The job market and inflation

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by superdave, Nov 22, 2021.

  1. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I used to know a guy who was wiry and strong, but wanted to bulk up. Did some serious strength training with weights (The "Starting Strength" method, which relies on squats, dead lifts, presses, bench press, and eventually rows: warm up sets then 5 sets of 5, hitting each move twice a week while working out three times). Got stronger, not bigger. The founder of Starting Strength recommended that people like him (young men not adding mass, or otherwise plateauing) try the "GOMAD" move, which is consuming a gallon of whole milk every day, in addition to what you're already eating. He did it for three months, a month longer than recommended.

    He gained 6 pounds.

    One day he borrowed his roommates bicycle, having not been on a bike in years. He had a blast, so much so he rode to Pittsburgh and back, probably around 90 miles in total. He wasn't that sore the next day. And when his roommate figured out his time, he was like, "dude, can you swim?"

    They went to the Y at lap time. Dude could swim an hour with no trouble.

    He entered his first triathlon that weekend and finished in the top 20 out of around 500. By the time I moved away, he had a couple "Ironman"- length triathlons under his belt. Doesn't worry about mass anymore. And some days will drink a half galln or more of chocolat milk, which is a thing for swimmers these days.
     
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  2. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    That was part of my motivation too. When I took more of an office job at the brewery, I bought some size 32 fat jeans in preparation. Despite getting flabby to about 160, they never fit.
     
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  3. Funkfoot

    Funkfoot Member+

    May 18, 2002
    New Orleans, LA
    Back when I was in college, one of my buddies tried to get a summer job picking tomatoes in South Carolina (pretty much the same thing). Nobody would hire him because they suspected he was a labor organizer. We gave him a lot of shit about not even being able to get hired as a migrant laborer.
     
  4. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    But but, they stopped password sharing!!!

     
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  5. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    After the last 2 pages, had to check which thead this is. Then realized all the pant size and weight discussion is appropriate for the inflation thread.
     
  6. Kazuma

    Kazuma Member+

    Chelsea
    Jul 30, 2007
    Detroit
    Club:
    Chelsea FC
    The writer Harlan Ellison once said that execs won't go 5 seconds without being paid and will whine about how much they're being paid. And want more while expecting workers to make less.
     
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  7. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Had our boss in the office last week for a team meeting. Was talking about getting a few locations together in one place sometime this year. Said maybe in the suburban Jersey office. Me - "can we do it in NYC? it's kinda lame around this office"

    Boss "Ohh not so sure that's do-able. Stock price is down 25% and the Manhattan muckety-mucks are not too happy right now" :rolleyes:
     
  8. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

    Apr 5, 2004
    La Norte
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Vanuatu
    Did you broke the law and the law won?
     
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  9. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    And this is why we will not experience a recession in the foreseeable future:



     
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  10. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    If anyone is interested Odd Lots has a really great episode on this new and weird inflation we've been having, which maybe should best be called "sellers' inflation"

    The basic idea is that a lot of what we are seeing is not driven by demand in the traditional understood sense. Rather sellers are choosing profit over volume. Usually you don't want to increase your prices because sales go down. But at the moment you seem to be able to increase your prices so much that even though you sell less, profits go way up.

    The theory is this is made possible because of a permissive, price collaborative space. i.e vendors know competitors are also putting prices up (e.g because they have the good excuse of energy shock and rising costs) so everyone sends prices to the moon. This is why it is called Sellers inflation because the reference point is other sellers.

    This is weird for the traditional method of fighting inflation (interest rates).

    Raising rates takes investment out of the economy, perhaps leading to a recession, job losses and lower demand. But demand wasn't causing the inflation - in fact companies have surplus capacity.

    It's interesting stuff, and I guess because we haven't had inflation for so long, it might turn out there are processes here we didn't fully understand.

    Some economists don't agree that this is a thing.
     
  11. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    Interesting. I'd add that the current conditions in the US create such a strong economy, that interest rates raises would probably not have a big dent in the foreseable future.

    We have a very strong labor market due to a combination of Covid casualties and restricted immigration. Also, many companies are moving their manufacturing and service jobs back to the US to avoid the logistical nightmares caused by the pandemic. On top of that, the federal government is making gigantic investments in infrastructure and clean energy. Throw in that, due to the tax cuts and increased profits, there's still plenty of money in corporate bank accounts so they really don' need loans, or if needed, they can probably pay higher interests without much fuss (except for Twitter).
     
  12. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  13. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The Fed temporarily stopped its campaign to kick both the American middle class and American democracy in the balls. No rate increase.
     
  14. ceezmad

    ceezmad Member+

    Mar 4, 2010
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Price increases did go down (well they increased by a smaller percentage)

     
  15. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    I work with a lot of Boomers and I definitely skew more Gen Z's way. I dont:

    - print stuff
    - feel the need to waste people's time with constant meetings
    - don't need to be in the office
    - titles are not super important. Corporations show their love by good pay & benefits.

    Amy just can’t stand their need to make everything so official. “Why does everything have to be a formal meeting? They just love creating stale environments.”

    *Jennifer is sick of their inability to respect people’s time. “My qualm is how they ring your mobile with no regard for your calendar – like, I’m in meetings all day. You don’t get to skip the queue.

