Quotehttp://jacksonville.com/news/national/2013-01-28/story/ap-investigation-technology-killing-millions-middle-class-jobs
NEW YORK â€" Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.
And the situation is even worse than it appears.
Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What’s more, these jobs aren’t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren’t just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.
They’re being obliterated by technology.
Check out your groceries or drugstore purchases using a kiosk? A worker behind a cash register used to do that.
Buy clothes without visiting a store? You’ve taken work from a salesman.
Book your vacation using an online program? You’ve helped lay off a travel agent â€" perhaps one at American Express Co., which announced this month that it plans to cut 5,400 jobs, mainly in its travel business, as more of its customers shift to online portals to plan trips.
Software is picking out worrisome blots in medical scans, running trains without conductors, analyzing Twitter traffic to tell where to sell certain snacks, sifting through documents for evidence in court cases, recording power usage beamed from digital utility meters at millions of homes, and sorting returned library books.
Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other devices becomes more capable of doing tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future has arrived.
‘’I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years,†says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of “Race Against the Machine.â€
The global economy is being reshaped by machines that generate and analyze vast amounts of data; by devices such as smartphones and tablet computers that let people work just about anywhere, even when they’re on the move; by smarter, nimbler robots; and by services that let businesses rent computing power when they need it, instead of installing expensive equipment and hiring IT staffs to run it. Whole employment categories, from secretaries to travel agents, are disappearing.
“There’s no sector of the economy that’s going to get a pass,†says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote “The Lights in the Tunnel,†a book predicting widespread job losses. “It’s everywhere.â€
The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are midpay. Nearly 70 percent are low-paying jobs; 29 percent pay well.
In the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency, the numbers are even worse. Almost 4.3 million low-pay jobs have been gained since mid-2009, but the loss of midpay jobs has never stopped. A total of 7.6 million disappeared from January 2008 through last June.
Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers. But, overall, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.
To better understand the impact of technology on jobs, The Associated Press analyzed employment data from 20 countries; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, CEOs, and workers who are competing with smarter machines.
The AP’s key findings:
■ Over the past 50 years, technology has drastically reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work faster and make fewer mistakes than humans. Now, that same efficiency is being unleashed in the service economy.
■ Technology is being adopted by every kind of organization that employs people â€" in large corporations and small businesses, established companies and startups, schools, hospitals, nonprofits and the military.
■ The most vulnerable workers are doing repetitive tasks that programmers can write software for â€" an accountant, an office manager, a paralegal reviewing documents.
■ Startups account for most of the job growth in developed economies. Thanks to software, entrepreneurs are launching businesses with a third fewer employees than in the 1990s.
■ It’s becoming a self-serve world, where we use software to do tasks ourselves.
The lingering pain of the Great Recession is not entirely a result of technology’s advances. Other factors are keeping companies from hiring â€" partisan gridlock in the U.S., for instance, and the debt crisis in Europe, which led to deep government spending cuts.
But to the extent technology has played a role, it raises the specter of high unemployment even after political troubles lift and economic growth accelerates.
In the U.S., the economic recovery that started in June 2009 has been called the third straight “jobless recovery.â€
But that’s a misnomer. After the recessions that ended in 1991 and 2001, jobs lost were slow to return, but they all returned within three years.
But 42 months after the Great Recession ended, the U.S. has gained only 3.5 million, or 47 percent, of the 7.5 million jobs that were lost. The 17 countries that use the euro had 3.5 million fewer jobs last June than in December 2007.
This has truly been a jobless recovery, and the lack of midpay jobs is almost entirely to blame.
Fifty percent of the U.S. jobs lost were in midpay industries, but Moody’s Analytics, a research firm, says just 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained are in that category. After the four previous recessions, at least 30 percent of jobs created â€" and as many as 46 percent â€" were in midpay industries.
Some of the most startling studies have focused on midskill, midpay jobs â€" think travel agents, salespeople in stores, office assistants and back-office workers like benefits managers and payroll clerks. An August 2012 paper by economists Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich of Duke University found these kinds of jobs comprise fewer than half of all jobs, yet accounted for nine of 10 of all losses in the Great Recession. And they have kept disappearing in the economic recovery.
