Guess What's Destroying the Middle Class?

[moda0306]

Let me give a simple example that I encountered today at work.  I'm currently investigating different polymers to gauge their suitability for 3D printing.  I've subjected these to various treatments, and I want to see if, and how much, some physical properties have changed as a result of the treatments.

There are 5 different measurements I need, all performed at different physical locations manned by different people. 

So I divide up the sample myself into 5 smaller bags.  I connect to our laboratory information management system (LIMS), and create "jobs" where I specify the tests I want done.  LIMS will then print out barcoded labels, which I retrieve, place on the bags, and then deliver them to the appropriate labs, making sure I scan them in.

From a completely selfish viewpoint, this is bureaucracy. 

The most efficient thing, from my standpoint, would be to completely eliminate the LIMS system: I simply take one bag of the stuff to one of the labs, verbally tell the analyst what I want done, and when he is done, he takes it to the next lab, where that test is done, etc.

Of course, if everyone took this same "micro-efficient" route, there would be chaos.

It sounds like you're describing a system that is heavily automated and could be further automated, perhaps taking care of transporting the samples itself. I don't think this counts as "bureaucracy." If would be a "bureaucracy" if instead of submitting jobs to a software tool, you sent emails to your manager, who forwarded them to his or her manager, who had to get approval from billing, who had to ask what it was for, which percolated down to you again, and when you got approval, you had to go to the shipping department, and get approval to create a shipping label, and on and on and on...

The system you describe in your example works because you are presumably efficient and make good decisions regarding which samples are worth testing and which offsite locations are appropriate to send the samples to; you don't need someone constantly checking up on you to make sure you followed the rules or made good decisions. If you were a poor employee, then probably your manager would institute a policy that all of these jobs had to be approved before being requested, and the approval would be subject to a review process, and so on and suddenly, you're in a bureaucratic hell.

In the end, bureaucracy only really exists as a verification system. Inputs that are naturally correct require no verification and can be hindered by it, when applied to excess or in a manner that slows things down. So if we are plagued by bureaucracy, that's really a sign that we are not doing our jobs correctly.

PS,

I think you're just describing the difference between "good, modest bureaucracy," and "bad, heavy-handed bureaucracy."  Having to follow certain processes to produce products or ideas in a way that works within an organization is "bureaucracy."  If you see a work-flow chart, that is "bureaucracy."  Whether it's done in a balanced way or not is up for debate. 

Producing financial statements doesn't cease to be "financial accounting" just because you have a bunch of well-designed information systems that folks use consistently to produce said statements.  It's just being done right within the context of what the business desires.

I think we're getting into semantics here, a bit.  We all know there's a difference between "effective information systems/controls and processes" and "mind-numbing, inefficient, soul-sucking bureaucracy."  If my government (or a company) is going to lean towards the latter, I truly hope it is for truly important control/security/risk priorities rather than allocating another pen to Bob in Accounting.  The point-being, the profit motive doesn't eliminate the latter in the private sector.  The government, being something larger and in need of more oversight than a private company, should probably be expected to have more of that kind of stuff.

But to tech's point that "women don't do much of the more productive work."  Well bureaucracy IS, by definition, and extremely important function to corporations and profit-seeking entities, and they have no reason to pay more for it than it is worth.  Women would probably be naturally better-wired for that kind of work than something more unruly, but there's no reason to think they're job is worth anything less than they're paid in relation to what men are made for making the widget.

If tech held consistently to his capitalist philosophy, he'd probably quickly realize that just because something doesn't directly produce some desired end-output, that doesn't mean that it is not "of value."  Especially since one company's "end output" is another company's "input, requiring bureaucratic management of some sort."


I think tech is forgetting the difference between "politically incorrect" and just simply "incorrect."

[moda0306]

I don't think you want to get into the game of examining the grim underbellies of these institutions. You won't win. I could easily counter your "corporate fraud and violence" it "government genocide and mass murder". You might have noticed that governments experience that "desperation" you're describing too, only they don't cook the books or dump garbage into the river; they starve, torture, and execute millions of people.

