327 thoughts on “Welcome To The Part Time Economy”

1. Well, it’s not really rocket science. Capitalism may be the best form of an economic system that we have, but unfettered free-market capitalism invokes excessive greed and a lack of responsbility for the well-being of society. It is merely in the interest of big business and the upper class to gradually institutionalize a part-time economy.
   I stopped here. Read on a bit further after that, mostly because I enjoy pain.
   The part time economy is a direct effect of the Obamacare regulations. Employers who have full time employees over, I think, 36 hours (somebody correct me if I’m wrong here) have to deal with the full labyrinth of evil regs and laws from this monstrosity. The simple solution, not just from a financial but also regulatory perspective, is to reduce full time headcount and go part time as much as possible.
   This “economy” did not exist prior to Obamacare passing, and if Obamacare is repealed in part or whole, will no longer exist in the future.
   However, the reality is that too many American business owners, decision makers, and those part of the upper class are simply becoming increasingly greedy.
   and
   If you are reading this and you are a conservative, then you can go fuck yourself as well because I am definitely not on your side. That’s right. You are just as big as a cocksucker as your whiny hipster counterparts. The politics of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter are nowhere near what you espouse to be socialism. Have you ever actually read a book on Marxism? Better yet, have you ever read a book in your life?
   Actually, leftist, many of us have read Karl Marx, Engels, Galbraith and Keynes in depth. What exists today is not precisely socialism nor precisely fascism, but a mixture of both. A socialist “safety net” system with a economic upper echelon where profit is privatized and risk is socialized by public monies for the politically connected (a variant of fascism, which arose ironically from the earlier anarcho-socialist movements of Europe after WW1). This of course comes at the price of extreme regulation where the economy basically is controlled by government bureaucrats while maintaining the illusion of private property (which is fascist).
   Anyone with a half a brain can realize that a healthcare system is practical and better for the long-term economy.
   We had a health care system, until the early 1960’s, when any family could afford to send a person to the hospital without having to break the bank. Then it became a pseudo-socialist institution, then eventually one that takes away our very right to choose how we wish to conduct our lives (I may wish to choose not to purchase health insurance).
   Your snarky leftist sneering is intolerable, btw. You tell us we’re in the middle of class warfare (true) but then tell us to forget politics. From whence, padewah, does class warfare eminate? Hint, it comes from one Mr. Karl Marx (see, told you I read him). You want me to forget that?
   Your piece is populist and decidedly leftist. Your only complaint with them (I note they were not instructed to go fuck themselves, btw) was that they do NOT do all the things that you feel government should be doing, which as I read it, is a laundry list from every Democratic Convention since, like, forever.
   Not fond of pieces where the reader is told to go fuck himself if he doesn’t buy into the author’s politics. This is unprofessional and frankly, unworthy of this site. If you’re going to be a leftist author, and you are, stop hiding behind the veneer of fence sitting and “not being a part of the system”. You clearly have read the canonical works of the left (and make fun of us if we haven’t), you go on glowingly about the takeover of the health care industry, and your “problems” you want government to solve are not the government’s to solve (yes, the government should provide me “job security”, whatever the hell that means. Not).
   Not impressed.
   Next.

   1. I think, 36 hours (somebody correct me if I’m wrong here)
      I thought it was 30 hours, but I could be wrong as well. I remember it being much lower than a typical 40 hour week that most people consider full time employment.

      1. Right, may well be. Devil is in the details. Fortunately it does not actually detract from the point. And it’s a well known things, companies are openly fessing up to it, not because they’re “greedy” but because they simply cannot afford to work under this new model by using the old ways. And boom, welcome to the part time economy.

   2. Indeed. Chrony socialism is no solution for chrony capitalism.
      As Mises would say, it’s best to have a truly free market. What I see instead are urban douchebags blaming capitalism when we have not seen real capitalism since 1913, and I see the other side talking about socialism and we have yet to see that.
      If we had real capitalism the “too big to fail” banks would have been left to rot like they deserved and their debt liquidated. If we had real socialism the people would have been bailed out instead of the banks.

      1. Exactly.
         We have capitalism much in the same way that Genghis Kahn had mercy.

         1. Can’t have capitalism when the government decides which businesses (banks) should be kept around by using the tax payers dollar to prop them up.

         2. Agreed. Given my druthers I’d burn down the FedReserve and replace it with nothing, then take us off of fiat currency for good. Let the rest of the world burn and perish for their own stupidity in pegging themselves to a fiat aka imaginary, currency.

         3. More importantly: Let the international zionist bankers burn. I long to see the day when we are actually in charge of our own currency again. Might be a pipe dream.

         4. careful what you wish for; the dollar being the world’s reserve currency is the only thing keeping our country from being hell on earth…

         5. The dollar being the world’s reserve currency just means that when the collapse happens the world gets to go down the shitter with us. Want hell on earth? Wait ’till that happens, there will no place to flee to.

         6. well,yeah, thats what Im saying. Be glad you live here for the time being, when it goes, its gonna be bad. we went total full retard in 73, everyone else followed suit, The avg time before fiat currency fell apart was 14-15 yrs, so that woulda been around 1987 (imagine that! black monday happened for a reason). All Im saying is, enjoy it now, things will get bad- hoever many yrs from now…

         7. BANNED. Hate crime charges will be reported to the authorities! Everyone please be on the lookout for offensive speech. No more lampshades!!

         8. TRUST US WE KNOW WHATS BEST

         9. While I think people would love to blame Obamacare / ACA for the current situation, in reality it isn’t that or you’d see it more worldwide. That’s the astounding ignorance in this line of thinking.
            We are in a part time economy, because we are in a global economy. That global economy has plenty of places where the ‘state’ is supporting their businesses (state owned) directly. Think China, Europe, and others. These state owned businesses have distinct advantages, but also distinct disadvantages. In good times, the American system typically performs better. In tight times, the other model does. Nope, no such thing as a perfect system.
            Another thing, we had (effectively) a Laissez-Faire market system in America. Other than fantasy books (Ayn Rand) or extremely small communities, it flat out doesn’t work. Smaller government is just cheaper to buy, and people are hurt, rivers start on fire, people lose massive amounts of money, and so on.
            The true problem with Rand Capitalism is the same problem with Marxism: humans. Rand thinks thinks that humans will always better themselves (in the long run) with self interest. That’s as much a fantasy as Marx thinking the central planners would work toward the betterment of society. The real truth is that, in both systems, the Sociopaths are the ones who make it to the top. The more ruthless (if you’re reasonably good at hiding it) you are, the more power you gather. The more power you gather, the more you can control.
            If you choose to question this, just remember that businesses and the wealthier have received multiple tax breaks for 40 years. This was promised to be the rising tide that lifted all boats. The truth of the matter is that wages were shaved slowly, depressing the buying power even more than inflation. You can do the math, it’s easy enough. I’ve done fairly well, but I have the skills (and a reasonable amount of money) so I’ve made out like a bandit after we started recovering from the 2007 recession. Corporate profits are high, as are stock prices.
            Most people, however, have not seen the writing on the wall. The wealthy (typically) don’t give a flying fig about you. Business hasn’t cared about employee loyalty since (at least) 1981. Remember the following:
            There is only one way to view your employer: the future enemy. Show zero loyalty to the corporation. The corporation doesn’t care about you. You are merely a cost on a balance sheet. They think you cost a dollar too much, or they need a temporary stock bump, they will terminate your employment. Be a mercenary. Use your current employer (after all, they’re just using you) to develop your skills. Take advantage of any free ‘betterment’ programs they might have. If they have an educational support program, milk it for as much as you can. Then, be ready to stab them in the back before they do the same to you. Sell THEM out and move on to the next job. They are nothing to you but the green they put in your pocket. Never get attached to the job. The job is just a means to an end. The only thing you should care about is YOU. Your employer’so competitor offers you an extra $10k to work for them, assuming you don’t have an employment contract barring it, leave and get the extra money. You have to look out for you, not your employer. Your employer doesn’t care about you, don’t give a flying fig about them.

         10. That’s because in it’s late stages, capitalism decides to cozy up to government for favors. Oh, and some “capitalist” entities become too big to fail and demand bailouts, less they take a big chunk of the economy with them. Eventually, government figures out that it doesn’t even need these clods to run the economy. That’s when you get socialism.

      2. “If we had real capitalism the “too big to fail” banks would have been
         left to rot like they deserved and their debt liquidated. If we had real
         socialism the people would have been bailed out instead of the banks.”
         That is true. We always tout that we are a country that believes in capitalism. But, when it came time to pull the trigger, the ones ” in charge” couldn’t do it (from Bush to Obama)…and that is the point where I think many Americans witnessed “the same party”.
         It didn’t matter – left or right, where one left off – the other picked it right up. That goes to show everyone who is really in charge in this country…and it’s not the people.

         1. IT’S THE NAZIS WHO ARE IN CHARGE

      3. If we had true capitalism, those too big to fail banks would not be too big to fail.
         Also it is funny how people marvel at modern technology, but forget that is a product of capitalism (or the monstrosity that looks like it). And they blame the bad stuff on banks and capitalism. Without ever looking at the crooked politicians that promised them free shit and are the root of all this mess.

         1. Astute observation. Competition waged on the small/medium level would prevent mega-opolies. No real monopoly exists without government help and influence.

         2. Standard Oil.

         3. Which existed with tons of favors from politicians.

         4. Standard Oil got big mainly because they started transporting oil in big tanks on trains instead of barrels, making oil cheap and accessible to everybody.

         5. Unless you are going to eliminate all government (anarchy or similar) there will always be politicians. Smaller government is just cheaper to buy in the long run. What was that Californian town that was making rumblings about the refinery nearby? The refinery that had an accident (explosion) which led to the mayor and some council members to call for them to step up the maintenance and increase backup systems?
            They spent a couple million bucks in that local race to kick out the mayor and everyone else who raised a stink about the explosion. This isn’t new.
            The Cuyahoga river started on fire multiple times. That’s a perennial favorite of showing local (and state) politicos being bought off. People being scared that doing something would cost them employment.
            Even where I grew up, the rivers didn’t start on fire but had enough chemicals in them to cause fish kills, et al. Again, until that commie Nixon did something, nobody raised too much of a fuss. Fear of employment.

      4. Really though capitalism and communism/socialism has always been the polarizing dialectical coin that the moneyed elite have used in this country to create this mutant synthesis which we see today.
         I’ve heard it said that in the cold war era the USA was considered outwardly capitalist but inwardly marxist while the USSR was outwardly communist and inwardly capitalist. This perspective makes some sense now considering where russia is now and where we are now. How the poles have switched! And we the common people are just the rubes playing along in a slot machine game with the odds completely stacked against us.
         The utopian ideals at the end of each spectrum are merely pipe dreams for the plebs from which they can anchor their hopes and dreams and also have an enemy on the opposite side of the pole that they can blame and hate. Divide and conquer. Those in power have done this very well I’ll give it to them.

      5. Too big to fail? Too connected to fail.

      6. Well said. I was going to comment on this one but feel you handled it already and any more would be superfluous. Well done.

   3. Agree with some of these points – been around for awhile (damn old guys).
      I think Obamacare may have contributed to it but we’ve seen this coming
      for years (and you know, Ghost, politicians love to finger point and
      keep us busy fighting with each other).
      They (politicians) have
      been working with big business (big money, big donors) to steer the
      county in this direction. I don’t want “over regulation” but at the
      same time we witness corporations not regulating themselves – at all.
      Also, I believe the ones who suffer the most are the small to medium businesses who keep people employed (and create jobs). Large corporations have been getting away with dodging paying taxes for decades while the rest of us (the workers and other business owners foot the bill).
      That’s what really should piss off many Americans, today. I get tired of footing the bill for people above me as well as below me (i.e. big corp to welfare).

      1. All things lead back to 1913.

         1. Indeed, the federal reserve was a monkey put on our backs that we cannot seem to shake off. It’s virtually consumed its host.

         2. If you want a real trip down the rabbit hole(assuming you haven’t already), look at what else the international bankers influenced back then and still do today. One glaring thing around the same time period was 5 years later when they redrew the map of Europe at Versailles.

         3. A lot of other things happened around the same time. One big upheaval was giving women the right to vote. Western society has been in freefall ever since.

         4. It’s all interconnected. If you follow the trail to it’s base element it is plain to see what/who is the source of all this.

         5. Yep I totally agree

         6. A goodly portion of the fat cats of the time who were already opposed to the idea of a “federal reserve bank” died on the Titanic in 1912.

         7. …and the income tax came a year later. Just sayin’.

         8. Working as designed

         9. I didn’t know that. Could you give names?

         10. Something Hebrew I presume?

         11. “Was giving women the right to vote. Western society has been in freefall ever since.”
             I agree with that. Big fuckin’ mistake – hormonal driven animals always vote socialist.

         12. Actually wasn’t the income tax ratified (or at least, they say it was) in 1916?

         13. Sixteenth Amendment was ratified 2/3/1913.

         14. BANNED

         15. Yep. From a logical view point giving women the right to vote is fraught with danger. Men work everywhere, in every facet of the community. Women “work” primarily in very few areas. Thus a large population with a very narrow knowledge of society gets to vote on how the rest of society should live. Then bring in the hormones and emotionally charged “arguments” of said females and you have a recipe for a declining society.

         16. Women are certainly canaries in the coalmine when it comes to societal collapse, when they’re acting up and out of control en-masse(e.g ALL feminist, not just the extremist) , prepare for the worse.

         17. Yeah I’m banned.

         18. The greatest conspiracy is that there is no grand conspiracy. Most of these jokers can’t take a shit without commenting on it, and that other guy’s morning shit.
             I understand the innate human ‘need’ for conspiracies to exist on massive scale. This is the same need that keeps God around, instead of relegating the idea to fiction. We NEED something to blame, so we invent the Devil along with God. We say God is punishing this or that action. Really, it’s a cop out by small minds. Conspiracies work much the same way, they’re a cop out. People in power have always acted in their own interest.

      2. I actually agree with everything you said. The ACA was the final push that made this “a reality from here forward”. Prior to it, we could always find wiggle room. No more wiggle room left.
         That’s what really should piss off many Americans, today. I get tired of footing the bill for people above me as well as below me (i.e. big corp to welfare).
         You and I brother, we’re on the same team.

