Guaranteed Minimum What?

This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies.

I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out over the last few decades. Now the middle tier company is going to get killed cause they can't change fast enough.

Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.

Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful.

On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.

Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc. While sometimes the person doing the job can be interesting, or friendly, even if the person is amazing, generally these jobs are pretty repetitive, and could be done easier, faster, and cheaper with automation. Not only for the employer, but the customer. Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job (I can't blame them really, you get what you pay for). The only thing keeping employees around was that automation was more expensive (and more unreliable). Now it's the flip - labor is much more expensive and unreliable than automation. Now people in those jobs have to prove where they add value, if it's only to watch over the machines.

A simple example of the challenges this sort of reasoning present; assume you're a being that perceives time very slowly, perhaps your lifetime is a mere 100 milliseconds rather than 100 years. But your perception is fairly good and you can observe and measure things several yards away in all direction. And you're living in seawater near the beach. Through out your entire life, and for several generations, the amount of seawater above your head has been growing and growing. You believe that eventually there will be sea water "as far as you can observe" above your head.

As an outside observer with a different time scale and perception, we "see" that this being is part of an ocean wave that once the mass of water above the center of gravity moves ahead of it because of water below being slowed by the the beach, the wave will 'crash' and fall into foam.

Now if we could explain this to the creature in the wave, or if the creatures there had some sort of stored history, they might know that in the past there have been waves and the waves have crashed and that the seawater never extended so far into the sky. And there might be debates because some waves reached a height that was higher than any other wave in recorded history and so maybe this time, this time the wave would grow forever.

Except from our time spanning view we realize that all of those fears and understandings arise from the the short lifetimes of the creatures versus the longer time of a wave cycle, and so few creatures will ever encounter another who has experienced "the crash".

These unemployment doomsday articles suffer from a similar myopia. Yes, technology does advance, and yes, it changes how people are employed and what it takes to be employed. Technology shifts however have not resulted in a 'net loss' of employment opportunities when looked at in the full view, ever.

So rather than focus on the 'loss of jobs' let us focus on "transition" support. I point out to people all of the time that we have tremendous gaps between supply and demand in what have historically been called "the trades."

The reality of that was brought home to me when I started a bathroom remodeling project in Las Vegas. For that project I need a plumber, an electrician, and a mason. Three classic 'trades'. I cannot find three people that I can schedule who are licensed contractors, any sooner than 6 months from now. They are all booked up, and as a result leaving money on the table from unfilled demand.

What is more, Las Vegas has very affordable housing. It was hit hard by the mortgage crisis and house prices have still not recovered in large parts of the city. So it isn't like a plumber can't afford to live in the city.

I really think we need to stop stressing out that the number of retail cashier jobs are going away and start figuring out why people aren't able to train for the jobs that are available and going unfilled.