[greenwolf]

In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.

That's a bullshit analogy to the present situation. Being replaced by automation and changing times is one thing, being replaced with people doing the same work for ten cents on the dollar because they live in a country which has 10% the living costs ours does is not the same thing at all.

The man's an idiot, and not a genius.

[sly671]

If you would read the ENTIRE article, you could see the point. He's showing how the government will try to limit the moving of jobs to other nations but not to automation. It's completely right to assume jobs WILL come and go so the interventions of the government are futile. Would you rather see your job go overseas with a possibility(even if it is remote) of it coming back or would you like to lose it to a machine with no possibility of you getting your job back? Or do you want to keep your job for a little longer until it may be automated and pay more for all the products produced?

[Daus]

That's a bullshit analogy to the present situation. Being replaced by automation and changing times is one thing, being replaced with people doing the same work for ten cents on the dollar because they live in a country which has 10% the living costs ours does is not the same thing at all.

Please explain why you feel better being replaced by a machine than by an Indian?

Either way, someone is making the cold calculation that you present less 'value' than the above two alternatives.

On a global level, the US is bettered because another Indian is tied up doing this 'less valuable' job, than going to school (or continuing his education) to learn to do a job that has real intrinsic value.