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A disaster is looming for American men

washingtonpost.com

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#51
post #5

> "Job destruction caused by technology is not a futuristic concern. It is something we have been living with for two generations" If American thought leaders such as Larry Summers think that technology destroys jobs and that it's a relatively recent phenomenon, then America is truly screwed.

It's all just this century's Luddites

You should actually read up on the Luddites. Their main goal was better treatment of workers; smashing machines was just their preferred means of protest. The image of the backwards anti-tech fetishist was a propaganda smear by the industrialists at the time, which was so successful that people are still buying it now.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#52
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 70's, middle-class "comfortable" consisted of a 16-30,000 sqft house with a yard, two cars, and remarkably good job stability (pensions, etc). Today, it takes nearly 2x the median household income to get something resembling that kind of life. Granted, you're still considered middle class at that level of income...

> Today, it takes nearly 2x the median household income to get something resembling that kind of life. In some cities. In other cities, that's just not true. Example: in Atlanta, GA, the median income is right over $55k. According to Zillow, that will get you a house in the $227k range. There are tons of single-family houses with yards in that price range (or even half that) in the city. I ran similar math for Dallas…

If you buy a house in the $227k range on a $55k income (With NO insurance and NO property taxes, the monthly payment would be ~$1,736.53), you will have to live very carefully to get by comfortably (considering $55k after federal/georgia taxes would net about $41,013.75, your monthly takehome would be $3,7k leaving you Zillow and other home pushers are interested in selling houses, not in the consequences for the buyers thereafter.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#53
post #19

Disaster is already here. In the 1950's you could raise a family with 2.3 children on a 40 hour work week. Today, families are struggling to make ends meet with 60-70+ hour work weeks. Technology was supposed to have made things more efficient. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

Although this may be true for US and other Western nations, in 1950 billions of people outside the Western world live in dire poverty and many starved to death. Since then, over a billion people in India and China alone have been lifted out of poverty, life expectancies have been increased dramatically, several diseases have been eradicated and contained, food security have been expanded. Yes, some of it has come at the expense of populations in developed countries, but if you put a global lens on it, 2016 is a much better time than 1950s

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#54
Without any evidence whatsoever, Larry Summers posits that the four-decade long trend of an increasing share of young men not working implies "job destruction caused by technology".

Instead, I think this trend is far more likely to be caused by an increasing share of young women entering the workforce over the same timeframe.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#55
post #19

Disaster is already here. In the 1950's you could raise a family with 2.3 children on a 40 hour work week. Today, families are struggling to make ends meet with 60-70+ hour work weeks. Technology was supposed to have made things more efficient. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

The decline happened when the rich realised that expropriation was no longer a risk. The aftermath of the Great War (the rise of communism and the Great Depression) scared the owners of capital into giving a much larger share of production to labor (the split went from 50-50 to 70-30). By the late 1960s the risk of expropriation had gone and so capital owners started taking back their share until we are now back to 50-50 and heading lower.

The masses know that something is very wrong, but they don't know what to do and hence the thrashing around for alternatives. As long as the rich keep the door to upper middle class open to the cognitive elite they are safe.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#56
This article is built on sand. First off, Summers doesn't provide any evidence that his linear trend is a valid predictor. Coupled with his history of predictions, that should be a red flag to anyone reading this. If you're interested, you should read about his suggestion that California deregulate its energy market during the rolling blackouts caused by Enron's manipulation of the energy supply. Similarly, he supported the rapid privatization of former Soviet bloc countries in the 1990s without considering that former party members would consolidate resources and wealth among themselves. Lo and behold, Russia is now ruled by an oligarchy.

Second, not even the links he provides support his points. The one to the BLS shows the number of cashiers is expected to grow by 2%, not decline as he states.

Third, "to the extent that non-work is contagious, it is likely to grow exponentially rather than at a linear rate." No citation given. Nothing to substantiate this claim. Again, given Larry's history, I'd advise against taking him at his word. He also cites falling marriage rates as contributors, but only links to evidence of the rates falling, NOT to evidence of a causal effect of declining marriage rates on employment.

Finally, seeing as this [1] was posted on HN today, Larry seems to be living in a world where he doesn't read the news. Companies still need workers.

It's drivel like this written by people like Larry that erode my trust in the media.

[1]U.S. Companies Turn to German Vocational Training Model to Fill Jobs Gap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12584606

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll leave this here for those making the "technical unemployment" argument. After hundreds of years of virtually the same argument being made, I think the burden is on you to say why this time is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre...

It's not actually any different; "technical unemployment" has caused many problems that are clearly visible from a cursory examination of the historical record. The obvious place to start is the horse: the horse population in the US peaked at 26M in 1917 and had declined to 3M by 1960, almost 1/10th of its peak value [0]. When those horses were unemployed by the automobile, we did not retrain them in new lines of wor…

I'm sorry, but the horses example is really terrible.

Technological disruption is not new. It's been around forever. If your theory stands true, then how come that overall, the global economy is growing? Doesn't it mean that we've created more jobs that we've destroyed?

What about the other important element no one seems to care about in this conversation: the jobs created - very often - require a higher level of skills and specialization.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#58

"Job destruction caused by technology" kind of begs the question, especially when the US has an immigration policy that results in vast additions to the labor supply that compete with natives.

Shhhh! There is a massive labor shortage dont you know?

Are you suggesting that US is importing a vast army of truckers from Asia ?

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#59

> "Job destruction caused by technology is not a futuristic concern. It is something we have been living with for two generations" If American thought leaders such as Larry Summers think that technology destroys jobs and that it's a relatively recent phenomenon, then America is truly screwed.

I'll leave this here for those making the "technical unemployment" argument. After hundreds of years of virtually the same argument being made, I think the burden is on you to say why this time is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment#Pre...

Well, the chart at the top of the article suggests that this time, it really is different. Between 1970 and 2016 we really have seen technological unemployment that has yet to be compensated for.

As the Wiki page you linked to says, stopping unemployment depends on "compensation effects ensur[ing] there is never a long term negative impact on jobs". So, by default, technology will put people out of work, and there's no guarantee that some counterbalancing factor will always materialize. The amount of meaningful work that humans can engage in is certainly not infinite.

Of course, it's not a guarantee that technology will continue to improve either, at least not at a faster rate than the counterbalancing factor. As it happens, it's very hard to predict the future. But it's not unreasonable to try. And right now, it looks very much like tech will keep marching forward, and jobs outside of tech will not.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#60
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all just this century's Luddites

Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?

That's exactly the point. People fail when they look at what exists today. Technology opens opportunities people did not imagine before.
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