         1. All he said was the same thing the author said (which you disagreed with) without the political snark.

         2. Ask any medical profession about what they think of the ACA . It’s a complete joke. There are still people coming in looking for dialuidid, hydrocodones, and other stupid shit. Except now, they get covered even more by the government. The sad thing is, most hospital are actually advocating the pushing of prescription pills by the EM physicians since they are getting subsidized by the government.
            So many worthless pieces of trash come through that ED door who require workups that would cost a normal american at least 5000-10000$ (CTs/X-rays/Labs even sometimes MRI’s) . They abuse the system so they can get prescribed drugs and shit, and there is nothing we can do about it.
            Oh yeah not to mention the 800$ ambulance bill that is completely covered for idiots coming into the ED for “tummy aches” or “can’t go to sleep”. However the same family coming in for a real emergency, but they happen to have private insurance end up paying a hefty bill.
            I’ll let you guys use your imagination about the type of demographic I’m taking about.

         3. Right, my wife is a nurse, I get to hear doctors complain all the time. Everything you mention is due to our wonderful “laws and regulations” which basically mandate hospitals become involuntary charities.

         4. Not so much. Not everything the author said was wrong, which is why I quoted the parts I disagreed with.

         5. Doctors bitch about everything. My friend is a ‘Clinical Analyst’ whose job is to help the doctors mesh with technological advancement. This job (well before the ACA) is because doctors are Whitney little pissants. They want a new toy, but it has this change to make it work? Fuck that!
            Many insurance companies own hospitals. In 2000 the one my friend was working at had the gall to do a massive upgrade. In sections of course, can’t have anything go down. Also you have to train staff on the new software. He ranked the people, according to whine factor, and inevitably it was doctors at the top. Specialty nurses ranked right up there too.
            After listening to him, and others over the years, I’ve learned one thing about doctors: They may act like they descended from the mountain with stone tablets, but (as a group) they’re a bunch of whiny primadonnas.

   4. Well said. This one started out good, but then degenerated into more horse shit from an entitled twenty-something repeating talking points fed to him by his homeroom teacher. He’s no different than the very people he pretends to deride.
      Teach English abroad? That tells me all I need to know about his age, ambition and level of life experience.

   5. This comment is a 10/10WB.

   6. You really bought the snarkiness? I found it to be a very emotional response, albeit one with some good insights. I have studied Marxist and fascists economies and they are both quite similar, they just approach from different paradigms. Both the left and the right in this country are reaching for the same goals, just from different paradigms. I have also studied the Constitution in my time and understand somewhat the complexities of modern society. The Constitution is a general framework which the framers left open to change. The issue that I see is that due to the advancement of society; namely the devolution of the Enlightenment and the evolution of the Industrial revolution-lead inevitably to the decrease of knowledge across society as a whole, in turn leading to “which hunts” and “hysteria”. (Merely, a matter of time, and many historical examples from American History from 1800-present.) The main point is that the rich always profit during chaos in stead of “advancement”. Don’t get caught up on the minor points, it will keep one distracted. The big picture is always subjective to time and place.

   7. Free-market capitalism is insane (if you don’t think it is, try saying these three words without shuddering: “For-profit military”), but what we have in America isn’t free-market capitalism. It’s a system of corporate welfare where the government decides the winners and losers. The government, in turn, is heavily influenced by corporate interests. Thus while small companies are bogged in insane levels of tax and paperwork, big companies get almost free reign in terms of what they are allowed to do, as long as it creates pretty numbers and graphs showing increased GDP – even if that GDP is almost all in the pocket of the rich with very little ‘trickling down’ to the masses.

      1. Actually we have a heavy mix of socialism (welfare, unemployment, food stamps, heating, medicare/medicaid, social security) with corporatism. And no–free market capitalism actually works just fine (and ps–it’s not about banking–fractional reserve banking is NOT free market capitalism).
         PS agreed on Obamacare is just more corporate welfare

      2. (if you don’t think it is, try answering this: would the military work in a pure free-market system?)
         I can’t recall Adam Smith suggesting that the military be a pure free market institution. Government does and should provide a scarce few services, the main one being providing for the common defense. In fact, that’s the only rational for government that has stood the test of time. Debate can occur on how this is executed (militias? ready reserve military? standing army? etc).
         Agree on obamacare. Agree that what we have isn’t even close to capitalism.

         1. You’re right but you’d be surprised how many free-market purists (in fact, most of them) advocate for privatized police & military. The whole thing is insane.

         2. Maybe–maybe not–there isn’t any history for it to judge otherwise. Closest thing to it were sheriff’s in the wild west back in the 19th century. This is where the federal system the founders had in mind would come in handy–you have 50 states, each with say 50 good size cities on average–each testing their own thing and the best ideas/results rise to the top naturally. This one size fits all from the federal government is killing government efficiency and innovation. I’m fine either way–in theory it should cost about the same either way and have the same results. Of course, that’s just a theory.

   8. you saved me the trouble of calloing this jack ass. out, love how he puts all these premisis on the table , but doesn’t provide ANY data to back them up. Thats great you have opinions, but that’s exactly what they are OPINIONS. Maybe you should return that ” international relations degree ” and stick to what you know, which isnt econ.

      1. What the fuck is an International Relations degree? Is that the male version of a Gender studies degree?

         1. 1) he returns his degree
            2) sticks to what he know’s ( dunno what that could be )
            3) what he’s knows does not include an informed opinion on economics.
            Are you retarded?

         2. International relations is just one of those things, it’s interesting, but impractical for almost everyone. What the hell are you going to do with that? Become an ambassador? Probably not going to happen. It’s just like history, or hell, even economics. Economics in academia is all taught from a mainstream Keynesian perspective… but even John Maynard Keynes wouldn’t approve of the nonsense floating around marxist and feminist echochambers that we call universities in the U.S. today. Milton Friedman pointed out how John Maynard Keynes’ philosophies are so fundamentally misunderstood. But once again, what the hell do you do with economics? It may be good for personal life skills, but is someone going to pay you to be an economist? Are you going to write articles on forbes.com? Probably not.

   9. Well said, this guy is clueless. What is extremely ironic is most people’s main complaints of capitalism is banking–but the banking system that exists in capitalism today exists in EVERY system today. What do you think brought down the USSR? It was their over-leverage of finance.
      It’s amazing to me that most of these jack-asses don’t actually realize why healthcare is so expensive today..it combines the worst of “capitalism” (actually fascism) – that is import controls, monopoly controls, cross state/national controls, etc with socialism (“free” for elderly or the poor–typically the most expensive in the system) and a lack of the best of the free market (open prices, competitive bidding, many producers, etc).
      PS its 30 hours although most businesses are only giving people at most 28 because they want to make sure they stay clear of the 30 in case they get a couple of hours of “overtime” a week. What do jackasses like this author think the money comes from businesses to pay for that healthcare costs? When its 2% of the businesses and rising at 10+%/year/person–most businesses can see the writing on the wall and realize it will eventually collapse them. Rule of 7–in 7 years it will be 4%, 14 – 8% (which is nearly all companies profit margins)

      1. actually, the west got the saudis to lie about their oil reserves back in the 80s and the rest of opec followed suit. the result was lower oil barrel values, which russia couldnt balance the books with (they knew at that pt it would only be a matter of yrs before they collapsed).
         brilliant bastards!!

         1. Yes, but that wouldn’t have mattered if the USSR hadn’t been leveraged up to their necks.

         2. I know God doesn’t get much respect here, but don’t you think that, maybe, just maybe, the slaughter of millions of faithful and hundreds of thousands of clergy by the communists following the 1917-22 revolution maybe angered the Almighty just enough to make life difficult for the USSR. Year after year of bad harvests caused by bad weather, a sky-high infant mortality rate despite widely available pre and post natal care; kind of sounds like God stacked the deck against the USSR. In a final cruel trick, He allowed to rise to superpower status before He trashed it.

         3. No I don’t think God interfered because of that

      2. thank you. repealing EMTALA is the first step

   10. I am going to be a hanger-on and shill for a video series that I think this site would get a kick out of.
       It is by a user called Morrakiu and it is called “Agreeing with Liberals for the Wrong Reasons.”
       The Premise is that he creates a straw republican (greedy, rich, racist, classist) which is sadly not too out of touch with the mainstream party and shows how that man would support carious left wing pet issues because many of them are self defeating for the progressive agenda.

   11. Watch this video. It is just 4 minutes long.
       http://www.positivemoney.org/
       IN the USA or UK we don’t live in a capitalist system. We live in a system based on credit – money that is created by the banks that we then have to pay interest on. The banks suck wealth from the rest of the country and their loans inflate the price of housing which forces us all to work to own somewhere to live. This is why it’s very hard for a traditional family to survive on one income. Two incomes are required to buy even a modest flat/apartment these days.
       If banks were only able to loan out the money that they have deposited by savers house prices would fall and people would not be forced into having large debts.
       The government could create money that we all benefit from and abolish some taxes.
       Instead of speculating on rising share prices and property prices (where most of the borrowed money is spent) it would make more sense to build businesses.
       http://www.positivemoney.org/

       1. Interesting, I’ll give it a look later this afternoon! Thanks for the heads up.

          1. If you haven’t already heard of G Edward Griffin’s Creatures from Jekyll Island, this may be a good side reading about the Feds and its money creation. As if the govt funded feminism is here to destroy men into a socialistic government reliant debt entities.

   12. Well said. And what we have today is a “sick-care” system, rather than healthcare.

   13. I am curious to know as to whether or not we live in the same country. The part-time economy is not the result of Obama. This has been in the making for three decades. This is the result of years of class warfare. They want us to think that this has something to do with Obamacare. Those who blame the current economic problems on obamacare are not only stuck in a perpetual state of ignorance, but nothing more than mindless sheep.

       1. Right, a 2,500 page law which commandeered 1/6th of the economy would have no impact on hiring.
          Soma is a terrible drug, son.
          Nobody is blaming the entirety of the current economy on Obama. It was a work in progress, clearly, starting from the Progressive era at the turn of the previous century forward. But the new Part Time Economy? Directly attributable to O-Care. It cut out the little wiggle room most medium and small businesses had left to work with.

          1. I would honestly take a single payer system over Obamacare though, as much as I hate ACA, and as much as I hate the idea of a single payer system. But at least a single payer system is bureaucratically simpler.

          2. “It cut out the little wiggle room most medium and small businesses had left to work with”
             I used to work in a call center calling small businesses to get data for customer satisfaction surveys. Many owners echoed this sentiment exactly. What an agony

       2. The born again, closet butt sex aficionado neocons like Rick Santorum might be sheep, but don’t just write off all fiscal conservatives. Government has been driving the costs of health care up for half a century. Take all the burdening regulations out and let people form private contracts with their health care providers and we’ll have a much more affordable and effective system in place.

   14. It’s 30 hours and an absolute nightmare to manage for a small business. I had to cut most of my employees to part time this year just to keep my doors open in the future.

       1. I hear this so much it’s maddening when I still hear the occasional bleat from True Believers on the left. The blindness, the willful blindness, is so frustrating.

   15. I wish I could upvote this more than once!

   16. You know what the worst part is? Young guys like myself (25) have no choice but to bet on the phony fiat currency. We can’t count on social security to take care of us when we retire. We can’t put money under the mattress and never let it accrue interest as it’ll be worth far less after years of inflation. We can invest in gold, but there’s no guarantee that will pan out during a period of hyperinflation like doomsday preppers believe, and gold also doesn’t earn interest, so it’s like saving for a lifetime just to prepare for doomsday and never experience the true satisfaction of saving money and earning additional capital on our investments. Our only viable option is to put all our savings in equities valued by USD. And if not USD, some other fiat currency. All the developed nations in the world have a fiat currency managed by central bankers, so there’s no safe haven to invest in. We’re between a rock and a hard place.

   17. I was going to go off on this tool but your comment was the first I saw and I realized I didn’t need to! You hit all the points and maybe better than I would have. Great job! You should write for RoK.
       But I have to double down on your point that this is a very unprofessional article. Worst IV ever seen here. That’s right, you don’t tell your readers to fuck off in a political opinion piece just because they disagree with you. Especially after claiming to be a reasonable, center of the road type person. What an Ass!
       Anyone with eyes saw the part-time economy coming right after Obamacare passed. I work part-time now for a pizza place and not one of the employees can’t be scheduled to work more than 28 hours a week. Why 28? Because they are afraid they’ll get caught if they schedule us too close to the 32 hours a week (not 36) that creates a health insurance mandate for the employer. TWENTY-EIGHT friggin’ hours!
       By the way, to understand the leftist goal, read, “In Praise of Leisure” by Bertrand Russell. When Obama said part-time workers could spend more time with their families, they were being serious!
       Alice through the looking glass. Obama is the Red Queen.

   18. The dialectic is at work. You just don’t see it. You need to take the economic red pill for that. When you do, you’ll see that the “free market” is dying of its own internal contradictions. Blaming the part-time economy on “obamacare” is silly, and a red herring to boot. A sleek, efficient, single-payer system with low overhead and standardized paperwork would relieve the (alleged) “obamacare” burden from employers. But we’re heading towards a publicly-owned economy anyhow. You can run from the dialectic, but you can’t hide.

2. “Don’t get me wrong, I am all for clean and chemical-free food, protecting the rights of people, and preventing animal cruelty, but what about the fact that millions of Americans are without job security, benefits, or any hope in the workplace? The reality is that the American Left is run by a bunch of oversensetive, annoying, and spoiled pussies. They are mostly white kids who grew up in the suburbs, but migrated to the large cities after university and are suddenly here to save the world.
   If you are reading this and you are a conservative, then you can go fuck yourself as well because I am definitely not on your side. That’s right. You are just as big as a cocksucker as your whiny hipster counterparts. The politics of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter are nowhere near what you espouse to be socialism. Have you ever actually read a book on Marxism? Better yet, have you ever read a book in your life?”
   Yeah thanks to more than a decade of FOX vs CNN comprising TWO Matrices (FOX being the one where people who think they “escaped the matrix” by not watching CNN end up) we have two movements and two correlating political parties servicing the same results.
   Now we get to choose between a left wing socialist police state or a right wing nationalist police state.
   There is a third way of sorts and I have seen both “liberal” and “conservative” go this way.
   You see the cities are overrun with white snarking hipster douchebags, touting their “social contract” crap (as if those of us who don’t sign onto the contract need to accept it for our own good), pseudo gay (looking), their SJW garbage, and all that.
   The “answer” from the suburbs is some big fat Limbaugh fan with their useless SUV and “fake farm” (2 acres they do little more than ride their mower on) pumping their fist for Bill O’Reilly and “pro Israel this pro Israel that” every fucking night and succumbing to WND clickbait and shouting “rule of law!” (as if just because the retards outvoted the rest of the retards to get a law passed then it’s “law of the land” and if you don’t follow it you are a criminal and “anti police”) and worshiping “all things police and military”.
   The libertarians, many leaning left and right but finding they have a lot in common, have been in GTFO mode – getting away from the cities and these suburbs. Out in the sticks it’s “real” for the most part though I regret that the people who need to be around most to argue with the urban douchebags and suburban statists have flown the coop.
   Things are only going to get more stupid.
   As for jobs – well Gary North has been predicting this and offering advice for years now: the days of “get a good job and prosper” are long over. Learn to be self employed and sell yourself.
   Another entity out there recognizing this trend would be government. You see, they KNOW they fucked the dog on the economy and they KNOW that most of the “kids” today will have to be self employed meaning no health care through an employer meaning that they need to be taxed for not getting their own health insurance. You see the boomers need that health coverage so after fucking you out of “a job” they still want your money and are going to get it somehow.