What hope is there for the future?
Historically, new companies and new industries have been the incubator of new jobs. But even these companies are hiring fewer people. The average new business employed 4.7 workers when it opened its doors in 2011, down from 7.6 in the 1990s, according to a Labor Department study released last March.
Technological innovations have been throwing people out of jobs for centuries. But they eventually create more work, and greater wealth, than they destroy. Many economists are encouraged by history and think the gains eventually will outweigh the losses. But even they have doubts.
“What’s different this time is that digital technologies show up in every corner of the economy,†says MIT’s McAfee, a self-described “digital optimist.†“Your tablet [computer] is just two or three years old, and it’s already taken over our lives.â€
Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations can disappear in a few years. Utility meter readers are just one example.
As power companies began installing so-called smart readers outside homes, the number of meter readers in the U.S. plunged from 56,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2010, according to the Labor Department.
In 10 years?
That number is expected to be zero.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/national/2013-01-28/story/ap-investigation-technology-killing-millions-middle-class-jobs#ixzz2JI83DiDh
Really interesting, though not entirely surprising, story.
Just curious as to what you guys think the long term implication is.
Will these advancements (like other eras of rapid technological growth) fuel the development of entirely new job sectors and opportunities? Or, as advancement races forward while the labor market continues to increase, will technology continue to supplant human labor, ultimately leading to a society where unemployment is astronomical while those that control the machines control the vast majority of the wealth?
All shills making excuses for this god awful administration.
Times change and we are in the middle of the technology revolution. I eventually see the middle class shifting to more tech oriented jobs.
Quote from: bill on January 28, 2013, 01:01:18 PM
All shills making excuses for this god awful administration.
Seriously no matter what your politics. To think someone would suggest that technology has no impact on jobs is worrisome. Find your front door exit and look around at the world.
How many people were employed in craft breweries ten years ago? How many were working in small cheese making operations? How many nail salons were there? How many cell phone stores?
See a trend here? Creative destruction again.
Goods and services are fragmenting and getting more local and more individualized. Chain restaurants are closing, but more and more local restaurants are opening. Department stores have been dying for decades, but smaller boutiques have exploded in number.
Next time you want jewelery you might not go to Zale's but a local 3D printing store and print out a design that you made using Tinkercad (https://tinkercad.com/).
Call it the atomization of jobs; everything getting more particularized as technology begins to eliminate the advantage of larger and larger conglomerations of people and goods.
I do believe there is some real creative mitigation going on DW but there is no getting around as more jobs can be automated or semi-automated it takes less people to meet societies wants and needs.
Just because we can't predict it doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
I'm old enough to have seen a couple of waves of creative destruction and innovation. Saw Gateway, Roosevelt and Regency Malls being built and downtown die. Saw Gateway and Roosevelt remodeled and Regency die and downtown beginning to grow again. Saw containerization (Invented in Jacksonville) make our downtown waterfront obsolete and government building take the place of the waterfront wharves and warehouses. Now seeing the government buildings move off of the waterfront and ????? taking their place.
Technology isn't just killing middle class jobs. A lot of people who work in warehouses are losing their jobs to "Robot's help run warehouses" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLEmsyPv144
Quote from: BridgeTroll on January 28, 2013, 01:05:40 PM
Quote from: stephendare on January 28, 2013, 01:03:40 PM
Quote from: bill on January 28, 2013, 01:01:18 PM
All shills making excuses for this god awful administration.
bizarre.
yep...
The national media may indeed be playing the hand of a shill for the presidents policies, socialism only works until you run out of other peoples money. Historically human nature demands a radical reduction in population, usually hand in hand with a technological leap forward. An administration that penalizes entrepreneurship, business and success, is usually the one at the receiving end of the population cleansing. We will only buy off China for a season and then the bill will come due.
Isn't this what you meant?
Anyone who took history classes in college will have read about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution. Anyone who watched the opening ceremonies for the London Olympics will have seen the dramatization of how it changed life in just greater England.
