A Short Job Quiz

can you put this on yahoo.com

If mortgage equity extraction was responsible for 2.3% of gdp,
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/06/25/guest-contribution-housing-bubble-fueled-consumer-spending/
and increased construction, finance, and real estate another 1.5%, was there any real growth this decade? Looks like it was all an illusion.

You, Lord, are just an illusion.

If I don't cheat, I would say that:

1.a. computers and electronics lost more jobs since 1998, because I was there and saw it -- it has been a long time since egotistical GM reps could laugh at the upcoming electronics industry;

2.a. computers and electronics still has the larger payroll, because I was there and saw it; heavier industry started dying much earlier (just look at the wasteland of Detroit);

3.a. computers and electronics have the largest pay per worker, because I was there and saw all the lower paid workers lose their jobs, even though the labor content is pitifully small. I find it hard to believe that it was worth the pain imposed.

Bonus: This is a tough one. In spite of the suffering of computer and electronics industry employees in the last 10 years, I lean toward motor vehicles and parts as the source of widespread pain, because it reaches into so many communities. Am I a victim of media hype? I think so. The deep suffering of the automotive industry is mostly over -- in spite of the blame that certain quarters want to lay at the feet of the unions, the unions have nearly ceased to exist, along with most of the U.S. labor intensive automotive jobs, and the computer and electronics industries were never unionized. I think it is more likely that job loss in the computer and electronics industries has severely damaged the U.S. economy. A huge proportion of the bright, well educated people I knew who made a fine living there are now unemployed, under-employed, or fearful.

I see that I was right about the 3 questions. It is not something to celebrate. I am at the leading edge of a generation of people who rode the electronics and computer wave. Sadly, we've left nothing behind for the next generation.

The answer is A all the way down. I don't like the bonus question. Did the job losses damage the economy or did the economy cause job losses? Did the job losses damage the economy or did the job losses allow the economy to move on to bigger and better things? For example, I'm about certain that most of the automotive job losses were lost to robots, not competition. Think about how many more cars we built in 2004 than in 1976. Think about how many fewer people built them in 2004 than in 1976. Also, how many automotive jobs did we even lose to competition? The competition came to America to build cars. I know I have delivered stuff to Toyota. So in a round about way, I have worked for Toyota.

All 3 questions and the bonus question have to be tempered by consideration of extenuating legacy costs that are still in effect within the auto industry. First the auto industry has lost foundry and manufacturing positions that have been replaced almost exclusively by imported assemble parts that go inside all of the American made cars. Second health care and pension obligation remain a damaging drain on any returns that could have been reinvested for greater transformation of the industry. Those continuing costs for health care and pension will have the sad effect of taking any future returns to only continue the status quo for employees. The assembly workers in the South don’t have this drain but they start at a flat level that adds little extra except to the local economy and they return profits to foreign investors.

As far as the computer industry goes, there are only limited remaining legacy costs to employees and those highly skilled American workers that lost employment were defused to hundreds of other location where found they new work that added to the local economy.

We are a retail and services economy and they added to it with skills they gained in there first employment. Leaving that good pay check has to be a burn but its going on to the next thing and making it work as best you can without losing a expected life pension and being stuck in depressed States that now carries the failing tax load that makes the difference.