   1. As a libertarian, it would have been nice to read a critique of the two party fake system from somebody not from the Left, as the author seems to be.
      I’m really not interested in his take on this, I can hear it in all forms with a simple visit to HuffPo.
      GTFO mode is my path! heh

      1. Yeah whenever someone posts a huffpo link I’m pretty much done at that point.

3. If you are reading this and you are a conservative, then you can go fuck yourself as well because I am definitely not on your side.

   Wow… this man-child needs to take some advice from Mike Rowe.
   http://mikerowe.com/2014/11/unsolicited-marketing-advice/
   Conservatism, for all its faults, did not drive the push towards the part time economy. That is purely the result of the unfettered leftism that got rubber-stamped into law between 01-20-2009 and 01-03-2011.
   And there’s plenty of full time work available if you know where to look. Since a growing number of man-children can’t even turn a screwdriver these days, it pays quite well to be a tradesman of some sort. If college is one’s thing, then there are still good full time careers which await those with engineering degrees, just to name a few.

4. This is the worst article i’ve read on this website.

   1. I wish I would have posted your reply, in lieu of my windy response below, heh.

      1. A lot can get done with less words – I’m cursed with being able to type very fast.

         1. Why use 100 words when 10,000 will suffice?

         2. Because writing is fun?
            I am convinced that’s the reason behind 99% of all ‘educated’ trolling. Writing a well-considered response is a blast, even if it’s barely relevant.

         3. Heh, yeah, I know. I grew up reading Aristotle, Rand, Plato, Descartes and other “windy” authors. The effects of this have carved out all but the faintest whiff of brevity from my writing style, most of the time.
            It’s rather a hindrance in the modern age, where ideas over 144 characters in length are generally glossed over and ignored as “walls of text” by uneducated ignorant dolts (not talking about anybody here, I mean generally). But in the year 1840? I’da rocked bro! heh

         4. I know, the phrase tl/dr means “Total Loser, don’t reproduce
            “

         5. Or maybe “Too Lazy and Dumb to Read”

         6. You still rock G.of J.
            A few weeks ago I read a collection of letters written during the American Civil War. I was struck by the ability that even the common man of the period possessed to express his thoughts with pen and paper. Perhaps it was because basic education of the time included a few of the “windy” authors you mention above. You and many of the posters I see here are a refreshing reminder that the art isn’t totally lost. Keep the walls of text coming sir.

      2. I enjoyed reading your response. Word of advice to Author: You can make your point without coming off as an arrogant all knowing dick

         1. Thank you.
            That’s another fine point as well. I rarely read missives from libertarians or those on the right that scream and yell at the very article’s readership, calling them names and belittling them at every turn. It’s immature and a sign of an undeveloped intellect to engage so basely at a higher level like this, specifically in writing an article on a widely read website.

      3. Indeed. Has a whole leftist “progress is inevitable and part time job economies are part of progress.” nonsense to it. This guy probably thinks socialism is just another form of “progress”. As if all that is new glitters like gold. How did that work out for the soviet union? They’ve progressed alright.

         1. Not to mention, socialism isn’t really new or progress. Taking peoples money and redistributing it is the oldest idea in the book. Check out Solon of Athens. You don’t change an economy to suit the needs of the poor. Never has worked. Never will work.

         2. I heard a wonderful quote in a movie from the 1970’s, but I cannot for the life of me recall the movie to credit the quote or writer of it. So here’s a paraphrase:
            “You want power to the people? We had power to the people once. We called it the Stone Age”

         3. Exactly. Total democracy (mob rule) is insanity. There is a reason voting was granted only to a select few when this country was created. Now Jose whose parents are not citizens and is on welfare gets to show up to the voting booth and cash in his vote for socialism, not realizing that by doing so he is turning this country into the same 3rd world shit hole his parents tried to escape from.

         4. As Billy Bragg sang, “We’re still waiting, for the ‘Great Leap Forward’”…

      4. Well, I enjoyed it.

5. Gutting American manufacturing in the name of “free trade” and importing hordes of unskilled laborers alongside foreign engineers and doctors sure has worked out great, hasn’t it?
   The middle class is largely sustained by service jobs in the professions, ranging from engineering and medicine to law and finance. If the working class, which used to be sustained by manufacturing and construction jobs, has the rug pulled out from under it, then the middle class also suffers. Both parties have certainly been complicit in this, from Reagan’s signing of the 1986 amnesty, to Obama’s plan to unilaterally pump the brakes on deportation.
   None of the ruling technocrats in the West have their constituents’ best interests at heart. If they did, they wouldn’t be encouraging financial crises by suppressing interest rates, or lining the pockets of bankers who gambled big and lost. They wouldn’t be buying votes from the indolent with the public treasury, either.
   Market failure certainly exists, especially in the case of natural monopolies like roads, electrical grids, and soforth. The burden of regulation, however, goes well beyond that required to correct for externality, etc., and in many cases offers larger competitors advantages over smaller ones.

   1. That’s a reasonable critique. “Free trade” as it was conceived, instead of how it was presented in the 1990’s, would have been 1 page with two paragraphs on it, abolishing barriers, regulations and taxes. It was instead one of those thousand page monstrosities. That’s when I knew the game was being rigged.

      1. Indeed.

   2. “The burden of regulation, however, goes well beyond that required to correct for externality, etc., and in many cases offers larger competitors advantages over smaller ones.”
      That’s what I observed in the energy industry. Small companies and sub-contractors had no chance against large multinational corporations because unnecessary regulations made it impossible to compete.

   3. There is no such thing as a natural monopoly. Utility conglomerates are notorious for political lobbying that stomps out competition. Whether it be for solar, tidal, or wind farms to banning thorium plants.
      Again, it all comes back to government intervention.

      1. I would submit that governments themselves are an example of transient natural monopolies. Online social networks would seem to be another transient natural monopoly, given the benefits of a large user base and the dominance of MySpace and then Facebook. Insurance is likely also a transient natural monopoly, since the insurer with the largest pool can charge premiums closer to the average risk. Toll roads are an excellent example of a transient natural monopoly, since the most profitable route can’t be used twice, but will certainly shift over time.
         I don’t disagree that utility companies are good at lawfare, but no small part of their initial lobbying power came from high profits driven by barriers to entry. That firms would seek to preserve an emergent lack of competition is not surprising.

         1. Somewhat higher costs to entry doesn’t mean there won’t be competition–look at what Ford, Chevy, etc saw with Cars; IBM with computers, and nearly every form of entertainment (TVs, phones, etc). Capitalism improved the product AND drove the costs lower. Where you see costs go higher is due to government (laws, regulations, patent/trademark/copyright, fractional reserve banking laws, etc) or government agencies/benefactors (eg: Treasury, Fed Reserve via inflation, etc). ATT is the best example in the history of mankind at how much of a failure a “natural monopoly” is. Look at the explosive growth at both costs, value, and portability of phones today vs 20 years ago. It’s truly staggering.

6. The poster seems to be unaware that the ACA is a prime driver of the part time economy. Nor does he address what are the prime drivers of health care costs. A huge one is the entire medical billing system. Pay attention to the number of billing staff on your next visit, recent articles state that the billing/insurance cost alone makes up about $50 of a doctors visit. The ACA was a huge opportunity to solve many billing issues by standardizing billing codes and procedures and increase the supply of medical practitioners, but instead it was a giveaway to the insurance industry.
   No, I don’t find it difficult to find work, but I have never gotten a job via job application websites. All of my job offers are from networking with people. I also have a top 5 engineering school degree so I’ve gotten job offers based on the name alone, but its not that hard to get a hold of decision makers in companies through social engineering and get an offer that way. Follow tricks from successful salesmen to learn how to do that. (A hint, its like trying to find a good tradesman, go to a local supplier and ask who they do a lot of business with).
   Now if you are working multiple part time jobs, you should not be driving a late model car. You should be saving up that cash to put it to work for you, or save for the future to make yourself financially independent or for an emergency. The western world is far more productive than in the past and many goods and services (such as food and energy) are at historic lows. Excessive spending and lifestyle inflation has sapped that increased productivity. Live like someone from the 1950’s and you would be considerably wealthy today with a huge surplus at the end of the month.
   If you go the work for yourself route as an independent contractor, you have a number of retirement vehicles with HIGHER LIMITS than that of a normal employee. Simple IRA’s for example allow you to put the lesser of 50k or 25% of ones compensation into a tax differed account. Even burger flippers have stock purchase programs if you have to go the part time route.

   1. I would be very careful of any such custodial retirement arrangements where you do not have control over your own money. Once you go down that road, Uncle Sugar can change the terms of the deal any time he wishes. It might not be outright confiscation, but a little tax here, another fee there – pretty soon your 401k, Roth, TSP, government pension or whatever else you thought you had will be milked as needed to gain votes of the indolent. It’s way too tempting a target for government to leave your nest egg alone – it is at risk. Full control over your own assets outweighs any perceived or promised advantage from such plans.

      1. I would not be surprised to see a wealth tax at some point and it won’t matter if your investments are taxed advantaged or not.

         1. I’ve thought so as well. The question is will it be sudden without any trial balloons and debate that we’ll see, or will we wake up one morning and discover that 50% of our retirement was taxed because we “won the lottery of life”? With the increasing desperation in government to avoid the consequences of its own stupidity, the later course wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

         2. There’s a history of that already – even a luxury tax on cars over a certain price. Tax advantaged or not, having control over your investment will be critical as the situation grows more desperate, now that promises have outpaced revenues.

         3. Do you put money into an IRA or 401K?

   2. “The ACA was a huge opportunity to solve many billing issues by standardizing billing codes and procedures and increase the supply of medical practitioners, but instead it was a giveaway to the insurance industry.” Yup. It’s the “Private Employer-based Health insurance Protection Act.” Trying to keep a dinosaur alive. Other advanced nations wised-up ages ago.

7. Monarchy, gentlemen…monarchy.

   1. My libertarian nature and rebellious streak against unearned authority would have me cringing under a monarchy, although I do temper that observation with the fact that I rebel against this God awful monstrosity we now call “democracy” far more than I do against tradition and heritage and sensible rules and laws.
      That being said, there are arguments to be made for an actual true monarchy, specifically the kinds that existed in pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon England. Head of state basically accountable to the people he represented, where cynig was a title of paternal familiarity (cynig originally meaning “of the kin” ergo “of our people”). The man literally lead the people, and heritary lineage was *not* established by blood, but rather by a council of representatives that chose the next in line (saved a lot of problems that would later occur post Normandy invasion).
      The Roman inspired French version of monarchy that spread after the Norman invasion, ehhh, dunno.

      1. The type of one leader government you are talking about is much like hitlers role as the head of the third reich. He was accountable to the people and his peers at the top. Much like the anglo kings if he lost massive public support (like our presidents tend to do) he would have been removed plain and simple. It’s an interesting take/concept on the “sovereign” or “leader”. Held accountable for all the successes of a nation, and at the same time all the failures. Much like an NFL quarterback.

         1. Not so much, he wasn’t democratically elected and it had a lot more to do with competence in battle (his own, as well as his followers) and his basic ability to secure trade and relations with other kingdoms. He did NOT have dictatorial powers, and could be called into question at the moot by the kingdom’s people.
            The absolutist model of Hitler & company follow far closer to the Roman Imperial model that places like France and Spain adopted (then exported to England after the Norman invasion). In other words, the model that produced L’etat? C’est moi!.

      2. All I see now is we just changed kings.
         It was better to have one king that everybody knew about, one castle to burn, one neck to put to the chopping block.
         Thus that one king was “it” and he knew that and he knew he could only go so far.
         Now let’s compare. What do we have today?
         We have millions of tyrant kings, nameless, blameless (their opinion) hiding behind a voting booth curtain committing robbery and even murder anonymously, like cowards.
         We could look to a bad king and go “That king is a douche”. But now we can look at entire crowds and wonder “did that person over there vote for the laws that make me a criminal? did that other person there vote to take more of my money?”
         I will say that nothing has generated more class warfare and hate from one man to another than democracy.
         And look at the United States now. Many times WORSE than what was fought against in 1776. All because people suck.
         And the worst part is democracy is a civil war without personal consequences. I have more respect for a car jacker than someone who sees a fancy car roll by and thinks “who does he think he is?” and then goes and votes for a politician to raise taxes.
         Nobody loses a leg, or their life. They get to fuck people over and then press on being fucktards without any personal consequences. They have reduced robbery and murder to the most base condition that could get the most people to do it, like this was an MMO: anonymously and without risk of bodily harm.

         1. Preach it man.
            Back then, you knew who “they” were.

         2. Amen.

         3. Right on point. This was the plan all along I fear; a nameless, faceless, relatively hidden ruling body. An anonymous ruling body allows the shirking of societal responsibility and in the absence of responsibility, who is to blame? At least in the day, if people didn’t like the king, they could option to rebel and behead him (forced or not).

      3. I see your points. You’re coming from a Libertarian perspective and I’m coming from a Traditionalist perspective; and thus we perceive different data.
         Having said that, isn’t the Council of Representatives (the name implies that they represent someone else) a democratic organization, aka mob rule? That seems to me to be incipient leftism.

         1. No, it’s the order they had set up at the time. Basically it was all the older men in the particular kingdom. More of a traditionalist thing than an elected position. There’s a high chance that I misnamed it and reverted to a modern parlance.

