Recession, Tech Kill Middle-Class Jobs 586
Un pobre guey writes
"'To understand the impact technology is having on middle-class jobs in developed countries, the AP analyzed employment data from 20 countries; tracked changes in hiring by industry, pay and task; compared job losses and gains during recessions and expansions over the past four decades; and interviewed economists, technology experts, robot manufacturers, software developers, entrepreneurs and people in the labor force who ranged from CEOs to the unemployed.' Their findings: Technology has consistently reduced the number of manufacturing jobs for 30 years; people with repetitive jobs have been easy to replace in the past, and task jugglers like managers and supervisors will be likely targets in the future; companies in the S&P 500 have expanded their business and increased profits, but reduced staffing, thanks to tech; and startups are launching much more easily these days. The response to the article includes the dutifully repeated bad-government-is-at-fault and don't-worry-it's-like-the-Industrial-Revolution memes. But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
Chicken Littles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:4, Insightful)
To sum up:
"To understand the impact of tech on skilled labor (where automation is extremely questionable) , we studied the impact of tech on unskilled, easily automated labor"
"Technology has consistently reduced the number of manufacturing jobs for 30 years; people with repetitive jobs have been easy to replace in the past, and task jugglers like managers and supervisors will be likely targets in the future"
When we come up with a real Computer AI, wake me up to care about "middle class" jobs... until then why not focus on the question of what we are going to do with all unskilled labor that is currently being replaced?
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Funny)
why not focus on the question of what we are going to do with all unskilled labor that is currently being replaced?
"Let them eat cake" as long as possible, followed, of course, by revolution. In this case, the revolution will, in fact, be televised. Probably won't fix anything, but not avoidable either.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Funny)
There won't be a revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
The assumption you're making is that you're going to win in the good vs evil fight. Even if good doesn't win, you'll win. You won't. They'll come for you soon too. For all of us. There's nothing you have that the ruling class won't take away. Their greed knows no limits or bounds. It's what they do. They have enough wealth to buy anything. They teach us that if somebody just gives it to you you'll stop there. But that's a lie. They didn't stop. They never stop.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Funny)
When we come up with a real Computer AI, wake me up to care about "middle class" jobs... until then why not focus on the question of what we are going to do with all unskilled labor that is currently being replaced?
The same thing we do every night after work.
We consume as much drugs as possible and watch TV.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Funny)
Oh Brain how far you have fallen
zort
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Insightful)
Middle class jobs have already been replaced in the past - you just weren't around at the time.
Newspapers used to have huge print departments - entire teams of hundreds of people employed to take the stories that journalists wrote, convert them into metal boilerplate on drums, choosing appropriate font sizes, laying out rows of text, leaving space for pictures and photographs, doing a run of hundreds of thousands of newspaper pages, then tearing down this boilerplate and putting all the letters back into the appropriate boxes for each font. All done within a day. When WYSIWYG edit systems came out, the journalists and editors could do this by themselves. The print unions went on strike demanding that they be the ones to operate these systems. Known as the Wapping Dispute [wikipedia.org] where 6000 workers went on strike over the sudden vaporisation of their jobs. In-house print departments have been replaced by Powerpoint and laser printers. They might still be around for presentation posters.
Corporate structures have become flatter. Some companies used to have a 3 to 1 ratio for managers to subordinates, so there would be 10 people between an engineer and the CEO. Typing secretaries have been replaced by admins and personal assistants, and executaries. Weaving loom operators have been replaced by Photoshop artists and machine technicians. Telephone operators have been replaced by automatic exchanges.
Workers either emigrate, set up their own companies and/or move onto doing something diffferent.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I've long said the job of IT is to eliminate work.....sometimes that's to free up people to work on other things, sometimes it's to eliminate positions. Whether the application is to make an accountant's job easier or to automate the manufacturing process, it's still about doing more with less.
I've been on many projects where the savings in the first year (real savings, not the funny money cost-benefit-analysis savings) was more than double the cost of the project.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's look at another creature who used to be a large part of the economy but who's numbers have dwindled to nearly nothing, the horse. Technology has created machines that were able to replace nearly all that a horse could do, ie. farming, transportation, warfare. The few remaining jobs, being a pet, used for the pastime of horse back riding were not enough to employ all the horses, so they were mostly killed and not allowed to breed.
