Digital Revolution Will Kill Jobs, Inflame Social Unrest, Says Gartner 754
dcblogs writes "Gartner says new technologies are decreasing jobs. In the industrial revolution — and revolutions since — there was an invigoration of jobs. For instance, assembly lines for cars led to a vast infrastructure that could support mass production giving rise to everything from car dealers to road building and utility expansion into new suburban areas. But the "digital industrial revolution" is not following the same path. "What we're seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job," said Daryl Plummer, a Gartner analyst at the research firm's Symposium ITxpo. Plummer points to a company like Kodak, which once employed 130,000, versus Instagram's 13. The analyst believes social unrest movements, similar to Occupy Wall Street, will emerge again by 2014 as the job creation problem deepens." Isn't "decline in the overall number of people required to do a job" precisely what assembly lines effect, even if some job categories as a result require fewer humans? We recently posted a contrary analysis arguing that the Luddites are wrong.
Re:Someone kindly post a link to the story. (Score:2, Informative)
Manna.
Re:Someone kindly post a link to the story. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wages as share of GDP dropping since 1972 (Score:4, Informative)
Those people are likely not paid a normal wage. One of the scams surrounding the disabled is to calculate what you should pay them vs another employee by having a ringer perform a task then letting them do it. You can then say since your ringer can do X operations in Y time and it takes this worker 5 times as long you can pay them 1/5th as much. Even if they are only really performing half as much work as your normal employee.
Gartner??? (Score:5, Informative)
Who also predicted (in 2011) that Windows Phones would capture 20% of the mobile market in 2015??? Yep. In fact, they are the same outfit that predicted (in 2010) that Symbian would have 30% in 2014. So, I make it a rule not to get worked up about their predictions...
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
You're correct; that verb was used correctly, although the verb "effect" usually isn't. "I'm going to affect this car by hitting it with a hammer, and I'm going to effect a dent." Hitting it is affecting it, the dent is the effect.
If you said "I'm going to effect this car by hitting it with a hammer" you would be saying the car was the effect of the hammer's blow, which would be absurd.
Gartner (Score:5, Informative)
They are the National Enquirer of IT, mainly trying to sell useless advice to people who cannot think for themselves.
Newflash: Motor vehicles put buggy whip manufacturers out of business. And they also created a huge number of jobs in drilling for oil, refining gasoline, building roads and they even require mechanics.
Maybe we won't need store clerks any more but we will need somebody doing something new and unanticipated at this time. Gartner Group can never sell that to its customers (which is completely different from saying they don't understand the future). It's easier to sell fear than hope mostly because fearful people will buy anything that looks like a solution whereas hopeful people aren't in the market for solutions. (Be very clear about what sorts of folks Obama was selling his Hope message to in 2008).
IBM still makes mainframes. No matter how many tablets and smartphones are sold, Dell or Lenovo or somebody will still be able to make money selling laptops. Oh, and I can still buy both buggies and buggy whips at my local equestrian store, both of them made lovingly by hand.
Increasing costs = decreasing (Score:5, Informative)
Why can't companies pay better wages?
You need to differentiate between those who cannot pay more and those who will not pay more due to the greed of the owners. Many companies such as mine are in price sensitive industries and paying significantly higher wages results in the company's products becoming uncompetitive. My company manufactures wire harness products and our competition is often in places like China or Mexico with much lower wages or are much larger companies who are able to automate to save money. We simply cannot pay more than we do and remain in business.
Wal-Mart increasing their wages to $12/hr. would increase their average item price by 1.1%
Let's presume for a moment that your numbers are accurate. What you are forgetting is the the loss of sales from that 1.1% increase in item price. Walmart has built their entire business on being the low price leader but their lead is not very big. Walmart's net profit margin is about 3.5% so there isn't a huge amount of room to increase costs. They only keep their price leadership by a ruthless focus on keeping costs low. An increase in prices of 1.1% would result in a significant loss of sales. How big? A little hard to say without some pretty serious analysis but it could *easily* be more than 1.1%.
I don't actually have a disagreement that Walmart should pay their employees better if they are able to do so but it is not nearly as simple as you make it sound. There are more stakeholders in the company than just the employees and there are serious consequences to across the board pay increases.
Re:Wages as share of GDP dropping since 1972 (Score:5, Informative)
I am genuinely curious, do you really believe this? That the worker bees are free to just go elsewhere to make more money?
Just look into US history for labor violation. Think company store.
It is simply a fact of life, many of those with power will take advantage of those without power. It is Human nature.
If you want to have a functioning, peaceful society, then yes, you really need to regulate things like labor laws.
Remember this. MOST people in the US live pay check to pay check. They CANNOT quit their job. If they lose even a week of pay, that is is the difference between eating or rent.
I am lucky. I don't really need to worry about these things, but it wasn't always the case. And back then, it was scary. Having lived it, I firmly believe we need regulate these things.
Of course, a big part of the problem is inflation. There is no real reason things need to get more and more expensive.
Re:Wages as share of GDP dropping since 1972 (Score:4, Informative)
That's not what it means. You fail. It means that you do not have savings upon which you can live while you regroup if your paycheck is terminated. Everyone else on the planet understands what this means, so you're not fooling anyone.