Stephan Pastis does it again. Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.
Any experienced pastor will tell you never to ask questions like that. The answers might surprise you - particularly from children!
Peter
The big challenge everyone's talking about today is how to get the millions of unemployed Americans back to work - create enough jobs that they can fill, and ensure that they have the necessary training to do those jobs.
However, that ignores the fact that all over the world, more and more people - particularly younger people - are desperate for jobs, but they aren't there to be found. The US economy is no more than a microcosm of a much greater conundrum. That same oversupply of job-seekers is fueling international illegal migration. When young people face economic ruin at home, they've got nothing to lose by trying to move to a country where more jobs are available, even though the journey may be very dangerous and they may not be welcome at their intended destinations.
First, there's the supply of workers and potential workers. I'll use Africa as an example, because that's my continent of origin and I'm more familiar with its situation. Bloomberg recently reported:
Africa’s population has doubled in three decades and it’s now home to about 1.5 billion people, a figure that’s predicted to grow to 4 billion by the turn of the century. This growth has been driven by improved access to medical care, plummeting infant mortality since 1990, and persistently high birth rates. Already about 60% of people south of the Sahara desert are younger than 25, compared with one-third in the US, according to the United Nations.
The expected number of annual births in Congo is more than 800,000 greater than across the US or the European Union’s 27 member states. So while the developed world worries about getting old, Africa is getting younger.
. . .
Success will depend on both shrinking the existing rate of population increase, and also creating the economic opportunities — jobs are a key driver of growth in the early stages of development — for young people entering the labor market. Getting it wrong could fuel poverty, trigger more conflict and potentially spark mass emigration.
. . .
Sub-Saharan Africa will see 1 billion people enter the labor force between now and the end of the century, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of UN Population Division data. Annual job demand is projected to peak at approximately 18 million in 2048.
Most countries on the continent already struggle to provide sufficient jobs. For every two people that joined Congo’s working-age population between 2005 and 2020, only one job was created on average, a pattern repeated across Nigeria, Ethiopia and other large states, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of International Labor Organisation data.
. . .
In a worst-case scenario, that scenario could translate into the continent sliding ever deeper into poverty and political and civil strife, and encouraging mass emigration, with the reverberations felt across the world.
“Labor migration is an inevitable consequence of being educated,” says Charlie Robertson, the author of The Time Travelling Economist who has been monitoring developments in Africa for the past 15 years. “This is the most educated the continent’s ever been, but with insufficient savings to utilize that education there will be demographic pressure to emigrate.”
There's more at the link.
That demographic pressure is driving the wave upon wave of African illegal immigrants overwhelming European countries right now. Along with similar pressures in South America and Asia, it's what was behind the surge in illegal alien migration to the USA under the Biden administration - and that administration's refusal to do anything to stop it has left us with enormous socio-political problems that will take more than one Presidential term to sort out. It may take decades. I personally view it as treasonable behavior by the Biden administration, but it's not my job to adjudicate that - perhaps fortunately . . . President Trump has already shown that swift, vigorous law enforcement action can stop such mass immigration in its tracks, and even reverse it. One can only hope and pray that his successors in office will continue such policies.
Be that as it may, we have the "irresistible force" of mass immigration from the over-populated, economically under-developed Third World threatening the First World. However, the climate for such immigrants is likely to become even less welcoming once the reality of modern economics takes hold.
“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.
After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition.
“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.
. . .
Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company’s attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.
“I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you’ll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts,” he says.
“And you’re walking alongside this conveyor, and after about 800, 900 metres, a truck drives out. There are no people – everything is robotic.”
Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.
“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.
“The process was so heavily automated that there were no workers on the manufacturing side, just a small number who were there to ensure the plant was working.
“You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”
. . .
Between 2014 and 2024, the number of industrial robots deployed in [China] rocketed from 189,000 to more than two million.
These can typically include everything from robot arms used for welding, assembly and loading, spider robots used for high-speed “pick and place” movements and overhead gantry robots for precision tasks such as 3D printing.
The overall number of robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.
And while it would be easy to put this disparity down to population size alone, China also blows its western rivals out of the water when it comes to robot density. It now boasts 567 robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, compared to 449 for Germany, 307 for the US and 104 in the UK.
. . .
Rian Whitton, an expert at Bismarck Analysis, says increased automation is also an attempt to mitigate the impact of [China's] ageing population.
“China has quite a notable demographic problem but its manufacturing is, generally, quite labour-intensive,” he says.
“So in a pre-emptive fashion, they want to automate it as much as possible, not because they expect they’ll be able to get higher margins – that is usually the idea in the West – but to compensate for this population decline and to get a competitive advantage.”
Again, more at the link. (Article may be behind a paywall.)