The only difference I see between horses and the common man is that he or she can vote. So if there became to be no more work that most humans were qualified for, a safety net could be voted in to support them. This should work for awhile, but eventually as the military forces becomes more machine than man, until totally being machine, and the people holding the reigns on them become fewer and fewer, the power of the vote will become less and less. People that speak out against the system will be rounded up and disappeared'ed, your representatives will completely ignore the will of the people, etc. One day the vote will become a complete charade, or a coup will occur, (which would be much more easily done with an army of robots, then the human army today, since soldiers won't be there to refuse to fire on civilians of their own country) and the population of people will be forced to dwindle to near nothing, along side the horses of the past, once a great beast but now completely dependent on and subservient to the whims of a technological being more advanced then them.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Funny)
The only difference I see between horses and the common man is that he or she can vote. ...
And literacy. And the ability to use tools. And the ability to communicate with language. And the ability to learn, think abstractly and plan for the future.
Aside from all that, the common man is just a dumb animal.
Do you think you're a super genius surrounded by idiots, per chance?
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Interesting)
Where horses really better off when they were more useful to man? They were essentially kept as slaves. They were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Maybe horses aren't smart enough to notice or care that they are slaves. Maybe some people aren't either.
Yes a difference between the common man and a horse is autonomy (one manifestation of which is the right to vote, along with other rights bestowed by various societies and constitutions and enforced by legal systems). When we say horses became useless, this is only in relation to people. What does it mean when people become useless? In relation to what? I'm sure some would argue that if the poor became useless to the rich, there would be a strong incentive to simply have the poor killed. This is probably true under some circumstances. But living in a society where the only thing keeping the poor alive is their usefulness (real or artificial through denial of technology) to the wealthy, seems to me to be barely an improvement. Maybe that was good enough for horses, but I wouldn't accept that for people.
I think people are intelligent and empathetic enough to come up with a system that respects human life while trying to maximize economic efficiency. I think sopping technology to keep the unskilled useful is one of the the dumbest things you can do if you care about overall human prosperity.
Even if you look at it from the point of view of the selfish uber-wealthy. If my options were to have 10% of my $billion income used to help poor people, or 90% of my $trillion income (facilitated by technology) used to sustain people who have no useful skills, it is simply irrational of me to choose the former. Obviously a selfish uber-wealthy person would rather just kill all the poor and keep 100%, but that's not one of the options allowed in this social contract. If people ever lose the right to vote or democracy fails, etc, all bets are off anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
And can the rock throwers and the jar smashers earn enough to be middle class?
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditionally in this sort of example, the rock throwers and jar smashers represent the government. The people benefiting (those getting an otherwise unnecessary job) are the "special interests", and the ones who end up paying the cost are the taxpayers.
When the government decides it will pay people money to destroy their old cars (i.e. cash for clunkers), this creates jobs on the auto industry (the special interest), but it comes at the expense of the tax payer. It may seem like the beneficiary is the lowly autoworker with the new job, but this job is also profitable for the auto company (i.e. it's shareholders), that supplies it
Any economy with a lot of window smashing job creation is one that has a smaller wealth pool from which to distribute to the same number of people. All economies are exploitable by those who are good at exploiting. Having more total wealth puts less pressure on those that end up at the bottom. For example, look at the situation of poor people in the US compared with poor people in Africa.
Re:Chicken Littles (Score:5, Interesting)
However reality is we live in a psychopathic insane society, where selfishness and greed have become dominant at the top. For them, if you have no useful function, you should starve and die. So the reality is automation presents a real problem for us as a transitional society.
With no attempts in place to reduce working hours, in fact the opposite occurring the reality is, society is far more likely disintegrate into violence as those at the top expect those at the bottom to simply die and those at the bottom refusing to do so.
The internet is helping to break down the control of the psychopathic minority but will it be quick enough to prevent societal collapse driven by insanity at the top? At the current rate no, with continuing pressure to reduce wages and increases hours rather than the required increase in wages with a reduction in working hours. Until that shift occurs to say a 6 hour 4 day week, things look pretty grim in the long term.
Why do you want to work for others all your life? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know a lot of people do not like those who are filthy rich, but you guys need to know this ...
Most of those who are filthy rich were originally from lower to middle class, just like you guys.
They got to where they are because of one thing - they got tired of working for someone else.
I know, I know, the recession and the tech have killed a lot of middle class jobs, but to some, this crisis is the perfect chance for them to do something about it ... like starting their own business, instead.
So ... why are y
Re:Why do you want to work for others all your lif (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those who are filthy rich were originally from lower to middle class, just like you guys.
