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Labor Day 2012: The Future Of Work
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Labor Day 2012: The Future of Work
Technology and the Web are destroying far more jobs than they create. We will need to develop a "Third Way" based on community rather than the Market or the State to adapt to this reality.
What better day to ponder the future of work than Labor Day? Long-time correspondent Robert Z. recently shared an essay on just this topic entitled Understanding the 'New' Economy.
The underlying political and financial assumption of the Status Quo is that technology will ultimately create more jobs than it destroys. Bob's insightful essay disputes that assumption:
Over the past 15 years, the global economy has experienced structural changes to a degree not seen in nearly 150 years. Put simply, the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s has given way to a post-industrial economy. In this post-industrial economy, technology has now evolved to the point where it destroys more jobs than it creates.
Still, most people are Luddites to some extent. Human nature is to resist dramatic change, either actively or passively, until we have no other choice. If you don’t believe that, just listen to our presidential candidates.
Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will give us happy talk about maintaining entitlement benefits (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid) that cannot possibly be sustained. They will talk about energy self-sufficiency. They will talk about creating jobs. They will tell us that we can somehow ‘grow’ our way out of our economic distress. But neither candidate will admit that technology now destroys more jobs than it creates, because to do so would be to commit political suicide. The fact is that none of the happy talk will ever come true. Instead, the Federal Government, with the tacit approval of both major political parties, continues to run trillion-dollar-plus deficits year after year in a futile attempt to spend our way out of our economic problems and to sustain an economic model that cannot be sustained.
Those who believe that bringing manufacturing back to the US will also bring back jobs are trying to fight a war that has already been fought and lost. Why? The answer is technology. It’s actually a fairly simple process now to bring production of many items back to the US, simply because of automation and robotics. A factory filled with robots can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, so long as the raw material inputs keep flowing into the factory. Robots don’t take breaks, don’t make mistakes, don’t call in sick, don’t take vacations, don’t require expensive health insurance, and don’t receive paychecks. A fully automated robotic manufacturing facility might require only 100 workers, while a traditional assembly line facility might utilize 3,000 workers. That’s a huge difference in the number of jobs. The simple fact is that most of the lost manufacturing jobs are never coming back.
What about all the marketing, administrative, accounting, and IT jobs that we think can’t be outsourced or automated? Well, retail enterprises now tailor any number of special offers directly to individual customers by mining data from reward programs. That doesn’t take an expensive ad budget or a huge marketing department, since it’s all automated. Have you ever noticed that most of the advertising you see while you surf the Web is tailored to things you might be interested in buying? That’s all automated – huge numbers of marketing professionals are just not needed.
In the accounting world, ‘lean accounting’ attempts to streamline accounting processes and eliminate accounting inefficiencies. A byproduct of ‘lean accounting’ is often greater use of technology and a significant reduction in the number of accountants and accounting clerks. In the IT (Information Technology) sector, computer algorithms for high-frequency stock trading (HFT) have become so complex that specialized software now writes new HFT programs and algorithms. That reduces job opportunities for programmers. The net result of all these examples is not job creation. It’s job destruction.
How about government jobs and government-related jobs? Well, think about the US defense budget. It’s a huge example. We surely do not need as many tanks and fighter jets as we used to, now that we have remote-controlled drones to do many of the jobs required. And with the availability of these drones, we might not need as many aircraft carriers, ships, or military personnel either.
What about the Post Office? Do we really need daily mail service in an electronic world?
The point is that as we let go of old methodologies, whether in the private sector or in government, huge numbers of jobs simply disappear. As a society, we need to admit that ‘free-market’ capitalism is not going to bring back these lost jobs. Thanks to technology, society is capable of meeting basic human needs (food, clothing, shelter, transportation) with far fewer workers percentage-wise than were needed in the past. But as a society, we also need to admit that socialistic solutions won’t work either, simply because human nature is to take care of ourselves and our families first. Once we have provided for ourselves and our families, very few of us are both willing and able to provide for every stranger that might knock on our door seeking assistance.
As a nation, we must at some point address any number of major economic issues, including the massive overhang of debt (public and private) that cannot possibly be repaid and demands for future entitlement payments that cannot possibly be met. As a society, we ought to admit that we cannot borrow our way to prosperity. Unless interest rates are zero forever and creditors are willing to forego scheduled repayments forever, borrowing our way to prosperity is a mathematical impossibility.