Admittedly, the article above addresses the manufacturing economy: but that underpins all other economic sectors, when push comes to shove. Just as China is striving to maximize automation and minimize actual human workers, so US manufacturers are striving to catch up with that country and re-engineer their local assembly lines. The same can be said of many service industries. Did you notice, during the dockworker strikes over the past couple of years, that one of the constant demands from the labor unions was that ports and harbors should not introduce any more automation, or robotics, or labor-saving technology? The unions are trying desperately to protect their members' jobs . . . and they're doomed to failure. When it costs far too much to employ human workers compared to an automated solution, eventually the time will come when employers will say "Enough!" and make it stick.
For US workers in several industries, this is already bad news. Without retraining and a deep-rooted change in their attitudes, they're going to end up in the economic dumpster. However, it's worse for those heading for this country from places like Africa, in an attempt to find work here that they can't find at home. Initially, they'll find at least something, through being willing to work for lower wages and/or in more dangerous, less desirable conditions than American workers will tolerate. However, that won't last for long. The list of industries already implementing technological solutions to their labor problems is already very long, and growing longer. Manufacturing, fast food, farming, assembly operations, customer support, corporate administration, banking . . . the list of places where you'll find automated assistants and AI systems instead of a human being is growing by the day. New jobs are not part of that equation.
It's equally bad news for the US education system. Right now, a school-leaver is woefully ill-equipped to become part of our economy. He's got far too much learning still to do - hands-on, productive learning - and too much touchy-feely politically-correct baggage to learn to discard, once he realizes that it's all been a lie. Commerce and industry function on facts and reality. If they don't, they go out of business. Our education system currently does not teach facts and reality, and doesn't prepare its students to deal with them. That may be an even bigger problem for us that China's current lead in automation.
Furthermore, consider what this immense level of automation means for countries that are struggling to establish their own industries and facilities. They can't possibly afford to build a factory to assemble vehicles using their own labor force, when China (or, for that matter, similar factories in Europe or the USA) can deliver a finished vehicle, made to a much higher standard of quality, for less than a fifth of the cost of a vehicle manufactured locally (what with economies of scale, etc.). In so many words, such hyper-automated production will destroy economies that can't compete at that level; and those living in those economies will see that they have no future there, no way to earn a living, improve their situation in society, or hope for something better. That being the case, they're going to leave for anywhere that appears to offer them a better opportunity. The current immigration pressure on the First World is going to turn into an overwhelming flood.
We are literally creating this future as we speak. All of the factors identified above are now in operation. There's no way we can possibly turn aside from that future now, because just about the whole of the First World as it currently exists would cease to exist if we did.
What does this mean for us as individuals? For someone like me, approaching the end of my life, I can only watch events unfold. For younger people, who must find a way to support themselves and (hopefully) a family in due course, they're going to have to make some very blunt, realistic career decisions. A degree in underwater basket-weaving or feminist studies may sound like a lot of fun, but it's going to fly like a lead balloon in an economy that will demand specific skills, attributes and attitudes. Nations will no longer be able to afford those who contribute nothing to the economy and the needs of the country as a whole. At best, those people will have to live on a minimal public dole, because governments won't be able to afford anything more. Those willing to seek out jobs that will always be in demand, and are unlikely to be automated (e.g. the trades, technical fields that support automation, etc.) will do rather better. Not sure how to get into them? Talk to Mike Rowe.
Sound frightening? It is. Yet, that's the dilemma and the conundrum facing our politicians and business leaders today. Go read the two articles I cited, and do your own search for more material on the subject. We live in interesting times, no matter how much we may wish we didn't.
Peter
Over the past few months I've been noting the number of calls from both sides of the political spectrum to lock up - i.e. imprison - those they don't like, or whom they think deserve it. If all those calls were heeded, our prison population would be at least ten times higher than it is today - and, let's not forget, the USA imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other First World nation. When it comes to locking up people, we're the winners and still champions, by a very long way.
What people forget is the backstory to prisons. They're a relatively modern phenomenon, in the sense of long-term incarceration. Short-term detention (say, between arrest and trial, or trial and sentencing) has been with us for centuries, but long-term imprisonment as a punishment is only two to three centuries old. The reason is simple: it's expensive! If the State imprisons a man for a period of months or years, it is responsible for his upkeep during that period. It can't be any other way, because he has no means of supporting himself while incarcerated, and it's unlikely his family and/or friends will be able to do so. Metrasens estimates:
The cost of incarcerating an inmate varies significantly by state, facility type, and inmate population. According to recent estimates:
- The median annual cost per prisoner in the U.S. is around $65,000.
- Some states exceed $100,000 per inmate per year, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts.
- The lowest-cost states (e.g., Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana) spend around $23,000-$30,000 per inmate per year.
- The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports an average cost of $36,300 per inmate annually.