Back then, there were many calls from people that we had "gone too far" and allowed industrial processes to take over what had been human driven manual processes.
Going back even further, there have been all kinds of technological forces that have caused huge shifts of change in how mankind produces, supports and maintain his needs. The Bronze Age, weapon development by the Sassanids to defeat the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople, their subsequent fall generations later as the Ottomans couldn't embrace the newer technologies. The rifled cannon that made Third Era forts worthless in the US. That is just in defense technology.
The Gutenburg Press and the revolution it opened in publishing, revolution that extended all the way to Thomas Paine and the American Revolution. It allowed a flow of information never possible before.
Printing allowed a common education, which allowed religion to become more than just a secret society held by the few, but available to all through the removal of Latin (Catholic Church example).
When telephony technology became affordable, the mass outsourcing of call centers to Middle Asia, and with voice over IP technology and the rebellion against poor english skills, it has brought those affordable jobs back.
Yes, technology has always been at the forefront of retiring old skill sets and fostering the emergence of the new. This always causes turnover and upheaval in the middle class as people attempt to understand where things are going and prepare. I think what bothers people is that the current growth of technology is accelerating the changes ever faster.
This was true for the Industrial Revolution and it is no different now in our current Technology Revolution.
Wow I had no idea people were willing to bury their heads in the sand about this topic. Really "technology always changes and it simply transitions to new jobs" no muss no fuss I guess. Pollyanna thinks you guys are being naive.
I know we still have plenty of people who think polluting the atmosphere won't cause atmospheric pollution.
I know people still think if we just give the rich tax cuts they will invest that money here rather than in lower cost countries.
However what kind of blinders must one wear to think automation, databases, processing power and enhanced communications won't offset more jobs than they create.
Of course you don't try to diminish tech advances but this is a trend not some future prediction so we can at least look at it truthfully.
I am sorry if you think that violates some theology you have about socialism. The article is not about that however just pointing out the degree to which something that is obvious is happening.
I have been busy with a new project installing unmanned C-store/ Lunch counters into large employers lunch rooms. Easy interface touch screens make this a wave you will see more of. Yes one cafe has boomed now supplying products for what used to be several. I have hired new people to service these projects so there is some mitigation but net it takes less people to bring more products to market.
The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing. The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries. I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind. Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?
"Chuck Norris is always on top during sex because Chuck Norris never f*cks up."
How probable is it that continued unemployment will produce a host of new low-paying jobs which would allow the classic unemployed to supplement incomes and satisfy needs not met by the items supplied by a possible encroaching socialist system?
Will a socialist system encourage a growth or a decline in the population? If neither, should some kind of population control be exercised in the interest of societal health and the standard of living of its citizens?
“When you look back and see only one set of footprints, that’s when Chuck Norris was carrying you.â€
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/26/america-has-hit-peak-jobs/
Quote from: ronchamblin on January 28, 2013, 06:22:55 PM
The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing. The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries. I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind. Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?
Ron,
Are you saying that this type of joblessness is driven strictly by technology, or that this scale of joblessness in general is unprecedented?
Unemployment in the 1930's easily beat the current rate. But it wasn;t industrial or technologic, it was strictly economic issues.
How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?
I think currently the unemployment rate is more driven economic issues. However we need to look at the tech trend with open eyes and try to figure out what's coming and do we need to compensate for it.
Quote from: spuwho on January 28, 2013, 07:16:34 PM
Quote from: ronchamblin on January 28, 2013, 06:22:55 PM
The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing. The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries. I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind. Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?
Ron,
Are you saying that this type of joblessness is driven strictly by technology, or that this scale of joblessness in general is unprecedented?
Unemployment in the 1930's easily beat the current rate. But it wasn;t industrial or technologic, it was strictly economic issues.
How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?
I think that the usual cycling economy is causing only some of the problem, and that the major cause of increasing joblessness is the decades-long drift to greater efficiencies in manufacturing etc, and robotics.... so that more and more jobs are being eliminated from the economy. This is new, and because it is new, it is not being met constructively by the comfortable power elites and the politicians, who seem to be unaware of the seriousness of the trend, or what to do about it.