One point is certain. Even if we find the political will to deal with the mathematics of our economic problems, we will never find long-term solutions to our economic issues until we recognize the profound economic changes wrought by technological advances. This is especially true with respect to our traditional view of a job and a paycheck. While it is true that new opportunities will always exist, these opportunities may not be as plentiful as the jobs of the past once were. And these opportunities will generally require more advanced skills than many of the jobs of the past. Technology has fundamentally changed the nature of paying work, and it is also one of the major economic issues of our time.
About the author:
Bob Z., of Vancouver, Washington, is a Corporate Finance executive who retired in 2007 from an upper management position with a Fortune 500 corporation.
Thank you, Bob, for your forthright appraisal of technology and jobs. The decline in labor's share of the GDP (gross domestic product) is sobering:

Here are some other points to consider:
1. The build-out of a new technology creates a large but temporary number of jobs. This has been the case for some time: the construction of the railroads created a jobs boom that soon disappeared in a financial bust as rail was over-built and profits were non-existent for many of the extraneous or duplicate lines.
Telephony and telecom followed similar arcs, and did the build-out of the Internet infrastructure.
2. Technology maturation leads to diminishing return on labor as incremental advances in productivity are capital-intensive. Semiconductor manufacturing is a good example; fabrication facilities (fabs) cost upwards of $2 billion each even as the number of workers need to operate the fab declines. Profit margins on many high-technology products are razor-thin, flat-screen displays being a prime example, and diminishing margins further pressure labor costs.
3. Software is leading the next-generation industrial revolution, automating many tasks that were considered "safe" from automation. As Bob pointed out, this includes securities trading and accounting. (I would add tax preparation for the majority of tax situations.) Can the law, academia and government remain immune? Unlikely.
4. Although few dare contemplate this, the low-hanging fruit of technology may have already been plucked. Take healthcare as an example: antibiotics and vaccines virtually eliminated many diseases at a very low cost per dose (though some diseases are coming back due to unvaccinated host populations and bacterial adaptation).
Antibiotics are "one size fits all" technologies: they act basically the same on every target bacteria and in every host. Compare that universality to the spectrum of individual responses to cancer treatments and other medications: one size does not fit all, and many of the most profitable drugs of the past few decades treated symptoms, not the underlying illness.
It is increasingly clear that there is no "magic pill" that kills all cancers, or even specific cancers in all patients. Lifestyle diseases such as diabetes appear impervious to "magic bullet" cures, as the causal factors of the disease are complex. The same can be said of diseases of aging and environmental factors.
In other words, the notion that tens of billions of dollars in high-tech research will yield "one size fits all" low-cost treatments of complex diseases has been shown to be problematic, and very possibly a fantasy.
5. The Internet is destroying vast income streams that once supported tens of thousands of jobs in industries from finance to music. Craigslist has gutted the once-immense income stream from newspapers, and web-based marketing has shredded print-media advert page counts. Global competition and pressure to maintain profits and margins relentlessly drive enterprises to slash payrolls.
6. As I have discussed here many times over the years, the rising costs of taxes, benefits and regulations have squeezed small businesses. In response, many small companies rely on automation and software to perform tasks that until recently required a human worker.
Those small businesses that cannot prosper via technology are going under, and the risks posed by ever-higher costs have raised entry barriers to starting a small business. These trends are visible in this chart:

The array of web-based tools available to entrepreneurs now is astonishing. Why take on the risks of hiring people when you can do the work yourself with low-cost web tools and software? For many small enterprises, that is the only way to survive.
Advanced societies face a dilemma that cannot be solved by more debt or more technology: how to distribute not just the output of the economy, but the work and responsibility so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute and earn their keep.
Those who have plowed through my books know that I see community as the only viable way forward. Many aspects of human life cannot be turned into a "market opportunity," nor can they be taken over by the insolvent central-planning Central State. Paying people to stay home and rot is not a solution, but neither is paying people more than they produce in competitive markets. There is a "Third Way," but we've lost the skills and infrastructure required. Of the three elements of civil society, the Market and the State have crowded out Community. We either re-discover the labor-value of community or we devolve further into a potentially "death spiral" social and financial instability.
