"And that's the way it was and we liked it."
Posted on 08/26/2013 7:39:05 PM PDT by lbryce
In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000.
This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn’t productivity itself. Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?
Are we in danger of losing the “race against the machine,” as the M.I.T. scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in a recent book? Are we becoming enslaved to our “robot overlords,” as the journalist Kevin Drum warned in Mother Jones? Do “smart machines” threaten us with “long-term misery,” as the economists Jeffrey D. Sachs and Laurence J. Kotlikoff prophesied earlier this year? Have we reached “the end of labor,” as Noah Smith laments in The Atlantic?
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
If any of what is presented in the article is true, then that would seem to exonerate Zero's sorry handling of the economy, the ineptitude in which he serves as President. In essence what it is saying is the poor state of the economy was inevitable as the fallout from the technological advances made throughout the decades and that it didn't matter whatever economic policies were implemented, the economy would still be faltering as it is doing in the present time.
In other words. You don’t work you don’t eat.
There, fixed it.
.
the chinese dont have unions do they?
they seem to be assembling nearly everything we buy here In the USA.
might there be a correlation between Union Demands...and Overal Unemployment....beyond the obvious economic sabotage the Regimes been engaged in?
The obvious solution would be to install a Soviet-style economy, where low productivity is a virtue. Oh, how convenient... for the 0’ Regime... and the Slimes.
Its our education system. Can you say modern Math circa 1968.
I think the Chinese have two words for union members: Prisoner and corpse.
People have it all wrong, it will be awesome when everyone has robot slaves.
Hmm, good point, my FRiend.
Okay...
How Technology [Welfare and Labor Unions and Government Schools] Wreck the Middle Class
Better, eh?
.
I’ve heard nothing about there being....anything resembling a union in RED China..or anyone ever attempting to “organize” one.
oh thats right, dead men dont talk..
Marxists are such moral and intellectual wimps! They can't even tell halfway credible lies.
We do now seem to have a technology “problem.” And it is only likely to get worse and worse.
In spite of my commitment to conservative principles, it’s getting difficult for me to see how we avoid ending up with increasing socialism. When you have machines producing the wealth, and larger and larger numbers of people are out of work because the jobs simply are no longer available, what else can you do but pass laws that tax the owners of the machines, and give paychecks to the unemployed?
You can of course tax the machines and create meaningless jobs that produce nothing (like additional government bureaucracy). Or, I suppose you could create government jobs for building things like bridges and roads.
Given the rise of the machines, though, I’m just not quite certain where we go from here.
Unions AND regulations/taxes
“Have we mechanized and computerized ourselves into obsolescence?”
No.We.Have.Not.Sir.
Let me put this in such a way so this idiot(the author)can understand.
I am a landscaper. It is hard, hot work.
I have more work than I can possibly accomplish.
NO machine can do this work. We DO use MACHINES, but it takes a human to run them.
PS. I earned a degree in electronics and use it on a daily basis. It comes in handy and I paid for it in full.
These f-n putzes will be our downfall.
Yes, life was so much better when we pounded our laundry with rocks at the riverside, cracked whips over the oxen in the fields, toiled dawn-to-dusk to grow enough food for our families, and turned in at 8 PM after burning our one precious candle for a single hour. Who needs energy and labor-saving machines?
"And that's the way it was and we liked it."
Very well said. Where would the Slimes be today using the Gutenberg press to publish the crap it advocates?
Apparently Obama is so great he invented technology. No other president had technology. Certainly Reagan’s terrible economic growth was because there were zero technological advancements in the 1980. Go figure.
No, you’re making it too hard. The problem is NOT techonology, in fact technology is the answer, the solution.
The problem is government. Read “Atlas Shrugged”.
Take government out of the picture, let free market forces work, and this problem will resolve itself very quickly.
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