Althouse: "There are no stable jobs anymore."

October 11, 2011

"There are no stable jobs anymore."

"Entrepreneurship is like creating a safety net."

29 comments:

Anonymous said...: The 99% got so much Kool-Aid poured down their throats by their boomer college professors, and they drank so lustily, that they never noticed that the Boomers were robbing them blind.

Now they're blaming the bankers.

I guess the effects of Kool-Aid wears off slowly.; 10/11/11, 9:16 AM
Peter V. Bella said...: The president's Anti-American Jobs Act will put an end to all of that.; 10/11/11, 9:17 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: This has always been the case.

Both of my parents were factory workers in the 50s, 60s and early 70s.

The factory economy dried up and died in the 70s throughout the Midwest and Northeast. Those factory workers thought they had lifetime job security, but they discovered that this was false.

My parents both lost their jobs. My mother was successful in retraining and working in another profession. My father was not.

Economic reality keeps changing. The notion that some sort of stasis can be reached so that people will be more comfortable is... well, bullshit.; 10/11/11, 9:25 AM
Roger J. said...: The end result will be that we will have some very "educated" people serving up our lattes and dishing out our fast foods--regretably they wont be able to discuss Derrida, Hegel, or Marx.; 10/11/11, 9:25 AM
Bender said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/11/11, 9:29 AM
Bender said...: No stable jobs anymore?

Except for government employees and teachers who have extorted a job for life from society regardless of merit, not to mention the pension for life they get after they decide to stop showing up for work (and this after they stopped doing the job, but kept showing up).; 10/11/11, 9:30 AM
rhhardin said...: Your job is stable as long as you're worth more than you're paid.; 10/11/11, 9:34 AM
Kensington said...: My 53-year-old Obamabot brother lost his job yesterday. He had it for less than a year after being unemployed for over a year.

I'm betting he'll be joining the #occupyChicago crowd shortly.; 10/11/11, 9:35 AM
AllenS said...: Try and fire a government worker.; 10/11/11, 9:39 AM
Henry said...: Has anyone here actually read the article? It's not about how lousy things are. It's about the upbeat option of working for yourself.

What's interesting is that it is the service economy makes this possible. Instead of making a product, you sell your time. Lawyers have always done this. Add to this designers (of all types), programmers, marketing and advertising consultants, etc.

Modern communications also make it easier for tradespeople to work for themselves. Have truck, tools, and mobile phone? Start a businesses.

I'm currently wondering if I should go this route -- from part time to full time freelance.

What is missing from the article is any mention of the real pain point -- self-employment taxes. If, like many people in the article, you work a regular job and build your own company in your spare time, self-employment taxes means your first hour of freelance is at a huge marginal rate.

If the President and Congress wanted to do something worthy of the solo entrepreneurs who are getting things done they would revisit self-employment taxes.; 10/11/11, 9:39 AM
bagoh20 said...: I probably had 50 different jobs by my mid 20's. Then I became an integral part of an entrepreneurship, and treated it like my own business. I've had that same very rewarding job now for 28 years. I now own it. I highly recommend it for every reason a person could possibly want to work.

You may not have the capital to start your own, although it takes very little, but alternatively, you can find a small start up and try to get in as a partner through investment in time, money or both.

After my first week of work at the company I now own, I ask the owner to let me work as many hours as I wanted beyond what I was paid for, and I'd do it for free. I wanted to make the business a success and prove my worth. I spent many long nights and weekends doing just that. It paid off enormously. I think every day how great it was to not find a regular safe job with a bigger company, and how much what you get depends on what you give, plus a little luck, which you can go a long way to creating through action.; 10/11/11, 9:42 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: Yes, it is possible to become a programming entrepreneur.

Did it for several years.

Couple of problems. First, you go through dry periods of months between assignments. This is tough.

Second, corporations (who are the only viable clients) are suspicious of workers who are out of the grasp of their administrators and supervisors.

There's no reason for 90% of the desk jockeys in this world to be getting in the car and commuting to work. (Here, by the way, is the ultimate solution to the "energy crisis." Convince employers to let their employes work at home.)

The work at home, entrepreneurial programmer thing is great, but hard to keep going.; 10/11/11, 9:43 AM
bagoh20 said...: How pathetic is it to find your strength in the fact that you are in the bottom 99 percent. Wouldn't 99% get whatever they want? I guess if it says so on a T-shirt, it must be true. You 99% just have to vote for what you want and presto, you will get it. Now what do we want? If you want free stuff, just wave your fingers. How many people want free stuff. Woohoo! It's a consensus.; 10/11/11, 9:50 AM
Bayoneteer said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/11/11, 9:50 AM
ndspinelli said...: Having operated my own small biz since 1984 I learned quite early on in my career that when politicians..NO MATTER THE PARTY..say "we want to help small business" it is simply a lie. Small biz doesn't want help from the govt. Like Marlene Dietrich, we "just want to be left alone."

The only way this derision for small biz will ever have a chance of changing is if it were required that any person running for public office have made a payroll in their life.; 10/11/11, 9:51 AM
Wince said...: I started a business 25 years ago, shortly after graduating college, in an area not directly related to my degree in economics (although more applicable than most would think).

