What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around? • Hacker News Board

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#161

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #105

david927 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying there's plenty of room for musicians if you're Mozart. The amount of investment required to develop yourself for a target field has grown astronomically, but that's been coupled with a push down in wages. I know lawyers who spent a fortune for their degree, passed the Bar, and make barely more than minimum wage. Regulation isn't causing this; automation is causing this.

There is no robot that can knock me out (safely so that I wake up when everything is done), snake a thing down my windpipe, poke through the exact right spot in my bronchial tube and into my mediastinum (a name for the bag that my heart), and retrieve a chunk of whatever surrounds my aorta. But here I wait, while people capable of doing this (or at least capable of learning how to do it - and that's a lot of people)…

[deleted]

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#162

Post by vkou » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

fineIllregister wrote: post #154

yummyfajitas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not the money to pay for these jobs....But in most countries they receive social welfare while out of work. See the contradiction here? We could put these people to work engaging in labor that is valuable, but not as valuable as the cost of their welfare. I.e. pay them $7.25/hour to do $5/hour worth of labor (net cost to society = $2.25/hour). Yet we don't. Instead we pay them to play video games (net cost to soc…

What "welfare" are you talking about? I don't know of any social assistance in my state that goes to individuals who can work but aren't working. Medicare would be close, but in practice that's very difficult to qualify for, and covering health care is a far cry from "pay[ing] them to play video games."

If they aren't supported by the state, they are supported by their families.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#163

Post by Animats » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

Both the article and the paper aren't very good; they're trying to infer too much from macroeconomic data. They implicitly assume that labor is more fungible than it is.

Reality is that we just don't need that many people to make all the stuff. US manufacturing output is at an all-time high (output has recovered completely from the 2008 recession). US manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Imports are 26% of US consumer good consumption.

What are people doing? Here's US employment by sector.[1] It's worth spending some time with this table. Incidentally, "information services" dropped from 2.2% in 2010 to 1.8% in 2014, and is still dropping. No, going into computing isn't a good move. The only area with big growth is "health and social assistance", which reflects an aging population. (Mining was up from 2010-2014, but that reflects the oil and gas boom. That's already collapsed.)

That's the reality.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#164

Post by adamnemecek » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #160

adamnemecek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and your argument is a lot more concise. Have you read anything on the topic?

No. I've worked some people to try and come up with product ideas to fit this type of future, but it's at least 5-10 years off, and dependent on factors like the current title-based education system being replaced by something more skills-based.

Who are the people working on this?

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#165

Post by ryanmarsh » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

White collar jobs get a little harder to find and people start freaking out. Meanwhile my clients import skilled workers by the plane load.

We're a long way from autonomous strawberry pickers and housekeepers.

I don't doubt that eventually much of the economy will have no need of human labor but we're quite a ways from that.

I mean I get it. I'm replacing some good white collar jobs with software right now. But "jobs"? Nah. There's lots of those.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#166

Post by kamaal » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

david927 wrote: post #132

maxharris wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no robot that can knock me out (safely so that I wake up when everything is done), snake a thing down my windpipe, poke through the exact right spot in my bronchial tube and into my mediastinum (a name for the bag that my heart), and retrieve a chunk of whatever surrounds my aorta. But here I wait, while people capable of doing this (or at least capable of learning how to do it - and that's a lot of people)…

My view is that the times when Capitalism has been a long leash it ends up being wildly destructive. I love fire for cooking, forest fires not so much. I certainly don't think that the reason we don't have more jobs in America is that businesses are so hard pressed with labor laws. I just don't see that. What I have seen, over and over again, are that employers are realizing that they're now in the cat seat and becom…

Capitalism creates a winner-take-all market as time progresses. As it becomes harder to enter the market for new comers(See Tesla, also try starting a company to build airplanes) you will see powerful monopolies emerging. That doesn't end well on the longer run.

Also Free Market economy seems to play along with popular choice, so pokemon go and cure for baldness is likely to get prioritized above space budget.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#167

Post by st3v3r » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

maxharris wrote: post #105

david927 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying there's plenty of room for musicians if you're Mozart. The amount of investment required to develop yourself for a target field has grown astronomically, but that's been coupled with a push down in wages. I know lawyers who spent a fortune for their degree, passed the Bar, and make barely more than minimum wage. Regulation isn't causing this; automation is causing this.

There is no robot that can knock me out (safely so that I wake up when everything is done), snake a thing down my windpipe, poke through the exact right spot in my bronchial tube and into my mediastinum (a name for the bag that my heart), and retrieve a chunk of whatever surrounds my aorta. But here I wait, while people capable of doing this (or at least capable of learning how to do it - and that's a lot of people)…

How much does doing that pay? How much does being a finance guy on Wall Street pay (or at least have the allure of paying)? How much does being part of a trendy startup in SV pay (or at least have the allure of paying)?

Doing the job you want done takes a lot of hard work and study. Being in Finance or startup world can reward better, with less effort.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#168

Post by jdminhbg » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #151

jdminhbg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To see why that is true, imagine we lived in a sports-based economy. Sports are zero-sum, the real-world economy is not.

Are sports economics zero-sum? Both teams get paid for playing. If one team loses, they don't give money to the other team.

Depending on the sport, there is frequently prize money at stake, so while you're not actively giving money to the winner, you're all competing for a fixed prize.

But beyond that, the more salient point is that unlike in sports, in the real world, for me to win does not necessarily mean that you have to lose. Every time I make a shot in basketball, I've increased the "value" of my team and also decreased the value of my opponent.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#169

Post by gnaritas » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #23

Not an economist but my thoughts on the topic are that society can make changes to accommodate this. This isn't a catastrophe, we just need to prepare. I think this needs to/will happen: * labour will change from people having only one main skill to having multiple skills ("jack of all trades, master of none" will become "jack of all trades, master of fewer") * this will be made possible by the fact that technology m…

> * it will become standard for people to keep learning

That won't happen, humans don't work that way and it ignores the reality that many people will simply be incapable of learning enough to be more valuable than a machine. Machines will put a floor on value and people who can't exceed that floor (which will be most of society at some future point) won't have jobs they can do.

Re: What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

#170

Post by jwatte » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 10:36 PM UTC

It's impossible that there is simply nothing in the world that needs doing. Exactly how to make sure that things that need doing, are done, is what economics and politics are about, but any "job shortage" is because of inefficiencies along some spectrum, not actually ever a natural state.