be restricted to the wealthy. If this doesn't create a nasty situation of those born to win & those born to lose, I don't know what will. Hide Bound Class Society -here we go again!

A second question would be: "Why do banks offer high school students, immediately on graduation (with no job or means of support) Credit Cards?"
My daughter was sent many notices from the bank & was requested by tellers on many occasions to have a credit card, which she declined, because at the time, she had no job & no means of repaying the credit. After she had been employed at a full time job at the same place for 3 years, she re-applied several times, & was denied each & every time.
How does that make any sense? We want to start a young person's lives in debt up to the ears, with both with student loans & credit cards? Maybe there will be a job out there for them in their chosen field, or maybe not. That's a major gamble, & it's not one that everyone is prepared to take.

"So if the reported rate of youth unemployment in Canada is 13 percent give or take - what's the actual rate? 23 perent? 25 percent?"

I think it hit 16.3 per cent during the summer of 2009. But while you have a point, the granular detail that would reveal true numbers has always been elusive. Even so, 13-17% youth unemployment is not as entirely novel.

Ontario’s unemployment rate among youths (15-24):

1991: 14.9%
1992: 17.3%
1993: 17.4%
1994: 15.5%
1995: 14.5%
1996: 14.9%
1997: 17.3%
1998: 14.4%
1999: 13.1%

Canada’s unemployment rate among youths (15-24):

1991: 15.8%
1992: 17.1%
1993: 17.1%
1994: 15.8%
1995: 14.7%
1996: 15.4%
1997: 16.2%
1998: 15.2%
1999: 14.0%

Source: Youth Unemployment In Canada

http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection-R/LoPBdP/CIR/824-e.htm#Table 1(txt)

Workforce participation among Ontario's youth is apparently 58%, which is around 10% lower than compared to the adult population (but considerably better than the approximately 49% participation among their counterparts in the United States). What's less talked-about is the decline in the average youth's working week. In October 2009, it was pegged at 23.4 hours.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2009/10/06/youth-unemployment.html

Youth Employment 1977-2009:

http://www.vitalsignscanada.ca/nr-2009-research-findings-e.html#sec-started

Canada’s unemployment rate among youths (15-24):

2000: 12.7%
2001: 12.9%
2002: 13.6%
2003: 13.6%
2004: 13.4%
2005: 12.4%
2006: 11.6%
2007: 11.2%
2008: 11.6%
2009: 15.3%
2010: 14.8%

Unemployment rate among youths in 2010 Ontario was apparently 17.2%.

It's a finite window, but for sake of comparison, here are Hamilton’s youth unemployment figures from the Ontario Federation of Labour report "Fundamentally Unsound: Manufacturing Job Losses and Labour Market Conditions in Hamilton":

2005: 10.6%
2006: 14.6%
2007: 12.4%
2008: 12.9%

http://www.ofl.ca/uploads/misc/Oct%20%206%20Hamilton%20%20-%20Labour%20Market%20Conditions.pdf

Mouse flinch. Initial link should be prefaced with: "Unemployment Rate for Students and Non-Students, Ages 15-24, July, 1977-2009, Unadjusted for Seasonality"

http://youtu.be/4pdedSOmnSI