(citation needed)
There are plenty of mechanisms in place which make it easy to assume most of the filthy rich made it because they were born into wealth, either directly through inheritances or indirectly through financial help, family connections, and better schooling. Just as an example, 4 of the top 20 richest people on earth are part of the Walton family, which inherited their wealth from Sam Walton.
That isn't to say I dismiss your point outright, but I think I need to see some actual data before I accept your point.
Sour grapes, perhaps ? (Score:3, Insightful)
... easy to assume most of the filthy rich made it because they were born into wealth ...
If that's what you like to think, that's what you'll end up thinking.
Re: (Score:3)
That isn't to say I dismiss your point outright, but I think I need to see some actual data before I accept your point.
You are quite right to doubt him.
Relative upwards mobility (in the US) is quite limited from everything I've read. Generally you end up in the same income quintile as your parents. Absolute income may be higher (hopefully, if you want to keep up with inflation), but relative income stays the same.
There are tons of articles online on the subject. Here's a cute little video that explains relative vs absolute income change [pewstates.org]. They claim the upper and lower quintiles to be "sticky" (i.e. less likely to see m
Re:Why do you want to work for others all your lif (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly... like the Rothechild's, Jim Walton, Bill Gates, who started at the top and worked his way up, Warren Buffet, who also started as a child of privilege, ...
In fact, well over 2/3 of the current wealthiest americans all started rich.
They got their because their PARENTS were already wealthy and in America, your parents' income now accounts for 50% of your adult income potential- that's worse then many companies in EUROPE where it only accounts for 10%.
America HAS some benefits- like forgiving you if you go bankrupt. You actually can start over again here unlike so many places (unless the reason is student debt- then you are frakked).
But "land of opportunity" isn't one of them in the way you are talking.
You can work your way up a rung or two. The rest is all connections, family names, and inherited money.
And now those guys are using the money to buy machines which have been destroying jobs for almost a generation (15 years).
Once you stop employing people- you can't use the capitalist model any more.
If you have a job- do what I did. Save over half of what you made. Don't carry any debt. Then when they lay off 500 of you and take a SEVEN figure raise for "saving money on salaries", you will be safe.
Worst run offshoring/outsourcing I've ever been part of. Our replacements didn't even arrive until 4 months after the layoffs- most of us were already gone. Companies probably screwed... but wait- that just means the executives are all going to get TWO YEARS PAY for highly damaging the company.
Re:Why do you want to work for others all your lif (Score:5, Informative)
You ain't seen nothing yet. There's a short story about where all this is going.. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com].. two models of the future in there, but I only find one plausible.
Income inequality (Score:2, Troll)
You forgot trickle-down economics.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Trickle down - thats the rich pissing on the ever increasing poor classes.
Re: (Score:2)
Lowering the highest marginal income tax rates beat back inflation in the early 80's and helped to provide capital for funding the technological advances and products of the last 30 years.
And yeah, some people became rich being a part of all that. So what?
Re: (Score:2)
They are already basically at the 1987 rates and far below the 50% top marginal rate of 1982.
At some point we have to pay for stuff.
Re:Income inequality (Score:4, Insightful)
Middle class incomes stagnated, that's what. The rich got a *lot* richer, everyone else got jack shit.
Not true. The median income from 1965 to 2005 (in 2005 dollars) shows a general trend upward. If anything it shows movement towards stagnation BEFORE "trickle down" tax rates went into effect.
And no, everyone else didn't get jack shit. Just look on your desk right now. You have what at one time would have been considered a supercomputer attached to a global network that you use to bitch about how exploited you are.
Re: (Score:2)
People talk shit about the trickle-down theory, but it did actually happen, it trickled-down right on past the border to China and Indonesia and India and etc...
And the profits from that were sent to the top using an express elevator completely bypassing the middle class.
how many times do we get this story? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tech has always been for getting things done faster, better and cheaper. Get over it.
Asimov's robots or Skynet (Score:2)
"What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
Could go either way - Asimov came up with his laws of robotics as a way to counter all the "evil robot" fiction of the 1940s and 50s (so that the implications of having self aware non-humans could be explored in stories, rather than just the "run for the hills" type)
On the other hand, the Skynet robots, came to a conclusion that they were not only in charge, but the humans made their work less
André Gorz (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of intelligent, educated people can still get too caught up in ideologies to see the big picture.
In order to be viable in the market, a labor-saving device must, by logical necessity eliminate more work than it creates. This is the only way to get the total cost of ownership down below the cost of hiring people to do the work. When successfully applied widely enough, this processes has serious economic implications.
