Posted on 04/05/2015 5:14:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Robopocalypse for workers may be inevitable. In this vision of the future, super-smart machines will best humans in pretty much every task. A few of us will own the machines, a few will work a bit — perhaps providing "Made by Man" artisanal goods — while the rest will live off a government-provided income. Silicon-based superintelligence and robots will dramatically alter labor markets — to name but one example, the most common job in most U.S. states probably will no longer be truck driver.
But what about right now? If you're unemployed or working part-time instead of full-time, or haven't seen a raise in years, should you blame technology?
Yes, says venture capitalist and former Intel executive Bill Davidow. In a provocative piece for Harvard Business Review, "The Internet Has Been a Colossal Economic Disappointment," Davidow makes a strong claim: "For all its economic virtues, the internet has been long on job displacement and short on job creation. As a result, it is playing a central role in wage stagnation and the decline of the middle class."
Just look at how Amazon is disrupting brick-and-mortar retailing. And even though tech firms such as Google and Facebook generate huge revenues, they employ comparatively few people versus industrial giants of the past, such as IBM or General Motors. In the 1970s, General Motors employed more than 600,000 people, 10 times more Google and Facebook combined.
To accept Davidow's broad conclusion, though, one also has to believe workers across many sectors would be a lot better off today if the internet had not been invented. That's an unlikely counterfactual. Just look at how the labor market has been doing. The U.S. economy has generated 3.3 million jobs over the past year, the best 12-month performance since 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
I’m trying to get you to own up to an argument you’ve been making for a very long time. Did you lose it? I can’t recall . . . but it definitely appears as though you have been reduced to mouthing platitudes.
What we need is several million people moving into the skilled trades (some of them new) like diesel engine repair, CNC machine operation, plumber, electrician, welder, repairing these advanced automated systems that are being built. As Mike Rowe says, we have millions of “blue collar”, skilled trade jobs open that can’t be done by guys walking across the border today or liberal arts graduates.
The Great Shift Toward Automation and the Future of Employment
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/The-Great-Shift-and-the-Future-of-Employment
Obamacare’s Part-Time Jobs Are a Full-Time Problem
Townhall Magazine | Dec 09, 2014
You’re just repeating, your pointless attacks.
America needs a party, which will focus on bringing back American manufacturing.
Either that is the GOP... Or else we need a new party, in my opinion.
This just might be what Sarah Palin is waiting for. Perhaps she is waiting to see, whether the GOP can come up with a candidate, who will actually work to bring jobs back to America?
(I don’t have any reason to expect that is the case, but I think she is waiting for some reason)
The GOP is standing on a weakening position. We can still win the next election, but if the GOP doesn’t start strongly supporting American workers, the democrats will eventually be in complete control.
The GOP needs to build up their own support, by building up American jobs.
They don’t need to sell out to donors more. They need to be supporting things, which build up individual Americans once again.
That means, the GOP needs to actively be involved, in bringing back millions of former American jobs.
Right here, to America.
Mike has been right on this for a long time.
Trade School vs. College: Drawbacks to College Education
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/why-you-should-consider-trade-school-instead-of-college/
And you are repeating your confusion between the national debt, the budget deficit, and the trade deficit. Whatever new party comes along, it doesn’t need you.
That said, the problem isn't the internet. If anything it has opened up a whole world to that entrepreneur willing to bone up on technology and respond to a world market efficiently and not requiring a government-set wage..
Laws have words and they mean things. They also cannot go on ad nauseam for all cases and that's why there are loopholes like the number of hours, etc. That's what happens when government tries to regulate things about which they know absolutely nothing.
Yeah, we give China worthless paper for all this stuff. Who is really getting screwed here?
Rudeboy, you seem to be arguing with posts made by Cringing Negativism Network on other threads. I don’t see anything on this thread that justifies your attack mode. True, he did conflate debt with trade deficit in one sentence, but you engaged in the positive instance fallacy by citing your own personal employment as proof. A bigger logical error, in my opinion.
Look you are one of a handful of blatantly biased posters on this board (all for selling out America, in trade), who really don’t speak of specifics. So what you’re accusing me of, is in fact something you yourself are equally at fault for.
You just are “pro-free-trade regardless of consequences”, and you haven’t shown anything else this time.
While I must admit your side has been remarkably successful at setting the tone in America for now an entire generation, it is now time to work to bring manufacturing back to America.
I support America’s manufacturing base.
Nobody else seems to. Not here. Not in the current GOP. Not even in the democrat party.
Everyone is all for building up China.
Everyone.
I just would like to point out to you, and to everyone else on this board:
China (now the world’s largest exporter, anywhere) is also now the second-largest spender on national defense.
And unlike our own budget, theirs is now constantly growing.
America needs to bring back our very own manufacturing base.
Now.
You are right, codeflier. As Milton Friedman said, what are they going to do with all those dollars, eat them?
Even at the height of Stalin’s Soviet Union, when most anything, or nothing at all, could get you enslaved or killed, workers still have one means of protest: sloth.
That is, everything they did, they did slowly, and poorly. They took lots of breaks, had two hour long lunches, drank a lot on the job, etc. And if management threatened one group, they would just do their job for a while, while all the other groups slacked off. The end result being the failure of whatever it was they were doing.
I mention this because since even the late 1950s, there have been worries that businesses would become entirely automated. In fact, just the opposite has happened. More automation equals *more* jobs, and often at higher or much higher wages.
What *does* put Americans out of work are two things.
1) Illegal and legal aliens, the former brought in to work at artificially low wages, and the latter on H1-B visas to do jobs Americans *could* do, but with just a fraction of the perquisites, no seniority, no promotions, etc. In other words, artificially low *benefits*.
2) Allowing international businesses into the American market without requiring them to hire Americans, pay American taxes, or buy raw materials from America. Such multinationals owe America no loyalty, and would sell us out for a nickel. And if anyone suggests they should give back for the opportunities of our market, then they start squealing “free trade! free trade!”, and give money to politicians who will continue to offer them this corporate welfare.
As with the effort to turn welfare into workfare, which was a huge success, it is just to turn corporate welfare into workfare as well.
And just because CNN (apparently) has backed-off his pro-tariff stance, why shouldn't I remind him of it?
Can't say anything else, because I cannot provide a solution.
America last year, bought 466 billion dollars of goods from China.
China last year, bought 124 billion dollars of goods from America.
And the inbalance, is getting (even worse) this year.
I have not backed off my pro-tariff stance. I just don’t identify it specifically as what we need to do.
But we need to bring back manufacturing to America.
That I am completely clear on. Moreso, every single month.
America, needs to support America.
Of course it is. How many office workers - as late as the early 2000s - were paid to basically sit around and "know stuff?" Now Google knows everything.
When we get into a hot war with China, free traitors will be hunted down and hung from light poles. 1rudeboy would do well by shutting up.
We need to bring manufacturing back to America.
America needs to support America.
Cut the corporate income tax. End global taxation of U.S. corporate earnings. Limit, sunshine, or eliminate unnecessary government regulations. Rein in the EPA.
But never, ever, raise taxes on American citizens. (And I won't back off that stance when it becomes "inconvenient").
Why would China wage war on their best customer?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.