Frustrating enough at times, despite the rewards (or perhaps enabled by them), I flirted with the idea of pursuing a professional career track, especially after I graduated law school 10 years ago, which I pursued as career development not career change.

Then I looked at how much time I'd have to put in paying my dues as an associate to even have a shot at reaching a point equivalent to the income, freedom and success I already had.

Fuck that!; 10/11/11, 9:54 AM
Bayoneteer said...: Globalization & WW2. After WW2 America was the only industrial power that wasn't a big pile of smoking rubble. If you wanted pretty much any high value manufactured good you got it from American factories or shops. And so it was possible for manufacturing companies to pay high wages and benefits for unskilled work and still make a good profit. The rest of the world rebuilt and caught up by 1975. That's when the slide downward began. But that isn't to say that stoopid economic policies and treaties aren't making it all worse though.How I see it.; 10/11/11, 9:58 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Convince employers to let their employes work at home."

I do it a lot myself, and some of my people do it occasionally, but a tight business will have people who wear a lot of hats, and that usually requires working with people face to face under at least one of those hats.

Still, I would love to be able to do it more, but I know people working from home are easily distracted by non-work stuff. And there is the legal requirement to pay people by the hour rather than by the job. Government regulation has stopped cold many creative ideas about how to work that my people have come up with. The company wanted it, the employee wanted it, but it was illegal. Most are simply incompatible with union ideology, which is behind most work regulation. Unions have hurt our nation and our people so much in the last 50 years, even without being common in the workplace.; 10/11/11, 10:00 AM
Wince said...: I want to know how the woman in the video takes a sheet of dog buscuits out of the oven with her bare hand.

Her dog didn't seem too thrilled by the treats, either.; 10/11/11, 10:10 AM
edutcher said...: You get the feeling from the article the Beeb has a little trouble understanding the entrepreneurial spirit.

This is what 65 years of unadulterated socialism does to a country.

PS Stable job?

Go where the horses are.; 10/11/11, 10:17 AM
traditionalguy said...: Computers are also a reason for replacing entrepreneurs with super efficient giant chains in most sales.

Only a personal touch is worth paying much more to get and then only if you are Rich to the point that money is no object for you. So the Rich are the enemy today.

We need start ups in the USA again, But Federal Regulations and minimum wage and benefits are a bridge too far for start ups.

China loves businesses starting up there but the USA hates businesses starting up here...just because the existing businesses are paying off both Parties in Congress.

Herman Cain is looking better and better.; 10/11/11, 10:29 AM
edutcher said...: traditionalguy said...

Computers are also a reason for replacing entrepreneurs with super efficient giant chains in most sales.

Only a personal touch is worth paying much more to get and then only if you are Rich to the point that money is no object for you. So the Rich are the enemy today.

We need start ups in the USA again, But Federal Regulations and minimum wage and benefits are a bridge too far for start ups.

New tech seems to be the backbone of startups, but they can be expensive to launch.; 10/11/11, 10:32 AM
Fred4Pres said...: Follow your bliss.; 10/11/11, 10:47 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: @ Henry

I read the article.

Yes, the beauty of being self employed is that you answer to no one. (Well, unless you exclude the County, State, Federal regulations that plague your business.)

Your business model can be your own. You don't have a boss. You ARE the boss. You can set your own hours. You can choose who to do business with or not to do business with. Liberating!

The article is short on the downside of self employment.

Being self employed is by NO MEANS stable. Every single day, you need to be looking for jobs, prospecting for job, marketing, networking, advertising. Every single day you need to be considering costs, expenses, weighing the alternatives.

You are on your own in dealing with government, the IRS. You are on your own for health insurance and any other benefits.

Stable. Hardly. Rewarding.....YES!; 10/11/11, 10:50 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: What we need are more risk taking entrepreneurs who hit it big, become successful and rich so we can demonize them, march in front of their homes and demand they share their wealth with those who don't have anything.; 10/11/11, 11:10 AM
Joe said...: The employment rate is above 90% and there are no stable jobs anymore?

(I'm also trying to figure out what 99% the OccupyXer are part of. Freeloading dipshits maybe?); 10/11/11, 11:14 AM
kjbe said...: I owned a service-industry business for 15 years, as an S-Corp, and always considered by clients by boss. I'd agree with the last paragraph of the article - that freedom of time-shifting is a huge benefit. I hired other professionals to take care of the taxes and legal stuff. The biggest drag was, as DBQ says, the marketing and networking. That took a toll.

I'd think that part of what makes this a good time for start-ups is the trimming everyone's been doing for a while, now. There's got to be gaps in the services industries, both in-house with unattended potential clients. I'm kind of surprised that wasn't mentioned.; 10/11/11, 11:32 AM
BarryD said...: There may not be stable jobs, but there are certainly jobs that involve stomping through a lot of horsesh-t.

Stability isn't the ONLY reason to look outside conventional ideas about employment. :-); 10/11/11, 12:13 PM
Oclarki said...: Some people like the stability and predictability of traditional jobs. It doesn't mean we aren't smart talented or hard working.; 10/11/11, 12:26 PM