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Back when things were being colonized at least people had a choice of whether to stay(and be screwed) or to venture out for an adventure in an untamed world, ie america, and probably also being subsequently screwed
Phat, yes, that is the image of deep capture and the revelation of a prison planet in need of a wash. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8X6mlbq45k
not like the dark ages when you could rely on the black death or evil/mean marauders to cull the herd
if human civilization today was a lawn it'd be wayyyyyyyyyy overdue for a good mowing; just sayin' evolution would prefer it that way to keep the 'axe' sharpened, and mankind on an heightened alert level. Instead, today we have useless eaters everywhere bringing the intelligence level, well down to where it has arrived at today. whee
http://www.enoughof.us/catholicisms-passion-for-procreation/
"Catholicism insists that procreation is a religious “must.”
“The womb is the most endangered human environment in the world today. The right to life precedes and underlies every other social and environmental issue.”
LDS: "Using the power of procreation does not alienate one from God. Rather, properly used, it enables mortals to become co-creators with him in the divine Plan of Salvation, which stretches across the eternities and includes the opportunity for the faithful to participate in family life and eternal increase (see Eternal Lives)."
http://www.mormonhaven.com/ofpolicy.htm#Procreation
BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY (IF YOU DON'T DIE OF STARVATION FIRST)
...this one is for you Bunny. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2024:%2019&version=KJV
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+24%3A37-39&version=KJV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUalN7PK98
Why are you sharing this religious garbage? Wrong forum, stupid breeder.
Forgive me, I don't have any children, and your Father is not stupid, he made a fine tool, a garbage man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N2-jV189Zs
Boy, when you grow up you may be able to quantify numbers beyond the pail and discover why you belong in this forum.
Cantalopes, peachs, apples, pears, grapes, bananas, oranges, pineapples, cherries, plums, mangos, watermelons.
4 X 8 = 32
There, I have done my duty.
A middle-class solution would be to acquire and stockpile commodities and raw materials of low-tech necessity, while they are still economically available. These should include information resources (books, PDFs, disks) and whatever llfe-items (non-hybrid seed, livestock) that can reproduce with Providence's input. Some folks will call you a junkman, but don't mind. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never . . . Oh, wait! You're all out of sticks and stones.
Brilliant and verbose science fiction writers from the USA covered the robot thing exhaustively, over 50 years ago.
Eventually, it will be necessary to build robots which can play golf, which can travel, which can drive around town sightseeing,
and which can go to the gym, in order to maintain consumption .....
However, the mood of the people has changed. Most americans have simply had it with "stuff".
They are tired of lugging it home, putting it together, sending in the warranty card,
keeping it clean, keeping the batteries working, moving it, storing it, and disposing of it in a safe, environmentally-friendly manner.
Wanna create jobs?
Easy...just pass a law that any telephone call to any business, help desk, customer service desk, tech support desk, or whatever,
must be answered by a living human being ...
People want service now, not stuff ....
...''service'', like ummm, someone providing the perfect sustaining meal. Hey, I wonder what offer you would give to the Chef for that?
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%204:%207&version=YLT
Are the fruits of our labor now ''Able'', lol, to free us from contempt? NO! ...but! if we reject the offer(s) of (contempt) this generation we provide the call for our escape.
Shall we escape the pain of labor? No! We must endure the call of Perfection without compromise, even unto death. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB1erm6yMw4
Kewl video Black; haven't heard that song for ages
They will tell us that that's not them pissing on our leg.
It's the warm rain of a productive economy.
waiting for dimentia to kick in anyday now and end this veil of tears
Isn’t it a rip-off con for all of us to run our living standards aground in this land of plenty while those who stole the production of our labors and goodwill, call it hightech/robotics/offshoring or what you will, sail off to the Promised Land? I always think of Richard Benson’s “Inflation and the Ironic Productivity Tax” when I contemplate my fellow man’s stolen economic heritage.
As mankind’s standards of living improved with past innovations, so they should improve with new innovations. What must be overhauled is crony capitalism that allows the few to reap all the benefits produced by the many.
The American Free Enterprise System was the nursery for some of mankind’s greatest technological advances, including robotics. It was culture which fostered invention and opportunities to be rewarded for innovation (creation of wealth). It was American culture, founded on a system of laws and justice which would protect property rights and the opportunities for education and improved standards of living, that created the innovations, not the corporations and the bankers who financed them.
