In many of the threads which had the job-loss crises attributed to those nasty old rich people, guess what, they were right. BUT, they were wrong about where the jobs went and how we could get them back.

TECHNOLOGY is the greatest middle class job killer, in every developed country in the world. AND it is starting to kill jobs in the developing world at an even faster pace.

The politicians have blamed China and big business, but they have missed the real culprit. Why? Because it is easier than admitting the truth. Cheap goods drive sales, sales drive profits, profits drive the economy. Sales drive the GNP, to kill the sales would create havoc in the economy.

So as I said many times before, Pogo was right: "We have met the enemy and he is us"

Take the time to read this article, it is quite eye opening:

http://www.timesunion.com/news/us/a...ssion-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-4214077.php

 

I have said all along that Bill Gates and the computer has killed a bunch of jobs.....

and I saw a report on the manufacturing that is coming back here is being done by a lot of robotics...

 

Not just Gates, since man made his first tool, to ease the task; used the first beast to carry his load; made the wheel to speed his movement; and used fire, water and wind to do his work, we had begun to replace human efforts with other means.

 

I just got back from another trip to Vegas and 40 years ago there were all kinds of people to service the machines and do work...

Now it is all computers and tickets....I am guess maybe 30% of the casino floor workers are gone...

Just think how many book keepers lost jobs to quick books....

Bottom level stock brokers are about gone because of the internet computer orders as I can do at home what I use to do at a Brokerage House...

A young person needs to have a degree in computer science to go hand in hand with something else....finance, managment...healthcare...etc

 

Computer technology increases the relationship between intelligence and income. It enables a small number of geniuses to acquire vast fortunes. It creates well paying careers for those of superior intelligence. It reduces the economic value of jobs most people are capable of learning.

Charles Murray is one of the few people who has had the courage to talk about the problem. Those who deny the problem, and who try to silence people like Charles Murray, do not make the problem go away.

This is not a problem that can be solved by "lower taxes, less government." It can be alleviated by shortening the work week to spread the work around, and raising taxes on the shrinking number of winners to spread their wealth around. The government could provide for people what they are no longer able to provide for themselves.

Nevertheless, those who would most benefit from this are most susceptible to right wing demagogues like Rush Limbaugh. Most lower income whites who are losing ground to technology would rather blame high taxes to fund generous welfare checks for black folks for their declining standards of living than acknowledge that in an increasingly competitive economy they have little of value to offer an employer.

"Vote Democrat. It's not your fault you lack the brains to earn a good income," is an honest campaign slogan. Nevertheless it lacks the resonance that "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains," used to.

 

Tenguy,
It is an interesting article and it will be interesting to read the other two parts when published.
Buried within all the gloom and doom in the article is this:

Entrepreneur Andrew Schrage started the financial advice website Money Crashers in 2009 with a partner and one freelance writer. The bare-bones start-up was only possible, Schrage says, because of technology that allowed the company to get online help with accounting and payroll and other support functions without hiring staff.
"Had I not had access to cloud computing and outsourcing, I estimate that I would have needed 5-10 employees to begin this venture," Schrage says. "I doubt I would have been able to launch my business."


Yes, the new startups will require fewer people, but, at the same time, technology will allow people with fewer resources to start a new ventures that create jobs.

 

Things are constantly changing and in the book Future Shock written years ago said as time goes by changes will come even quicker....

Things are moving very fast...

I think about how complex my taxes are with all the different types of income and I use to pay an accountant 250 to 500 just to do my taxes....

4 years ago Tax act Online came out for complex returns that I can now do my taxes myself...takes about a day but it costs me 9.95.....I love it and have yet to have a problem with the IRS.....(knock on wood)....:excited:

 

There is always a tendency to extrapolate current trends into the future. Around 1990 people were looking with dread to a continuing rise in the rate of violent crime. Violent crime began to decline in 1991. It has continued to decline.

