But I fear you may be missing the point for true skills capable of operating in the complex-space and above. There, one of the primary drivers for skills-shortages is not money, but time: it takes literally years to bring someone to that required level, and no amount of throwing money at the problem is going to change that. (Okay, there’ll be plenty of people who would claim to solve it with money alone, but I can guarantee that the skill-levels will be inadequate to the task.) And that, of course, assumes that the aptitude for the skill exists in the first place: for example, just how many people are there in the world who are even capable of understanding the deep-math of nuclear physics, or the subtleties of a financial market? At these levels, the skills-shortage will always be real.

I’d also guess that you live in an area where there are plenty of people with a high general-education level and a significant amount of experience. In most of the countries I’ve worked, the technical-skills pool has always been very small – hence a constant problem of overload, frequently at risk of burnout, and, again, a very real skills-shortage which no amount of throwing money at the problem would resolve.

In short, I fear you may have an over-idealised notion of the capabilities of ‘the market’, and perhaps not enough experience or understanding of what real skills – as opposed to high-level trainings – actually entail in practice. (To give one very simple rule-of-thumb, if it’s possible to do a certification for the ‘skill’ by a multiple-choice exam, it’s not a skill but at best a training – and not capable of handle real-world complexity without experienced help.) It is relatively easy to train up people to do the same tasks that computer-systems already can; it is not easy, or quick, to develop their skills beyond that point. The people we need most are those who can define the capabilities for new computer-systems, and/or can take over beyond the capabilities of those computer-systems – in other words, can deal with the real world rather than some convenient over-idealised abstraction.

To say that “Shortages are purely a function of price” betrays a serious lack of knowledge or understanding of how the real world really works – such as the complex intersections of the transaction economy, attention economy and trust/reputation economy, as described in another of the SideWise posts. Of course, you would be in good company in that lack of real-world understanding, because it seems most current economists make much the same myopic mistakes – which is precisely why our current economy is in such a chaotic mess!

So apologies if this seems rude, but I truly do not believe that you have thought about this in any depth at all, beyond the most simplistic of price-centred economic models: and as such I really cannot take your critique seriously. But many thanks for writing, anyway.

Some people speak about shortages as though they represent some absolute, readily identifiable lack of desirable services. Price is rarely accorded its proper importance in their discussion.

If you start raising wages and improving working conditions, and continue doing so, you’ll solve your shortage and will have people lining up around the block to work for you even if you need to have huge piles of steaming manure hand-scooped on a blazing summer afternoon.

Re: Shortage caused by employees retiring out of the workforce: With the majority of retirement accounts down about 50% or more, most people entering retirement age are working well into their sunset years. So, you won’t be getting a worker shortage anytime soon due to retirees exiting the workforce.

Okay, fine. Some specialized jobs require training and/or certification, again, the solution is higher wages and improved benefits. People will self-fund their re-education so that they can enter the industry in a work-ready state. The attractive wages, working conditions and career prospects of technology during the 1980’s and 1990’s was a prime example of people’s willingness to self-fund their own career re-education.

There is never enough of any good or service to satisfy all wants or desires. A buyer, or employer, must give up something to get something. They must pay the market price and forego whatever else he could have for the same price. The forces of supply and demand determine these prices — and the price of a skilled workman is no exception. The buyer can take it or leave it. However, those who choose to leave it (because of lack of funds or personal preference) must not cry shortage. The good is available at the market price. All goods and services are scarce, but scarcity and shortages are by no means synonymous. Scarcity is a regrettable and unavoidable fact.

Shortages are purely a function of price. The only way in which a shortage has existed, or ever will exist, is in cases where the “going price” has been held below the market-clearing price.