There is a finite (and, ultimately, small) demand for brain-work (you only need one genius to invent a trinket in order for everybody to be able to have one), so the majority of displaced workers cannot simply promote themselves to more interesting work. When production is very high but the labor cost is very low, you wind up with large masses of people who can't find *any* work (or at least nothing that provides a livable wage). That results in severe crime and upheaval.
As tech puts us all out of work, we either start adopting more socialist policies, we put most of our population in jail (where we pay for their needs anyway), or we experience a violent mess.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:André Gorz (Score:4, Informative)
Rises in productivity due to automation are incompatible with a culture that values 'work' on a moral basis, and associates it with a persons identity.
This is the critical thing, in much the same way that decoupling wealth and power from land ownership during the Industrial Revolution was incompatible with a culture that valued landed estates on a moral basis, and associated them with a person's identity (at least for the gentry, who were after all the only people who counted as "people", back in the day.)
It took something closer to centuries than decades for a relatively small and educated class to come to terms with that (my Scotish friends tell me England is still struggling with it.)
Today, we have a system of distribution of benefits from social producitivity [*] that depends on "work", while automation is rapidly eliminating jobs while maintaining productivity (and therefore profits for owners.)
It is of course completely indeterminate how this is going to end, but we can be pretty sure that a hundred years from now the status quo of the past century in which paid corporate employment has been the common basis for the distribution of wealth, won't be the norm, and more than the leasehold farming and villiage life that was the norm in England in 1750 much resembled the average English life in 1850 (Male Employment in Agriculture/Industry = 1760: 52.8%/23.8%; 1840: 28.6%/47.3%).
[*] if you don't think social goods like the rule of law in general and the Companies Act in particular are absolutely necessary, though admittedly not sufficient, for "private" corporations to exist, much less thrive, you might be a libertarian lunatic
oblig (Score:5, Interesting)
Got enough karma so might as well post this AC: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
Captcha: exempt
Last question in summary is very insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
The final question in TFS is an example of a question that's bounced along the periphery of technology and now deserves centre stage. Nicely put!
Now, what are we going to do for a living after everything's been automated?
Re: (Score:2)
Things that cannot be or are not desired to be automated.
We see this already. People are buying handmade crap, just because it is handmade. No matter how good frozen food gets, I would rather go to restaurant. No matter how good that robot waiter is I rather have a nice cute female human bringing me my food and booze.
Automation will drive prices down for common things. This means people will desire uncommon things and pay extra for them.
Re: (Score:3)
You're changing the subject but not the topic.
So you'll make a new hierarchy of style and tactile dexterity. Trust me, no one wants to buy my homemade knitted scarf, along with 99% of the human population. My grandma did in fact knit kick ass handmade sweaters that looked pretty awesome, but an entire family clan cannot live off one granny.
So you'll make a new hierarchy of hotness. Again, you don't want to see a fat middle-aged-ish dude like me in a hooters waitress uniform. Well maybe some of you weirdo
Re:Last question in summary is very insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
The hope for humanity would be for a simple and money-optional society. Everyone "gets" the basics (food, shelter, simple clothes, education, healthcare, public transportation, maybe a computer with internet access) with no requirement to contribute anything to society. If they want anything more than that (iPod, trip to Disney Land, a car, a house with front yard, clothes other than a solid color t shirt) they will need to make money, and for that they will have to work in one of the few jobs available. These jobs would be almost entirely academic (research will always be necessary), service, or cultural in nature. People would work until they could afford whatever luxuries they want, and then could opt to go back to having free time to explore their own desires/ambition. Without the requirement to work, working conditions would automatically improve, as companies would no longer be able to keep workers if "doing nothing" is better than the job they are offering.
That is possible today actually, if we change the welfare system from something that gives out money to something that only provided necessities, and not money. Instead of farm subsidies, flat out buy the food.
This system would only work if the "public option" for things that was held to a standard that anyone would be willing to accept. What passes for public housing now does not qualify, but what passes for dorms / cafeterias at a public college would be a start.
Re:Last question in summary is very insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, what are we going to do for a living after everything's been automated?
This isn't the problem. The real problem is, 'How are we going to allocate resources without work as a measurement of worth?'
It time to make full time 30-32 hours a week with (Score:2)
It time to make full time 30-32 hours a week with overtime starting at 32 and more rules makeing it harder to pay people salary to get out of OT. or even push people under the min wage while working on salary with so menu hours.