There is no doubt that, by one way or another, the very least of needs, the most fundamental, such as food and shelter will be obtained by the citizen, by the man in the street. The question is whether the politicians and the power elites will see reality in time so that the needs of the masses can be satisfied via job incomes, or, lacking jobs, via some kind of state assistance, a type of socialism, because if not from either of these, then the option of protest, of force, and perhaps revolution, is the only option for the citizen in desperate need of the fundamental necessities of life.
“Chuck Norris invented the Internet so people could talk about how great Chuck Norris is.â€
313 million people in the U.S. and 7 billion in the world has never been done before so we are in new territory in that respect.
Creative concept for abandoned brewery: Conversion into an indoor farm(http://finance-commerce.com/files/2012/10/Brewery4.jpg)
A long abandoned brewery in St. Paul, MN's urban core is being converted into an indoor farm that produces fish and greens. Thinking about the original question raised about technology and jobs, this is representative of where I see things headed. The days of simply graduating high school and landing a lifetime production job at the local steel or paper mill are coming to an end. Yes, like the dinosaur, some jobs will become obsolete. However, technology will also create new and innovative economic opportunities. It's up to us on how willing we are to accommodate or fight creativity/innovation, and the job creation that comes along with it. A part of this answer relies on taking advantage of existing infrastructure and building fabric to accommodate new economically viable uses.
QuoteHamm's site will be aquaponics farm
The 105-year-old Hamm's brewery in St. Paul has been vacant since 1994, but it's about to get new life as an indoor farm that produces fish and greens.
Urban Organics hopes that tanks full of tilapia and racks lined with fresh lettuce and herbs will fill the old brewery by mid-2013.
QuoteBut Haberman and his partners saw potential in the 105-year-old building, and they’re now transforming it into an indoor, urban farm. Most of the building has been cleaned up, and by mid-2013 there will be tanks full of tilapia and racks lined with fresh lettuce and herbs.
Urban Organics will use an agricultural technique known as aquaponics, a symbiotic marriage of aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) and hydroponics (growing plants in water). The nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish will be pumped to the produce growing on the racks above, and the plants then act as a filter for the water before it returns to the fish tanks.
The long-term goal is to generate 1 million pounds of food per year that will be sold through distributors to local restaurants and grocers. Eventually, some of the food will be set aside for food shelves and homeless shelters in the community.
Haberman projects that Urban Organics will make money within two years, establishing itself as a viable business in what, he said, has historically been “an industry of poets and pioneers.â€
“From a revenue perspective the numbers look really good,†he said.
full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/print-edition/2012/12/21/plot-for-farm-in-old-brewery-plows.html
I am not saying the moment is upon us but at some point I believe efficiency and the ability to produce without much Human help will create a situation where we do not have as many potential jobs society needs as humans that need them.
I'm just posing a question but what did we do before the industrial revolution?
I don't know if and when we'll reach the point where we don't have enough jobs for society but we are reaching the point where specialized skills are becoming more of a standard requirement. Even with the recession, there are trades out there that can't hire enough people because of an insufficient pool of talent possessing the needed skills.
Quote from: spuwho on January 28, 2013, 07:16:34 PM
How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?
Based solely on what I've witnessed first hand, it seems to me that when businesses first saw their lines of credit drying up in the wake up the initial collapse, they were forced to lay off employees, perhaps with every intention of eventually hiring them back when the economy improved. What they discovered, however, was by supplementing their skeleton crew workforce with improved technology (that didn't call in sick or require expensive benefits packages), they were able to maintain much of their output. When things began to look a little brighter, they were much more resistant to hire additional workers. For example, a company that I did some contract work for replaced six secretaries with one regional operator and some cheap call routing software. Everyone in those six offices picked up a little extra slack. Those jobs will never come back.
