The Mythology of the Future Job Market
Rdan
Martin Ford continues his thoughts on:
The Mythology of the Future Job Market
Angry Bear recently picked up an article by Michael Lind at Salon on the jobs of tomorrow. The story notes that advancing job automation technology is going to be the primary force that will shape the future job market. That’s something that I have also been talking about here.
Lind’s article then goes on to do a pretty good job of fleshing out the conventional wisdom on where jobs are going to come from in the future:
The most numerous and stable jobs of tomorrow will be those that cannot be offshored, because they must be performed on U.S. soil, and also cannot be automated, either because they require a high degree of creativity or because they rely on the human touch in face-to-face interactions. The latter are sometimes called “proximity services” and they include the fastest-growing occupations, healthcare and education.
So we are led to expect that, over time, the bulk of the workforce is going to migrate into jobs that require creativity or innovation, or jobs that depend on uniquely human traits or talents. Furthermore, these new jobs are going to require that any innovation, creativity or personal attention occur pretty much while actually holding onto your customer’s hand—so that the job can’t be offshored. Is that really a likely scenario?
The first thing to note is that the two sectors singled out as being promising—healthcare and education—are by no means exempt from automation. Specific healthcare tasks are likely to be automated, while decision making and patient monitoring may migrate increasingly into expert systems.
Automation is clearly going to be a major factor in specialized, vocational-type education and training. Today in California, you can get your real estate license completely online. You won’t encounter an actual human being until you run into a proctor at the licensing exam. A similar thing has happened with the traffic school programs that drivers have to complete after getting a ticket. If training can be offered online, it will be. I see no reason why something similar won’t eventually occur in college education, especially since new graduates have been seeing a lower financial return on their investment. It seems likely that if the credential is worth less, many people will gravitate toward less expensive, automated online learning.
The biggest problem with the conventional wisdom is the number of jobs we are talking about. In the U.S. we have a workforce of around 140 million workers. The majority of these jobs are basically routine and repetitive in nature. At a minimum, tens of millions of jobs will be subject to automation, self-service technologies or offshoring. The automation process will never stop advancing: computer hardware and, perhaps most importantly, software will continue to relentlessly improve. Therefore, simply upgrading worker skills is not going to be a long-term solution; automation will eventually (and perhaps rapidly) catch up. If you are willing to look far enough into the future, the number of impacted jobs is potentially staggering.
Can we really expect that such an enormous number of these supposedly safe creative/“proximity service” jobs are going to materialize? And even if they do appear, can we reasonably anticipate that millions of workers who are now employed as cashiers, accounting clerks, materials movers—or even as college-educated “Dilberts”—are going to be able to successfully transition into those jobs?
Historically, the job market has always looked like a pyramid in terms of worker skills and capabilities. At the top, a relatively small number of highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs have been responsible for most creativity and innovation. The vast majority of the workforce has always been engaged in work that is fundamentally routine and repetitive. As various sectors have mechanized or automated, workers have transitioned from routine jobs in one sector to routine jobs in another. In many cases, skills have been upgraded, but the work has nonetheless remained routine in nature. So, historically, there has been a reasonable match between the types of work required by the economy and the capabilities of the available workforce.
Now, as it becomes clear that automation is going to ultimately consume the entire base of the job skills pyramid, the conventional wisdom is that we are going to somehow cram everyone into the very top. And even if we somehow manage to do that, the jobs will be highly susceptible to offshoring, so we also have to require that the jobs be somehow anchored locally. I think this is somewhat analogous to having the agricultural sector mechanize and then expecting that everyone will get a job driving a tractor. The numbers don’t work. The problem with the conventional wisdom is that it underestimates the long-term impact of automation, and it expects too much in the way of occupational acrobatics from the average worker.
Yet another problem is that even if all these creative jobs materialize, the result would likely be far from optimal. Jobs that rely heavily on creativity, talent or unique personality traits (think authors, actors, musicians, commission sales people) very often have a power law income distribution. In other words, a few people do phenomenally well, while nearly everyone else struggles to survive. Even if vast numbers of workers could successfully migrate into these more creative areas (and I doubt that), it would probably do very little to slow down our drive toward ever-increasing income inequality.
