News Oct 6, 2009 at 9:12 am

Comments

1
so we should consider cutting down those trees for recycling to save a few jobs, good idea!
2
You know, when they shut down coal fired power plants, some people are going to be out of work too. Does that mean we should keep them running?

What about wars? Wars are a great way to keep people employed. Why don't we invade Poland in the name of full employment? It worked pretty well the last time there was a world wide Depression, we went from 20% unemployment to a labor shortage overnight. Never mind all the people that died, what really matters is that people had jobs!

(Seriously: I expect that online phone books employ more people than paper ones, and pay them better too.)
3
Michael - those jobs are building an incredibly wasteful product that no one wants!
4
How silly. Michael must have been psyched about the auto industry bailout - gotta keep all those workers employed, after all, so go buy a freakin Explorer already!

Really. Spend the money on retraining the workforce for more relevant jobs instead of subsidizing a dying industry.
5
You know who else is in trouble these days? Proprietors of opera hat factories and horse shoe fitters. Get with the times, man.
6
don't forget newspaper employees.


ooops.
7
Don't forget the milkman and the guy that delivers a block of ice to your icebox every week. Gotta keep them around forever, as well!
8
The Bible: Now With Less Women!

Does this mean they're going to replace Eve with Steve?
9
Just like English Luddites that destroyed the mechanized looms that 'took their jobs,' so this yellowbook supporter only sees that positive large-scale change must be a bad thing. The Solution: Adapt! Survival of the fittest, maybe if your job wasn't reliant on an outdated, self-destructive model, then this perspective wouldn't be so pervasive.
10
Wow, the city pays more for sex than Elliot Spitzer!
11
Have to agree with most of the previous posts but it does raise an interesting question. Should jobs be preserved or created even if there is no need for them. If you include the underemployed and those that have just given up, real unemployment is at 25%+ and yet productivity is up. The bulk of the stimulus jobs are short term make work projects that don't affect most of us directly. Lots of union jobs have built in super redundancy. In Portland right now 1 out of 4 of the folks riding on the MAX with you are unemployed. The schools are crowded, but the doors are open and kids are attending but 2400 newly minted teachers can't find work. Should these folks have jobs or are we comfortable with a significant percentage of the population being unemployed because the economy doesn't need them, regardless of the reason. I don't have an answer and I sure as hell don't want the stinking Yellow pages, but its clearly not that simple.
12
As my brother wrote to me yesterday, "Capitalism, in proper, doesn't prop things up, but lets them die because, as in many mythologies, Death is also Rebirth. Unfortunately, there is a great American tradition (bipartisan here) of continuing unnecessary and should-be-extinct institutions simply because they've been around for so long."

And if your job truly is not worthwhile, couldn't and shouldn't you find something more productive to do?
13
100 years ago, people were bemoaning the end of the buggy whip industry too. Times change...I loathe phone books and haven't opened one for a decade or better.
14
you know, I see so much of the merc's print content in online form throughout the week that it's barely worth picking up every thursday.

I used to look forward to sitting down with it at lunch. but now it seems like I've read everything already. but at least you guys don't leave a soggy one on my porch every other week like the fucking oregonian.
15
The Internet put the Nintendo Tip Line out of business.

Shame on you GameFAQs.
16
Haha that whole cop thing is- OH JESUS CAN COWS REALLY SHOOT MILK THAT FAR!? I hope it is, in fact, milk.
17
Dale Earnhart Jr. is a European dairy farmer? Who knew!
18
Would it be out of the question for the US to shorten the work week? Wouldn't this create more jobs for others? If you cut it down to 35 hours then that would be an additional 5 hours a week that someone else could work. My phone book goes directly into the recycling bin every single time. I don't even know anyone who owns a phone book longer than 2 minutes.
19
Come on! It's perfectly clear to me that phone books are another conspiracy perpetrated by The Timber Companies to get their hands on that tasty old growth.
20
Where did you read that Junior is a milk farmer?
21
Dont forget the gass pumping guy. I really could do with out those assholes. I just wanna pump my own gas and get the hell out of the station.

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