# According to The Economist, 40% of jobs are "bullshit" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 2, 2019, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117 "2019-01-02T23:00:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/61 "2019-01-05T20:54:47Z")
A mutual is an insurance company wholly owned by the policyholders; it has no shareholders, no owners. All the money you pay as a policyholder either gets paid out in settlements, or, if money is left over, it eventually has to be given back to you - either by just sending you money or by reducing your premiums. Like most types of not for profit corporations, some money can be saved for a rainy day, but there’s generally a limit on how much they can keep in the bank. So if they turn down a claim, the money just goes back to all the policyholders anyway. The only people who can benefit from a denied claim are… the customers of the insurance company, since they collectively get that money back anyway. Of course they do have to turn down fraudulent claims because if they don’t the whole shebang will fold or your premiums will skyrocket, but it doesn’t “save” the company money. Consequently, if you genuinely feels their insurance company is a scam, just leave them as soon as you can and use a mutual. Generally, though, the service and prices are pretty similar - since, if they were not, the private companies would for that very reason lose business to the mutuals until they were forced to adjust. State Farm is a mutual. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/62 "2019-01-06T04:20:29Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > So if they turn down a claim, the money just goes back to all the policyholders anyway. The only people who can benefit from a denied claim are… the customers of the insurance company, since they collectively get that money back anyway. Right, but you as an individual are screwed, and all the other customers share the gain of your loss. And somebody with a bullshit job is paid to make those decisions. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/63 "2019-01-06T04:23:03Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Right, but you as an individual are screwed, and all the other customers share the gain of your loss. And somebody with a bullshit job is paid to make those decisions. The profit motive is removed from the decision making. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/64 "2019-01-06T05:46:08Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > I think a large number of big corporate CEO positions are bullshit jobs, but not because they are useless. It’s just that they’re so overpaid. Yes, they play an important role, but they are shamelessly disproportionately paid for the work they actually do. Their pay scale is determined solely by how well they sell their reputation, not for the actual work they do—which many much lower paid people could do. And this is true in all kinds of sectors. The new Department Director which joined my American University at the same time I did was about as useful as a gold-plated dick, but the one thing that was absolutely gold-plated was his contract. Consultants can be useful, in that we often have knowledge the hiring company doesn’t or come up with ideas they wouldn’t have; we’re useful when we’re short-term expertise for a short-term situation. I once hired a lawyer for something which got me billed for two (2) hours of his work: it absolutely was worth it. I’ve consulted others which didn’t even charge as they didn’t need to look anything up. Are lawyers something I need all the time? No; there have been other situations and other lawyers which were in fact an obstacle to my work and my life. Any job, whether CEO, consultant or maintenance worker, will be bullshit if it’s the wrong person, with the wrong job definition or for the wrong reasons. Think of it this way: is Excel a good program? I’d say yes, if you want to manage spreadsheets and get the occasional pretty chart. But if you use it as a pretty-printing program (as some of my customers did), then it’s a WTF POS… the problem wasn’t Excel, though, it was the customers’ ignorance. Same when we’re talking about people’s brains and hands instead of computer logic: use them wrong, they’ll be used wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/65 "2019-01-06T13:52:52Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Except that, largely, the way it works is that I pay a premium every month, and then, if I suffer a catastrophe, the insurance company folks figure out some reason why my insurance isn’t valid after all, and so I don’t get anything in return for all of those premiums I paid. Please cite that this is “largely the way it works”. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/66 "2019-01-06T16:37:27Z")
I remember I once had a job where I was literally required to be a warm body in the chair. It went something like this. Department A’s budget for the year was x, and they were going to come in under budget by y and risk having next year’s budget cut by y if they didn’t spend it. So they needed to hire someone for no reason other than to use up that money so they’d get it next year. When the Fiscal Year was over and their new budget was in, I was shown the door. I had some superficial tasks - file this, collate that - but I spent most of my time trying to look busy. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/67 "2019-01-06T16:53:04Z")
