things are changing
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
I had an email exchange with someone in my family about the changes we're witnessing in Canada and Japan. Thought I'd share a bit of that.
> (my correspondent)
> In Canada, the experts
> say the economy for developed nations will never be as robust as it was
> in our parent’s generation and periods of unemployment, or
> underemployment, are humps and hurdles to be negotiated in an
> unpredictable career path and realistically need to be planned for, just
> like the “sabbaticals” in the education system.
That's already been the case for twenty years. Real growth ended even earlier than that. Easy access to energy reserves was behind all the growth, and that's over for good.
> Jobs are coming back
> but they aren’t necessarily good jobs; contracts with no/few benefits,
No one in my generation should be thinking about a pension of any kind. The boomers will bankrupt the state pension system and the corporations long ago gutted their and now they've largely gutted the union pensions as well.
The luxuries of benefits from employers and the state have left us with an intolerable and unsustainable amount of debt, and the math says it will all have to stop.
> or part-time work, and even new union jobs in the auto sector (yes, both
> Honda and GM are hiring!) have no company-sponsored pensions attached
> and no-strike clauses for new hires.
IT workers in Canada long ago gave up any hint of job security, and in more recent years have even given up the right to be paid for overtime. With the advent of outsourcing, it's effectively ended as a viable career path. The auto industry has been sustained on little more than dreams for a long time, and it's high time that that bubble burst as well. The Indians and Chinese are making cars now, which will complete the drive to low-cost, low-price and competent vehicle manufacture in the developing countries. Just as the IT jobs moved to the same countries.
> The average, female recent grad
> with a BA works only part-time in retail or the service industry—so not
> too many parents happy about footing the bill for that! Also the
A University education was another luxury that was laughably extended to all kinds of people who couldn't afford it. My brother and I being excellent examples. I would suggest that 90% of all University student in my day had absolutely no business taking a University degree when they were only going to take an office job and cease all pretense of learning and using the education they'd received as soon as they settled into the torpor of job that fuels a debt (mortgage) based lifestyle.
> average age for kids “finally moving out” of their parents’ home is now
> 27 years in Canada. It is all very sobering to think my Mom and Dad
> were home-owners at the ages of 19 and 22 respectively!
That really is amazing. I think it was around 20 when I graduated from high school.
Here in Japan the age-old route of graduating from a given University and entering into one of the corporations associated with your school is at last coming undone. It had its first shock fifteen years ago when a huge number of kids were simply not hired. But now it's the case that layoffs have begun, previously unknown. There were 580,000 layoffs in 2008 and 800,000 layoffs in 2009. The numbers are accelorating, obviously. Meanwhile, commercial real estate is at the lowest cost since they started measuring .. in 1974.
Debt-laden "developed nation" excess is a thing of the past. It's time to adopt a system that recognizes that we've in an era of declining resources and surplus population.