And, of course, you've got a ton of once-invincible industries that have irrefutably been driven to obsolescence by technology. Netflix, with less than 4,000 employees (and shrinking as mailed DVDs continue to give way to streaming) has played a large part in eliminating the video store (including nearly 75,000 Blockbuster employees alone at its peak). It's probably safe to say that streaming movies alone have permanently eliminated 100,000 jobs. The losses have probably been similar for music stores, 3,000 of which have closed since the birth of iTunes. Travel agents, bank tellers, and law clerks are quickly going the way of the dodo. Cashiers and toll-takers are being replaced by machines. I'm not arguing whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but as this trend continues, I do wonder where in the hell these people are going to find employment.
I completely agree with Ennis that there will always be a place in the labor force for those with highly specialized skills, but there is absolutely no denying that, at least in the short term, jobs are being eliminated or machinated at a rate higher than new jobs are being created, particularly in the service and manufacturing industries. I found the below graph (left side) from the Economist last year to be particularly alarming. Disregarding the blip at the peak of the recession, we can clearly see an increasingly inverse relationship where manufacturing output has increased while employment has decreased. In other words, machines are more efficient than humans in this (major) sector.
(http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2011/03/12/us/20110312_usc324.gif)
Even in highly specialized fields, with the widespread availability of student loans, we are approaching a point where we may find ourselves with a greater supply of lawyers, for example, than the market actually demands (50% of new graduates won't find full-time employment within a year). Ditto nurses. Or new MBAs. Architects are being advised by some universities to change majors because their job outlook is so poor. I've got a friend who's been trying for three years to get a teaching job.
I just don't know if we can call the technological revolution (combined with the economic downturn) an apples to apples comparison with the prosperity brought on in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In many ways, we've perhaps advanced more in the last 20 years than in the entirety of human history before. The Industrial Revolution may have brought the advent of the cotton gin, loom, and steam engine, but the technological revolution has allowed the average citizen to carry the sum of all human knowledge with them in their front pocket. And advancement has just been so rapid and so exponential in the last ten years in particular that I worry sometimes that we really haven't sat down and had a thorough enough discussion about the long-term implications it will have on human utility. 3D printing, in particular, has the potential to be a game changer the likes of which we have never seen.
I kind of fear a medium-term future where the demand for work continues to far outpace a stagnating supply of jobs, causing a race for the bottom in wages and a dramatic shift in job quality where a bachelors is required to work at Starbucks, a masters is required to get entry level employment, and everyone else is shit out of luck.
Quote from: stephendare on January 28, 2013, 08:48:34 PM
Quote from: ronchamblin on January 28, 2013, 06:22:55 PM
The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing. The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries. I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind. Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?
"Chuck Norris is always on top during sex because Chuck Norris never f*cks up."
actually this is just factually incorrect. This type of labor displacement has happened a number of times over the centuries. Each era has had a different outcome, depending on the response o the people, general health and politics of the time.
Interesting comments KenFSU. And Stephen, upon reading my paragraph, I can see that it is vague, and fails to make the point I thought I had in mind. Perhaps my attempt to clarify will reveal that I had no valid point in the first place. Let’s see.
I suppose that I must explain why, when you say that, “each era has had a different outcomeâ€, allows me to say that the outcome of our current situation will be so extremely different that we will be forced to make an extreme and intentional reaction to it, and perhaps to look increasingly to some kind of socialism to balance out the supply / demand (need) dynamic.
The paragraph you’ve questioned consists of two points, the first being a suggestion that new technologies will destroy jobs for the workforce, and the second is a question about the necessity of a kind of socialism to distribute needed items to those who’s jobs were destroyed by the “systemâ€. I think that you and theLakelander have questioned the first.
I think the phrase I intended to be significant is.. “a type of joblessness which has never before existed in historyâ€. Whereas the former cycles of increasing technologies, from ancient times through the industrial revolution, produced such a large increase in the types of products, and satisfied so many more consumer needs, some of which were created by the marketplace, that it also created more jobs which were needed to produce the exploding types of new products. A balance was achieved. An exploding variety of products in the service industry and the manufacturing of products for consumers was matched for the most part by more jobs to produce them. Thus, unemployment cycled safely between 4 and 9 percent.