There’s some criticism of project/program managers here but I love mine. They’re cheap and take care of so much shit that I don’t want to waste time thinking about. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/68 "2019-01-06T21:40:09Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > I had a lot of different white collar management type jobs and the thing they almost all have in common is that > > 1. the entire department could probably be totally automated within a year by one subject matter expert and a few programmers > 2. the work could easily be done by a motivated and properly trained high school kid for about a quarter to a third of what they pay us Don’t look now, but that is what is happening. many operations can be automated, up to the management level, which mainly concerns, ahem, people skills (keeping the peons happy) and making decisions. The new deep learning systems quickly teach themselves to make better decisions than most many people. Indeed, seeing what some highly paid executives have done in the past, you can see many reasons for cutting salaries and most of management. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/69 "2019-01-06T21:48:49Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > As a counterpoint, given the fact that the cost of living always goes up (and never down), and we all need a way to pay the rent/mortgage, I’d say that the economy is largely _comprised_ of make-work. Remember that back in the 70’s economists were projecting that automation would make us so efficient in the future that we’d all be working 4 hours a week by now. (Not exactly, I’m sure I’m butchering it, but maybe someone can find the quote.) That hasn’t happened simply because nobody can live on a 4-hour/week job. The paperless office and the four hour week. Yup. Computers seem to lengthen my working day. As for "bullshit jobs and “make work schemes”, in the long term there will be a problem that a great many things will be automated, run by a small number of geeks to ensure no problems crop up, and the work world will want lots of people who are cheap and can work flexible hours, either on things that machines cannot do efficiently (such as many kinds many kinds of food preparation) or for people-related work. Essentially, warm bodies. And the growth industry? Geriatric nursing. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/70 "2019-01-06T23:26:40Z")
> [@Brayne\_Ded](#): > > Don’t look now, but that is what is happening. many operations can be automated, up to the management level, which mainly concerns, ahem, people skills (keeping the peons happy) and making decisions. The new deep learning systems quickly teach themselves to make better decisions than most many people. Indeed, seeing what some highly paid executives have done in the past, you can see many reasons for cutting salaries and most of management. But as members of the “managerial feudal class”, top executives will probably keep their jobs. Ultimately, companies are owned and run by people. Automation and machine learning will do most of the actual decision making, enabling companies to hire an idiot to perform these jobs. But they will most likely be an idiot who played lacrosse with the CEO in prep school. The people who will be hurt will be the ones in the middle. The ones who are too smart to want to do retail or food jobs, not smart enough to invent the software and without the connections to get those cushy executive jobs as VP of Whatever. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/71 "2019-01-07T03:39:12Z")
I suspect the world would get along just fine without anthropology professors. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/72 "2019-01-07T21:44:12Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > State Farm is a mutual. Indeed they are. And I’ve both received claim payouts from them for policies I had, as well as payback/dividend checks for unspent premiums they collected. I think a lot of people tend to interpret “insurance” as meaning “health insurance”. Which isn’t the case, and in any event is a sort of atypical form of insurance in the first place. Car insurance or homeowner’s insurance is a more classical form- you pay your premiums, you have a deductible and clearly spelled out conditions in your policy. In general, barring you being culpable in some way\*, they pay out according to the terms of the policy. In essence, it’s a sort of financial gambling scheme- basically they collect premiums, invest them, and hope their bean counters did their jobs right, and they can break even or better on their payouts. Either way, they keep the investment income. \*in other words, there’s almost certainly going to be clauses that say that if you wreck your car while driving the wrong way down the street, they’re not going to pay out your claim. Or if you start a fire in the middle of your living room floor and your house burns down as a result. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117/73 "2019-01-08T19:00:27Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Right, but you as an individual are screwed, and all the other customers share the gain of your loss. And somebody with a bullshit job is paid to make those decisions. Surely preventing insurance fraud isn’t a bullshit job? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-the-economist-40-of-jobs-are-bullshit/827117.md?page=3)