The bottom line is that, at some point, we are all going to have to wake up to reality. It will be a long, arduous trek across the wasteland of denial, but someday all of us will have to start thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable: The jobs of the future…are not going to be there. Jobs are disappearing, and we will have to somehow adapt to that. In the long run, the solution will likely have to involve some type of job sharing, and it will also have to incorporate income supplementation for most people. It’s almost impossible to imagine how that will happen in a world that includes Fox News, but I think it will nonetheless have to happen. Perhaps the chances of it happening will improve when conservatives and business owners begin to recognize that workers and consumers are basically the same people and that the vast majority of consumer spending is supported by wage income.
The good news, though, is that you can ignore all this because it’s wrong. Many economists will tell you so. Ask any well-regarded economist such as Krugman, DeLong, Mankiw or Thoma. None of them are really worried about this, or if they are, they’re certainly not talking about it. They may nibble at the edges of this issue. Yes, we might have some structural unemployment for a few years while the economy adjusts and new jobs are created, but, no, jobs aren’t going to disappear. The economy always creates jobs; it gravitates toward full employment.
Why? Because it always has. Economists have studied it and analyzed reams of data from the past. They’ve built mathematical models, and the models say there will be jobs. It’s a rule. Hundreds of years ago there were lots of jobs for guys who shoveled coal into steam engines. Now those jobs are gone, and we all have jobs that people back then could never have imagined. It will be the same this time around. So don’t worry. And leave a cookie out on Christmas Eve. Santa might be hungry.
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Martin Ford is the author of The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future and has a blog at econfuture.wordpress.com.
These are good arguments — and have been since they were first rolled out half a century ago. (Or earlier?) Forgive me if I’ve missed something new and novel. Trouble is that the economy continues to ignore them and create jobs where reasonably perhaps none should exist. The arguments have failed to predict the future so often that folks tend to disregard them.
That doesn’t mean that they will always be incorrect.
I think one major factor is the very slow pace of development of “artificial intelligence”. In point of fact, although we can build very powerful thinking machines, we have a great deal of trouble making them “think”. In my experience “artificial stupidity” is possibly a slightly more accurate moniker than “artificial intelligence”. I realize that is flippant, but to date, automating even the simplest jobs takes an enormous amount of work and takes a long time. Paradoxically, attemtping to eliminate jobs tends to create jobs. That could change. Probably will someday. But I’m not sure that “It’s changing even as we speak” is the way to bet.
Hi –
From the work I’ve been doing on demographics and income cohort distribution and development, what Martin Ford is saying here is absolutely correct.
When someone from the middle class in Hyderabad or Mumbai can do the same job as someone from the middle class in Peoria or Kansas City, that job will migrate to the lowest cost concurrent with roughly the same quality. This means that mundane factory jobs, simple clerical work and other blue-collar jobs will indeed disappear because they will be too expensive to do. Your data processing or assembly line worker dollar, if you are a manufacturer or service provider, simply goes much further in those areas which are lower cost.
Won’t always be that way: what is currently low cost won’t necessarily be the lowest cost in the future. I like to tell this story: a US manufacturer of high-quality goods found his US workforce to be simply too expensive to compete (the work required largely hgihly skilled labor) and after carefuly consideration and intensive preparation, outsourced the most expensive part of the value-added in production to a low-cost country where productivity was lower than in the US, but wage costs per finished unit were even lower, with potential for productivity increases much larger than for unit labor cost increases. The outsourcing decision was made, the company flourished and did much better than its competitors.
The company? Gruen, one of the premier US watchmaking companies. The time? Late 1870s. The low-wage country involved?
Switzerland.
Gruen ultimately went bankrupt in the 1960s due to extraordinarily bad management (and complete disengagement of the original family, which led to severe fraud on the part of management). But that’s another story entirely…
Shifting demographics and economic activity means that those on the left-hand side of the bell curve of skill distribution are the losers in globalization: what people don’t realize is that the point where outsourcing becomes not only practible, but indeed desireable, is variable and moves not to the right, but to the left. It becomes a catastrophe when it reaches and then passes the highest point of the bell curve.
Whenever anyone points out that jobs of the future will be in education, I like to point out the Rosettastone language software. Masterful and wonderful way to learn a foreign language that requires zero teachers.
There is no reason someone can’t invent a Rosettastone like program for just about every single subject.
How about a template redo?
