A top anthropologist says the US is flooded with 'bulls---' jobs that should disappear

[Judi Lynn]

A top anthropologist says the US is flooded with 'bulls---' jobs that should disappear
Chris Weller
Dec. 15, 2016, 9:30 AM


There is a job epidemic in America, anthropologist David Graeber says. And not because there are too few jobs, but because there are too many.

"Huge swaths of our economy are completely unnecessary," Graeber, an anthropologist and professor at the London School of Economics, said in a 2015 interview with London Real, which was recently spotted by Natalie Shoemaker at Big Think.

Graeber was referring to the many telemarketers, middle managers, and people in clerical roles who make up a sizable chunk of the US economy. They are jobs in which employees don't find great meaning and are often embarrassed to talk about, Graeber said.

His initial complaint about the surplus of meaningless work emerged in 2013, when he published an essay called "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs." (The essay has since been taken down.) His argument revolved around the prediction John Maynard Keynes made in 1930 that humans would be so technologically advanced by the end of the 20th century that we'd only have to work 15-hour weeks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-graeber-jobs-should-disappear-2016-12

[TrogL]

1. Don't forget telephone sanitizers

[Warpy]

2. There is so much work that really needs to be done

but the plutocracy controlled government just doesn't want to pay for it. If it doesn't generate paper profit, they're just not interested in it.

[Squinch]

3. It is inevitable that we will go to a 15 or 20 hour week due to mechanization, but we

are going to have to go through a lot of revolution and starvation before the 1% will release the money to allow it to happen. But in terms of the work that still needs to be done in the face of mechanization, the 40 hour work week as the standard is just no longer necessary. The 1% has taken all the profit from mechanization, but someday they will realize that A)you just don't need that second $billion and B) they no longer have any customers for the goods and services that made them rich because no one can make ends meet because we are not paying enough.

[EL34x4]

4. I'm reminded of traveling in Ukraine...

...where they actually have people whose job it is to sell you admission (to include about 6" of toilet paper) outside of public restrooms. I figured this was a relic of the USSR's "100% employment" initiatives.

Often, it was two women right outside the entrance; one to take your money and the other to give you toilet paper. I'm not kidding. Every now and then one would grab a mop and go swab the floor.

Completely unnecessary work except that it provides a paycheck (and discourages people from stealing the toilet paper).

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. They're there to keep junkies and prostitutes away

[supernova]

5. But, but bullshit jobs...

provide an easy offload for management to dump

1) talented people who display too much competence and are thus a threat to their superiors' jobs and gated-community status.

2) incompetent people on one wants to work with but they keep them around for the laugh factor.

3) Very often these two groups wind up in the same division.

[TygrBright]

7. We could have 110% employment for DECADES if we'd upgrade infrastructure. n/t