We in the west are largely bereft of this sort of thing ourselves but it is purely cultural. Most people in the world don't have the luxury of being free from the worry that their government may disappear them.

PS,

Well "genocide and mass-murder" are pretty well covered by "force," are they not?  You already covered their grim under-side by highlighting the very reason we even listen to what government says.  VIOLENCE!

Yes, desperation affects government actors, too.  If one believes that government actually PROTECTS property and economic security more-so than it threatens it when NOT desperate, one could argue that this is a utilitarian argument for MORE government rather than less (to prevent said desperation).  Governments tend to lash out either when their existence is threatened, or the people grow increasingly disgusted with a particular segment of the population.  The former could arguably be prevented by a stronger government (obviously, the horrifyingly convenient nature of this argument doesn't escape me).  The latter has largely been hugely exasperated by economic crises in the past that governments could have but didn't adequately mitigate (until they decided to fight the war largely facilitated by the economic crisis getting so bad in the first place) :/.

I'm just pointing out that the so-called private sector (which, let's not forget, claims public natural resources as its own and sells them "back to" the people for profit) didn't have its ugly under-belly mentioned.  It sounded like a bunch of Elon Musks inventing cool new stuff against government bureaucracies serving various nefarious masters (many of those masters are players in the private sector, as well).

To me, this is all a continuum.  There is no such thing as a "private sector" and a "public sector."  The vast majority of the people in the former support and actively advocate for the existence of the latter, and vice-versa.  In fact, nobody is really "in" the private sector.  They vote, drive, email their congressman, and call the cops when the neighbors won't turn down their music after 10:00 PM.  Nobody is really in the "public sector," as they simply are employees, not masters of the universe... they hang out with family, spend money at stores, and buy widgets like the rest of us... as well as get pulled over by dickish cops on a power trip.  Senators purchase from and invest in the "private sector."  We PP'ers interact with and "invest in" the public sector... discretionarily I may add.

Sometimes I feel like this public/private debate occurs in some weird version of the Dr. Seuss butter battle book.  These aren't really different things.  They're two inter-dependent, intertwined systems so intertwined, supportive-of-each-other, and dependent-on-each-other within their current context that it hardly gets us anywhere to look at them as separate on a fundamental philosophical/moral level than it would our digestive & endocrine system within our bodies.  Those two systems do generally different things, and generally compete for resources within our bodies in a sense, but they inter-play so much with each other and reinforce each other that its ridiculous to look at them completely separately, like the endocrine system is "forcing resources from our digestive system" like some sort of unwanted parasite.

[Libertarian666]

It's not just government that causes the rise in useless managerial/clerical work; the modern mega-corporation seemingly requires an extensive bureaucratic apparatus to function, and most of the people who make up this hierarchy are dead weight, producing no products and supporting the production of no products, but rather telling the actual producers and support personnel how to do their jobs and jerking them around.

But these jobs are hardly destroying the middle class. If anything, I'd say they're increasingly the bread and butter of the middle class, whose members have been socially conditioned to scorn blue-collar work but aren't bright enough for the high-paying industries.

Yes, that is implicit in my comment. That is, in order to gain enough purchasing power to live at the standard of living they think they deserve, most people need a two-income family, precisely because so much productivity is wasted in bureaucracy, both government and corporate.

[MachineGhost]

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

You'd be very surprised how much real work is done in the real world in absolute contravention to your extremist ideology.

[rickb]

This is very politically incorrect, but I believe feminism has a lot to do with this issue, that is, the reason that you now need two incomes is because a lot of women have entered the labor force, but aren't doing anything terribly productive.

I'm not talking about you, WiseOne, or any of the other small fraction of women who are doing useful work. I'm talking about the paper-shuffling jobs that women primarily work in, including corporate, government and academic jobs where nothing is produced but more paper. It stands to reason that if about half of the population is doing things that don't actually need to be done, average productivity is going to be much lower, and you will need two jobs to make as much in real terms as you did with one job when there were half as many people doing about the same amount of useful work.