Here’s a little something for Lem that addresses just this problem, and in particular, how Americans have handled it thus far:
A certain learned constructor built the New Machines, devices so excellent that they could work quite independently, without supervision. And that was the beginning of the catastrophe. When the New Machines appeared in the factories, hordes of Drudgelings lost their jobs; and, receiving no salary, they faced starvation. . .”
“Excuse me, Phool,” I asked, “but what became of the profits the factories made?”
“The profits,” he replied, “went to the rightful owners, of course. Now, then, as I was saying, the threat of annihilation hung. . .”
“But what are you saying, worthy Phool!” I cried. “All that had to be done was to make the factories common property, and the New Machines would have become a blessing to you!”
The minute I said this the Phool trembled, blinked his ten eyes nervously, and cupped his ears to ascertain whether any of his companions milling about the stairs had overheard my remark.
“By the Ten Noses of the Phoo, I implore you, O stranger, do not utter such vile heresy, which attacks the very foundation of our freedom! Our supreme law, the principle of Civic Initiative, states that no one can be compelled, constrained, or even coaxed to do what he does not wish. Who, then, would dare expropriate the Eminents’ factories, it being their will to enjoy possession of same? That would be the most horrible violation of liberty imaginable. Now, then, to continue, the New Machines produced an abundance of extremely cheap goods and excellent food, but the Drudgelings bought nothing, for they had not the wherewithal. . .”
“But, my dear Phool!” I cried. “Surely you do not claim that the Drudgelings did this voluntarily? Where was your liberty, your civic freedom?! ”
“Ah, worthy stranger,” sighed the Phool, “the laws were still observed, but they say only that the citizen is free to do whatever he wants with his property and money; they do not say where he is to obtain them. No one oppressed the Drudgelings, no one forced them to do anything; they were completely free and could do what they pleased, yet instead of rejoicing at such freedom they died off like flies.”
I can see a future America with no middle class to speak of at all and a great deal of ‘freedom’ indeed.
Trainwreck, I don’t think that teaching can be automated. I am admittedly a (math) teacher, but imho a lot of what I do – what just about every good teacher does – is diagnostic in nature. If someone makes a mistake, I can’t simply say “that’s wrong” and follow up with the problem worked correctly; I’ve got to figure out why they made that particular mistake. Iow, to paraphrase a Real American it’s not what you don’t know, it’s what you do know that ain’t so. And given that these mistakes are manifold and can point to any number of underlying causes, it’s hard to see how the process can be automated without some very high level AI.
Can’t be outsourced: Janitors, Gardiners, security guards, car washers etc. ‘Cause contrary to popular opinion, web designers, x-ray readers, network administration are ALL being outsourced as we speak. -Jim A
***Trainwreck, I don’t think that teaching can be automated.*** ScentOfViolets
Having worked in a school (not as a teacher) and once had to put together and teach a real 40 hour class, I think I have some idea what is going on.
My take. There is a substantial set of students who can learn a subject with no teacher and lousy source materials. (e.g. Neil Young claims he took a couple guitar lessons once, but couldn’t figure out what they wanted him to do so he dropped the lessons and taught himself to play). There is another set who can learn when given a good set of tools. Producing those takes a LOT of effort. There is an even larger set that can learn with help from a teacher. And there is a set that is learning-proof. In some subjects that’s a small minority. In math, it looks to be maybe half the class.
“…these are not the only people that are creative in their particular field. what about engineers, electricians, electromechanical technicians, mechanics?”
The myth of the future job market stated so succinctly: The confusion of innovation and creativity with science, math and engineering. Advancing job automation is the antithesis of creativity and innovation in the work place. You can not have a creative society when you take no time to study the subject, and it shows when these pamphleteers tout pictures of famous inventors, and then ask; why do we have so few creative people or ideas?
First off- Engineers, electricians, technicians, mechanics, are not creative or innovative professions, nor are they trained to think, act, or perform creative acts.(If you think what an engineer does is creative or innovative, then you have an impoverished view of the world and are missing what real creativity and innovation is about.)
Second- The condemnation of the arts. Why do we equate training in industrial fields, engineering, mechanics ect… as creative endeavors and yet spit upon those who actually study the topic; such as artists, designers. I have yet to hear one of these pundits of creativity and innovation; you know, actually talk to a painter or even a poet.