More peopel working part time is better then a few people pulling 60-80+ hour weeks.
Maybe even over time 20 can be come the new full time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
France has a 10%+ and growing unemployment rate. The idea behind a shorter working week is not "the entire country works less", the idea is that the work which does exist is distributed more evenly over the population. So people work less, but more people work, and because everything is so damn efficient and cheap the quality of life can still be pretty good.
That isn't likely to happen in a place like France because laws make hiring and especially firing people very difficult. So if you have some work that
Article contains some factual errors (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says: In the U.S., the economic recovery that started in June 2009 has been called the third straight "jobless recovery." But that's a misnomer. The jobs came back after the first two. Most recessions since World War II were followed by a surge in new jobs as consumers started spending again and companies hired to meet the new demand. In the months after recessions ended in 1991 and 2001, there was no familiar snap-back, but all the jobs had returned in less than three years.
That is not the case. The ratio of working age men who actually work has steadily fallen since the 50s (in the USA). After each recession it plunged and then recovered .... but not to the original levels. Data [blogspot.ch].
Anyway, whilst I'm sympathetic to the general topic and find the idea fascinating, the article has a lot of other questionable statements in it. Like this one: Even the most commonplace technologies — take, say, email — are making it tough for workers to get jobs. That's obviously wrong. Email and the net allow people to find employers around the world whereas before they might have been limited to their local area. Heck, I hired a commission artist just two days ago, I initiated contact via email.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps he means by the impact Email has on the postal service. We don't need mail delivery two times a day when email is all day everyday. That means less postmen are employed.
Umm, Ya (Score:4, Interesting)
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?"
You could learn to repair the machines, or learn to make the machines.
However, we have seen it before and we will see it again.
5000bc
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to the wheel is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history? What will happen to the men who carry the litter?
1840's
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to the machine is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history? What will happen to all the children that spin cotton?
1980's
But what if this time it's different? What if delegating everything to the machine is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history? What will happen to all the people who calculate trajectories when they are replaced by a single machine?
The only constant in this world is that everything changes. I believe the old adage is "Lead, Follow, or get out of the way!"
Re:Umm, Ya (Score:4, Insightful)
So the luddites were right after all. (Score:2)
In the old days (Score:2)
we were told that this would free us from drudge work and give us lots of leasure time. Unfortunately, all of the benefit goes to the already-wealthy, and the only leasure time we get is the time to be unemployed.
I hope they are building things that robots will buy!
Specificity? (Score:2)
I honestly can't find exactly what jobs are being killed. What jobs exactly are even considered middle class seems to be highly contentious and subjective.
Can anyone point out to me an exact list of which jobs are reducing by technology? I, personally, don't consider a manufacturing job to be middle class, for example. And, it would seem, neither does wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "The following is a list of occupations one might expect to find among this class: Accountants, Professors (Post-secondary educators), Physicians,
Re: (Score:3)
I think the assumption is that manufacturing jobs had in many ways achieved "middle class" status by the late 1960s. They had pay that allowed a spouse to not work, health benefits, pensions and enabled the workers to own their own home and an automobile.
Most of the jobs you listed I would call "professional" jobs that either require post-secondary education (doctor, lawyer, professors) or substantial certifications (accountant, architect, financial managers, nurses).
A lot of those jobs (doctors, lawyers,
Re:Specificity? (Score:4, Informative)
What jobs exactly are even considered middle class seems to be highly contentious and subjective.
Depends how far back you go, I suppose. If you go back 35 years, you'd find lots of people working in manufacturing (autos / ships / whatever), steelwork etc. who were 'middle class.' They owned a car and a house, raised a family, maybe went to a ballgame on the weekend. Those are the jobs that are gone.
Re: (Score:3)
It's all those manufacturing jobs, apparently. The ones that are dirty, dangerous and mind numbing. Thanks to insanely strong unions many of them are also obscenely overpaid, which makes them "middle class."
Slashdot crowd not very bright (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some of the commentors here need to go back to econ 101 (or just use their heads for five minutes).
Automation and increased unemployment are _inversely correlated_. If automation destroyed jobs, than how do you account for the trillions of jobs that have been created over the previous thousands of years given the creation of the wheel, the plow, the assembly line, the computer, etc.?
There are _tons_ of jobs being created by today's automation, just as there always has been with increased efficiencies. The problem is that those jobs aren't being created in the US! The taxes are too high, the regulation is too onerous, and the labor is too expensive. If we lack job creation in the US, we only have ourselves and our boneheaded policies to blame!