Therefore, the benefits of this American system should be open to all American citizens, not the sole property of the corporations for their sole profits. Our commandeered political system does not reflect this needed change.
Says Richard Benson of Specialty Finance Group: “Man is such a lucky creature because machines do all of our work. Our economy and prosperity stand on the shoulders of the geniuses who invented the wheel, lever and plow, and the creative thinkers who dreamed up mathematics, the internal combustion engine, silicone chip and the internet. These innovations have led to wondrous and unforeseen leaps forward for mankind. Human ingenuity, mixed with a desire to do better and produce more with less, has relentlessly driven productivity forward…”
Therefore, asks Benson, "If mankind's machines produce more with less labor each year, why shouldn't the dollar I make this year buy more next year? Shouldn't this increase in productivity flow through to the wage earner and saver?”
We are being robbed! says Benson. “First, by the Federal Reserve Bank because they have kept inflation moving ahead so I never receive the benefit of productivity, and then by the slick Bureau of Labor Statistics, ("BLS") that actually made the Price Index pay for productivity by subtracting it from the CPI and reporting it as a smaller number than it really is!”
He adds:” If our government was fair and money and credit growth were restrained, I estimate the dollar could purchase about two percent more each year, and we would be living in a saver's paradise.”
If a free enterprise culture produces innovation, then that culture should be a part of the resulting prosperity. And it has happened; innovations have provided for higher standards of living , more free time, and more chances for development. And the more money people made the more opportunities people designed to do things. Progress, if allowed, progresses on itself.
To match a free enterprise economy, a new kind of political system is needed; one that provides greater representation of the people and one that greatly reduces the size and impact and domination of government, not one that puts the people out of work. Americans are suffering an incredible burden; and that burden is a gargantuan, abusive government that stands in the way of prosperity for the many while it vacuums up the product of labor and transfers it to the rulers, Goldman, Rockefeller, Rothschild, et al., who monopolize the benefits of innovation primarily through a privately owned and controlled, world-reserve fiat currency system – gifted them by the U.S. Congress.
Perfect post JR.
I concur; BRAVO......
would it make a difference to put a message like this in front of people, your everyday joe? Or would they simply curl up like a turtle in their shell?
(I was referring to JR's post, didn't read the threads article; not that much anyway :-)
I read about 1/4 of the piece and just couldn't read anymore. I have a low tolerance in my years for bullshit it seems. The author tipped his hand when he made the statement:"robots don't make mistakes". REALLY? When did robots become God? Robots screw up all of the time, and the worse part of it is, unlike humans, they don't realize they are making a mistake UNTIL SOME HUMAN STOPS THEM. But perhaps the biggest lie told in this piece is it falsely addressed WHY all of those manufacturing jobs left the USA in the first place. It wasn't because of technology. It was because of unions, over regulation and the passage of various "free trade" agreements. Globalism is not a natural phenomenon, in fact, it is counter-intuitive. No, globalism was created by the corporations and their paid whores in D.C. And perhaps the most funny part I read:"we must find a third way outside of the market or state to create jobs, community". We already have those pal. They are called "community organizers" and non-paid community volunteers. I smell a commie. Who is going to pay all of these community workers comrade? Why yes, A NEW TAX ON THE PEOPLE. The author is either a useful stooge, or a fifth column activist. You know you are screwed when the fifth column becomes mainstream.
...yeah, author is a commie. Middle name must be Duracell. They will build a great robot farmer fer sure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEHoU0lWyx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvu2Q4BsE2U Mmmmmm Muppet...
Similar to my conclusion - anarcho-communist (yes, the anarcho- part is 'mostly' for show).
And after you have laid everybody off thanks to these super efficient, tireless, zero wages robots, who is going to buy the shit they make? This kind of thinking is a recipe for disaster. Long term there is no more certain way to destroy a business than following this bullshit route.
Cameli; You are so right. Problem is, the US based company who tries to compete against the automated or transplant factory will have to close their doors after a few years. they simply are not competitive. Today, the USA has only a few industries left: defense sector, agriculture {which is being replaced, albeit gradually}, health care, government, educstion and corrections. What do they all have in common? They all recieve federal subsidies!
