Posted on 07/16/2013 7:11:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Parts of the nation's commentariat have been seized, in recent months, with a nasty bout of technophobia. Technophobia is a psychological condition, but infectious. Hardly a week goes by without a new outbreak documented in another blog post or business column. To judge from the symptomatic hand-wringing the epidemic is spreading, we are on the verge of mass unemployment as work becomes increasingly automated.
Technophobia is an affliction we have yet to cure even after decades of evidence-based ameliorative efforts. We might not have expected much resistance to the disease in earlier times, before evidence accumulated that the fears it inspired were irrational. Back in 1930, a mind as brilliant as John Maynard Keynes was susceptible to the condition. Keynes sensed sickness in the air but misdiagnosed it as a feature of the capitalist economy: "We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come-namely, technological unemployment."
Years of economic progress would thereafter reveal the misdiagnosis itself as the disease. The computer was invented and subsequently the fastest one increased in speed by a factor of 100,000. Unemployment fell to around five percent from 1930's nine percent. Median earnings doubled. Yet a self-appointed committee of public intellectuals declared in a letter to the President that a "cybernation revolution" was at hand, the product of "the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine." The revolution was producing "a system of almost unlimited productive capacity which requires progressively less human labor." The year was 1964.
Between 1964 and 2007, on the eve of the Great Recession, the earnings of the median working-age male rose by about one-third, and while most of that came during the 1960s,
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Lost me right there. I literally quit reading.
yeah- it’s ATM’s that cause unemployment! just ask Obama
Drum may see those things, but they are not caused by technology. They are a result of government regulations and insurance requirements that are creating incentives to do away with labor.
In a free economic climate, technology creates productivity improvements that produce more capital and spur investment in new lines of production. In our current economic situation, businesses are mechanizing current production to save money but aren't investing in expansion.
Politicians cause unemployment.
Factories built and staffed by Communist China cause American unemployment.
Bring them back to America.
Hire Americans.
Whatever the reason though, I think it is he makes some strong points (points that I will certainly use in the future) to refute the nonsense that technology eliminates jobs. Perhaps you would do yourself a favor to read it and glean some valid arguments you can use in the future. Just a suggestion.
Drones are putting fighter pilots out of work.
RE: Drones are putting fighter pilots out of work.
can’t they be re-trained to CONTROL the drones?
The drones are controlled by enlisted teenage video game junkies for a lot less than officer pilots would cost.
With a lot less cognitive functioning and judgement. I prefer pilots. In this day of womanizing men combat pilots are one of the last strong holds of real men.
No self-respecting pilot (aka real man) wants to fly a drone. It is for pansies that cannot take stress.
The rules of engagement are supervised by a JAG officer. Drone pilots are not paid to think, they are paid to surveil and/or destroy designated targets. It’s only a couple of years until the JAG officer is talking directly to the drones with no middleman.
Don’t get me wrong, I love pilots. My brother is a retired Eagle Driver, and I would have been one myself if today’s eye surgery waivers were available 25 years ago. But my brother and I both recognize that these jobs are on the way out.
Automating US factories is a good thing. Automating Chinese factories is a really bad thing.
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