The difference now is that centuries of society’s increasing abilities to create new products and services for human consumption has reached a point where there are fewer new products to excite human needs; that is, which cannot be produced by simply changing the program on a computer or robot controlled manufacturing process. The problem is that there is less need for “workers†to enter the manufacturing process, the farming process, the design process, or the distribution process, because we are entering an era where any changes to products will be via computers, software, and robotics.
Why are less workers needed now in the economic process as compared to decades or centuries ago? First, the degree of efficiency as a result of computer software and robotics, is zooming upward, and secondly, whereas in the nineteenth century, the potential for the introduction of new products for human consumption was almost unlimited, there are today fewer new product types which can excite the human desire or need for acquisition of them.
Genuinely new items for human consumption are rare these days, so marketers and manufacturers are now limited to changing colors, shapes, textures, costs, and qualities of products which have been around for many decades. The problem is that these changes occur within an automated manufacturing process, run increasingly by robots, and designed by software which is monitored and tuned by the computer gurus, the fallout being that the process needs less and less workers to design, manufacture, and deliver the products to the consumer.
And look at the efficiencies in information supplied by the Internet. One can learn, communicate, play, entertain, and work from one’s home; and all with an efficiency unheard of three decades ago.
The process of evolution has caused improvements in all areas of society so that products and processes have reached, if not perfection, at least at times approaching a dead end in design. How many ways can one design a brake for an automobile? The wheel has for the most part been perfected. Visual and sound creation, transmission, and consumption is reaching a dead end. We humans are being bombarded with all and everything in hopes that we can and will consume more. There are limits.
I suspect that more of us, except perhaps the young, and then only until they are older, are looking at simplicities, questioning what is really needed in life. I suspect that this attitude will include a tendency to avoid more of the fabrications and artificialities of the marketing and manufacturing industry, and thus will discourage the habit of consuming products which formerly provided jobs for the average worker.
Let me see. Have I said anything to clarify my point? Basically, we’ve run out of work to do, simply because we’ve made things too efficiently, and we are running out of new products that excite us to the degree that we continue buying at the rate of many decades ago. The basics of food, shelter, and stability of mind achieved through the acquisition of knowledge, will be the important necessities and issues in the future. All else will be candy, some of which unfortunately might be bitter, or even poison.
“The movie King Kong is loosely based on an incident in which Chuck Norris killed a 900-foot Gorilla and had sex with the Coors light twins on top of the Empire State building.â€
Jeffery, not disagreeing with what you are saying. Technology is having a huge impact on the number of bodies needed in many areas and given past history or technology advances like the invention of power looms which created huge slums in England and the mechanization of agriculture in this country which forced share croppers off the land and into slums in US cities, the process of adjustment is ugly and hits people with the least education and income.
You are right to be concerned and even alarmed.
If you're not familiar with 3D printing:
(http://i.imgur.com/TaS7UPv.jpg)
The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/?src=recg
Heard a bit about that on NPR yesterday, Lunican. Very interesting.
I think where Jeffrey gets it right is in projecting there will be a greatly lessened demand for overall labor, skilled and unskilled. This includes many 'creative' type positions in the near future.
In the future, controlling the means of production will be as important as ever. It might be the case that a new socio-economic system is required, or a massive reduction in population. (By what means? This is a scary question... and if I have pondered it, so have those who are much smarter than me, as well as more willing and capable of enacting policies to such an end)
Will the new technology serve all of mankind, or just a few? If history is any guide, it doesn't bode well for the masses. (unwashed or otherwise)
To see one author's vision for the future after 3-D printing, read "Makers" by Cory Doctorow. The novel is actually available for free (legally) on the author's website.
http://craphound.com/makers/download/ (http://craphound.com/makers/download/)
I once walked to Walmart and realized that I could buy several shelves of stuff with one paycheck. That was unheard of in the past. I also know that one visit to the ER could bankrupt me. Doctors are expensive.
Half the country is automating. The other half can't. The part that is automating is becoming cheaper. The part that can't is becoming more expensive.
QuoteImagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?
It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But thatâ€"in slow motionâ€"is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrivedâ€"appliance repairman, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designerâ€"each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/ (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/)