8. When did this site become leftist bullshit.
   Capitalism is the best economic system in the world

   1. True point but the capitalism of today is hardly what would be considered free market capitalism. Banks “too big to fail”, corporations spending billions on lobbyists to get laws passed to suit them and corporate handouts for struggling corporations.

      1. Amen. We have no real free market left, except that grounded in private trades off the radar. Hopefully in cash or bitcoin. Everything else is a lie.

         1. Actually both of those are lies, too. And I’m not saying that to be a dick. Dollars are a fiat currency and bitcoin is smoke and mirrors.

         2. It’s the closest we have, outside of resuming trade in ounces of silver and gold. To be honest, I’d actually prefer that (silver & gold).

         3. There are rays of hope out there.
            In June of this year Oklahoma joined Utah, Texas, and Louisiana in declaring that gold and silver coins are (as they always have been under The Constitution-Article I, section 10) legal tender for debts and trade. Arizona made an attempt to pass similar legislation that was vetoed by its governor.
            The people of The Fed hate this because they are well aware that if this starts to spread and, in effect, puts the gold standard back into place state by state, and people become comfortable using money that holds its value over time it will be the end of paper currency backed by nothing.
            If everyone decided to convert all of their bank deposits to silver or gold, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless. It all ties in to what Alan Greenspan called the “shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold.” Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth through inflation. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process.

         4. Bitcoin could be the end of the government one day. As far as I know the IRS has not announced any policy in regards to holding bitcoins.. probably because they don’t want to admit they’re vulnerable. As it stands, not enough people have faith in bitcoins to try to use them to evade taxes. However, I think as millenials age and baby boomers retire and die off, more trust will be placed into bitcoin and hopefully its volatility will shrink to reasonable levels. Not saying that millenials are all gung-ho free market advocates here to save the nation from the Zionist controlled status quo, but I think our generation is more likely to give ideas like cryptocurrency a fair shot.
            The good news is, even if the IRS is able to derail the bitcoin, the idea is already out there. Remember what happened when the state took down Napster? LimeWire, Imesh, eventually torrents, countless others emerged.
            Once enough people start getting paid under the table in bitcoins, brokerage firms start making illicit trades with bitcoin, and son on, to the point where the IRS can’t collect enough money for the government to enforce its own tax regulations (or anything else for that matter), the entire experiment of government is toast. We will then proceed to the post-state era of human life.
            The world will change dramatically. Imaginary lines (national borders) will cease to exist even in our imagination. All of our needs, namely protection of ourselves and our property, will have to be met through private exchange. I imagine the transition period will be a bumpy ride, but the land of milk and honey awaits at the end of the tunnel.

   2. “You have to fucking ADAPT as the world changes, you can’t sit there and bitch (like pubic unions) that you can’t do the same function for 40 years anymore.”
      UBER is a recent example of government preventing technological progress in the free markets. From my understanding, government is attempting to abuse administrative power to prevent UBER from carrying out business in many parts of the US, such as Washington D.C. for example.
      “But what about the taxi industry?? We can’t afford to lose all those jobs!”
      When automobiles were introduced into the free markets, what happened to horse and carriage transportation?
      Should we have created legislation prohibiting automobiles from entering the free markets and destroying the horse and carriage sector?

      1. This is a big thing going on right now in Pennsylvania. State bureaucrats are trying to squash Uber. They’re making all those same arguments you just mentioned about preserving the taxi cab industry. It’s totally fucked to think you can’t make a private exchange with someone else to arrange transportation for money using a mobile app without dipshit government overlords and their minions of lefty sheep getting in the way.
         Letting uber operate in Pennsylvania would slash the number of DUIs in the state. It would give people who need extra money on the side a way to get it. It’d stimulate the economy, and not in the artificial way the government does. But we have to protect all those Iranian cab drivers.

         1. Truth. This is the corruption inherent in government. When government, the only organization with a monopoly on the use of force, gets involved in economics, corruption is inevitable. Those who benefit from the current system (taxi industry) have the greatest ability (financial influence) to lobby (exploit) government in order to prevent change (UBER) from taking place.
            Who are the respective winners and losers of this system?
            —Winners— (the cronies)
            1) Corrupt government officials
            2) Corrupt business industry leaders
            —Losers—
            1) General public (who is legally restricted from using their free will to choose UBER over less attractive alternatives)
            2) Innovative business leaders, unable to overcome unjust barriers orchestrated by despicable government officials, and executed by intellectually indolent/degenerate police officers

      2. The carriage makers, whip makers etc. got better jobs making automobiles and associated technology. There’s nothing now like the auto industry was 100 years ago that’ll be the working class’ salvation.

9. Automation and outsourcing are two of the largest contributors to the current economy. And it will only keep getting worse.

   1. America was so successful 1950-2000 I think Americans became too safe, lazy, stupid, and SHIELDED from bad decisions.
      Instead of adapting or learning a new skill, they just bitch. As if you should be able to step out your door and have a middle class job waiting for you.

      1. Technology eventually replaced most manual labor jobs. What happens when technology replaces knowledge labor jobs? The transition to that point isn’t going to be immediate so someone is going to get left out.

      2. We put the kibosh on the space race, that’s the problem (I know, it was a government program, but at least it did something). If we’d moved to the moon and planets like GenX was told we were going to do, we’d be full hard core free market and individualist now, instead of pseudo-socialist and atomistic. I use individualist in the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood sense, not the narcissitic atomistic Russel Brand sense.

10. The thing is people think they have leaders that represent them, but they really dont and never will, cuz power corrupts. So how do we end up in that kind of economy? Cuz people with money pay the people we choose to represent us to make whats in their best interest.

    1. Government can do little to create jobs, but can do a lot to thwart them.
       People trading goods and services with one another, and providing value is how you get a ‘middle class’ life. It’s not the governments job to help you attain a marketable skill.
       The government’s role is to enforce basic rights and rules, and get out of the way. A politician isn’t meant to ‘help’ you.

       1. True, but right now our government is bought and paid for by large corporations that have a vested interest in preventing competition from other competing firms.

          1. That’s why so many companies like Apple give to democrats. Expensive regulation shields bigger companies and crushes upstarts.
             Romney campaigned extensively on this issue but most Americans didn’t seem to care

          2. It’s not just a one way thing (though I do agree with you). It’s incestuous. Politicians go back to “the people” to cushy jobs in industries they “regulated”, and corporate hacks get the nod to go into high level public office.
             In the olden days, we called this an oligarchy. We’re way too sophisticated nowadays though to call it that.

       2. I agree, but they are there to f^ck u in the ass if someone give them money. For example coca cola need cheap labor force, so they buy a president and enforce cheap labor force.

11. What, you think employers want to manage as many employees as possible? If it was financially feasible, they’d cut it down to the bare minimum and give them 80 hours a week. Laws like overtime are only hurting the people they are supposed to help, since precious few of those people are able to tap into them.

    1. Say I own a company. I want to attract and hire the best talent I can to do the job the best that he can, in order to make the best product I can, to sell at the highest price I can based on the market.
       Now, would I want to send this man off after only working 28 hours, to my competition for 28 hours against me? Or would I want to keep him full time and loyal to me? I mean, he’s going to work in his field of interest, which would naturally lead him to my competition. So what would I do, without any prodding from outside regulatory and legal forces?
       This is an easy answer.
       ACA made the overtime economy appear out of thin air. Sorry man.

    2. Lots of jobs don’t get overtime anymore. A lot of places will work designate you “exempt”, work you 50 to 55 hours and only pay you your salary based on 40 hours.

       1. Unless an employee has highly desirable skills, the employer knows the employee has limited options, they can work them far beyond 40 hour weeks instead of hiring additional workers. That’s where these record corporate profits are coming from.

12. I see this is another filler article. What happened to Athlone, AV8R, etc?

    1. This isn’t a filler article. This is a communist subversion article.

       1. but how did it seek through the cracks of quality control?

          1. Even though there have been quite a few shitty articles on here, I am still a little surprised this one managed to make it through.

          2. Maybe they let it through so the author could see (through the ensuing comments) first hand how the rest of the readers feel about it.

    2. Maybe it is the Econ major in me, but doing an article like this without having any sort of sources or data to support the position is a weak effort.

    3. I’m still around bud. I will have my next article done soon (should be published sometime next week). Don’t know what happened to Athlone though – I always enjoyed his articles too.

13. While the left and the right are blaming each other’s policies for bringing about a part-time economy, the real culprit, technological innovation, is marching on.
    Whether you like it or not, unemployment will keep rising. It isn’t anybody’s fault, unless you want to blame innovators for replacing human labor with machine labor. Welcome to the future where everyone but the very creative will be out of a job.

    1. Yep. That combined with outsourcing is going to make an increasing percentage of American laborers unemployable. A strong indicator of the changes technology has brought is examining practically any measure of productivity that shows an improving economy (in efficiency) yet labor wages have remained stagnant for years.

       1. Technology displacing humans is yet another form of outsourcing

          1. I think the combination is going to make it very difficult for Americans to find middle class jobs in the near future. And the argument that everyone can just transition into a new high-demand field is nonsense when employers can find cheaper alternatives faster than someone can retrain into the new field. It will get really interesting to see what happens after that. Real unemployment now is probably ~12% in the US. How high do you think it can go before the system can’t sustain itself?

          2. Probably double that at ~25%. Then they’ll start paying folks to sit on their hands.

          3. But…if technology replaces us such that we acquire wealth and free time, it’s not a bad thing. The problem is, this doesn’t happen.
             I worked in an office in the 1980’s, and worked rather hard compared to what most folks are used to today regarding office work. Today I can do all of my functions back then, in about 1/2 an hour on my computer. Yet still I work many hours to bring home a paycheque.

          4. Do you disagree with that decision or think there is a better alternative?

          5. Germany has “Hartz IV”, which is basically a universal income program. Once you have been unemployed for a while and got no money left the government pays you a monthly allowance and some extra expenses such as heating.
             I am Spanish and we are at 19,5% unemployment now (25 % a few years ago). I remember reading that some areas of the country had a higher unemployment rate than the Gaza Strip, a war zone. We don’t have any official universal income yet -we are far poorer than the Gerrmans- but our government has tweaked the existing welfare payment system by creating some “exceptional” cases that hint already into the German direction: you get normal benefits; when you run out of them, if you have a family, you get into other program, then if you are older than 45 into another one, and so on.
             “the argument that everyone can just transition into a new high-demand field is nonsense”
             My thoughts exactly. I saw that you seemed to identify as a libertarian in a previous post above, so I am glad that you tell it like it is. Many pro-capitalist people are really in denial about the alleged “opportunities” of IT and related fields. Truth is, the much fabled “start-ups” and “entrepreneurs” make a tiny minority of the self-employed. Here in Spain jobless people continue to open bars -if men- or hairdressing salons -if women-. You can not expect a fifty-something former construction worker to become a programmer overnight.
             And yeah, the real American unemployment rate must be far higher than the official one. No way Trump would had made it so far with a 5% rate, which would mean almost full occupation.

    2. I think somewhere in the bible it says something like
       ‘knowledge is vanity’
       Kind of a warning that our fascination with science will end up destroying ourselves. Makes the Amish seem wise.

       1. Except if something like a species-extinction event might happen in which case everyone wants whatever answers science can give them.

14. Anarchy is the solution.

    1. The closest you will get to anarchy is pitched battle in war when communications break down. People will always seek out some form of government so this talk is just silly. Limited government is a much better answer.

       1. You have to have some sort of government, even a very limited one, otherwise you just have bands of warlords running around. Look to Afghanistan to see how that worked.

          1. Heh, well, technically, Afghanistan has worked out pretty peachy for the natives. Empires swoop in with billions of dollars in high tech weaponry, men in robes wielding bolt action rifles leftover from WW1 beat them back, the power retreats and leaves a bonanza of valuable equipment laying around, and the nomads go back to their peaceful existence of supporting their own families.

    2. Anarchy is what we have now.
       One person will get stopped by the police for “something” and end up beaten to death or shot. Another person can melee with the cops and merely get arrested.
       One person can build a house with “a few permits” but the next guy trying that on a piece of land that the county commission wants to get more taxes over will be harrassed to no end.
       One business with an army of lawyers can open a store in a week. Another small business that lacks the funds can be held up for a FUCKING YEAR (I’ve see this myself) over permits.
       The only reason why we still have guns is because the state lacks the manpower to come and take them. There is no protection under law.
       The media is reduced to shilling for the government that licenses them and the businesses that fund them.
       Our rights are subjected to “who outvotes who” but we only get to vote on whatever initiative that special interests and billionaires will fund.
       And the only reason why the state does not go full retard is because it would finally convince everybody of what they are really dealing with.
       So, no equal protection under any law, arbitrary application of law, cops who can do whatever they want and make up a story, rich people buying votes and laws and getting out from under them with legal teams, and your rights are determined on a level of illegality not under protection of said rights but of the fear (color of law = you obey or get hurt) or resistance (they don’t enforce because they fear getting hurt).
       THIS is anarchy.

       1. No THIS is corruption. Is a different thing.

          1. Anarcho-tyranny. Agents of the state use their power to advance interests they deem aligned with their own, and thwart interests they deem inimical. Anarchy, because the rule of law demands consistency, and tyranny because the average citizen lives in abject fear of his government.

          2. The problem here Eued, is that humans are born corrupt, and even if they grow out of it, are susceptible to corruption every single minute of their lives. We cannot be governed by even the saints, for even they were fallen men.
             Corruption happens, we need to find a way to deal with it as a species. Denying it, is to float yet another soon to be failed Utopia.

    3. Right wing anarchy may work, but left wing hooligan, bomb throwing, black mask anarchy is the march straight into Bolshevism, friend.
       For right wing anarchy, look at the Amish and other peaceful 19th century non-violent, free market anarchists. They rocked. I wish it could have happened.
       In today’s climate though? Good luck.

15. Dubai borrowed 1800s style American Capitalism and went from desert wasteland to the worlds greatest metropolis in less than TEN YEARS.
    Detroit borrowed 1800s style Marxism in the mid 60s and went from the glorious Arsenal of Democracy to 3rd World status in less than TEN YEARS.
    Government is the problem, not the solution.