The "Postindustrial Revolution" (Score:4, Insightful)
All of these things are true:
premature (Score:2)
What if delegating everything to machines is a radical and fundamental new change in the course of human history?
Then we'll deal with it when the time comes. My suggestion is to handle it by letting the machines work while the rest of us have parties and write open source software (for those of us who think parties are boring).
Re: (Score:3)
Those who own the machines will party. The rest will most likely starve and be ignored. Then tossed in jail when they steal to eat.
Well, which segment is most affected? (Score:2)
Automation of manufacturing has pretty much already happened. Instead of 40% of the workforce making stuff it's now at 8%.
Farming went through this earlier. Farming jobs are now somewhere around 5% of the total employment base.
As these sectors are already such a small part of the workforce changes aren't going to affect the overall economy that much.
So the question is what segments come next? It's going to be hard to outsource middle managers, as personal interaction is so big a part of their jobs. Engineer
Re: (Score:3)
There are far fewer middle managers than there used to be. Span of control (number of persons reporting to a manager) was typically 4-5 in the 1950s. Now it's typically up to around 8-10. This is a direct result of improved information technology. This implies less upward mobility.
Retail is shrinking. The US has a lot of closed stores and dead malls. They're not coming back. First Wal-Mart clobbered the small town main street, and now Amazon is clobbering what's left.
A less discussed side effect of
The industrial revolution (Score:3)
All of us benefit from being the heirs of the industrial revolution. Even the poorest of us have better health and nutrition than before. We all have better health care than the mightiest king did 300 years ago. Yet for the average person who lived during the industrial revolution life was poor hell. Craftsmen and herders were sent into Dickensian factories and mines. I hope we can live long enough for the majority of citizens to see a benefit from our present computer revolution.
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that our government could plan anything this complex and succeed is preposterous.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that sometimes shit happens because someone just screwed up is scary. The idea that sometimes shit just happens and it isn't even possible to stop it is scary. No one would have had to come up with the adage "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity" if people weren't so eager to believe that there was someone to blame for intentionally causing all their problems instead.
Note of course this does not deny that governments, corporations, and other groups _can't_ purposefully do shitty things to people, just that people have a strong tendency to exaggerate the power, maliciousness and competence of those groups.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I seriously doubt that's what they actually want for themselves. So either they're being selective
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
They've gotten greedy.
Study's have shown they now think people poor is the fault of the poor person and that being wealthy is entirely because they worked smart/hard/morally and the poor person was an immoral, unwise loser.
And as a result, anything they want to do to the poor person is justifiable and moral.
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Insightful)
The death of the middle class over the past 30 years has been intentional. Our leaders seek to return us to feudalism, and have been very successful at that. Remember that, next time you see a politician crying about the middle class.
So, since this article posits that the rise of technology is also what's killing middle-class jobs, our leaders are... us. Right here in this tech-centric website. Discussing and promoting tech. The tech that's killing middle-class jobs.
Nope, nope, too inconvenient. Has to be teh evul shadow comspeeracy and teh evul evul gummervents lookin' to take our guns and our jobs! Whew! That's much less depressing, and way easier to polarize!
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You would probably be amazed at how much of that is just the average individual making choices on their 401-k's.
I know I would, if I ever actually bothered to look it up..
Re: (Score:2)
Most people can't make many decisions about their 401k. I can pick from like 10 vague choices; small cap US, small cap international, mid cap US , mid cap international, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
saving their wealth, rather than investing and creating more
So, without savings, exactly where are they supposed to get the capital to be invested? Rich people don't save by stuffing it under mattresses, people.
Re:As intended. (Score:4, Interesting)
did you know that 90% of americans were once farmers? and then they got pushed off the land by the emergence of technology and corporate farming (we're still in the 19th century here, folks). and THEN those people and their children took jobs in heavy industry (Carnegie, Mellon...) and extraction industries like logging and mining. And THEN the heavy industry jobs moved offshore and the extraction industries automated and wound down a bit. and THEN those people and their kids took jobs in engineering and technological industries. and THEN Japan took over the automotive and consumer markets. Remember the '70's "japan has won the war". And THEN... well OBVIOUSLY it's a HUGE CONSPIRACY perpetrated over several generations by... some... bunch of people who... well...
Re: (Score:3)
Boy, are you presenting a logical, reasoned argument backed up by history to the wrong crowd.