    This is a big one for deniability in my experience:

    What’s more, she explained, there’s a reason she doesn’t want to answer Boomer’s calls.

    “The use of calls because ‘it’s easier to explain over the phone’. No, you are just too lazy to type it out, so now I have to dictate the request, and then there’s no paper trail. If there’s an error they can blame you,” she said.


    https://nypost.com/2023/06/14/millennials-and-gen-z-unleash-on-the-work-habits-of-baby-boomers/amp/
     
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  16. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    This is essentially my wife's career. She gets stuff in writing, and keeps receipts.
     
  17. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    The best tactic I ever learned was the so called "letter to the judge" (now an email to the judge)

    Basically when you send the time coded "thanks for the call today where we agreed A B C and D!"

    Sometimes i just email the call notes to myself in order to create these timestamps

    years later that email is always so useful when a super alpha who never writes anything down is trying to be an arsehole
     
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  18. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Yep. When I first started at my current job, one person I work with never replied to emails. I say to my manager "what's up with her?"
    Mgr - "Well you really have to go over to her desk to discuss XYZ"
    Me - "Nope! In this day & age there are multiple ways to communicate and I don't want to be bothered walking over there" Word got back to her and she started to respond via email...but took her sweetass time.
     
  19. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    JFC

    A restaurant in California has been ordered to pay $140,000 in back wages and damages to employees after it hired a priest to extract workers’ confessions, in what federal investigators are calling “the most shameless” acts of corruption an employer has taken against its staff.

    The US Department of Labor said an employee testified that owner Che Garibaldi, who operates two locations of Taqueria Garibaldi in northern California, hired a fake priest to hear confessions during work hours and “get the sins out,” including asking them if they had been late for work, stolen money from the restaurant or had “bad intentions” toward their employer.


    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/restaurant-must-pay-workers-140-155511249.html
     
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  20. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
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  21. Minnman

    Minnman Member+

    Feb 11, 2000
    Columbus, OH, USA
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Well, if younger generations would bother to read and respond to their ********ing email, maybe their elders wouldn't need to track them down on the phone.
     
  22. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    One of the things I've been wondering about recently is if the definition of an economic recession is not wholly accurate anymore. Generally, that covers the whole economy, but since we are so data driven and a lot of companies have become able to adjust so quickly (post pandemic), I'm wondering if we can actually say there is a whole economic recession.

    I'm thinking about this in the context of inflation dropping, interest rates appearing to be maybe 50 bp from top, but housing starts up. Yet I keep hearing about how cardboard box orders (a sign of shipping, and thus purchasing) are heavily down (11% I think). Consumer confidence is down, but spending is up. And manufacturing is up as well. Not to mention, unemployment is flat over the past 4 months, and wages are stable.

    What the hell is going on? :confused:

    What I'm wondering is if, going forward, unless there is a universal shock, like 9/11 or Covid, we will see sector recessions, but not whole economy recessions.
     
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  23. Mike03

    Mike03 Member

    Jun 7, 2006
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    It is weird. Post GFC, all the central banks have been superheating the economy with ZIRP (negative in Europe) to suppress the short end and QE to suppress the long end of bond yields. And they still couldn't get inflation over 2%. Meanwhile, wealth inequality went parabolic and asset holders have benefitted handsomely due to the cheap money chasing asset prices up along with stock buybacks.

    Then the pandemic hit and QE was juiced even harder along with direct fiscal stimulus. This created the so-called "V-shaped recovery" as assets were bid up even further as asset holders plowed the extra money back into the market since they couldn't travel, eat out, etc.

    Now you have massive demand from wealthy consumers, price be damned and the less well off can't keep up with inflated housing, food, health care, transportation, even with record low unemployment and improved labor negotiating power. Seems to me that the V-shaped dynamic is still in play and the standard economic metrics show a healthy economy even though non-asset holders are super pessimistic.
     
  24. The Jitty Slitter

    The Jitty Slitter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Bayern München
    Germany
    Jul 23, 2004
    Fascist Hellscape
    Club:
    FC Sankt Pauli
    Nat'l Team:
    Belgium
    One of the best parts of the odd lots discussion was the idea that economic shocks destabilise pricing, and this might be dumb and bad and a thing we need to protect the economy from.

    An example of this from personal experience - using the energy/war crisis. Milk used to be about 1.10 per litre.

    Then one day in the super market it was 1.45. Obviously i don't know prices exactly, so if it was 5c different i might not notice. But such a big change - twigged. So I didn't buy it, and went to a competitor. But same price. Milk is apparently very energy dependent. But the key idea here is that suddenly the milk price was unmoored from any expectation and I just started having to pay whatever it was each day and this applied to a lot of goods.

    As I don't have time to always shop around, this meant that there was a big tolerance for price fluctuation and this is what 'sellers inflation" is about. If the seller correctly believes competitors will raise prices to the bleeding edge, then there is suddenly a big tolerance for price increases beyond cost increase i.e. massive profit taking at the expense of market share.

    it will only stop when a competitor decides to lower costs dramatically to recapture share.

    The point odd lots was getting into, is that we might need to prevent these economic shocks from entering the market in the first place. so e.g. a windfall tax on power companies is not to redistribute, but actually to encourage them not to introduce a price shock.
     
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