Forever Recession
The term “forever recession” was coined by Seth Godin on his blog on September 21, 2010, “The forever recession,” and on September 29, 2011, “The forever recession (and the coming revolution).”
Godin argues that some jobs in the industrial revolution have been lost forever and aren’t coming back—low wage, factory jobs aren’t local and will go to the place that can do them the cheapest. Policies of government subsidies and protectionism are futile and counter-productive.
Wikipedia: Seth Godin
Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.
Seth Godin’s Blog
The forever recession
Posted by Seth Godin on September 21, 2010
There are two recessions going on.
One is gradually ending. This is the cyclical recession, we have them all the time, they come and they go. Not fun, but not permanent.
The other one, I fear, is here forever. This is the recession of the industrial age, the receding wave of bounty that workers and businesses got as a result of rising productivity but imperfect market communication.
In short: if you’re local, we need to buy from you. If you work in town, we need to hire you. If you can do a craft, we can’t replace you with a machine.
No longer.
theFastlaneForum
jazzfreak11
Dec 26th, 2010 01:41 PM
A “Forever Recession”?
I was reading a free manifesto by Corbett Barr (a blogger/traffic consultant who is one of those minimalist-ish location-independent lifestyle guys) and he said this:
“We’ve created our own “forever recession” (as Seth Godin calls it) and now we wonder when the jobs will come back. The problem is though, the jobs aren’t coming back. Ever. The rules have changed for good.”
Seth Godin’s Blog
The forever recession (and the coming revolution)
Posted by Seth Godin on September 29, 2011
There are actually two recessions:
The first is the cyclical one, the one that inevitably comes and then inevitably goes. There’s plenty of evidence that intervention can shorten it, and also indications that overdoing a response to it is a waste or even harmful.
The other recession, though, the one with the loss of “good factory jobs” and systemic unemployment—I fear that this recession is here forever.
Why do we believe that jobs where we are paid really good money to do work that can be systemized, written in a manual and/or exported are going to come back ever? The internet has squeezed inefficiencies out of many systems, and the ability to move work around, coordinate activity and digitize data all combine to eliminate a wide swath of the jobs the industrial age created.
There’s a race to the bottom, one where communities fight to suspend labor and environmental rules in order to become the world’s cheapest supplier. The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win…
Business Insider
SETH GODIN: If You’re An Average Worker, You’re Going Straight To The Bottom
Vivian Giang | Jan. 19, 2012, 4:09 PM
The way we do business is changing fast and in order to keep up, your entire mentality about work has to change just as quickly.
Unfortunately, most people aren’t adapting fast enough to this change in the workplace, says marketing guru Seth Godin in an interview with the Canadian talk show “George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight” (via Pragmatic Capitalism).
According to the founder of Squidoo.com and author or 13 books, the current “recession is a forever recession” because it’s the end of the industrial age, which also means the end of the average worker.