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

Seriously?  Here's a list of the 25 most common full time occupations for women: http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/most_common ... n.htm  Of these which would you classify as not useful?  I suspect you're thinking about secretaries and administrative assistants, and possibly receptionists and information clerks.  Anything else?  Let's throw in general office clerks as well.  This is a total of a little more than 17% of full time women working in the most common 25 occupations. Let's see.  83% of full time working women are doing jobs like teaching, nursing, supervising and managing other workers, accounting, etc etc while about 17% are perhaps arguably pushing paper around.  Which one of these would you call a "small fraction"?

Perhaps you've been watching a little too much Mad Men.  The world is not like that any more and hasn't been for 50 years. 

All of those, other than nursing, are overhead. Some of them are needed due to excessive government regulation, but none of them produce anything.

Of course a lot of men do similar jobs, but a lot of men also do actual jobs that produce output. Very few women do.

OK - now you're just being a dick (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick).

You're saying:

• Elementary and middle school teachers are overhead and produce nothing
• Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides are overhead and produce nothing
• First-line supervisors of retail sales workers are overhead and produce nothing
• Customer server representatives are overhead and produce nothing
• Managers, all other are overhead and produce nothing
• Cashiers are overhead and produce nothing
• Accountants and auditors are overhead and produce nothing
• Receptionists and information clerks are overhead and produce nothing
• First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers are overhead and produce nothing
• Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks are overhead and produce nothing
• Retail salespersons are overhead and produce nothing
• Maids and housekeeping cleaners are overhead and produce nothing
• Financial managers are overhead and produce nothing
• Social workers are overhead and produce nothing
• Secondary school teachers are overhead and produce nothing
• Waiters and waitresses are overhead and produce nothing
• Personal care aides are overhead and produce nothing
• Teach assistants are overhead and produce nothing
• Preschool and kindergarten teaches are overhead and produce nothing
• Education administrators are overhead and produce nothing
• Janitors and building cleaners are overhead and produce nothing

Let's look at a list of occupations including both men and women, see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

Click the column heading to sort this by number of employees per occupation.

Which of these are NOT "overhead and produce nothing" by your standard?

Hmmm.

Going down the list from most employees to least:

• Overhead: Office and administrative support occupations
• Overhead: Sales and related occupations
• Overhead: Food preparation and serving related occupations
• Not overhead?: Transportation and material moving occupations
• Not overhead?: Production occupations
• Overhead: Retail sales workers
• Overhead: Education, training, and library occupations
• Not overhead?: Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations
• Overhead: Food and beverage serving workers
• Overhead: Business and financial operations occupations
• Overhead: Management occupations
• Overhead: Information and record clerks
• Not overhead?: Construction and extraction occupations
• Not overhead?: Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations
• Overhead?: Health diagnosing and testing practitioners (perhaps unless it's a man)
• Overhead: Retail salespersons
• Overhead: Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance operations
• Not overhead?: Material moving workers
• Overhead: Business operations specialists
• Overhead: Personal care and service occupations
• Overhead: Preschool, primary, secondary, and special education school teachers
• Overhead: Healthcare support occupations

At this point I'm tired of counting.  And we have about 25% of employees in the top 22 (by employee) job categories producing something (although "Transportation and material moving" and "Material moving workers" sound kind of overhead-ish - but, hey, these are usually done by men not women so we'll count them as productive).

Tell me again - what's your point?

Oh, right - WOMEN generally do useless jobs and MEN don't.

In your world, apparently 3/4 of the people (men and women) who work do useless jobs.

If that's what you want to claim - go for it.  But don't blame it in feminism.