Third- We have very little cross-training. In a rush to get a college degree, most engineers, mechanics, have zero training in aesthetics, arts and letters or other creative training. This goes in the opposite direction, when the creative people have little or no training in science, math, or engineering. I mean why can you major in English, and not minor in Engineering?
My practical knowledge is in speaking foreign languages and administering government programs. In both, you have to deal face-to-face with people. The degree of success obtained is largely dependent on one’s skill in communication. What I see people here say is that we have a population of perhaps 300,000,000 a large percentage of whom now have no economic reason to be here. In economic theory, they have no purpose other than contributing to GDP and a decreasing chance of ever doing so. Thus the question: what kind of country is it that cheerfully consigns its population to starvation, as in scentofviolets comment above, on the basis of some faith-based economic scheme.
I don’t really think automation can do everything. Learning is a good example of things people need others’ help to do, more often than not. However, we here need Bruce and rdan to point out the fine points of economic theory and practice, government policy and the like. I benefit greatly from these discussions as do others here who are much more knowledgeable than I. You certainly can’t fault those who comment here by saying they have no interest in others’ ideas. My point is that we can’t have a country if we reduce everything to a matter of econmic theory.
There are millions people involved who are not going to just sit there and starve. They will find many novel and innovative ways to show us how to destroy a society it has taken so much to build. Show me the way to use them in a way that creates productive capacity first and capitol gains second. Or, tell me how we propose to govern a population with no place to learn, no place to live and no place to work.
As others above have stated, this is one of many fears that come up from time to time whenever there is great social and economic change. People were saying the very same sorts of things during the Industrial Revolution. Yet, life went on, the economy created jobs and we all settled into a new means of production based on mass manufacturing and assembly lines.
I’m not saying that there won’t be disruption and that some groups won’t be adversely affected. I’m saying that the disruption will be temporary, and that people will eventually settle into a new mode of economic activity, just as they did after the end of the Industrial Revolution.
Lets not forget that the Information Revolution (as I call it) is only 20 years old. We haven’t even seen the beginning of social and economic trends created by the new technologies being used. To analogize with the Industrial Revolution, we’re being dismayed by the fact that the stagecoach business is being destroyed by railroads.
First off- Engineers, electricians, technicians, mechanics, are not creative or innovative professions, nor are they trained to think, act, or perform creative acts.(If you think what an engineer does is creative or innovative, then you have an impoverished view of the world and are missing what real creativity and innovation is about.)
Robbie, that’s precisely the attitude that one expects from one who has never had close exposure to engineering. As an electrical engineering/computer science double major, I would say that it takes a fair amount of creativity and skill to make something even as “simple” as a blog engine. Your attitude only highlights your ignorance here.
Second- The condemnation of the arts. Why do we equate training in industrial fields, engineering, mechanics ect… as creative endeavors and yet spit upon those who actually study the topic; such as artists, designers. I have yet to hear one of these pundits of creativity and innovation; you know, actually talk to a painter or even a poet.
Have you ever looked at Modern Art? I went to the Walker Center for Modern Arts (Minneapolis, MN) the other day, and I was dismayed by what I saw there. One of the “premier” exhibits was a rubber tire spinning against a wall, with the rubber shavings accumulating below. Another one of their famous pieces was a simple yellow square made out of enamelled wire. With “art” like this, how can you not expect contempt from those engaged in other fields?
Third- We have very little cross-training. In a rush to get a college degree, most engineers, mechanics, have zero training in aesthetics, arts and letters or other creative training. This goes in the opposite direction, when the creative people have little or no training in science, math, or engineering. I mean why can you major in English, and not minor in Engineering?
Again, you’re quite wrong. Many engineers I know have minors in non-scientific fields. One of my close friends has two minors: one in Literature and another in History. Another has a double major in Japanese and Computer Science. Indeed, I find there’s more interest in the arts on the part of engineers than interest in engineering on the part of artists.
If someone makes a mistake, I can’t simply say “that’s wrong” and follow up with the problem worked correctly; I’ve got to figure out why they made that particular mistake.
My wife is working for a small start-up that is building software for education/training that provides feedback on wrong answers based on the probable type of error. The people in our state community college system are very excited about using it for remedial math classes.
Rdan, I’d like to believe “there is no reason” why education can’t be (at least partially) automated. However, I see one big reason — educators have a vested interest in the current system.