Slashdot's really gone downhill since I last was hanging around. It's getting more like Fark every day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The rulers of this country (i.e., the corporations) would do well to remember something as they push people into more and more desperate circumstances: Desperate people do desperate things.
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Insightful)
I sometimes wonder if feudalism isn't the economic system that is just historically more sustainable over time than anything else once your population exceeds the numbers associated with tribal organization.
How long have we actually had "capitalism" and the kind of capitalism that assumes that its participants should pay fair prices or receive fair wages? Historically it seems like a total anomaly and it requires a ton of energy (political, economic, human) to sustain it.
Given the chance, those who can will hoard resources and charge exorbitant prices for them and will pay as little as possible for labor, with no concern over the standard of living of labor. Slavery isn't inconsistent with feudal organization.
At least in agrarian feudalism there were some limits -- underfed agricultural labor tends to produce less, putting the entire enterprise at risk, and some kinds of feudalism, though unfair by many standards, evolved to at least have a sort of reciprocal welfare, where the continuance of the system was more important than its efficiency.
Re:As intended. (Score:5, Informative)
reduction of people in manual labor jobs is intentional or if not intentional then the intentional GOAL of progress. that's what enables us to have droves of scientists, armies of professional athletes and more artists per capita than ever in every field. just a hundred years ago most people were occupied on producing basic necessities like food - now pretty much everyone in developed countries is fed, yet very few of us work in food production. that's on purpose.
doesn't have much to do with feudalism though. quite the opposite. you want feudalism, you keep everyone on manual labor, you keep everyone on leash - you don't just set them free to do whatever they please with all the information in the world. you pay few to tax them to feed the masses.. that's more akin to socialism and the star trek goal there is to eventually have just very, very few of us toiling on food production and have everyone else do research and production of whatever gimmick devices they want.
Re:As intended. (Score:4, Insightful)
Feudalism ended for a reason, and it's not coming back unless the conditions that generated it come back around again. I consider that a possibility if we run short on resources like oil, without a backup plan, but it won't come from increased efficiency like automation.
The thing that people forget is that when automation becomes more and more ubiquitous, it becomes cheaper and cheaper. Eventually, the common people will own the means of production without a revolution because the means of production will be self-producing, intelligent, and widely available. The computer I am typing on is more powerful than a supercomputer from a few decades ago. My $499 tablet runs more applications, with more colors, networking and sound, than my 4,000 dollar desktop did in the 1990s.
Yes, jobs where you get paid 70K to fetch tools from a tool bin are going to be history. That's not a middle class job. That's a blue collar job with a ridiculous salary.
Re:As intended. (Score:4, Insightful)
The computer I am typing on is more powerful than a supercomputer from a few decades ago.
No, it isn't. That computer handled the needs of an entire multinational corporation and resulted in numerous scientific discoveries and papers. Your table is so amazingly un-powerful all you can do is play angry birds on it and post to /.
"Economic power" comes from what it DOES not how fast a flipflop toggles in the innards.
If you want a cruddy analogy, the brain of a Nobel prize winner might be "better" in whatever measure than the average coffee barista. That doesn't mean that coffee made by a Nobel Prize winner is any more "powerful" than coffee made by the average tattooed pierced B.S. degree holding barista.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing that people forget is that when automation becomes more and more ubiquitous, it becomes cheaper and cheaper. Eventually, the common people will own the means of production without a revolution because the means of production will be self-producing, intelligent, and widely available.
True, on the condition it isn't successfully lobbied and regulated out of the hands of the common people.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, sure, a truly egalitarian society is arguably a wonderful goal - I won't be holding my breath waiting for one though. In the meantime, historically western society has been divided into a very few "haves" who control most of the wealth, and a very many have-nots who are mostly struggling to get by as their servants.
The rise of the middle class created a vast number of people with the wealth and leisure to direct towards art, science, politics, etc. Perhaps even more important is the existence of a m
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No. College != vocational school. If you have a proper education that teaches you how to think then you can devour the technical manual for some new machine in one night, be slow but proficient the next day, and master it in a month or two.
If you cannot become the type of person that devours the tech manual in one night, then training is just throwing money down a hole. The types of jobs where training consisted of a manager giving you a few simple instructions and leaning over your shoulder for a few da
Re:We need better / quicker schooling / training (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just schooling. The fact of the matter is that some people aren't too bright. Without repetitive, simple jobs, these people will literally have no place in the economy. There's no comfortable answer here. Do we prevent the births of stupid people? Gene engineer all potential parents so that their children are smarter? How smart? Where are the boundaries? And who pays? Or do we just hand them all a check each month and encourage them to stay out of the way, and reproduce as little as possible?