IMO, the mix of jobs has shifted dramatically away from manufacturing and toward "softer" (service) oriented jobs not because of women entering the workplace, but because of companies offshoring manufacturing jobs to lower wage regions.  Women in the US are working at the same kinds of jobs men work at, and it requires two jobs to make ends meet because the blue collar jobs are being done by (mostly women!) in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

The notion that women gravitate toward non-productive jobs is utter BS.  People, men and women, gravitate toward jobs that are available to them.  Most manufacturing jobs are available only to people willing to work for $5/day.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with feminism.   

[Libertarian666]

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

You'd be very surprised how much real work is done in the real world in absolute contravention to your extremist ideology.

Ok, enlighten me. How much?

[Libertarian666]

OK - now you're just being a dick (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick).

Thank you!

[rickb]

OK - now you're just being a dick (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick).

Thank you!

Brilliant! We apparently agree on something.

Did you even read the rest of my post?

[Libertarian666]

OK - now you're just being a dick (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick).

Thank you!

Brilliant! We apparently agree on something.

Did you even read the rest of my post?

Yes.

[MachineGhost]

I like the picture!  lol

[quote=http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/las- ... ose-to-15/]Oh, sure, the headlines in Wednesday’s papers all said the council raised the wage floor to $15 an hour. That’s what the actual ordinance says, too. But $10 is a more accurate reflection of what low-wage Angelenos will actually experience.

There are two reasons for this. The first is inflation: Los Angeles’s minimum wage won’t go up to $15 tomorrow. Instead, the hike will be phased in over the next five years. Assuming inflation holds more or less steady, $15 an hour in 2020 will be worth the equivalent of about $13.75 today.

But the bigger issue is that $15 doesn’t go as far in Los Angeles as it does in most of the rest of the country. Not even close. According to data from the Council for Community and Economic Research, it costs workers about 40 percent more to live in Los Angeles than in the average American community. That means that $15 in LA is the equivalent of less than $11 in the U.S. overall.

Put the two together and LA’s new minimum wage of $15 in 2020 is worth about $9.75 to the typical American worker today. (This is a fairly rough estimate. See methodology note below for more details.)

Still, $9.75 an hour would represent a big raise for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos. The city’s current minimum wage is $9 an hour, which is the equivalent of less than $6.50 after adjusting for LA’s high cost of living. That gives Los Angeles one of the lowest cost-adjusted minimum wages in the country. A University of California, Berkeley, study last year estimated that an earlier version of the wage-hike proposal would give raises to 567,000 workers, most of them minorities. (A report commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce countered that the proposal could cost the city thousands of jobs.)[/quote]

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[Pointedstick]

Since the minimum wage has been eroded so much by inflation to the point where earning it alone barely buys you gas money, and given that people generally are not dying in a ditch, doesn't this imply that the overwhelming majority people either earn far more than the minimum wage or are on some form of welfare (e.g. social security)?

In fact, the BLS says that the mean hourly wage in the USA is $22.71 (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000). And of the top 20 categories of employment (in terms of percentage of the population engaged in those fields), only 3 have a mean hourly wage of below $10. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour

It looks to me like virtually all employed people are currently earning more than the federal minimum wage already. So... why exactly is a minimum wage necessary at all?

[MachineGhost]

It looks to me like virtually all employed people are currently earning more than the federal minimum wage already. So... why exactly is a minimum wage necessary at all?

So people flipping burgers and checking you out at Walmart can have a lower middle class lifestyle?  It's basically about the bottom of the rung, i.e. minorities who can't escape the perils of poverty and discrimination.  I'd say the minimum wage has to be set low enough so that it doesn't disqualify you from that $33K average in federal benefits.

And I believe there is still one state that requires an attendant to pump gas in your car by law.

[Mountaineer]

And I believe there is still one state that requires an attendant to pump gas in your car by law.

I think that is the wonderful enlightened state of New Jersey.

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

It sounds like you're describing a system that is heavily automated and could be further automated, perhaps taking care of transporting the samples itself. I don't think this counts as "bureaucracy." If would be a "bureaucracy" if instead of submitting jobs to a software tool, you sent emails to your manager, who forwarded them to his or her manager, who had to get approval from billing, who had to ask what it was for, which percolated down to you again, and when you got approval, you had to go to the shipping department, and get approval to create a shipping label, and on and on and on...