Thousands of college professors are teaching large lecture courses. They could be replaced by a handful of excellent teachers creating DVD’s (or online files) of their excellent lectures. This shift could have happened 30 years ago with the advent of cheap video taping, but it didn’t.
I think the reason is that the thousands of people currently teaching these courses control the credential granting process. They will work hard to make sure that they do not become surplus labor.
We may see changes eventually, but the pace seems to be glacial.
Testing
The US is headed for a 3rd world economy … We already see the bifurcation occurring in the economy whereby there will be few winners and many, many losers.
The answer is to lower the workweek to 30 hours while the USG puts a floor under the population with single payer, permant unemployment benefits depreciating over time and employee paid USG Retirement accounts.
We need tariffs of at least 20% on all goods to protect existing jobs from foreign countries and companies who will manipulate currency, dump product and tax shop profits.
The problem we face today is corporatism and the idea that there are no human rights only the rights of capital.
If we solve our unemployment problem then we could move up with our economy too. We are in deep need to solve it, many friends of mine are unemployed and scopes of new jobs are just nil.
***Thousands of college professors are teaching large lecture courses. They could be replaced by a handful of excellent teachers creating DVD’s (or online files) of their excellent lectures.***
MIT has a substantial body of courseware available online (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm). Free as far as I can tell.
Richard Feynman’s legendary Cal Tech Lectures on Physics are available for a not outrageous amount of money including CDs with the taped audio from many of them. Cheaper than a single course at your local community college probably.
All the books on Computer Science that I ever found to be worth spending money on . (Knuth, Hamming, Brooks, Tannenbaum’s Computer Networking, Beizer on Testing) can be had at Amazon for well under $500)
The issue is not the availability of information. It’s how to package it and make it accessible.
“Robbie, that’s precisely the attitude that one expects from one who has never had close exposure to engineering. As an electrical engineering/computer science double major, I would say that it takes a fair amount of creativity and skill to make something even as “simple” as a blog engine. Your attitude only highlights your ignorance here.”
Today I made a cheeseburger. Where is my innovation and creativity badge? Oh, it was a special cheeseburger with innovative sauces and cheeses. Nice ad hominem attack though, but you still will be deducted points.
“Have you ever looked at Modern Art? I went to the Walker Center for Modern Arts (Minneapolis, MN) the other day, and I was dismayed by what I saw there. One of the “premier” exhibits was a rubber tire spinning against a wall, with the rubber shavings accumulating below. Another one of their famous pieces was a simple yellow square made out of enamelled wire. With “art” like this, how can you not expect contempt from those engaged in other fields?”
Your contempt for “art” is what I am talking about. Engineers do not understand creativity, and as a matter of fact, engineers shun it. Your contempt for “modern art” is founded in your science and math training? Regardless of your aesthetic views, you still have not engaged my argument; all you have done is basically stated that you engaged some pieces of art, and that you did not like them.
“Again, you’re quite wrong. Many engineers I know have minors in non-scientific fields. One of my close friends has two minors: one in Literature and another in History. Another has a double major in Japanese and Computer Science. Indeed, I find there’s more interest in the arts on the part of engineers than interest in engineering on the part of artists.”
Can you minor in Engineering? Can a Philosophy major waltz-on-down and take engineering statics, or a design of machine elements course?
Prove to me that my view is wrong.
“Jobs that are primarily focused on innovation and creativity are relatively few in number.”
If your job is labeled as creative, then it is more than likely not.
I work at a solar company and our production process is so complex that we have 400 production workers (we call them technicians) that would be maintenance personnel in any other factory. they do the majority of the technical maintenance the only time they call the engineering staff is when they run into a situation where they are having trouble figuring it out.
To say that engineers are not creative I would say you and I don’t know the same engineers.
jobs are not creative people are…
these off shore out sourcing financial plans always assume perfect product and perfect performance. what do you do when you find a flaw in the first production run that did not show up in the prototype stage and now you have a million units on a boat that need to be reworked. what do you do turn the boat around or eat it? first rule of lean manufacturing is you build your products in the country where you are going to sell them that is why Toyota, Honda manufacture cars here. both follow lean manufacturing principles religiously and it has worked well for them.