20th century morality isn't going to stand up long to this 21st century problem. Somewhere, something's got to give. Good luck if you think "the marketplace" is a good way to solve this. I think that was tried in France, and in Russia.
Re: (Score:3)
Why not just hand everyone a check, assuming everything is now nearly free since machines make it?
Re: (Score:3)
Why not just hand everyone a check
That's how things work [wikipedia.org] in Sarah Palin Land.
That's a special case though, since they have natural resources that the state gets income from.
Re: (Score:3)
Economically that could work. Except for the coming resource and energy shortages.
Unfortunately, if you look at communities where this is already done (any community with a very high welfare rate, such as native reservations), the social problems that it causes are hard to overlook.
Ultimately people need meaning in their lives and getting everything for free doesn't fill that. They need to do meaningful work.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, those people will have a place as cannon fodder in the upcoming resource wars that's going to hit this planet in the next 10 - 15 years.
what about people who alternative-credentials are (Score:2)
what about people who alternative-credentials are a better fit then the old College system. College is to much of a one size fit's all and its turning out people with big skills gaps. I not talking about Repetitive, simple jobs
Plumbers don't set in the class room for 4+ years before starting to work. No They do a trades / tech school with apprenticeship.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/18/manufacturing-industry-taps-colleges-help-alternative-credential [insidehighered.com]
And CS is not IT and it's to much theory geare
Re: (Score:2)
Plumbers do very little creative work.
Cs is not IT, and most CS grads don't have a good grasp of basic networking even. By that I mean what a subnet mask is and how it works(just one such example), not how to config a router. If you know the former the latter is just learning on piece of software. If you don't know the former you will never really understand the latter.
Re: (Score:3)
My next door neighbor was plumber. He didn't just clear blocked pipes and drains. He designed entire bathrooms and house renovations down to specifying the electric systems, insulation, types of wood, varnish, filing planning permission applications as well as the plumbing and drainage. In fact this was why there was a shortage of plumbers in the UK. They were all making more money from home renovations than from basic repairs.
Re: (Score:2)
Technology is providing the ability to exploit unequal labor markets and avoid the regulations that force capitalism to provide broad based benefits. A middle class doesn't happen by accident. It requires government policy to enforce and making work location independent through tech has done much to destroy the middle class.
well we need more hands on training / apprenticesh (Score:2, Insightful)
well we need more hands on training / apprenticeships.
The college system is kind of out of date and comes with the full load of fluff and filler classes. Tech schools are roped into the college system as well.
There is lot's stuff that is poor fit into a 2 year or 4 year plan and other stuff that needs a lot more hands on training that is a poor fit for a collgle class room. When more of a community College setting is better. Yes community College offer classes non degree.
Also the cost of college is getting
Re:well we need more hands on training / apprentic (Score:5, Informative)
The point of college/university is to teach you how to think not fucking tradeschool. The classes you refer as filler and fluff are the damn point!
Re: (Score:2)
The fine words of a cult leader are as helpful as piss in the wind. Ask Lenin.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "gets all the way there". It sounds like you mean, not only is all work doable by machines, but machines or their output are accessible to all in such a fashion that they can get all of their basic needs met. I'm not even sure what that would mean. Will most people have manufacturing machines to produce goods for barter? Will most people have machines that produce most of what they use? Will people own machines which will earn salaries for the owners? Will everything be
Re: (Score:2)
(Sorry, I just realized that how I quoted "gets all the way there" looks like I'm trying to claim you said that exact phrase. I was contrasting with your phrase "only gets part way".)
Re: (Score:3)
This short story explores some of the possibilities.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
if he won't (Score:5, Informative)
I will go ahead of the AC won't. During the depression progressives froze wages, business responded by offering incentives like health care and dental to work around the wage freeze when recruiting talented workers. It became an expected benefit, and then a codified one.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It also makes the most sense when large groups can get massive discounts for healthcare coverage due to their buying power and the fact that it minimizes the risk.
It is a terrible system, and I believe it actually hinders innovation and risk taking in business (because people feel they cant afford to quit a job, start a small business, move, etc) but it does have some benefits for those trapped in the cycle.
Regardless, the system will collapse one way or the other in the next 15-20 years, and we will all en