The system you describe in your example works because you are presumably efficient and make good decisions regarding which samples are worth testing and which offsite locations are appropriate to send the samples to; you don't need someone constantly checking up on you to make sure you followed the rules or made good decisions. If you were a poor employee, then probably your manager would institute a policy that all of these jobs had to be approved before being requested, and the approval would be subject to a review process, and so on and suddenly, you're in a bureaucratic hell.

In the end, bureaucracy only really exists as a verification system. Inputs that are naturally correct require no verification and can be hindered by it, when applied to excess or in a manner that slows things down. So if we are plagued by bureaucracy, that's really a sign that we are not doing our jobs correctly.

PS,

I think you're just describing the difference between "good, modest bureaucracy," and "bad, heavy-handed bureaucracy."  Having to follow certain processes to produce products or ideas in a way that works within an organization is "bureaucracy."  If you see a work-flow chart, that is "bureaucracy."  Whether it's done in a balanced way or not is up for debate. 

North’s three rules of bureaucracy…

1. Some bureaucrat will inevitably enforce an official rule to the point of imbecility.

2. To fix the mess which this causes, the bureaucracy will write at least two new rules.

3. Law #1 applies to each of the new rules."

Since the private sector uses bureaucracy as well, if this were true, vs just a convenient (and pretty funny) platitude, then we would expect bureaucracy to have crushed the world economy by now.

But I understand the source of these "laws" and do think there's a thread of truth there.  Trying to use bureaucracy to cure the ills of bureaucracy is a problem.

[Libertarian666]

PS,

I think you're just describing the difference between "good, modest bureaucracy," and "bad, heavy-handed bureaucracy."  Having to follow certain processes to produce products or ideas in a way that works within an organization is "bureaucracy."  If you see a work-flow chart, that is "bureaucracy."  Whether it's done in a balanced way or not is up for debate. 

North’s three rules of bureaucracy…

1. Some bureaucrat will inevitably enforce an official rule to the point of imbecility.

2. To fix the mess which this causes, the bureaucracy will write at least two new rules.

3. Law #1 applies to each of the new rules."

Since the private sector uses bureaucracy as well, if this were true, vs just a convenient (and pretty funny) platitude, then we would expect bureaucracy to have crushed the world economy by now.

But I understand the source of these "laws" and do think there's a thread of truth there.  Trying to use bureaucracy to cure the ills of bureaucracy is a problem.

The difference between public and private bureaucracy is that a private company overwhelmed by bureaucracy to the point where it becomes unproductive can and usually will go out of business. That usually doesn't happen to public entities, at least until the whole system of which they are a part collapses.

[moda0306]

North’s three rules of bureaucracy…

1. Some bureaucrat will inevitably enforce an official rule to the point of imbecility.

2. To fix the mess which this causes, the bureaucracy will write at least two new rules.

3. Law #1 applies to each of the new rules."

Since the private sector uses bureaucracy as well, if this were true, vs just a convenient (and pretty funny) platitude, then we would expect bureaucracy to have crushed the world economy by now.

But I understand the source of these "laws" and do think there's a thread of truth there.  Trying to use bureaucracy to cure the ills of bureaucracy is a problem.

The difference between public and private bureaucracy is that a private company overwhelmed by bureaucracy to the point where it becomes unproductive can and usually will go out of business. That usually doesn't happen to public entities, at least until the whole system of which they are a part collapses.

Is it really bureaucracy that crushes nations?  I figured that bureaucracy was more of a symptom of the underlying cause (eg, Rome trying to control too much of a world, and the bureaucracy involved in trying to maintain that control).

To me, bureaucracy is only one piece of the "national decline" pie, and usually more of a matter of correlation than causation.

[Libertarian666]

Since the private sector uses bureaucracy as well, if this were true, vs just a convenient (and pretty funny) platitude, then we would expect bureaucracy to have crushed the world economy by now.