Rdan said: “Trouble is that the economy continues to ignore them…”
It wasn’t “the economy” ignoring them, if by economy you mean some kind of self-acting beast with an invisible hand. It was government, listening to the arguments and intervening repeatedly and massively over the last 76 years to “stimulate” job creation.
So far, in the present crisis the government has been reluctant to act decisively… meanwhile “the economy” has been shedding jobs like they’re going out of style.
If you want to get depressed, do the feminist analysis. The higher paying jobs traditionally go to men, even if the work is the same as that in a traditional woman’s job. This means that the payoff for automating a man’s job is higher than the payoff for automating a woman’s job. This means that the jobs we’ll all be doing in the future will be traditional woman’s jobs like teacher, nurse (ot medic), seamstress, cook (not chef), paid companion, scullery maid, waitress and so on. Of course, we’ll change the names.
“Trouble is that the economy continues to ignore them and create jobs…”
Not true. “The economy” doesn’t create all those jobs. Government creates those jobs by “stimulating” the economy through spending programs. It’s called “full employment economics.” The problem is though that the utility of such programs is finite. It only works to the extent that there are ample suppplies, not only of labor but also of facilities and resources (including both sources and sinks). Furthermore, if the government seeks to promote economic expansion and job creation by stimulating private investment, the “cost” of doing so becomes progressively steeper with each political business cycle. Eventually interest rates and taxes have to be negative to continue to have the desired effect. If we’re not there yet, we’re getting close.
“To say that engineers are not creative I would say you and I don’t know the same engineers.”
Obviously you and I do not share the same views on creativity. Enlighten me on how you think engineers are creative and innovative?
Engineers utilize creativity when presented with a problem and figure out how to meet it. Simple example given the Hudson River how do you build a bridge across it that 1 is possible with the technology of the day, 2 is economically feasible, and 3 is not totally ugly. Balancing the various trade offs does take creativity.
I contend that creativity is not in art either, but rather is had by thinking about how one thinks. To do this start with the principle that do get different results you have to do different. Then to do different you need to think differently and finally to think differently you need to think about your thinking.
To take another example there is the Creative Problem solving process which is taught at the Creative Problem Solving institute. Basically a series of gather alternatives winnow them down, then gather new alternatives that come from the results of the winnowing, Rinse and Repeat.
Now to some this may not be creativity, but if you want to see creativity go there, not to an art institute.
Also there is Kirton Adaptation Innovation index which explains that people have different problem solving styles some operate within the rules and some say damn the rules full speed ahead.
For engineering saying damn the laws of physics, and damn economics results in something that never gets built. (Mother nature never waives the laws of physics, see the Quebec Bridge disaster of 1907. )
I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment, and think that the eventual solution to this problem (short of revolt and class war) will be the implementation of a guaranteed minimum income coupled with relatively high consumptive taxation/luxury taxation.
The guaranteed income would replace all forms of social assistance (welfare, unemployment, disability insurance, pensions, etc.), and be paid out to every citizen, who could supliment this income by working, trading or doing whatever they pleased with it. Necessities of life would be taxed more lightly (to assure that everyone could afford food, shelter, etc.) while luxury goods would be heavily taxed (and made all the more exclusive because of it).
There would be no taxation on labour, per say, but a tax on every economic transaction – including stocks, bonds, etc. and a heavy death-tax on accumulated wealth to protect against the formation of an aristocratic overclass.
A pipe-dream perhaps… but the alternatives are looking more and more like a global collapse into class warfare a la Russian revolution that would lead to mass starvation, economic collapse and an eventual return to some sort of neo-medieval existence or worse.
rdan
In my experience “artificial stupidity” is possibly a slightly more accurate moniker than “artificial intelligence”.
I think “artificial autism” would be more accurate – high level of course.
On outsourcing of low level jobs such as janitors etc. My oldest son is handicapped and held a janitor/cleanup job (subsidised) at a pet hospital. When the owner wanted to retire and sell out he pumped the profits by laying off all the longtime employees and hiring folks who were new to the labor market and or new to the USA.
Those laid off included my son who was making the handsome sum of $12K a year.
The 3rd/2nd world can be imported.
Looks good to me. The bugs will work themselves out – just like the economy.
Sandwichman:
“Furthermore, if the government seeks to promote economic expansion and job creation by stimulating private investment, the “cost” of doing so becomes progressively steeper with each political business cycle.”