There's more at the link. Those figures cover accommodation, clothing, food, medical care and essential legal services (as ordered by the courts). Incarcerating illegal aliens between their arrest and deportation is adding enormously to those costs right now. It's been estimated (I don't know how authoritatively) that a single alien costs in excess of $5,000 per month to house, care for and provide security against escape.
Our problem at the moment is how to reduce expenditure on jails and prisons, because we can't afford the ones we've got! As long as the drive to round up and deport illegal aliens persists, prison and jail costs will continue to soar out of reach of budget-cutters. It's simple economics. Increase the demand (for prison cells) and you force an increase in the supply (of money to build, maintain and operate them). I entirely agree with deporting illegal aliens, but we have to face reality too. That's why illegals who self-deport are being offered free flights to their home countries plus $1,000 apiece to go voluntarily. It saves us a lot of money compared to doing it the hard way.
It's also worth noting that only relatively wealthy countries can afford large prison systems such as ours. Most nations can't afford them, so they don't bother. Anyone who's lived and worked in the Third World will be able to tell you horror stories of prisons crowded to three or four times their capacity, resulting in gang conflict and all-out riots (as, for example, in Ecuador and Brazil); prisoners starving to death because the money to feed them was misappropriated by underpaid prison officials; and families being forced to bring food and clothing to their loved ones every day, or see them gradually die of hunger.
Being a wealthy country with touchy-feely public morals (well, sometimes, anyway), we've chosen to build a prison system to house incarcerated persons in at least minimal comfort. Trouble is, we (the taxpayers) don't like paying for it; and it's going to get a lot more expensive as we increase the number of inmates, whether transient or otherwise. Deporting illegal aliens comes with a hefty price tag. The question is, do we want them gone badly enough to be willing to pay that price?
Peter
Fellow blogger Divemedic brings a timely warning.
Alarm bells should be ringing with the news that the government sold $694 billion in Treasury securities spread over 9 auctions in only three days. Yeah, our national debt now stands at $38.2 trillion. The most alarming thing about this news is that T-bill yields are rising. The 10-year Treasury yield is now at 4.15%. At that rate, the interest on our debt will be more than $1.5 trillion per year. Since Americans only pay about $2.4 trillion in Federal taxes each year, we are edging closer to the point where our debt will begin to grow like a snowball rolling down a mountain.
The only way to keep the government solvent at that point would be to inflate the currency in order to pay it with lower valued money. At that point, inflation will be higher than interest rates, and it will no longer be financially possible to invest in government bonds. This will in turn cause higher rates, which will also create a need for higher inflation. In other words, hyperinflation is the only way out, but that will cause a complete collapse of the US dollar.
There's more at the link.
I can't disagree with anything he says. We've spoken often about debt in these pages, whether government, business, or individual. The inevitable result of too much debt is bankruptcy, in one form or another. A government can't really go bankrupt in the classical sense of the term, because it has laws (and can pass more) to protect it: but it will still not be able to afford the routine expenditure we expect from government. (Even if it tried, savvy businesses would refuse to accept government checks or money orders if they weren't sure they'd be able to cash them.) If you are reliant on government money to feed, house and clothe your family from month to month, you'd better be making plans for when that money is no longer available, and/or has been so (deliberately) inflated that it will no longer buy you all you need.
I also repeat our earlier warnings to get out of debt if at all possible. Sometimes this can't be done, due to factors beyond our control: but certainly don't take on any more debt, unless it's a matter of life or death (e.g. an emergency medical procedure), and don't neglect paying down (and hopefully paying off) debt you already owe. Don't carry balances on your credit cards - pay them off in full every month. Don't run accounts at stores - buy for cash, or do without. Forget "payday loans" or other ultra-short-term loan options (including buy-now-pay-later schemes). They're only designed to enrich the person or institution making the loan, not the one repaying it.
In particular, prepare now for what might hit us if the dollar does lose much of its remaining value. Try to have one to three months' worth of food stockpiled and ready for the day you can't afford to buy more. Try to have an emergency fund of at least one months' expenditure on normal bills, and three to six months if possible - and make sure that includes rent, electricity and other utilities. There's no point in having food available if you have no electricity to keep it frozen or to cook it!
All these are basic measures, to be taken during good (or at least better) times in order to make it through the bad times. Take as many of these step as you can afford, and plan ahead (and around) to deal with those you can't afford.
Peter
Gathered from around the Internet over the past week. Click any image for a larger view.
(A quick note for readers: Some weeks (as last week, and again today) I won't have many memes to post. That's because I try to only select memes that really did make me smile or laugh. Sometimes there are lots of them, but other times, I find they're mostly re-runs of older memes, or I simply don't find them very funny. Other times, I may not have had time to do a lot of Web browsing that week. So, during weeks like that, please bear with me.)
To pull together the threads of the past week's historic tragedies - the end of World War I in 1918, and the terrorist massacres in Paris, France in 2015 - here's a musical eyewitness to another tragedy.