    1. Fantastic observation.

    2. Dubai has kind of shit the bed since then, no?

    3. Really makes you think that sometimes its time to move locations eh?

       1. Yes. Just like how the Irish moved to the new world during the potato famine. Obamacare and all the other forms of de facto socialism is our potato famine

          1. My grandfather moved to Canada from Italy in the late 40s/early 60s.
             Its really not that weird of an idea… people have done it all throughout history when they see that their home is turning into a shit-hole.
             I’m really starting to believe that the west is unravelling. In Canada (where I live) the only reason our population is not declining is because of constant mass immigration. Combine that with a man-hating culture in the major cities, and straight-white-males who cannot accept being a faceless cubicle drone are screwed…
             All businesses here are now Asian, jewish, and muslim. I have nothing against those people, in fact I admire them, but my white western brethren are running around like headless chickens and I don’t know if things will play out well for us here in the next 10-20 years…

          2. The elementary school I went to was almost 100% white. It had it’s fair share of issues, but it was a walk in the park compared to what I was about to experience at Junior high school. The Jr. High I went to was closer to the city and had a large black and Hispanic student population. I went in with absolutely no preconceived prejudices, I didn’t even think about race. But these kids were like hardened street thugs. There were hoards of pregnant preteen girls. They had been conditioned to fight as a part of survival. Male posturing which often escalated into violence was the norm, and encouraged by females.
             You can’t just put white kids who aren’t exposed to that sort of negative environment in with city kids who are and expect it to work out well. It’s kind of like putting a domesticated house pet out in the wild. Nowadays most white parents have figured this out and send their kids to private schools so they don’t come home with black eyes every day.
             But my concern is that as the white percentage of the North American population declines, we will no longer have any safe havens to turn to within our own communities. I don’t hold these prejudices against all non-white individuals, but I do need to acknowledge certain realities.

          3. Thanks for the anecdote. And yeah I agree with you.
             Sadly so many white-women are completely oblivious to this…
             They don’t seem to realize that after they’ve completely disenfranchised white men en masse, they’re going to be absorbed into all these other foreign cultures.
             These cultures are already hardened to female nature and will not put up with their shit. I wont be surprised if the white-woman’s quality of life declines as she scraps the culture that is responsible for her opportunity to be so decadent in the first place.
             It might not be a bad time to move to a place where there is opportunity. Haven’t figured that part out yet but it is not an insane idea by any means.

    4. Also it’s comforting, if you live in Dubai, you can rest easy knowing that if your wife ever cheats on you, you can just have her stoned.

16. Russell brand book really gives a lot of anwsers to this kind of discutions.

    1. Say what?

       1. A russell brand book called revolution.

          1. Russel Brand is a fucking retard. If you look to celebrities for answers youre going to have a hard time in life

          2. Why?

          3. A. He is rich due to a capitalist system.
             B. He speaks out against capitalism even though he seeks to maximize his own gain (like anyone should).

          4. He is a leftist actor that espouses hate against capitalism. Without which he would be a drunken bum wandering the streets.

          5. Doesnt it make him more trustable? For me it does. The thing is most people divide into leftist or rightist and thats nonsense. Both are lame. We need different stuff.

          6. He would have made more money remaining an actor. Yet he is now hated for this kind of thing but he is speaking his mind and proposing new stuff.

          7. How does being a moron and railing against the thing that made him successful make him more trustworthy?

          8. Cuz he is able to see beyond it. The easy thing is to shut up and remain becoming more rich.

          9. You don’t find the image of a guy wearing $800 shoes and $2000 pants lashing out at capitalism comical?

          10. Once you get to a certain level of wealth, more wealth is just superfluous.

17. As a pre-Med student, your take on health care is bogus.
    Billionaire surgeon Devi Shetty built a 2000 bed hospital in the Carribean to avoid the insurance scam that is Obama/Romneycare.
    The result? He provides heart transplants at a rate of $1200 USD per operation. His private insurance costs a whopping $12 USD per year. That is Free Market Capitalism.
    Meanwhile your Obamacare quotes heart transplants to he no less than $100k majority going to the insurance company. That is government mandate.

    1. Which shows how goverments are outhere to scam you.

       1. So True. The same insurance companies that benefit are the ones that contributed to his election campaign. Its political kick backs at its finest.
          Meanwhile, you and I suffer.

    2. On a side note, none of these monopolies would existed without government help. The folly of the Progressives is that their movement empowers the same Oligarchs they seek to punish.

18. Leftists like the author of this article….. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

19. at least you’re working. in some parts of Europe unemployment is over 25%

20. What I don’t get is, aren’t the rich taxed 50% of their earnings already? If that’s not socialism what the hell is? I got news for these commies, it aint working!

    1. And that’s just outright confiscatory taxation. That doesn’t include all of the side and extra taxes they, and most of us, pay as well.

       1. also there’s not much incentive to work lots of overtime cause then they take twice as much, when I worked offshore years ago we would work 16 to 18 hour days everyday and you could take my hourly wage and multiply by however many hours a week I worked which was usually 116 to 126 and my net income was always around $50 to that number meaning they took all of my time and half to taxes, I’m not bullshiting when I say I’ve paid 2k in taxes for one week of hard work to pay for the parasites. It’s hard not to try and cheat my taxes after getting raped like that

          1. They do that with bonsuses, too. They tax that check as if it was 1/26th or 1/52nd (or whatever your pay period is) of your yearly pay and calculate your taxes for that check that way.
             You will get the extra money they took back when you do your taxes, but it still sucks when you get paid and it’s not nearly as big as you thought it would be.

          2. I didn’t get a lot of it back, and now I’ve been audited for 2 years cause they don’t want to accept my write offs for all my on the road expenses so I’m having to find receipts and statesments to verify all this shit and they added 6k in penalties for something they’ve already approved. The entire tax code is fucked and they should just simplify it

          3. If they simplified it, you could understand it. If you could understand it, they wouldn’t be able to basically rape you by using arcane passages and language in their “code” that nobody, not even they, full grok.
             It was made this way on purpose. It’s to keep us in line and to let us know that the government can and will fuck with us whenever it wants.

          4. That’s pretty much the case, my CPA was explaining to the woman handling my case on why my write offs were legit but she wasn’t havent it and so I’ll probably have to get a tax attorney to settle it. It’s bullshit they can pick n choose what to accept on some things and they act like a personally owe them money and fucked them somehow

          5. “they should just simplify it”
             That would make sense. A lot of people think it should be simplified. Anyone in the country should be able to fill out their taxes on their own without the assistance of a tax attorney or tax specialist.
             However, the people in power lose power if that’s the case.
             If the tax rate is 15% of your total income for everyone, everywhere, no exceptions, no exemptions, there is no way to legally trade money for votes. Politicians would need to manage money well and pass laws that make sense to keep people voting for them.
             If the default tax rate is 60% of your total income with a slew of exemptions, I can put a new line in that says, “Prudzsky’s maximum tax rate is 30%” and you, happy to have saved so much money now feel compelled to vote for me. Multiple that by hundreds of representatives servicing thousands of companies and lobby groups and you end up with a 74,000 page tax code that no one truly understands.
             A complicated tax code is nothing more than a way for those in power to legally trade your money they took from you in the form of taxes, for votes and endorsements from others they give your money to, in the form of tax cuts and breaks.

          6. Indeed, their attitude is that your life and labor belongs to them, and they allow you to keep what they wish you to keep. If you begrudgingly hold any of your life’s work and sweat as yours, you are wrong…slave.
             And that’s exactly what it is, to be a slave. Many forms of slavery did not involve beatings and chains, in fact many slaves throughout history led lives of comfort many today couldn’t achieve on their own if they tried. The truth is, if you cannot claim your life and labor as yours, then you are nothing but property with privileges meted out by a merciful, or merciless, master.

    2. 1% Wall Street tax would fix everything

       1. There’s no way to tax ourselves out of the fiscal mess we’ve made. We owe far too much money and have far too many obligations.

          1. http://tarpley.net/docs/five-point-program.pdf

21. 4 ways on how not to write a political article:
    1) Verbally assault the reader
    2) Blame an economic system; suggest “facing reality” as a solution
    3) Label the political powers of a nation as “politricks”
    4) Provide zero pertinent information
    (face palm)

    1. You know, you are giving me great hope that Millennials can be salvaged, sir. Well said.

       1. It’s damn near a civic duty these days! After 20 minutes of re-reading the article I still do not understand what the author was trying to convey. I’m actually dumbfounded. Part-time economy? What is that exactly, I have never heard of this? Irony: author works in a field unrelated to the US economy.

       2. It’s damn near a civic duty these days! Young people really need to wake up. This article is so terribly written. I’ve read this article three times and I still cannot discern anything.

22. Author is a liberal moron

23. Like other readers have stated it: this is the worst article I have ever read here… and it’s pure bullshit.

24. I’m no longer a libertarian but reading this socialist shit made me want to pick up Friedrich Hayek again.

    1. Why are you no longer libertarian?

       1. Because i realized that it is just another form childish utopian idealism that has isn’t grounded in reality or even remotely achievable in the modern world. The modern libertarian movement as become just another mouth piece of liberal ‘progressism’ It is just another form of escapism.

          1. What alternative do you propose? Libertarianism allows every moron in the world engage in whatever social practices they wish provided it doesn’t begin to interfere with others. I certainly don’t want an external entity deciding acceptable social behavior.

          2. 1) Whatever right wing ideology that will unite right wing people under a single realistic idea instead of dividing them on meaningless ideological difference. Conservatism (not neocons) is the most likely candidate for this since a large number of people on the right already identify as such. They are the only one capable enough of getting enough numbers to defeat the left.
             2) Any right wing ideology that doesn’t invert help leftist by promoting the same ‘progressive’ dogma that they do. Ironically, this could have been libertarianism if they weren’t promoting the same cultural Marxist degenerate behavior that the left does. (ex..gay marriage, abortion, being a pothead, feminism, multiculturalism,sexual deviancy, open borders [the worst of all of them], promoting atheism,ect)
             Libertarianism could have been a solution if they were sticking to markets like they use to.

          3. I would contest that libertarianism is the closest to a conservative political ideology in the US and the only one that might be unifying. Again, what more feasible alternative exists? It’s certainly not the GOP which promotes large government as much as the Democrats. Moreover, there are societies now severely restricting of each of the personal (marriage, drugs, abortion, sex, religion, movement, etc.). I would never live in such an environment, but you are more than welcome to.

          4. ” It’s certainly not the GOP which promotes large government as much as the Democrats.”
             I don’t like the modern GOP either but they are the only party large enough to keep the left form getting absolute power in the country. Voting for them is necessary if we don’t want to live in a leftist progressive authoritarian nightmare that already exist in Sweden and other eruo countries. Considering massive debt and the amount of people in the US that are dependent on welfare and social security the government isn’t going to shrink anytime soon.

          5. I don’t think the modern GOP can survive the national stage without a more libertarian platform. The GOP has won one Presidential popular vote out of the last six. I find it very unlikely they are going to win 2016 either. It will probably be relegated to a regional party by 2021.

25. People thought I was crazy talking class warfare in the late 90’s. Even then, it was simple enough to understand that power corrupts and to see the hints of corruption everywhere. They thought I was a blowhard. Well, I am, but I was right.

26. Great article. I have been sitting on my TEFL for a few years, and I’ll be returning to China to teach next year. I’m also looking into other avenues outside of the 9-to-5 to make money.

    1. Can you guide me on how to get certified to teach English? As far as costs, school, etc.

27. Great article and truly balanced, however, more emphasis should be put on how the public was duped by both Wall Street Democrats and Republicans, who promised the never-ending bailouts to the banksters were necessary and a “blessing” (Charles T Munger). Until Americans disengage completely the corporate mass-media and their puppet politicians, nothing will change and new scientific-based industries, like nuclear fission and technology to use in space for future generations.

    1. Good points. I believe many Americans came together that day (right and left) when the government said it would bail out the banks.
       I believe many will also say that on that particular day they no longer believed in capitalism (what? bail out the banks?….that’s not how it’s supposed to work).

       1. Exactly, for the first time Americans failed to take responsibility, particularly the banksters that run Wall Street/City of London, and bailed out the crooks. Now the world is saying: “…the West has lost its way and we can no longer trust them.” Just look at the BRICS nations and how eventually the “dollar” will become less dominant and more weak, like the Mexican peso. The bailouts ruined the notion of “capitalism” and offered “socialism” for Wall Street/City of London, while an ever growing number of people in the West suffer and struggle to make ends meet. Next to institutionalized slavery, the bankster bailouts were probably the worse crimes ever perpetuated against humanity.

28. I like how you felt the need to say that your article wasn’t a moronic left wing screed, the reason you felt the need to do that was because you know that your article is a moronic left wing screed.
    Look, America’s problems can be summed up very simply. You are overtaxed and overregulated, that means manufacturing jobs flee the country and all you are left with is services and retail. With an economy that barely produces half of what your people consume you make up the difference by borrowing money to blow on imports. It’s the same in most western economies. Unfortunately, far too large a percentage of the population is dependent to some extent on this bloated state largesse and so correcting these problems using the current democratic mechanisms is impossible.
    We’re just waiting for a dollar collapse at the moment, just a matter of time.

    1. Manufacturing left the country in search for cheap labour not because of overtaxation. If you are big corporations, you hire the right people to help you avoid paying too much tax.
       Same thing will very soon happen in China as their society is becoming rather affluent too. In result the manufacturing will eventually come back to Europe and America but only when those regions become poor and desperate enough.

       1. You can’t hire people to get over the fact that that government slaps an extra 30% onto the cost of all your employees in income tax alone. The reason it’s worth it to manufacture things on the other side of the world and then transport them back here is because of the enormous regulatory and tax burden that makes labour uncompetitive. If you’re waiting for the Chinese to become affluent enough that manufacturing magically moves back here you are going to be disappointed. So long as they don’t make the mistake of doubling the effective cost of labour with all the regulation, taxes, and red tape like we have done it’s going to stay over there.

          1. Within ten years or so direct labor costs will be so minimal if not nonexistent. Automation is taking over.

          2. Which will be great for the same reason it’s great that harvesting a Wheatfield can now be done by 1 man in a combine harvester, rather than 50 men with scythes. All human progress is the elimination of jobs; get the output without the work, that is what technology is for.

          3. I agree. The only problem is that all those intensive labor jobs are being replaced with cubicle drone positions… And I’d have to say that’s bad for men. Most men are more content with doing things that require moving around and interacting with objects other than a keyboard and a mouse. In fact I think women may be better at menial data entry tasks. Just keep pressinh these keys and don’t ask questions.

          4. I agree. The only problem with that is all the intensive labor jobs are being replaced by office drone positions. This is not good for men, as most men need to do things that involve interaction with more than just a keyboard and a mouse to be content. In fact I’d go as far as saying that women are better at menial data entry tasks than men. Just sit there and keep entering these invoices and don’t ask questions. Plus offices tend to promote a feminist/blue pill beta culture full of meaningless drama.