Elaborate for some of us not so intelligent in these matters?
“Eventually interest rates and taxes have to be negative to continue to have the desired effect.”
It appears they are discussing neg Treasure Bill Rates now . .
Scott:
Not exactly Lean principles which is solely the elimination of Labor. The principles of Toyoda Kanban and Lean Six Sigma look more to the process than people.
As far as your example. you eat it and that is one of the hazards of manufacturing on distant shores.
While people argue about how their job could not be automated, their employers and customers are thinking about how much less it would cost if they were. In this tough economy we can’t afford to spend the money to deal with a person when a machine will do. The trouble is that as more jobs are lost, every business sees it’s sales go down. Untill we take measures to deal with this problem the economy will continue to loose it’s strength. We just need to realize that technology is not there for us to compete with, its there to serve us … All of us.
It may happen that the part of the pyramid that was thickly populated earlier will become less dense because of automation but substantial decrease will not be noticed for jobs requiring specialized and technical skills. We may encounter minor issues because of this invasion of automation but if you have a college degree there will always be a payoff for the time, money and efforts that you will be investing. It is just that we need to keep abreast with the new technologies. Enrolling in career focused college degree programs can facilitate your way to a successful career, no matter what the scenario is.
It may happen that the part of the pyramid that was thickly populated earlier will become less dense because of automation but substantial decrease will not be noticed for jobs requiring specialized and technical skills. We may encounter minor issues because of this invasion of automation but if you have a college degree there will always be a payoff for the time, money and efforts that you will be investing. It is just that we need to keep abreast with the new technologies. Enrolling in career focused college degree programs can facilitate your way to a successful career, no matter what the scenario is.
As a person who creates technology for a living, I can guarantee you that the pace at which technology is created is far outpacing the ability of society to adapt. Technology advances exponentially versus time. Changes that took 100 years in the past are taking 10 years now. That will become one year. It will become less.
90+% unemployment is a given.
We are even destroying our own jobs, and not by outsourcing, but by our own hands.
The craze of this day is Cloud computing, something Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, etc., are pouring billions of investment into and making billions more in return.
But Cloud computing makes systems engineers, systems administrators, network engineers and network administrators totally useless. These people, who were highly paid and in great demand, are disappearing from the workforce on the order of thousands per month.
Software engineers destroyed these jobs. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
High level jobs are not immune to the forces of technology. Technology doesn’t care whose job it takes. It will take most jobs. And it cannot be stopped.
One big problem is that money talks, and those obsolete human ex workers who in the past were well paid workers, will find that no one is listening when they voice their dispair and need for help. Those business owners who got rich replacing their workers with machines will have their view of the world heard everywhere and the government will bow to them. People who still have jobs will see those who lost their jobs as losers who deserve their problems. Rising unemployment will be viewed as a result of a spreading spirit of lazyness and efforts to fix this problem with the economy will be viewed as coming from an unfair spirit of entitlement and a leaning toward evil communism and socialism.
We need to have limmits on the voice of the rich and recognize the level of human obsolescence in the workplace and remember that humans still are endowed by our creator with inalienable rights. Life is one of those. We need to recognize that ignoring this problem is violating our right to life.
For those who see this as an age old luddite argument that is always proved wrong when technology creates new kinds of jobs, The difference is that one level of technology compliments the human worker and a higher level of technlogy renders the human worker obsolete.
I agree with what you say. A combination of your theories combined with the doubling population every couple of generations is going to cause huge problems in the future.
great read, will share legitimate work from home jobs
The basic economic argument you’re referring to would say:
You’re ignoring that people are producing more, and more. Things we can’t yet imagine we need. Not more “stuff” and “goods” necessarily, but more value. Data, information, knowledge, ideas…. digital information tech-age. As we automate the B.S., we find needs we never knew we had. There are a ton of problems that need solving, granted few are smart enough to solve them.
How many people do you think would be employed in an industry that seeks to build mag-lev trains across the entire planet?
Also consider that population is going DOWN, way DOWN, in 1st world countries and everywhere else. 10 billion stabilization max. The population of uselss people will go down and those left will be smarter.
Still I worry about this subject a lot. I’m not useful to the economy as far as I can tell.
read the book “creativity” by mihaly csikszentmihalyi