Posted on 07/23/2014 11:33:45 AM PDT by C19fan
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers revived a debate I’d had with futurist Ray Kurzweil in 2012 about the jobless future.
He echoed the words of Peter Diamandis, who says that we are moving from a history of scarcity to an era of abundance. Then he noted that the technologies that make such abundance possible are allowing production of far more output using far fewer people.
On all this, Summers is right. Within two decades, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water; advances in medicine will allow us to live longer and healthier lives; robots will drive our cars, manufacture our goods, and do our chores.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I noticed an ad on tv the other night trying to lure companies to New York and their offer was no taxes for 10 years (i’m sure there were loopholes in there...). I mentioned to my husband how interesting it was that such a Commie state was shouting we need to pay higher taxes, while advertising the lure of lower or no taxes to bring in jobs. So dems get the idea they just don’t want others to know they get it.
so why do we need more illegals here to “do the work American’s won’t do” then?
I think that I’m on the side of the futurists on this one: jobs for production and many services have been declining steadily. Between the unions driving up the cost of US labor, the worldwide competition in production, and our insistence on the lowest prices rather than buying American, the jobs are being automated or sent overseas or given to Latin American “migrants”. Robots don’t strike, don’t steal, don’t cost more than initial investment, maintenance, and power. They also work very precisely, removing more and more sources of error.
It’s not like we did ask for it: I remember watching my fellow workers at Lockheed steal tools and material, goof off, stretch jobs out to get overtime hours, and generally get away with everything thanks to the unions.
All of this begs the question - what are we going to do with those parts of our population who used to fill those blue collar and service jobs?
Exactly half of the population has an IQ less than 100 and what will we do with them when automation gets more firmly entrenched? Will we have to pay them off so they don’t get violent? Chances are, they’ll be violent anyway - so what do we do - make bigger prisons?
there’s an area in my hometown that used to be the drive in theater back in the 1970s. By the early 1990s it was a grocery store. Then it became a different grocery store. Then wal mart came and it went out of business. Now it’s government offices. I don’t expect that to change any time soon. Should or present course continue, that’s what the economy of our future will look like imo.
I completely agree. All the jobs will be taken by all the illegal aliens.
In my local Chili’s restaurant, with a $10/hour min wage law, you can order a meal and pay for it without talking with anyone. Panera is also automating their operation.
I like it. The orders are filled more accurately and faster plus no one to tip :-)
Only if we remained a free country, but it looks like most of us will live more like the tenement dwellers of the 20's NYC
Right now there is a huge shortage of skilled industrial workers, welders, machinists, etc. Largely because schools stopped teaching shop and other industrial skills, and propagandized that everyone needs to go to college. Now people are graduating from colleges with mountains of debt and can’t find decent jobs, while trade school grads are being scooped up for jobs in the high 5 figures and there aren’t enough of them.
Everything will be hunky dory until the dollar crashes and some enterprising internet genius puts the grid down. Then not so much. :-)
My daughter’s best friend decided college was not for her and enrolled in a trade school. Now, as a black female welder, she is in extremely high demand. And she is earning more than most of the college grads her age.
There will also always be jobs in banking and government, scheming more creative ways to steal other people’s money.
Good for her. I always wanted to learn to weld. Can’t afford squat now.
I can remember a Milton Friedman story about India. He went to a construction site and asked the foreman why the workers were using shovels when they could be using an earth-mover. The foreman responded that it permitted more people to have jobs. Friedman then asked, “Why don’t you have them use teaspoons?”
In a lot of places it’s cheaper to hire 100 guys with shovels than to buy or rent heavy machinery, build a road and move it there, buy fuel and move it there, and run it.
Interestingly enough, China has some of the highest state of the art manufacturing facilities with automation out the wazzzooooo.
In any event, if you can do that it shows that there is a surplus of labor. If there was a shortage of labor, wages would be increasing, not decreasing.
I have been to China and seen it. It is the reason why so many companies are relocating there. The companies use the latest technology and combine it with cheap, capable labor. It is a hard combination to beat.
Yep. And they have the benefit of not being burdened with older facilities and methods. Many of their manufacturing plants are mostly fair new.
“Survivor” meets “The Running Man” with “Call of Duty” and so forth thrown in the mix of sponsored teams. Add home participation of strategy gamers input to the narrative for mass market appeal.
The example was in India, so I’m talking about other countries. I was specifically thinking about the last season of that show Gold Rush, with the Hoffman crew spending weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars moving heavy equipment to Guyana. Bulldozers are sinking in the mud, etc. Then they find that a bunch of guys with shovels and sluice boxes came in and cleaned the claim out in the meantime.
Yes. And the key to opposing hypertrophy of government is to recognize and promote the distinction between society and government:http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense2.htm  Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776) Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”You didn’t build that” is the socialist rationalization for growing the government - but although there is in fact some truth to the argument, the government “didn’t build that” either.Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
Society contributes to everything you do - but if you’ve got a business, you have to work to a bottom line in order to keep that business from decaying and stopping. Not government - not even society - will do that, because if it is “everyone’s" responsibility it is actually no one’s responsibility. And it simply will not get done. And still less would it have gotten done during the startup phase of the business, when everyone but you was saying your business would never pay the rent. And on average, “everyone else” was right - most business ventures fail.
So I guess you did "build that," after all . . .
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