Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.
Trimming the 10% at the top and the bottom on a yearly basis would provide a better outcome according to game theory.
The rise of the useless class
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: The rise of the useless class
#12I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things: 1. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. 2. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will…
>3. 'useless' class already exists. Employment and usefulness aren't necessarily the same. There are many millions of people in jobs that are 'useless' by some metrics (gas station attendant, supermarket cashiers, etc)
Actually, those jobs are still there. The current useless class are the people who are not capable of holding a modern job. And they're not receiving the support from the society that they should. When you take away someone's ability to support themselves because there are new, more efficient ways of using the shared resources, they're entitled to compensation [1]; but as a society we don't have a good way of enforcing that.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#13I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things: 1. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. 2. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will…
> Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased.
Did the number of cashier's per customer (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing rapidly during the very slow rollout of ATMs in the 1970s and 1980s, and the growth tapering off to very slow growth as ATMs take off in the 1990s and beyond (and remaining relatively flat even after the number of ATMs itself flattens in the mid-00s, probably as ATMs basically reached saturation but are still increasing functions, reducing the need for more tellers.)
[0] http://www.aei.org/publication/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-r...
Re: The rise of the useless class
#14Obviously, we should put them on the B Ark and send them to another planet.
This is pretty much how coasties view middle America, and vice versa.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#15I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things: 1. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. 2. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will…
> Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. Did the number of cashier's per customer (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing r…
Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#16I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom.
Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#17I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.
Don't dogs have very little agency. They don't even decide when they get sprayed/neutered.
Re: The rise of the useless class
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. Did the number of cashier's per customer (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing r…
Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.
Not the parent, but all other things remaining the same, population growth alone will drive the need for more cashiers. Since ATMs did not stop population growth, percentage based metrics help account for that.
So the different types of numbers can help drive home different points:
* in absolute numbers, ATMs didn't cause any job losses.
* in relative numbers, there are less job opportunities in this space. (e.g. there used to be a need for 1 cashier per N people, not there is only a slot for 1 cashier per 2N people).
The second type of thinking is what people are worried about - if we keep reducing percentage of people who are needed to do stuff, what the other folks do?
Re: The rise of the useless class
#19I want to be like my dog, but smarter and with more freedom. Every day I look at the lazy beast and wonder at the simplicity of its existence. Give me that life and an allowance for supplies to create, eat, socialize, and travel and let me loose.
Don't dogs have very little agency. They don't even decide when they get sprayed/neutered.
I said my dog :) She wasn't spayed, and in general has a pretty awesome life (for a dog).
Re: The rise of the useless class
#20I'm sure there is a good critique of that Frey and Osborne paper. Epistemologically, it sounds weird to assign 'probabilities of automation.' I don't have the time to read the paper in detail, but here are a few things: 1. Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. 2. Automation by itself is not sufficient. Will…
> Automation doesn't imply that jobs go away. Classic example, deposits and withdrawals were automated by ATMs. Yet, the number of cashiers increased. Did the number of cashier's per customer (or perhaps more significantly, as a share of the population -- not labor force) increase? If you look at even AEIs graph [0] that they use to try to sell idea that ATMs didn't kill cashiers' jobs, it shows cashiers increasing r…
I agree. The numbers should be scaled to # of customers and/or population. To some extent, this is addressed in the text. ATMs reduced the cost of operating a branch, so banks opened more branches. It's easy to see that number of tellers has kept up with population growth. US population was ~200e6 in 1970 and is now ~300e6. From that AEI chart, tellers have grown almost as fast.
(Made some edits to this comment after I realized I mistook the tellers graph for the ATMs.)