          5. Ah sorry, I’m always so primed to refute the ”automation will make everyone unemployed” nonsense that I just assumed that’s what you were implying.
             What you say is pretty much true, and I’m not even convinced there is a way around it. Women are creatures of leisure of luxury, men are designed for want and hardship, they fare a lot better than us amid ease and plenty. Like you said, men need more than a boring job and consumer trinkets.
             Life sucks.

          6. You put it very well. In fact you provided me the missing link that I’ve been struggling to find.. It’s like one of those things you can identify, but can’t articulate the reason for it.
             Give a woman a fixed set of instructions and a guarantee that her needs will be met as long as she follows the instructions.. and she’ll do better than a man in the same situation. To her, the instructions are the be-all-end-all. They’re her reality, nothing exists outside of them.
             A man can’t be content with this because men can only be enthused by the crucible of trial and error in order to establish his own reference of reality. Of course, with the way the American public school system is, most men are conditioned to do the opposite.

       2. That’s not true.
          I’m an engineer and I work with machinists who will tell you that they won’t expand business beyond one location because taxes and regulations would eat them alive.

       3. To be fair, manufacturing is slowly making its return to the west. But that is not because we’re becoming more willing to work for cheap. The reason is that automation, not cheap labor, is the future of manufacturing. I work at a manufacturing plant that employs just a handful of general labors. The rest is all done by robots and machines.

       4. Yup. “If we can’t pay our workers peanuts and dump our waste into the nearest creek, we’re packing up and going elsewhere.” That was the philosophy.

29. “… all indicators suggest that we are on track to descend further down this myopic path of part-time unsustainability.”
    This statement doesn’t bear weight if you allow the word “unsustainability” — it’s very sustainable from a certain type of employer’s standpoint.
    Imagine a business model where you’ve automated most if not all of the difficult portions of the position, and for those others you’ve hired sufficiently competent people to take those burdens.
    You’ve arrived at the business model that McDonald’s kicked off many years ago for their cashiers, so it’s fitting that this article mentions cashier positions at Walgreen’s.
    If all a business requires is morons^H^H^H^H^H^H minimally trained people who will fill the position, hiring managers can find an adequate number that can be screened for the usual offences that the minimally employable tend to harbour. Large box retailers (Wal-Mart in the US comes to mind instantly) often do this screening through automated hiring systems located in each shop.
    The solution isn’t a race to increasing competencies, as consultancies tend to call these things — that’s the sort of thing that’s created the “college education bubble” in the US, where an increasingly larger number of people seek a larger number of sinecures and desk jobs.
    The part-time nature of these marginal positions nearly demands an innovation in how work can be structured, such as charging for results rather than hours. Harry Browne of the American Libertarian party once proposed this innovation, and it’s still in the realm of possibility.
    However, for jobs that require marginal competence that can be automated, expect them to be automated even more aggressively.
    As for McDonald’s (and possibly Walgreen’s), expect this sort of thing to make a comeback:
    Ministry of Wikipedia — “Automat”:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
    It may soon be possible in the United Kingdom to receive prescriptions in this way — it would do quite a bit of good to clear the queue of birth control and social disease treatment seekers out of the pharmacy queues around weekends, for instance …
    Why work hours in a pharmacy, being bored out of your skull (and perhaps requiring some of the pharm as well), when you can be in a home delivery business that brings those drugs to customers in less than three hours or they get a percentage off the purchase price?
    Add to this something like SOS Medicines (as it is in France) and you’d possibly put an ugly box such as Walgreen’s out of business …

    1. Let’s look at a positive result of some of these part time (service) jobs.
       Many Americans will finally get off of their asses (desk jobs) and lose a little weight.
       I know no one wants to talk about it…..that’s why Driver is here to say it. America is fat. It’s time to trim down, get to work, get lean and rebuild.
       Men did before…we can do it again.

30. You don’t have unfettered capitalism though, no country does.
    The closest country that comes to unlimited capitalism is China, ironically.
    It is true too much greed will destroy you, but that’s not the problem nor is it the cause of this part time economy. The Western world cannot compete with third world labor, and you’re going to be forced into service jobs to compensate, and there just aren’t as many of those.

31. Here is where we went wrong:
    1) Overpopulating our society: What the baby boomers did, was having too many children. The reality is there are not enough resources such as jobs and homes to accomodate the growing population. The reality is that the elite will never redistribute the wealth into job creation, nor will the politicians help out society or dismantle the central banks, since they have all been bought and paid for.
    2) Government: Government has grown out of control and look at what they have done: formed monopolies, created more red tape and regulations, destroying and eroding all you constitutional rights, killing off the middle class and supporting more jobs being outsourced. Don’t believe that government is your friend.
    3) Technology: As long as technology continues to develop at the rate it is, then expect more jobs to be replaced and automated. And no, don’t call me a fucking luddite, because as long as the general public continue to but more smartphones, apps and other technological and internet related goods, then expect more jobs to be replaced.
    Please add more points to the list.

    1. either between point 1&2 .. or ..2&3 should be the unleashing of world trade. It was not done gradually, once the WTO came online, the flipped the entire concept of economics upside down and inside out. The US wasn’t prepared for it. If the way to fix healthcare is force everyone to buy it themselves, maybe the way to avoid the economic strife would have been for force everyone to at least have a 2-year degree in a STEM-schooled background.

32. I’m interested in the author’s response to the comments. I cringed throughout this whole shitty article.

33. It never ends. If you have a good job every one is lazy and stupid to you, if you are unemployed or underemployed everyone is greedy and taking your future and American dream. There is some truth in both but the reality is that when men have good finances they can in turn lift a nation up. They pay taxes, provide for wives and kids work overtime, do all sorts of good things for society. The problem is men have been emasculated by the economy. And feminism. The average American Man Simply can’t get a job that will allow him to start and provide for a family. You people think it’s all Obama? Obama made it worse no doubt but he didn’t cause it all. When jobs that pay 40-50k go overseas and then don’t get replaced or are replaced with a 8 dollar and hour job. Your society is fucked. Bottom line there are not enough jobs, and most of the ones that exist are shit jobs that have 5-10 applicants. Republicans, Democrats, wherever you want to blame. A society can’t function when most people see no future and have little to no stake in society. . I’m also sick of baby boomers who walked out of high school with a 2.0 gpa and into a good job with benefits paying 40-50k when adjusted for inflation calling younger people lazy and entitled. They think you are dumb and lazy if you can’t buy a home at 22 and start a family. They are the most detached and greedy generation in human history. They still claim hard work pays off and good jobs exist. Bull shit. I can’t wait to pull the plug on the fucks after sticking them in an Obama care hospice death camp.

    1. Harsh…………but you’re not wrong.

    2. A society can’t function when most people see no future
       I completely understand the frustration, but you need to find some future to see. You are right, it’s not the same future I was told was coming either, but you can’t just say, “Bullshit” and call it quits.
       If you’re not sure of a direction to go, or need help trying to figure out what you could try to make a future for yourself, you can probably ask here and people would be willing to help you or give you suggestions, but giving up is not an option.

    3. And that’s why we’re here, James.
       It will take men to solve this large problem. Everyone’s input will be needed and we’ll need “all hands on deck”.
       The problem started a long time ago, no doubt. It’s now time to find solutions.

       1. I agree. I’m just frustrated and like most men I see my life diminished and wasted. . The biggest waste a nation can have is its people unemployed and wasting their lives away. This is a travesty and there are tens of millions of men sitting there looking for a voice, a path to a normal life. .

          1. I’ve always enjoyed being an “ice cutter”. You’re essentially cutting a path (and making a new path) where no one has been at all.
             It may be time for us (men) to become that “ice cutter”. It’s a new time, there is no path..so we’ll have to make one.
             Like I said…we’re men and we’re good at it (finding solutions). It’s been that way since the dawn of time.

          2. You’re going to have to be that “ice cutter”, James. It’s not easy but with us (men at ROK)…we’ll cut a path (find a solution).

       2. Men, and a very few exceptional women who are outliers to the feminist sheep bell curve. Don’t forget, occasionally you’ll come across your sensible women. There are still some Margaret Thatcher’s out there.

34. Good to see economic articles on ROK, I enjoy them the most. You are posing questions which is always positive, you are flat wrong on current market, it is not a free market, it is heavily rigged to preserve big business, and other government interests, if you want to see a true free market, you should look at examples like China as others have mentioned which is more along the lines.
    You are correct in that both so called liberals and conservatives in power are more interested in preserving their own interests. The whole gay/abortion thing at the top is nothing but a distraction for the masses, it’s all about power and money as it has always been for all of human history, this time is no different, why would it be?
    I don’t see the current system lasting very long at all, so no I don’t think we will see a permanent part time economy, there are no fundamentals to base that off. We are headed for a period of high economic instability in the U.S, honestly it doesn’t even bother be much at all anymore. I know I have a good chance at adapting and even thriving, the system is pretty rigged to the hilt at this point and yet I have done well so far, but only because I knew it was rigged and have managed to avoid some of the pitfalls mainly debt.
    Men should focus on seeing the true economic realities at hand and adapting and thriving it can be done in any country, is it like the 50s or everything you were told in civics/econ class, well no and that sucks but it is what it is. It’s clear this country is headed for a civil war in the next 50-100 years and I’m sure out of that we will see true changes, but the ruling parties will still be the moneyed class.

    1. Interesting. We were discussing free markets in the comments section on the article that discussed Haiti.
       It seems that some of the most simple and “free” markets come from third world countries (like Haiti and countries in South America).
       I can’t remember which country (read an article) but it has a whole network of simple, small markets operating as a truly free market system (down to the basics). It was very interesting to find it in third world countries while some in the U.S. try to say we have one here.
       We have a market, here. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an “unfettered, free market” though.

35. It could be because Yanks are fucking dense.

    1. Save your effete elitism for people who don’t know better.

36. I really enjoyed reading this article and its take on our current Political System and our version of Capitalism. I would fall more on the leftist paradigm of our two party system if I could only pick between the two parties, however I do not support every position on the left. I do agree with equal opportunity between men and women, and any race as long as merit is involved. Many on the right and the media that presents conservative views such as Fox News I view as presenting very skewed “Black and White” History and view of current society. While many on the Right would say the leftist media presents a “P.C.” view of the world (which I partially agree with). However some things that are lumped as P.C. I view as a presentation of a more complete view of history that was whitewashed for centuries. For example Columbus “Discovery” of America was whitewashed for generations but I didn’t here those people claiming to want to present a more accurate view of history, and they would call the present presentation which is a more complete view as “P.C.” so I view this as hypocritical.
    Some arguments are that Blacks and Latinos are stuck in the “Plantation” of the Democratic Party but I can argue that many poor whites are also stuck in the “Plantation” of Republicanism when they vote against their interest because of some Xenophobic undertones voiced in Conservative media such as “Fox News.”
    However I do agree that in the case of “minorities” in this country being heavily invested in one party can be a detriment as they lose the ability to play both parties to further their own interests or improve their condition.
    The assumption that Obama is Communist or even close to Socialist is laughable and inaccurate, as Obama has actually alienated many leftist in his own party. The truth is that the Centuries long racism maybe diminished or administered in more clandestine fashion, but is also becoming what I believe extremely a class issue in overall nature. Which is encompassing the entire populace no matter the race, although race still may play a factor. Social mobility is rapidly diminishing and the middle class is becoming anemic. More middle class whites are not achieving the same social mobility as previous generations in their own cohort which has manifested itself in movements like Occupy Wall street. A situation which most Latinos and Blacks have long experienced in this country. Voting is becoming a “lesser of two evils” situation, and third parties are viewed as siphoning potential voters from either party depending on the Third Party. The Republicans would serve their big bank masters and further give breaks to the banks and corporations that cause the last Great Recession, but Obama actually bailed these same entities out as “too Big to Fail.” Also his interest in pushing his T.P.P plan is a cause for concern. Fact is Obama is much more intelligent than his predecessor and did mitigate the bleeding we suffered under the Bush Administration but its basically a slow poison over the fast poison. We are heavily in debt, college tuition is rising, social mobility is reducing, and we have an increase of credit lines and mortgages underwater. The rise of part time jobs, less money, and higher debt is changing the dynamics of Women and Men that are heavily discussed on this website, and the breakup or delay of the family and family formation.
    America was a very strong Nation and still is militarily at least, but there was a reason Andrew Jackson shut down the Federal Banks and advocated for the rights of the common man (Although those men were only Whites.) and people like Teddy Roosevelt busting the Robber Barons. But our system is based on other countries remaining poor and working jobs for wages that we do not wish to work for, thing is that now the Corporations and Big Banks are doing the same thing that they always did to Black and Brown people around the world and are doing it to everyone in the United States no matter the race you belong too. I hope for the best, but I know things will not improve.

    1. You’re the one commenter that knows his shit and sees history for what it is and not with some ideological slant.

       1. Thanks Travis.

37. “Capitalism may be the best form of an economic system that we have, but unfettered free-market capitalism invokes excessive greed and a lack of responsbility for the well-being of society. It is merely in the interest of big business and the upper class to gradually institutionalize a part-time economy.”
    Sir, I disagree with this statement. I believe that you have it backwards. Capitalism is not responsible for the part-time economy, rather it is the fault of creeping socialism, coupled with globalisation and high levels of immigration. As regulation surrounding employment proliferates, employers find it is cheaper in terms of both time and money to hire casual employees rather than hiring full-time employees – with all the risks and administrative issues that entails. Further, the job market is more competitive in the USA today due to outsourcing and availability of cheap labour.
    As to whether or not capitalism ‘invokes excessive greed and a lack of responsibility for the well-being of society” I would argue that this is also untrue. Capitalism does not encourage greed so much as account for the fact that humans are inherently greedy. The “excessive greed” and “lack of responsibility for the well-being of society” (whatever that means) can be considered the fault not of the economic system, but the social system in which people are raised. As the social system in the USA has changed, so have people’s attitudes to society and the self.
    It seems that even on this site, the unsupportable criticisms of capitalism are advanced as accepted.

38. This doesn’t deserve a well-thought out comment. This article is brainless.

39. I love the smell of Marxism in the morning…

40. “[U]nfettered free-market capitalism?” Do you think this exists in the U.S.? In what alternative universe do you live?

