Replies

Not even close. I’m just a guy who actually looks at the real data for myself, not what the media feeds me.

You can keep telling yourself what you want it doesn’t change the fact that government regulation is only *part* of the reason unemployment is high. Once the microchip was invented, the game changed. There will NOT always be work to do for unskilled workers. They are destined to become more and more redundant with the passing of each year. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

To illustrate: In the 1950’s, a grocery store would have a fruit and vegetable man on staff to go around to each location and figure out how much foodstuffs to order - strawberries, bananas, watermelon, etc. Today, that job doesn’t even exist because the moment a melon is taken out of inventory, the computer notifies the central warehouse of the existing stock units and places an order for a new melon. The distribution systems have become so overwhelmingly efficient that most don’t even require human interaction except on the retail floor where inventory must be checked and adjusted periodically to account for theft, spoilage, etc.

You also hear much about the ‘decline of American manufacturing’. Yet, virtually every economist in the United States knows that manufacturing profits, on an inflation-adjusted basis, are the EXACT SAME as they were in 1960, it has just become a smaller part of the overall economy, not due to decline, but rather due to industries such as ecommerce and finance becoming LARGER from very small or non-existent bases.

So how is it that during that same time manufacturing jobs disappeared? If manufacturing is exactly as profitable in “real” dollars after inflation as it was in 1960 why do we have fewer jobs? Most of it isn’t China and India but software automation and productivity gains. For us to be having this conversation 30 years ago would have required both of us to write on a piece of paper, stuff it in an envelope, and send it through the mail. That meant more logging jobs for paper, more manufacturing jobs for pens, most mailmen jobs, etc. Now, sites like Free Republic can handle millions of conversations, posts and comments on - what - a few servers?

The unions, politicians, and other support systems know this. But if they go to their people and say, “We’re going to keep losing jobs in this industry - you should probably go become an anesthesiologist - they will be voted out office and a job, along with their comfortable paychecks and benefits. So they put on a good show.

But anyone who ignores the underlying reason our economy is shifting does so at his own (or her own) peril. In 20 years, they will still be broke or bankrupt, still be unemployed, and wonder why the hell the world left them behind. It’s no different than horse and buggy manufacturers lamenting the rise of the automobile. Those who were smart enough to go work in Detroit made bank but those who kept trying to sell saddles and whips didn’t fare very well.

To think otherwise is an exercise in self-delusion that is the adult equivalent of believing in Santa Claus.