Stats for nerds
3recommend
14mentions
7people
2021–2026years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- AEI wants more immigrants for the torment nexus. It is important to deprive them of the economic fuel they are seeking. With that said, I agree with their assertion AI will not solve labor shortages in the industries that will face them forward looking over the next two decades (healthcare, construction, logistics, etc). There will simply not be enough people for the work to be done in the physical world in the US, and wages will be bid up accordingly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/american-enterpris...
As labor shortages worsen due to structural demographics, labor power, compensation, and rights for workers potentially improves. "Demographics are destiny" as the saying goes. The book "The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival" (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6) is an excellent resource on this topic and modeling.
https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...
(TLDR "Starve the Beast")
- Anecdotally, companies are attempting to cram labor costs down by putting off hiring, putting reqs out there with much lower wages than recent historical (<5 years), and outsourcing to India and LATAM at scale while also attempting to assert control by requiring hybrid or full time office attendance. This is in direct conflict with the current admin's anti immigration stance (which is arguably good for domestic workers) and forward looking demographics [1] [2] (also good for workers). More on this macro trend can be found in the book "The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival" [3].
> The "shortage" is a fig leaf to cover up the desperate greed American businesses are feeling as their margins shrink and their supply chains become more fragile.
Truth. There is no shortage, just sadness with regards to market clearing price.
[1] US Faces a Deficit of 6 Million Workers in Less Than a Decade - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-18/us-faces-... | https://archive.today/Lyr5t - September 18, 2024
[2] Aging Boomers Explain Shrinking Labor Force, NY Fed Study Says - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/aging-boo... | https://archive.today/nZVda - March 30, 2023 ("Population aging is likely to continue to exert strong downward pressure on participation going forward, as more of the baby boomer generation continue to enter retirement,” the researchers wrote.")
[3] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6
- Recommended reading on this topic (demographic debt trap):
The Great Demographic Reversal Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6 | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6
Demography versus Debt - https://www.bis.org/events/conf160624/goodhart_presentation....
- Internationally aging populations are a systemic source of inflation in the cost of producing goods.
I recommend Manoj Pradhan & Charles Goodhart’s, “The Great Demographic Reversal” (2019) for more on the topic.
Covid occurring since then has exacerbated the international debt issues, as well as plucked more of the valuable remaining years away from our labor force’s working years. See the number of early retirements that occurred during the pandemic.
That we’re also seeing a hot war, a trade war, and the ripples of a goosed economic system during covid at the same time? Can’t make it up.
Edit: I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the fed to resolve this, they’d have to crush assets to oblivion to keep pricing of labor the same as it dries up due to retirements.
AI on the other hand has a lot of potential to bail us out here
- 2022 was a great year for my reading (in order of my favorites):
The Great Demographic Reversal by Charles Goodhart - this book changed my life, but now that inflation and the retirements are in full swing it might be harder to make early moves on the knowledge. The graphs are also beginning to become outdated since the book was written in the end of 2019/early 2020? Either way, it inspired my decision to move closer to family.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan - this book is well worth the read. Peter is a very educated and factual guy, and it's hard to disagree with the normalized vectors of change he is describing. The magnitude of these vectors however are up for much debate. Lots to think on, agree with, and disagree with.
American Icon by Bryce G. Hoffman - a book on Ford's handling of the 2008 crisis. It's got some flowery parts that idolize these men too much IMO but a great book on leadership and problem solving.
Lights Out - a book on how GE failed. If hypothetically American Icon was paid for to make Ford look good, Lights Out would have been paid for by disgruntled investors to burn that company's reputation to the ground. By some Wall Street Journal employees, this book is bonkers and a really frigid lesson about how incentives play out and a sober view of work in the real world.
- I recommend everyone who reads this comment to pick up a copy of The Great Demographic Reversal by Charles Goodhart & Manoj Pradhan, a book on the cost-rising effects of aging populations among advanced economies.
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