41. This guy needs to go to Captain Capitalism’s blog. Then he’ll learn that that guy is the only authority needed on the economy.

    1. It’s a damn shame. We’ve had a few people in a position to make a positive impact on our economy (for the better of society). The problem is: depending who is in office, at the time, they didn’t want to fix things.
       Many like things “just the way they are” because it’s nothing more than a large welfare system (top to bottom).
       If anything, the small to medium businesses should have come first in our system. They create the new jobs and help this country grow (plus help to create real competition). Large corporations getting handouts (not taxed) and individual welfare recipients are the problem…not a solution.
       The middle is shrinking and it will no longer be able to sustain our system (a real problem).

42. What an amazing post. I sometimes feel like I am alone in my views as a 40 year old C level exec and the son of a Fortune 500 Exec who retired after tanking the company with his buddies, getting a golden parachute and screwing 10s of thousands of regular joes out of their pensions (It went away when Polaroid went bankrupt the first time in 1998. (My Dad became a multimillionaire I saw American capitalism first hand that day.) . What a great article. I drove by some 40 year old overweight guy in a SUV yesterday with a “Despite public opinion you arent entitled to anything” Funny.. these people are racing to the bottom and they dont even realize it. It will catch them a LOT sooner than it will be me. I dont know this viewpoint your express in your article I think is spot on. There is a large part of the middle class that think the rich, corporations and big business are their friends. They arent. They are there for the maximization of income. That is it.. nothing else. That means the smaller amount they can pay these guys the better the stock price does. Im hoping the bottom falls out soon but that just doesnt seem likely anymore. I dont know.. It is funny you can tell who didnt read your article because of the “socialism” comments. Surprised their pictures arent obama done up like the joker. This just in.. Government isnt your biggest enemy I just wish people could see that before this all ends. It wont end because of government.

43. Well written but I disagree with most of what you said here. GhostOfJefferson covered most of it (damn thunder thief) but the simple breakdown is this: Obamacare has screwed a lot of businesses, hence, their need to hire part time workers in order to avoid paying benefits like healthcare (you say greed, I say financial prudence). There are other elements involved but that’s the long and short of it.
    You lured us on with your title thinking this was going to be an article on why the part time economy is here to stay. To your credit, you addressed it but only partially. You’re clearly a leftist and that’s fine. But drawing us in with self deprecating narrative about how “bad” the left is and what pussies they (you) are was a thinly veiled disguise. It’s not a stretch to say we all knew what was coming afterwards (i.e. “I like really like your idea and I think it has potential but…”)
    I’m all for expressing political points of view whichever side of the aisle you sit on but in the future just keep it real. If you’re a part time web designing, Apple disciple, Starbucks coffee drinking, corduroy pants wearing hipster who’s an extreme leftist (your phrase “big business” was a dead giveaway by the way…) then just admit it. Whether or not anyone agrees with what you’re saying doesn’t matter so long as your initial presentation isn’t disingenuous.

    1. I think a big part of the problem is the labels (left or right; liberal or conservative)….and letting society paint you one or the other – with that broad brush.
       I consider myself a centrist who leans left or right depending on the issue (and or my own personal experiences, influences, opinion, etc…). I don’t let anyone tell me “who I am”.
       I carry a concealed handgun permit (yes, complete with handgun). Right away, someone would try to label me “a conservative”.
       We have to stop with the “dividing”. It’s what keeps the country stagnant and it’s what, the few in power, want from us (the infighting, dividing and distractions to keep us busy).
       As men, we need to find the solution to our problem and fix it. It’s what we do best.

       1. It’s fun when somebody finds out I hate taxes, love a free market and carry a handgun. The “you’re a right wing loon!” label comes out the gate, but fast. Until I note that I’m against the War on Drugs, would oppose a draft, want to abolish the unconstitutional surveillance society, endorse the UCLA’s courses on how to stay silent around police, do not worship cops and soldiers, and in fact I also wouldn’t mind terribly having sex with as many women as possible.
          Cognitive dissonance is such a joy to witness.

          1. GIVE ME YOUR GUN GOYIM. WE KNOW WHAT’S BEST

          2. LOL!

    2. just to add…a few good points, though, Sharp.

44. I feel like people are missing the point of this article. Why is everyone so hellbent on blaming the economy on obamacare. The problems of the economy and creation of the new part-time economy derive light years beyond obamacare. This has been in the making for years. Those who control the economy want the common folk to get caught up in a game of ignorance. Obamacare simply says that a company with 50 or more full time employees has to provide healthcare. What is so terrible about that. The problem is not with obamacare, but more with companies being greedy.

    1. The current state of our economy is more associated to the creation of the WTO. We opened to floodgates to world trade, no one just slowly turned on the spigot, and this is the result a few decades later.

       1. But yes, Obama coincides perfectly with conspiracy theories and the Illuminati..NWO, etc.. the latest scape goat clown we call the president in this country nowadays… just an actor. that’s all.

          1. This is an anti-semetic canard!

    2. That is in fact not what Obamacare says, in toto.
       I urge you to educate yourself about this onerous law from sources you do NOT agree with. If it were a simple mandate that companies with 50+ employees must provide insurance, it wouldn’t have been a 2,500 page law. You got some reading to do, friend.

45. Power and Greed are not the same.
    It’s true capitalism doesn’t ignore the fact that humans are motivated by greed or self-interest. The desire to take care of one’s self, then their family and friends over their community or nation, is something that capitalism is dependent on. However, it’s a self-checking mechanism that leads to competition, although it’s not it’s primary purpose.
    However, power is not a self-checking mechanism. Power is the desire to control human beings, and it’s a desire that is never satisfied, until it completely corrupts and consumes whoever seeks it. When people can’t go into the world and pursue advancement and their self-interests, they often choose to control the interests of others, often for a “common good”, such people never reach their goal, and are thus never happy or satisfied. The constitution was designed to make power so hard to accumulate, that most people would just focus on their “trivial”, self-interests and not waste their time.
    We’ve been in decline since Sputnik, when we entrusted our economy and politics, to people who are driven primarily by pursuits of power, which have leaked into all our institutions. We figured that if the Soviets, who were collectivized, unconcerned with wealth and primarily concerned with world domination through ideology, that we ourselves should be driven to do the same.

    1. Greed is the vehicle to arrive at power. I can promise you that, and nearly everyone who came from nothing – and seemingly forgets where the fuck they came from – will exercise that power when enough money has been accumulated to do so. This is the equation, I’ve rarely seen it fail.
       After you have a few million in the bank, there’s no need for more except for 1) Hoarding, 2) A false sense of security, or delayed onset of the inevitable IF a major catastrophe occurs, 3) and …. POWER.

       1. Absolutely not.
          The great dictators of the 20th century like Hitler, Mussolini and Mao, never appealed to people’s greed or self-interest. They had nothing and didn’t want money. Hell Stalin, was able to convince millions of people that money was useless.
          The lesson that people have refused to learn from the 19th and 20th centuries is that the desire for wealth and the desire for power are not the same. The desire for profit, is simply a reflection of the self’s desire to constantly improve, it’s just directed at money. The desire for power, is based off a desire to control, manage and instruct men, reducing them to means and ends.
          Can one be greedy and also want power? Yes! However, one doesn’t lead to the other.

46. this is because of obamacare regulations

47. I’m in Canada and this article has merit.
    We have a conservative government in power and it’s the same old non sense.
    They reduced our GST – federal tax by 2%.. the very tax that party introduced in the 80’s and said it would only be temporary. The hilarity continued when the opposing, liberal, party campaigned on the notion of eliminating the GST completely.
    Here we are, 20 years later, and it went down 2%. yet, property taxes, gas taxes, everything has continued to rise…
    and the provincial party found a clever way to “harmonize” taxes… so you can contribute to the wonderful government on purchases they weren’t making enough on before.
    All of this happening while our Premier set up and then canceled power plants (that no one wanted in the first place) that are set to cost only 500 Billion or so…
    He then voluntarily resigned and shut down investigations… I think he’s a professor at Oxford now or something.
    Anyhow, the genius voters in my province then went ahead and voted this same gas scandal liberal party in with a majority vote…. oh the replacement Premier is a lesbian, so that somehow adds to her qualifications.
    The joke of it was, the opposition (conservatives) campaigned on cutting 100 thousand government jobs so as to trim the “fat”… no not those political jobs that are an easy 100 – 150 K for working maybe half the year, with unbelievable pension and benefits…
    no it was to cut those over paid officers, nurses, teachers…
    Oh yeah… and our government continually gives itself a pay increase yearly…
    I really believe that Canada is the testing ground for whatever secret (exclusive) society it is that are calling the shots and manipulating people.
    Also… our healthcare system is not anywhere near what it used to be.
    The erosion of our civilization has been underway for decades now… but it seems we are setting up nicely for the apocalyptic phase.
    Good luck to everyone.

48. I don’t disagree with everything in this article especially the last part of it where sound advice is given. It has been said before that before that America has “socialism for the rich” but also for the ones in the bottom too that can get by on handouts. It’s those in the middle who work to enrich the top group and support the bottom who are truly being screwed. One simply can’t characterize this economy and point directly at faulty “leftist” or “rightist” politics to lay the blame completely on one side or the other. The financial and economic system has in the last 20 years been distorted beyond belief by artificially low interest rates, excessive leverage and countless fast-buck hedge fund and private-equity fund operations sustained by the financial bubble. And this is not happening only in America but other traditional social countries such as Sweden are also reporting sharp increases in inequality.
    The simple fact is those at the top of the pyramid are manipulating or the economy with the government’s support (Republican or Democrat).

49. Humans are greedy, no amount of regulation will change that. What big government and regulation does is ensure that big business is protected from competition. The state has a monopoly on the use of force, no business can force you to support them by buying their products, but they can petition the state to force you. Or influence the state to make onerous regulations so that start-ups cannot comply without having a massive compliance department filled with useful idiots who do not create value.

50. What an immature article from an immature mind. ROK editors should do a better job. It is ok to be a leftist, the “Big Business” comment was the giveaway but a little perspective would go a long way. It is obvious that you have never hired an employee nor ever run a business whether “big” or small.

    1. “…you dinnt billlld dat.”

51. I think it`s perfectly fine that people voice other opinions than what is common on this site. (I assume that most ROK regulars are Liberal-Conservative)
    I agree with GhostOfJefferson however that it`s not ok to call people fucking idiots or similar for not agreeing with the authors stance.

52. Wait until tax time when people didn’t get the memo that they owe the IRS 1% of their income if they didn’t get health coverage. I pay a ridiculous premium and my deductible is very high. The thing is, if you belong to a religion that isn’t down with Universal Health Coverage, you don’t have to pay. Nevermind socialism, the ACA is corporate fascism. I can’t wait to see how people react come tax time. If people are not already disillusioned, just wait.

53. You’re free to disagree with anything in the article or be critical of
    its angle, but weirdo anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists, brash keyboard
    alphas, and stormfront-level white nationalists will be banned and/or
    deleted. Muh Holocaust 🙁 Remember the 6 Trillion!!!!

    1. <>…dafuq?

54. You can go fuck yourself. First of all what we have is not a free market or anything close to it. Second Barack Obama is about to crown himself Emperor tomorrow night using the Constitution as toilet paper in the process. You know his dad proposed a 100% tax rate and in Barack’s case the apple sure didn’t fall far from the tree. This article is a steaming pile of shit.

55. See, Marxism is the full cancer of society. It robs a country of its wealth, a people of their morals and a country of its hope. Observe this fool, blaming everyone but himself, lying, attempting to shame others for actions not their own, all for the sake of serving an ideology that robbed wealth and caused his complaint in the first place. Populism only sounds correct when your soul is so destitute you have the arrogance and audacity to think you are correct and others are all wrong in absolute.

56. Well, this article is filled with dumb assery, but I will comment on just what I know a lot about which is the health care system. Our intrepid author says, ” that a health care system is practical and better for the long term economy”. This, mind you, is his only argument against conservativism. Note that ‘a health care system’ is completely undefined as to type. Since he uses it as the argument against capatalism and conservatives it can be inferred that he means a government run system.
    If self reliance, fiscal responsibility, and traditional values are not what you are about as a man, then what the heck are you doing on this site. But I digress.
    Back to health care. Ok, do you realize what medicine could do as little as 100 years ago. The answer is not much. The most widely read medicine textbook of the time suggested you treat diabetes with morphine. I kid you not. It devoted over 100 pages to the progression and treatment of syphilus. Todays textbook–less than one page. 1910; progressive dementia, aortic aneursyms: Today? antibiotic and done.
    In the 1950’s and 6o’s surgeons were still hooking patients vessels and/or bowels up different ways to find out what would happen. CT scanners, PET scanners, MRIs were nonexistant. There are treatments today for cancer that have almost a 100% cure rate that were a quick death sentence 30 years ago.
    Unfortunately, all these high tech gadgets and treatments cost lots and lots of money. An MRI machine is well over a million dollars. Which is why there might not be to many in Uganda.
    The profit motive drives commerce. That is why we have all those fancy gadgets, and why so much stuff has been invented here, in the U.S. and not in despotic dictatorships. Your ability to enjoy these goods is not from some sort of inventors altruism.
    Top down heath care, like top down management anywhere, is not efficient for large groups(like oh, 300 million). Top down, autocratic rule is socialism! Then your enemy is faceless, heartless, gov’t workers who might just have complete authority over your life.
    So, any group that wants to control your choices by dictat is moving this country towards socialism, and, by God, don’t the Democrats want to do that, be it health care, soda size, or what is going to heat your home(not hydocarbons).
    What an idiot!

57. The problem is not that it’s a part-time economy. The problem is that most employers want you to be available full-time but only pay you part-time. Most corporations want you under their thumb at all times. They don’t allow you to work your own hours and most don’t allow you to work off-site.

58. Dear author,
    I invite you to learn some fundamental principles of human behavior under conditions of scarcity of useful things (i.e. economics). Your misconceptions are evident in this piece. What we have today in most of the world is FAR from a free-market system, and it does a lot of damage to suggest that the “unfettered” system needs to brought under control by government. It is already HIGHLY regulated in ways that enrich the well-connected overlords (control of money being the starting point) and transfer wealth from builders/producers to the parasites.
    Here is a coupon to take the course for $2 at Udemy (-90%):
    https://www.udemy.com/of-markets-and-men-visual-introduction-to-austrian-economics/?couponCode=OMM2DEAL
    I can’t offer it for free because spammers would sign up and pollute the discussion. Others on this board who want to solidify their economic understanding are encouraged to take a look at the content and participate in the discussion with the instructor and other students.
    If the admin here considers this comment to be unhelpful spam, please delete it. No worries then. But most people need help on this subject after years of mal-education, and this is a course that condenses years of study into 3 hours of video lessons.