Cycles, cycles.
We are close to the end of the outsourcing cycle that devastated western countries industrial companies and jobs.
Rising costs in asian countries are slowly forcing companies to rethink their strategy.
It wont happen in one day but the tide is turning.
Emerging countries wont like it and will fight with increase productivity, but at least this is more hope than before for western workers
Local mfg with humans -> Remote mfg with humans -> Remote mfg with robots (as labor grows too expensive) -> Local mfg with robots (as overseas transportation gets too expensive)
Cycles, cycles.
We are close to the end of the outsourcing cycle that devastated western countries industrial companies and jobs.
Rising costs in asian countries are slowly forcing companies to rethink their strategy.
It wont happen in one day but the tide is turning.
Emerging countries wont like it and will fight with increase productivity, but at least this is more hope than before for western workers
The parallels between now and the 1930's are astonishing, as most ZH readers will attest. Then too, there was a huge oversupply of labor and deflationary spiral brought about by technological development resulting from the industrial revolution.
The only way out of this is another World War, I'm afraid. The elites know this too, and that is why they are looting sovereign governments as fast as they can, to get what they can while they can. Then hunker down until the shooting stops and later buy up everything and anything that's left.
So I don't think we really need to fret too much about how to solve what seems impossible to solve. Events will rapidly overtake us as we plunge into the next World War. The only thing we can do at this point, is try to weather the storm the best way we can. A small self-sufficient plot of land somewhere off-the grid is probably the best way, although I've also considered a cruising sailboat with solar panels and lots of fishing gear.
Right now it may seem that there is no way out....and you're probably right. But just as with WW2, the sun will still rise, and we will revuild, after this is all over.
One of the most incoherent concepts ever: "an oversupply of labor."
All can be fixed. Kill most everyone. GMO up the food to make everyone sterile. Call it a natural virus.
Now you got automation but at a slower pace, and more nat. resources to go around.
Bill gates wants to do this very thing;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WXcRfsrTQ
To me that's simple because it seems people are so fucking stupid- I see young men all the time having huge 3-8 kids and they are just to the wire in debt, and the dad is working 3 jobs... why? Then they are always, whoa is me, I am so tired we haven't taken a vacation in xxx yrs, blah blah blah- its your own damn fault.
Buy a fucking condom, have only 1 kid, feed them put them thru private school or better home school, maybe even work it so that mom can stay home and actually be a parent- quality not quantity.
Who would say I want to be flat broke with a shit load of broke ass kids with barely any education, nutrition or prospects later when they grow up and that I have raised white/yellow/black/brown/mixed trash?
Other crazy shit I see people doing:
-buying a house, when they just moved to town, and got a new job (not fortune 500 running the company shit but regular job)
-get married with no job
-moving to a new town with no job/work prospects, and have never been here prior. don't know anyone.
-getting pregnant when just common law within 6 mos
-buying a new car 1 month after getting a new job.
feel free to add to this.
Better yet, just change your name to Juan Garcia and have all the kids you want. You won't have to work three jobs, you won't be tired all of the time, and you'll get vacation every year. THANK YOU AMERICAN TAXPAYER!
Man the DailyKos trolls are out in force this Lumpenproletariat Day 2012.
I basically stopped reading at "We will need to develop a "Third Way" based on community rather than the Market or the State to adapt to this reality." because this statement implies that there is currently a "way" based on the market. It is a false premise. Also note the curious choice of the phrase Third Way and use of scare quotes, as some of you certainly know, the Third Way is another name for fascism, specifically the economic system of fascist states as well as the name of a political party associated with fascism.
And this bizarre sentence: "Advanced societies face a dilemma that cannot be solved by more debt or more technology: how to distribute not just the output of the economy, but the work and responsibility so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute and earn their keep."
CHS has come out as an anarcho-communist it seems, and his pro-central planning mentality is alive and well. Redistribution of wealth is not enough for him, he now demands redistribution of labor as well (which we in fact already have, of course), and he conflates the market with the state despite mentioning them as separate entities. If he did not conflate them, he would have realized this entire missive is based on a fallacious understanding of market and state, and never would have written it.
