<story><title>What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/07/21/what-if-there-just-arent-enough-jobs-to-go-around/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>No, the problem is misallocation of labor.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work.&lt;p&gt;It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not done because the metrics of Wall St deem them &amp;quot;not profitable&amp;quot; - which means traders can&amp;#x27;t make quick gains out of them.&lt;p&gt;Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy.</text></item><item><author>criley2</author><text>Is the &amp;quot;infinite work hypothesis&amp;quot; finally ending??&lt;p&gt;The answer to &amp;quot;what happens to workers being replaced&amp;quot; has always been &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;ll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs&amp;quot;, what I&amp;#x27;ve seen called the &amp;quot;infinite work hypothesis&amp;quot; where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>welanes</author><text>&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work.&lt;p&gt;But not the money to pay for these jobs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed.&lt;p&gt;But who pays for this training?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy.&lt;p&gt;Most companies are not publicly traded. These companies are not hiring the unemployed because they either don&amp;#x27;t need them or can&amp;#x27;t afford to (negative return on investment). The bottom-line matters to Mom &amp;amp; Pop stores as much as it does to big Corps.</text></comment>
<story><title>What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?</title><url>http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/07/21/what-if-there-just-arent-enough-jobs-to-go-around/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>No, the problem is misallocation of labor.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a huge to-do list of jobs that need to be done at almost every level, from design and build of significant infrastructure in most countries around the world, to community-level support work.&lt;p&gt;It would be perfectly possible to retrain the long term unemployed for all but the most difficult design and management elements.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not done because the metrics of Wall St deem them &amp;quot;not profitable&amp;quot; - which means traders can&amp;#x27;t make quick gains out of them.&lt;p&gt;Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy.</text></item><item><author>criley2</author><text>Is the &amp;quot;infinite work hypothesis&amp;quot; finally ending??&lt;p&gt;The answer to &amp;quot;what happens to workers being replaced&amp;quot; has always been &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;ll find jobs elsewhere, every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs&amp;quot;, what I&amp;#x27;ve seen called the &amp;quot;infinite work hypothesis&amp;quot; where there will always be new work and the problem is agility, job training, not demand.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>forgotpwtomain</author><text>&amp;gt; Allocating labor on the basis of whether or not traders and stock owners can profit in the short to medium term turns out to be an unintelligent way to strategise an economy.&lt;p&gt;And yet, this turns out to be the most succesful strategy civilization has used so far.</text></comment>