During the 1990s the expansion of the internet and the use of the personal computer lead to low inflation economic growth that most people benefited from even if they lacked college degrees and computer skills.

Things may not be a gloomy as my earlier post suggested. We will just have to wait and see. I do think it is important to learn marketable job skills. Going to an obscure liberal arts college and getting a degree in something like philosophy is a waste of time and money. If you love the liberal arts, like I do, study them on your own.

 

The Unibomber was trying to warn you about this....

 

Just ask all the people who lost jobs years ago when auto manufacturing started replacing line workers with robots. Production went up and the number of jobs went down.

That's one of the reasons I refuse to use the self checkout in the supermarket. I don't want to encourage companies to replace checkers with six machines and an overseer that just monitors the process. I like being able to make human contact when I buy my groceries and the machines don't support families or pay union dues.

 

As many of my fellow conservatives have been touting for many years. Entrepreneurship is the best way to overcome the challenges in the job market. Be bold, be smart, be creative, open your own business and reap the rewards. BUT, be aware that the changes we are witnessing WILL visit you at some point, so above all else, be flexible.

 

Read the Fucking Article..

I like the self check out line but they should give us a discount for doing it our self.....

One grocery store took out its self check out -- the manager said theft was way down after they closed it down....

LOL...when stuff did not want to scan I just put it in the sack...:excited:<shame on me>

 

interesting tenguy .... thank's ...

I suddenly feel better:rose: about being on pension. 'Old' has it's benifits.

 

Funny how that UPC code doesn't trigger the scanner when it facing away from the reader.

In 1954 I worked as a stock clerk at an A&P store. There were three inventory control clerks who manually counted shelf stock and recorded it on "count sheets", which were spreadsheet that included history, the department head then read the sheets and ordered merchandise from the head office/warehouse. The orders were assembled in the warehouse and trucked to the store. The goods were hand unloaded, cases opened and manually stamped with the selling price. The goods were then moved to the store aisles and manually stacked on the shelf. Price changes required that the price stamp imprint be removed and the new price then stamped on the goods.

In all there were 12 floor stock clerks, 3 inventory clerks, four department heads and many more head office staff involved in stocking the store. Today, there are still the 12 stock clerks, 1 inventory clerk and two department managers, in a store that does 12 times the volume of the one I worked at. Simple math (factoring volume increases) tells me that at least as 10 jobs were eliminated in that one store as a direct result of technology.

 

Yepper...I can think of tons of stories like you just wrote...

btw...great article....please post the follow ups....thanks

 

Now you see why the Luddites destroyed machines in factories.
The Luddites are a footnote now and technology continues to move faster and faster.

 

While you are correct look at the end of the article....

Peter Lindert, an economist at the University of California, Davis, says the computer is more destructive than innovations in the Industrial Revolution because the pace at which it is upending industries makes it hard for people to adapt.

Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations can disappear in a few years. Utility meter readers are just one example. As power companies began installing so-called smart readers outside homes, the number of meter readers in the U.S. plunged from 56,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2010, according to the Labor Department.
In 10 years? That number is expected to be zero.


Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/news/us/a...l-middle-class-jobs-4214077.php#ixzz2IoEu21eD​

 

Lindert's point is well taken, but I would also suggest that technology is changing faster than society's ability to change. It isn't just the individuals who find themselves in obsolete occupations that will feel the effects of technology, but society as a whole will be altered faster than society can adapt.

 

I'm reminded of Bertrand Russell's famous essay, In Praise of Idleness...

http://www.panarchy.org/russell/idleness.1932.html

The problem isn't that technology has eliminated jobs. It's that we haven't figured out how to distribute wealth and leisure equitably. We're locked into basing compensation on the number of hours you work, and the skill level required.

We constantly extoll the rise in labor productivity, as if it meant that people were working harder and harder. No, it means that technology enables the same amount of work to be done by fewer people, or the same number of people working half as hard.