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

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

#241

Post by gwright »

civilian wrote: post #207
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Regulation isn't causing this; automation is causing this. Neither regulation nor automation is causing this. Political-economic suppression of labor and productive enterprise in favor of rent-seeking is causing this. Let's imagine an alternate universe in which different political choices were made. For instance, in the alternate universe, Elon Musk started a techno-progressive political party and swept into power…

> Putting aside how [President] Elon Musk pays for it all, facepalm you can't compare the side effects of a massive government spending plan without looking at that! It'll all come out eventually. Either we borrow, and tax our future generations, or we tax more businesses now, which would also repress business activity and American competitiveness. There's a few items that could be solved with the market. Like: Remov…

One reason infrastructure projects are so expensive in the US is the Davis–Bacon Act. Yet another example of government intervention in markets with 100% predictable negative side effects.

Yet I'm sure there are many people in favor of "prevailing wages" while bemoaning the fact that we don't invest enough in infrastructure.

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

#242

Post by maxharris »

sokoloff wrote: post #238
maxharris wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing that abruptly would be seriously destabilizing for the entire world. You're absolutely right about this point, which is why benefits need to be removed over time. (People that have expected a Social Security check, and have paid into it their entire lives can't be expected to react just as they reach retirement. However, a 25-year-old can be told, "save for your own retirement, because this won't be there fo…

The problem with SS is that if the 25 year olds don't keep paying, there's no money to give to the 75 year olds who paid their whole working life. The money THEY contributed is long ago spent. It's much harder to tell the 25 year olds to keep paying FICA and save for their own retirement.

If 25-year-olds are in a booming economy (a result of decreasing the economic controls), the taxes won't hurt nearly as much. Also, the knowledge that those are getting phased out and are a one-time thing will help a great deal.

The end result is a society where entire generations of people stop viewing each other as burdens and resources (young and old), and instead as individuals, with their own lives and responsibility to lead them to be the best they can be. That is a just society.

(Hat tip to Don Watkins for the phrase "burdens and resources")

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

#243

Post by gwright »

pfranz wrote: post #235
maxharris wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why if there's demand for certain jobs, why there aren't more programs to train more of them. Medicare (i.e., the federal government, congress) sets de facto limits on the number of new residents that are trained each year. "The Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1999 (BBRA) increased the limit for rural teaching hospitals to equal 130% of each rural teaching hospital's 1996 resident count (BBRA Section 407)." http…

I do wish that was brought up. However, government provided healthcare or not (and Medicare or not), I think healthcare should be closely regulated (maybe by professional organizations if not the government). I can't find the citation, but I was reading that as doctor density increases, the number of procedures increase even though the outcomes are the same. It's also pretty obvious that as Baby Boomers start retirin…

Professional organizations generally advocate against lowering barriers to entry to their market. Delegating regulatory controls to a professional organization has to done very carefully.

My understanding is that in the US, this is one reason why there is a limited supply of new physicians. Of course the health care industry is quite complicated with many conflicting and interacting incentives and regulatory distortions to a true free market.

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

#244

Post by PhantomGremlin »

mac01021 wrote: post #159
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.

Many jobs have been automated away. Jobs for medical doctors, as far as I can tell, are not among those. Nor must you be a genius to be an MD. It is a huge investment, though, at least in the USA.

Jobs for medical doctors, as far as I can tell, are not among those.

It's happening, and it will only get worse. E.g. radiologists can easily be offshored: http://www.itnonline.com/article/remote-viewers-are-changing...

I remember hearing about this a number of years ago, when the offshore radiologists were in Australia. But there's nothing to keep those jobs from moving to cheaper radioligists in India. And when they get too expensive ... to the cheaper country of your choice.

But, don't worry, it will still cost thousands of dollars for that procedure. The overall price doesn't go down, only who gets what share.

It is a huge investment, though, at least in the USA.

Edit: to your point, those jobs haven't been "automated away". As of now, they still exist somewhere, just (soon enough) not in the USA.

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

#245

Post by dredmorbius »

eric_h wrote: post #109
jfoutz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... we don't have a real long track record and past performance isn't indicative of future gains. I agree with you, but we are kind of speeding into the unknown. Which like any adventure is risky. Hunter gatherers were real stable for a long long time. One person, or even a fairly large group of people couldn't cause much trouble. We're moving much faster, which again i think is cool, but it's much riskier. An ob…

> It's ok to take a little more time with power tools to avoid cutting off an arm. This is what I find interesting about the Amish. They are not, as I understand things, truly anti-technology, they are anti-adopting every new thing as soon as it's available. I wonder if they're the ones who are going to have the last laugh if/when this house of cards tumbles (although in all likelihood it'll probably be the Sentinele…

I like to think of them as the trailing edge of the late-adopter curve.

They consider the social and lifestyle impacts of technology. Which can be quite profound.