Vedran Smailović (born 11 November 1956), known as the "Cellist of Sarajevo", is a Bosnian musician. During the siege of Sarajevo, he played Albinoni's Adagio in G minor in ruined buildings, and, often under the threat of snipers, he played during funerals. His bravery inspired musical numbers and the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.
. . .
Smailović caught the imagination of people around the world by playing his cello, most notably performing Albinoni's Adagio in G minor for twenty-two days, in the ruined square of a downtown Sarajevo marketplace after a mortar round had killed twenty-two people waiting for food there. He managed to leave Sarajevo in 1993, during the second year of the siege that ultimately lasted 1,425 days, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996.
In Smailović's honour, composer David Wilde wrote a piece for solo cello, The Cellist of Sarajevo, which was recorded by Yo-Yo Ma. Paul O'Neill described Smailović's performances as the inspiration for "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" by Savatage and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
There's more at the link.
David Wilde died last month. In his memory, and to honor Vedran Smailović's courage, here's Yo-Yo Ma performing "The Cellist of Sarajevo".
Peter
In early October I asked for your help for James and Tirzah Burns, two friends of long standing. James had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic disease, and was in hospital, and another friend had launched a fundraiser to help them with related expenses. Many thanks to those who donated.
Sadly, James' illness was too far advanced. He died on October 29th. I mentioned it in these pages, and again asked for your help for the family with funeral and other expenses. Again, some readers were generous, and helped a great deal.
Tirzah is now dealing with all the post-funeral bureaucratic paperwork, and preparing their two children for life without Dad at home. It's going to be tough for them. Despite all the distractions and the pain of her loss, she sent me this brief text message this morning: "Peter, please thank your readers for me for such kind donations". Together, we helped her keep the family afloat, financially speaking, while James was no longer able to earn a living, and now his life insurance and other assistance are in the process of kicking in (once all the paperwork is done). They should be able to cope for several months at least.
I'd like to add my personal thanks to Tirzah's. She's good people, as are her children. My wife and I hope to have them visit us sometime soon, to relax and get over the stress of the past few months. They're definitely the kind of people worthy of our support.
Peter
I'm sure that by now, many of my readers have heard the allegations that during the Bosnian War, elements of the Bosnian Serb forces invited outsiders - foreigners - to pay for "safaris" to hunt and murder Bosnian civilians in Sarajevo.
The foreigners, from Italy, the US, Russia and elsewhere, are accused of paying Serbian forces to take part in the shooting spree during the Bosnian War.
They were allegedly motivated by sympathy for the Serbian cause, sheer bloodthirstiness or a combination of the two, investigators say.
. . .
The amateur snipers paid the modern-day equivalent of €80,000 to €100,000 (median £80,000) to take part in the chilling “sport”, according to La Repubblica newspaper.
. . .
The case has been taken up by an Italian journalist and writer, Ezio Gavazzeni, with the backing of two lawyers and a former judge.
There was “a price tag for these killings: children cost more, then men, preferably in uniform and armed, women, and finally old people, who could be killed for free,” said Mr Gavazzeni.
There's more at the link, including earlier allegations that now appear to be vindicated by the latest evidence. It appears that people from Italy, America and Russia were among the "tourist snipers".
When I first read that report, I got a sick feeling in my stomach, very similar to what I experienced when I realized the magnitude of the Catholic clergy child sex abuse crisis. The thought of anyone casually handing over large sums of money for the "privilege" of hunting innocent civilians, murdering them for no reason except that they were available . . . it's almost beyond belief. I've seen that kind of callous indifference among combat troops who'd been exposed to a war environment for too long, and had left at least part of their humanity behind, but I'd never dreamed that "normal" people might do the same. (They're not "normal", of course: they're monsters in human form, who've drowned their souls in the dregs of existence by their own choice.)
You'll understand that I still view life through the lens of a clergyman's calling, despite not having been professionally active in that field for a long time. I wonder what I would do if someone who'd done that came to me and asked me to hear his confession of sin, and give him absolution? I hope and pray that I wouldn't turn away from my calling, and would minister to him as best I could . . . but it would be extraordinarily difficult. It was the same for me as a prison chaplain, when a multiple murder or rapist or whatever would feel the touch of grace, and want to repent before God. To sit and listen to the litany of pure evil they unleashed in their confession was probably the hardest thing I had to do as a clergyman. I can only hope and pray that God's mercy would reach out and cover their sins, even though as a human being I didn't know that such mercy would be possible. I suppose it's a good thing I'm not God . . .
I can't say any more about it. I've run out of words to describe the horror I felt reading this, and remembering those video news images of civilians being cut down in the streets of Sarajevo. May those guilty of this repent of their sins; but if they don't, may they suffer condign punishment and retribution in the hereafter.
Peter
