Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Saudi and Russia are freezing production .

I see this as the biggest problem on the long term horizon. We are heading for a mass low wage low skill future. The first phase will be lower wages for unskilled jobs. Next it will be no wages because of few jobs. Long term it will be high wages for a few highly skilled jobs and no work for the masses. I have had this conversation on here before.

http://news.sky.com/story/1646966/earn-less-than-20-robots-could-replace-you

The White House says that if you earn less than $20 (£14) per hour, you'll probably be replaced by a robot.

The Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) came to the conclusion in its economic report for 2016.

It said that worldwide shipments of industrial robotics doubled between 2010 and 2014.

This surge in automation could put workers in non-supervisory roles that make less than $20 per hour out of work.

My understanding is that Iran, Russia and Saudi have agreed not to increase production. Nothing about cutting. Also the shale oil wells have relatively short lives, although techniques are being developed to increase the yields. Nevertheless, the yield per well drops off quite quickly so that the well preparation cost is amortized over a much shorter time than conventional wells.
The average break even cost of US shale oil is estimated at $65 per barrel, so it will need to rise above that for some time before we see new rigs.
Perhaps more relevant is that we are all using less oil each year.

Yes. It was a freeze. The article I saw was before that when they were talking about cuts. This is current today from CNBC.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/23/how-saudis-can-cut-oil-production-commentary.html

iturama - never mind shale oil recovery; on a normal well i think the recovery is only about 40% of the actual reserve .... even that might be a bit high

meanwhile, i see no uptick in saudi production or at least development of new wells

P68206 H/S where have you been for the last 45 years? the low wage rip-off Britain climate has been in operation all that time.

If people seriously want to stop the down down projection in Wages and Conditions and have a better chance of it going the other way then a cut in the hourly working week is one of the ways, unlike the French (35 hr) trial model that did not work simply because it was far to inflexible in operation.

What work is worth is a difficult subject. It is not a rip-off. It is market forces. You may not like it, but wages will remain low permanently. There are just too many people and not enough work. We need smaller populations. Full employment is a distant memory. It has only happened in the aftermath of wars.

higher consumption works!

Well we need inflation don't we , Saudi isn't helping there at all . Seems madness to do what they are doing produce more of a finite resource and get paid less . ( they have actually produced more during this period )

H/S The only part of your post that is true is the" We need smaller populations", the rest is not true.

After an extensive ring round, cajoling and much browbeating the updated count for Tory MPs is now; 140 for Out, 146 for In. This is the first time that Guido’s list has shown the Remainians leading. 44 still in play…




http://order-order.com/2016/02/23/more-tory-mps-declare-for-in/

Stan
You will not see full employment in your lifetime of much higher wages. You will see the lowest paid scraping a living or having no job at all and living on benefits. It will be like it is now but worse. That is not to say it is right of wrong, but that is how it will be. Increasingly manufacturing will be done in developing countries. The developed countries will be consumers and providers of tech and services. If you don't have a job in tech or services then you will be poor.

Who is going to buy the goods, and more to the point, what will they use for money?

The people with jobs will buy the goods. There will be two very different classes. There will be the ones with disposable income and an underclass.

bit like now then ....... are you one of the ubermensch?
:-)

So, the end of civilisation as we know it?


Dystopian to put it mildly.


The books I have read outlining these types of scenarios, all tend to end one way.

There is effectively an underclass now. If you grouped people by life expectancy, smokers, being overweight, poor education, buyers of fast and pre-prepared food, substance abuse you would end up with two distinct groups.

Smoking alone shows that. Smoking has largely died out amongst the middle classes.

There was a report a couple of days ago that had the wealthiest 10% living to around 95 and the poorest 10% live 35 years less. The difference was put down to choices that the two groups make.

And then there's stuff like the black economy, car boot sales, flogging stuff on eBay, Gumtree, etc, etc,.....

I wonder if these methods of people earning a few £ will grow?

That's why they want to ban cash.

Then the banks/gov will have full control over your money...or so they think.

I would suggest PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason might be interesting for some to read.

Quite thoughtful and readable.


There are obvious limitations to consumer economic theories.

Though, some won't accept them.