There are also differences among Amish settlements, with the Swartzentruber Amish, of Michigan, the most conservative: http://amishamerica.com/who-are-the-swartzentruber-amish/

(The site generally has a great deal of information on the Amish.)

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

#246

Post by Falkon1313 »

superuser2 wrote: post #204
phkahler wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> every time you make a job redundant you create other new jobs That is false on its face. If you buy a robot to replace a welder, you indirectly employ the people who design, build, and maintain that robot. True, and those are higher paid jobs than the welder. But at the end of the day, the person running the factory where said robot is used did an analysis and concluded that it was cheaper to buy the robot than to…

Yes, but now lower prices for welded goods mean some combination of people can afford to buy more stuff, and more capital is available for ventures that previously wouldn't have been funded.

That assumes that it would be profitable to fund those ventures. But as supply increases and prices are driven down by automation, it becomes less profitable to fund ventures in general. It becomes relatively more profitable to charge rent on things that can be monopolized. Therefore, fewer ventures get funded, leading to even fewer jobs. As the demand for rentable capital increases, its prices increase, and therefore the rents. Fewer jobs means that labor rates decrease, resulting in lower pay for those remaining.

With higher rents and lower pay rates for fewer jobs, people cannot afford the consumer goods even though they have become cheaper with the increased supply. That decrease in demand further drives down the prices such that even with maximum automation, that business is no longer profitable. The people maintaining the robots get laid off. What happens then?

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

#247

Post by maxharris »

joshcrews wrote: post #234
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)…

There now is a robot that can knock you out safely https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-machine-...

Do you know what I would give to help make this a reality? I would literally drop $10k, in cash, right now, to get faster treatment.

I have the money - I worked my ass off to earn it (while sick, no less!) What I (and the experts that would use this machine on me) don't have is the political freedom to use it as we see fit.

This thing could literally save my life. A team invented it, tested it, and it's just sitting there. I'm just sitting here.

Waiting.

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

#248

Post by dredmorbius »

adamnemecek wrote: post #174
gnaritas wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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.

> humans don't work that way This is fundamentally an issue with the educational system. Change the system the rest will follow. Saying that humans don't work this way is like saying that nothing heavier than air will ever fly. > incapable of learning enough to be more valuable than a machine I don't think that AI and human intelligence will ever completely converge. > Machines will put a floor on value and people wh…

I'm largely disagreeing with you here.

There is, I think, ultimately a problem with having to unlearn old skills which is difficult. If nothing else, you end up with a workforce in a particular area, say, if retrained, who bring in very widely divergent backgrounds on how to do something.

This might not be all bad if your goal is to mix and match methods and come up with something better. But that's rarely a firm's primary goal. Rather it's to have a uniform workforce, performing a uniform process, producing a uniform product.

As you climb up through the complexity of tools, tasks, products, and processes, this seems to increase. I suspect it hits the tech world rather hard (it may be a reason for the intense battles over editors, languages, frameworks, operating systems, revision control, etc., etc.).

That is: the problem isn't the educational system, it's us.

(There are other reasons to believe that education isn't a driver of economic growth, including the rather inconvenient fact that education seems to trail economic growth rather than lead it.)

I'm of several minds on AI, but a thought intruding increasingly on my awareness is that it's quite likely that programming will be among the first-affected employments. The training set is intrinsically amenable. Wether this proves an augmentation or a replacement remains to be seen.

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

#249

Post by ZenPsycho »

maxharris wrote: post #239
ZenPsycho wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disingenuously left out of your arguments here is the fact that a medical education costs a hell of a lot of money, and your economic measures would remove the ability to study medicine from a lot of people who might be willing to learn, but don't have massively rich parents. Deregulating university fees, getting rid of social security, and so fourth massively reduces the number of people who are able to study medici…

Disingenuously left out of your arguments here First, this is way out of line. I'm going to reply anyway, but please don't do this kind of thing in your next reply. Second, instead of treating it like a black box that has a fixed cost that we have to accept, take a medical education apart the way Musk would do when figuring the ultimate cost of one his cars or rockets: Putting people in a room, books in their hands,…

"Finally, what is the point here? An more economically "equal" society, or a society where people like me don't die waiting in line for care? I stridently advocate for the latter."

this is a false dichotomy. To get more doctors you need more people who can afford the education. Not less. I'd say check your privilege- Any of those options you listed for getting an education still take a vastly greater amount of resources, than you are giving credit for. You can't study out of a book if you don't have a house to live in.

as for whether my comment was out of line, I'd say if your argument is to take away government subsidy for infrastructure, force people to pay for their own education, leaving out the basic costs of the education is a critical part of the argument you left out, and for a transparently self serving purpose.

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

#250

Post by maxharris »

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…

All that aside, I do wish you good health and hope that you can get the treatment you need soon.

Thank you (and I mean that quite sincerely).

Practically speaking, though, how will I get treatment? Intervention from the government is the only reason I'm waiting for care right now. (See my comments in other posts on this thread - I establish this in great detail if you consider my posts together.)

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