Charles's ignorance is childish, he needs to enroll in a semester of Rothbard 101; if he disagrees with what he learns, well, that is his choice, but at least it will remove any doubt as to his biases and eliminate the possibility of claiming ignorance.
If he were not a 'professional' blogger who routinely covers economic topics, his failure to comprehend the subject matter would be more forgivable: those who have no reason to know of and understand it generally don't. But this is not the case, so it raises the question of his honesty and competence as a writer. If his fantastical view of political economy is genuine, so be it, but the text hardly justifies such an assessment.
I agree with you. The beautiful models who have been replaced by digitized images will move to their nex best option--sexual prostitution. The supply of protitutes will increase so price will drop and more ding dongs will have a moment of satisifaction.
The market responding to our higher angels provides great warmth to us all.
The dynamics of scarcity are best left to the forces of market and those alone. Same as always.
Junk away commies.
Lots of whistling past the graveyard in these posts.
The way things are going all of our jobbs will go to machines. That will leave 6 billion workers with nothing to do but sue each other!
Or jump to their deaths.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html
'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory Around 150 Chinese workers at Foxconn, the world's largest electronics manufacturer, threatened to commit suicide by leaping from their factory roof in protest at their working conditions. (Ace)The author would be well served by a careful reading of "Economics in one lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.
Automation is not the problem, goverment manipulation of the economy is the problem.
http://dollarcollapse.com/category/welcome-to-the-third-world/
The vast majority of North Americans will NEVER be able to "compete" with Third World Peasants and/or Computers. However, the vast majority of North Americans are too ignorant to understand that basic problem, although it has been plainly obvious to some intellectuals for a long time ... Meanwhile, we have the best brainwashing that money can buy directing the formation of public opinions!
Too bad, so sad, that the progress of science and technology ended up being primarily employed to become "better" at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence. Only a very radical change in the ways that we think about this might provide real solutions. Of course, that appears to be impossible to happen before the insane collapse of the established systems are pushed through ... which means too little, too late, and after which, all bets are off, since when and how that happens is too wildly unpredictable!!!
The ONLY good things that North American citizens could theoretically do is take control of the sovereign powers, that they theoretically have as citizens. However, almost all of those powers have already been privatized, while the vast majority of those "citizens" are too ignorant to understand that, but rather have become nothing more than bullshit consumers. It is off the scale BIZARRE that everything else gets pumped up billions, trillions, and quadrillions of times by advancing science and technologies, EXCEPT for politics, which tends to regress, and always get even stupider than ever, with even bigger lies, backed up with more violence, controlling what actually happens!
The chart is only interesting insofaras people understamd that in Y2K the NASDAQ companies made the S&P 500 something like 40% technology and so to own the S&P 500 was to own a Tech-Fund just like in the year 2007 to own the S&P 500 was to own a "Fund of Money Center Banks and Brokerage and Mortgage Lenders" so the graph shows nothing exceptional. It shows that the USA found a way to outsource the manufacturing of a ton of its technology equipment up to and ESPECIALLY after the year 2000 due to the generally deflationary price action on technology as a whole. The country was AWASH in jobs for computer programmers and the related professionals. Not the case during a tecgh-WRECK so naturally they oursourced.
In 2007 everyone was a BANKER and as you would expect, those jobs are all gone and or still leaving the country and rotating toward something more meaningful for employment purposes. This isn't showing a long term declining trend due to technology, it is showing that bubbles burst and that as certain elements within the economy are overbuilt, that the related employment vanished post-bubble and the marginal employment gains in the same sector tend to come from other lower cost solutions providers. research@pamria.com
Any person who cannot do some job that cannot be done by robotics does not deserve to have a job.
Robots and automated IT systems will make most workers obsolete.
That leaves a nagging problem...
Who will buy their products?
...other...errr...robots?
Revolution s coming....robots will be smashed and the elite strung high.
..unless they unleash a virus on the 'obsolete' masses.
Commence the Butlerian Jihad!
And here I thought that the dollar was so seriously over-valued and government regulation killed competition in crony markets that all the US jobs were shipped over-seas as the US economy was hollowed out by financialization. And returning to gold / sound money won't do anything to halt the financialization? You're saying that my job has been taken over by the Terminator and I should be looking for and protecting a guy named John Conner?
Once again everything I thought I knew is just a lie.