But I understand the source of these "laws" and do think there's a thread of truth there.  Trying to use bureaucracy to cure the ills of bureaucracy is a problem.

The difference between public and private bureaucracy is that a private company overwhelmed by bureaucracy to the point where it becomes unproductive can and usually will go out of business. That usually doesn't happen to public entities, at least until the whole system of which they are a part collapses.

Is it really bureaucracy that crushes nations?  I figured that bureaucracy was more of a symptom of the underlying cause (eg, Rome trying to control too much of a world, and the bureaucracy involved in trying to maintain that control).

To me, bureaucracy is only one piece of the "national decline" pie, and usually more of a matter of correlation than causation.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that bureaucracy was the cause of the collapse, only that it generally continues until the collapse.

[moda0306]

tech,

Gotcha.  Obviously I tend to agree.

What do you think are the usual fundamentals of collapse, then?

[sixdollars]

NAFTA, GATT, possibly the TPP?? 

[Libertarian666]

tech,

Gotcha.  Obviously I tend to agree.

What do you think are the usual fundamentals of collapse, then?

Overspending, including but not limited to imperial overreach and welfare expenditures.

[moda0306]

tech,

Gotcha.  Obviously I tend to agree.

What do you think are the usual fundamentals of collapse, then?

Overspending, including but not limited to imperial overreach and welfare expenditures.

What do you consider "welfare expenditures?"  Specifically, does general infrastructure count as "welfare?"

It seems to me, until some of the left-wing revolutions of the past couple centuries, we didn't really have "welfare expenditures."  We just had military and perhaps general state overhead and certain infrastructure.  Obviously we could be getting into semantics here... but isn't war a far, far bigger contributor?

And with regards to non-war causes, it seems to me that just general corruption, disorganization, and public dis-trust and unrest are larger causes than "too expansive a welfare state."  Sure there are a few exceptions, but to me if we're talking main causes, "too much unemployment insurance" seems like one rarely involved.

[Libertarian666]

tech,

Gotcha.  Obviously I tend to agree.

What do you think are the usual fundamentals of collapse, then?

Overspending, including but not limited to imperial overreach and welfare expenditures.

What do you consider "welfare expenditures?"  Specifically, does general infrastructure count as "welfare?"

It seems to me, until some of the left-wing revolutions of the past couple centuries, we didn't really have "welfare expenditures."  We just had military and perhaps general state overhead and certain infrastructure.  Obviously we could be getting into semantics here... but isn't war a far, far bigger contributor?

And with regards to non-war causes, it seems to me that just general corruption, disorganization, and public dis-trust and unrest are larger causes than "too expansive a welfare state."  Sure there are a few exceptions, but to me if we're talking main causes, "too much unemployment insurance" seems like one rarely involved.

(From http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/, but I'd be happy to see another source if you have one)

Out of total spending of $6.2 trillion (!):

Pensions $1.2 trillion
Health Care $1.4 trillion
Education $0.9 trillion
Defense $0.8 trillion
Welfare $0.5 trillion

Pensions, health care, education, and welfare (duh) all count as welfare. It sure looks like that's the big issue!

[moda0306]

tech,

That's modern America (which is still standing... arguably relatively strong (though I understand you disagree))... not ancient Rome.  I'm trying to look at the "fall of nations" from a historical context.  Do you have Rome's budget right before it fell?

[moda0306]

I think part of the problem is that the "welfare state" in terms of social insurances (disability, unemployment, retirement pension, health, etc) is a relatively new invention.  I think it remains to be seen what the long-term affects of it are.  Perhaps, and unfortunately brewing already... overpopulation.

[Pointedstick]

Hardly. Birth rates have fallen sharply, even more in the high-welfare countries, many of which are experiencing native population decline. The opposite effect is seen; a highly comfortable society appears to lead to population shrinkage because people can envision doing more with their own lives besides raising children, and women have more social and economic options available to them.