59. That is why I am getting my Certificates so I can work in the mining and oil patches in Alberta and also plan on learning several new languages (French, Mandarin, Spanish, Korean). Tired of this settle-for-less economy were living in (Canada for the most part). Ontario is going nowhere economically for a while. All the jobs in Canada are mostly going to the Western provinces if not China and India. It’s a statistical fact! Western Canada…here I come!

60. Ultimately, we have to blame ourselves for being duped by the “politricks” of the Left and Right. The business class wants us to take sides. They want us to fall into an ugly abyss of patriotism, single-issue campaigns and ignorance, while ignoring the real underlying economic dysfunctions that have a greater overall impact on our daily lives.

    Ultimately, there’s no solution. The underlying economic dysfunction is women’s illegitimate entitlement to fuck and breed children they cannot care for. It’s a horrific situation because they’re breeding children as hostages who can’t be rescued. Their evil is so unconscionable, they make their victims attached to ensure maximum suffering if they’re separated from their meal ticket.
    The human species cannot be rescued from betrayal at this low a level. Somebody needs to pay and the US war machine has run out of countries that can be pillaged to pay for American women’s noncontribution. The last time the US played a war game at home, its opponents were the US.
    They’re frantically throwing women into the workforce now but it’s too late.
    The US is reportedly $222 trillion in debt because the children of delusionally entitled parasites will be parasitic.
    “Somebody needs to pay for my 15 children.” But there’s no more cake for entitled whores. The Rich are forced to cull.
    Forbes: 1.6 Billion Rounds of Ammo for Homeland Security

61. I stopped reading after “unfettered free-market capitalism”. That world doesn’t exist anywhere. When 40% of the US economy is comprised of state spending, its something other than unfettered free markets at work.

62. ” I am all for … chemical-free food”
    Hahahahah – so you mean nothing. Food-free food. Food is made from chemicals, you f***wit. Just in that one statement is everything wrong with socialists: they don’t think they have to know anything at all about an issue to know it is wrong. This article is full of evidence for that.
    You don’t like hipsters, so on the left it is their fault.
    You hate conservatives, so your argument against them is just obscenity.
    The entire argument about the destruction of the healthcare system was an
    assertion against a straw man. No reasoning. No attempt to address the
    actual arguments against Obamacare. Just an assertion that a healthcare
    system is good in the long term for economic prosperity.
    No-one disputes this. No-one even disputes that there were serious problems with the US healthcare system. People hate Obamacare because it is insane, hence the “intelligent” man behind it (who cannot even understand the nature of insurance, I notice) felt the need to lie about it. It is insane to force poor, young, healthy people to pay for the healthcare of wealthier, older, sicker people. It is insane to force insurance to take on people for existing conditions (that is not insurance, the error that the stupid man Gruber made)! It is insane to force people to buy insurance. It is insane to force insurers to cover regular costs, that just adds a layer of bureaucracy and expense.
    There are plenty of good ideas to improve US healthcare. The ACA is not one of them.
    As for “…unfettered free-market capitalism invokes excessive greed and a lack of responsbility for the well-being of society…”, there are so many things wrong with this short phrase I could write a book, so of necessity much will be missed. First, where is there any unfettered free market that you so confidently condemn? Second, who died and left you in charge of what is excessive? Third socialism is based on greed, on wanting someone else to pay; capitalism is based on exchange that both sides feel is fair. Hence socialism is authoritarian because force is necessary and capitalism is liberal (not in the stupid sense of US politics; everyone else calls that socialism, it is certainly not liberal!) because it is based on freely-made trade. Fourth, capitalism is reality, not a choice. People react to incentives, regulation just distorts them. Fifth, who said corporations have a responsibility for society? The people in society are responsible for society. Walmart has a responsibility to make a return on investment; to do so they must
    make free exchange with customers, who will not come back if Walmart poisons them or otherwise pisses them off. Do you really want the board of American Airlines (or any other badly-run company) to be responsible for anything in society that you don’t get to choose?
    That is not a bad start at ripping the heart out of this insane socialist dribble upon the pages of the internet you might like to think of as your article.

63. james soller,
    You’re an idiot. You complain of problems that are caused by politicians interfering with our lives. Your idiot solution? More politicians interfering with our lives.
    It’s pathetic that you imply conservatives don’t read, but it’s clear your an ignorant buffoon bereft of any real learning. And it’s clear you’ve never read an economics book in your life, as your entire rant is the rant of fourth grader.
    Quit being a pussy. Fix your own life. Stop looking to government with your hand out like a fucking bum.

    1. I can’t find the line where James Soller argues for more government intervention. All I can see is Mr. Soller arguing that we should all get a few tickets to improve our chances of finding employment.
       Oh.. And ipencil – take Mr. Clarey’s cock out of your mouth.

       1. I can’t find the line where James Soller argues for more government intervention.
          soller’s major points are that since he can’t trust employers, politicians MUST intervene.
          Examples:
          “Flexibility is great, but a little security within a civilized and developed society is also a necessity.”
          Implying that security should be enforced by law.
          “Capitalism may be the best form of an economic system that we have, but unfettered free-market capitalism invokes excessive greed and a lack of responsbility for the well-being of society.”
          Implying that politicians should intervene on soller’s behalf to check the “unfettered”.
          “If you are reading this and you are a conservative, then you can go fuck yourself as well because I am definitely not on your side.”
          If he’s not on the side of smaller government, he’s on the side of larger government.
          “Anyone with a half a brain can realize that a healthcare system is practical and better for the long-term economy.”
          soller says the above, after his “fuck you” rant about free-markets. Obviously, in soller’s idiot brain, somehow a healthcare system simply cannot exist. His stupidity leads him to conclude that a healthcare system is a system that politicians set up.
          And PUMPsix, perhaps you should take soller’s and the other five dicks being pumped into you out of your ass.

          1. Implications are not statements – and they’re definitely not solutions.
             “[P]oliticians MUST intervene.” That’s why we pay them a whole lot of money.

          2. Implications are not statements
             So? The only way the statements of soller’s that I quoted make sense is if he actually WANTS government intervention, i.e., soller is arguing for government intervention.
             That’s why we pay them a whole lot of money.
             Wrong. You may think they are paid to interfere in our lives, particularly our economics lives, but the entire purpose of our republic is to have a political system that protects our natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Your fantasies aren’t fact, no matter how much you want your fantasies to be fact. You and soller want to discard liberty, and become serfs to political masters, thereby making it impossible to pursue your own happiness.
             And as I said before, all the things soller complains about are caused by politicians interfering into our lives, particularly our economic lives. It’s odd that he then thinks the solution is… more intervention?

          3. “So? The only way the statements of soller’s that I quoted make sense is if he actually WANTS government intervention, i.e., soller is arguing for government intervention.”
             [1] and [2] has a simple solution. [3] is nothing. [4] is maintaining that status-quo. Is the issue government intervention or more government intervention? Because, I’ve noticed a slight equivocation in the charges being made against Soller.
             However, I would also like to point out that one can solve the problem of the ‘part-time’ economy, while simultaneously reducing the overall size of the state.
             “Wrong. You may think they are paid to interfere in our lives, particularly our economics lives, but the entire purpose of our republic is to have a political system that protects our natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Your fantasies aren’t fact, no matter how much you want your fantasies to be fact. You and soller want to discard liberty, and become serfs to political masters, thereby making it impossible to pursue your own happiness.”
             You do realise the United States originally subscribed to protectionist policies? The problem Soller is lamenting was caused by a reduction in government intervention in a single economic sphere.

          4. I’m assuming your numbering is each soller quote I used above. Please correct if I’m wrong, as you simply started numbering things.
             [1] and [2] has a simple solution
             I’m assuming your numbering is each soller quote I used above. Please correct if I’m wrong.
             Security as a necessity has no solution, so it can’t be “simple”. Absolutely nothing in the universe is secure. But you’re right [2] has a simple “solution” (again, there is no “solution”). An unfettered market is exactly what’s needed. No one checks rapacious businessmen more ruthlessly than customers.
             [4] is maintaining that status-quo.
             You want to have government run healthcare, which is the current status quo? Because, again, the solution is to get government out of healthcare all together, which is a dramatic shift from the status quo.
             Is the issue government intervention or more government intervention?
             Both. If the problem is government intervention, the “solution” to that problem is to roll back government. The “solution” is most definitely not more government.
             I would also like to point out that one can solve the problem of the ‘part-time’ economy, while simultaneously reducing the overall size of the state.
             Of course, but that’s not what soller is advocating. He’s mainly just bitching and offering no actual solutions, but he is sure of one thing: government needs to tell him how to live his life.
             You do realise the United States originally subscribed to protectionist policies?
             So? Bad policy is bad policy, even when it was done by the founders. Some of the signers of the bill of rights actually signed into law the Sedition Act of 1798, directly contradicting the first amendment. The founders were men, not gods. We have two hundred years of economic knowledge that they didn’t have, as well as tools that the founders wouldn’t know from magic to understand that knowledge. Open boarders and free trade are an unqualified good for everyone.
             The problem Soller is lamenting was caused by a reduction in government intervention in a single economic sphere.
             Wrong. International trade currently done by the US is done exclusively through government intervention. So called “free trade” agreements are nothing more than government interference and crony capitalism.
             I don’t believe you have established this fact.
             1. The insecurity of jobs, particularly full time jobs, is largely a result of the enormous amount of labor regulation. The quick shift from full time to part time over the last few years is almost completely attributable to the awful incentives put in play by the ACA.
             2. He just complains about “unfettered capitalism” as a bad thing, which is isn’t. He doesn’t specifically complain about anything specific, so yes, “unfettered capitalism” is not caused by government interference.
             3. Just a general “fuck you” you to conservatives, which are very much to blame for their hand in outsized government.
             4. He laments that only government can build a health care system, which is patently false. Pretty much every single problem with the health care system is government meddling into people’s healthcare lives.
             I don’t play ‘spot the coercion’ any-longer.
             That’s great. That means you’ve gotten on board with telling everyone how to live and using government force to do it. Ideas so awesome people only do them under penalty of violence.
             Either you believe that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or you don’t. You either believe people have the right to live their lives as they want, for good or bad, so long as they don’t take another’s life and liberty or you don’t. If you don’t believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there really is nothing left to discuss. If you’re idea is that your idea is the one true way to do some piece of business and everyone else be damned, then YOU are the problem. As such, we no longer have anything to discuss.
             You can have the last word.

          5. “Security as a necessity has no solution, so it can’t be “simple”. Absolutely nothing in the universe is secure. But you’re right [2] has a simple “solution” (again, there is no “solution”). An unfettered market is exactly what’s needed. No one checks rapacious businessmen more ruthlessly than customers.”
             Then why bother with insurance? Sure. We can’t be absolutely secure. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t implement economic policies to secure better job prospects.
             To buy cheap Chinese consumables on leverage? Selling the United States out from under your feet in the process. Not only are you willing to buy the rope to hang yourself with – you’re willing to pay top dollar for it.
             “You want to have government run healthcare, which is the current status quo? Because, again, the solution is to get government out of healthcare all together, which is a dramatic shift from the status quo.”
             Yes and no. Nationalised healthcare should be something that all citizens can feel proud about. However, Obamacare is a total fuckup. The Australian healthcare system is far superior to that of the United States.
             “So? Bad policy is bad policy, even when it was done by the founders. Some of the signers of the bill of rights actually signed into law the Sedition Act of 1798, directly contradicting the first amendment. The founders were men, not gods. We have two hundred years of economic knowledge that they didn’t have, as well as tools that the founders wouldn’t know from magic to understand that knowledge. Open boarders and free trade are an unqualified good for everyone.”
             That’s the problem – open borders and free-trade is good for everyone. Your problem is that you love 3rd World Coolies more than your own compatriots.
             “1. The insecurity of jobs, particularly full time jobs, is largely a result of the enormous amount of labor regulation. The quick shift from full time to part time over the last few years is almost completely attributable to the awful incentives put in play by the ACA.”
             Combined with a failing economy. Healthcare systems can be afforded while the nation is doing well.
             “4. He laments that only government can build a health care system, which is patently false. Pretty much every single problem with the health care system is government meddling into people’s healthcare lives.
             But, but, what about the roads?
             So how would the free market build a healthcare system?
             “That’s great. That means you’ve gotten on board with telling everyone how to live and using government force to do it. Ideas so awesome people only do them under penalty of violence.
             Violence gets things done.
             “Either you believe that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or you don’t. You either believe people have the right to live their lives as they want, for good or bad, so long as they don’t take another’s life and liberty or you don’t. If you don’t believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there really is nothing left to discuss. If you’re idea is that your idea is the one true way to do some piece of business and everyone else be damned, then YOU are the problem. As such, we no longer have anything to discuss.”
             I would have been a Loyalist. And, no – I don’t believe everyone has a right to live how they wish. [I don’t believe Muslims have the right to demand Sharia law on Western soil. I don’t believe homosexuals have the right to marriage. I don’t believe Corporations have the right to fair treatment while selling off jobs. etc. etc.] Some people are savages, and must be sent to the gallows for the sake of Western Civilisation.

64. Ironically, James Soller understand more about economics than half the fags commenting in this thread.

65. Austrian Libertarians are not Conservatives – they’re Liberals, through and through.

66. I would strongly suggest to the author of this article to refrain from writing about economics in the future, in fact, he should not even post on ROK anymore.

67. This is probably the best article that I’ve read on ROK. The only thing I disagree with is the last (what can we do about it?) part. Once we take the economic red pill, and see that capitalism is dying of its own internal contradictions, then we can do the right thing, and help the economy to progress to its inevitable final state. Then we’ll have universal full employment (and universal health care as well) and all these Band-Aid suggestions won’t matter.

68. Part-time vs full-time employment has everything to do with forcing employers to provide benefits to those who work a certain number of hours.
    This comes entirely from the Left side of politics. The current “part time economy” you describe is a direct response to obamacare, and you’ll remember that when all the full-time employees had their initial work hours reduced, so companies could avoid paying their massive insurance premiums, Obama responded by slightly lowering the number of hours required to be considered a full time worker.
    And then guess what those companies did ?
    Just lowered the hours even more.

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