[oceanview]

farming jobs weren't sent offshore, the # of people required to conduct farming activites was reduced by technology. to be sure, the same thing is happening in manufacturing (one part of the decline in employment), automation and technology reduce the number of workers required, even in china.

but that is not what is happening in tech and IT. there aren't fewer programmers, its just that less americans hold those jobs, more in India do. there aren't fewer call center people, its just that less americans hold those jobs, they are now in India, and the Phillipines. IBM doesn't have fewer accounting and finance people, its just that the americans that once held those jobs have lost them to workers in brazil. In fact, employment in IT/tech is INCREASING, its just all happening offshore.

the comparison to farming and manufacturing is not valid.

[Iwo Jima]

the comparison to farming and manufacturing is not valid.

You are correct. The transition in times past was from production of food and subsistence items to production of manufactured goods to production of technological goods to knowledge based services such as IT. Always "upwardly mobile."

Now that the knowledge jobs are being outsourced, where do we go from here? There's nothing "upward" from knowledge. We can't even go down the scale and take the kinds of jobs our fathers had, because those jobs don't exist either.