11–20 of 270 posts
Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Maybe this time they'll be right. I don't know; I'm not economist nor do I possess a crystal ball. What I do know is that this whole situation is terribly discouraging for young people fresh out of school. My partner, for instance, recently graduated with a degree in civil engineering from a…
LoL Don't fill the potholes? Who the fuck fills them then!?
I'd suggest the modern version of the Depression era work programs and/or the 60s space race. Perhaps something launching a major technological leap in robotics (which ironically would exacerbate our job "problem").
Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Maybe this time they'll be right. I don't know; I'm not economist nor do I possess a crystal ball. What I do know is that this whole situation is terribly discouraging for young people fresh out of school. My partner, for instance, recently graduated with a degree in civil engineering from a…
how wide a search area is the job search? is relocation an option?
While this is not necessarily untrue, the prediction has been made a few times before, most notably during the early-20th-century wave of automation. Even the rather intelligent Bertrand Russell wrote a book in 1923, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization", which spent a good deal of time worrying about that problem (though some of the other stuff he worried about did come closer to being true, like the prevalence…
I'm in the middle here. I don't think this piece holds much weight because he's connecting two unrelated phenomenon (a downturn caused by overuse of credit and automation). Note the retailers he cites (Circuit City, Sharper Image, KB Toys) were generally killed off by other local retailers (most notably Walmart but also Best Buy, Toys R Us, etc...) That said I do believe automation will begin to eat away at jobs when…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how wide a search area is the job search? is relocation an option?
Thanks for asking. He's been searching in the Bay Area and in the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex primarily. Relocation is certainly an option; in fact, we would both love to live in the Bay Area, and it's a good chance that I could find rewarding work there. We're willing to spend time living apart if that's what it takes, but obviously that's not our first choice.
Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Maybe this time they'll be right. I don't know; I'm not economist nor do I possess a crystal ball. What I do know is that this whole situation is terribly discouraging for young people fresh out of school. My partner, for instance, recently graduated with a degree in civil engineering from a…
Plenty of others have predicted the rise of unemployment in proportion to increased automation, and they've been wrong before. Have they? In the long term, definitely, but in the short term, a sharp increase in automation is sure to have an effect on the amount of human labor required. Isn't a normal cycle that technology begins to replace workers but then those workers retrain and then get new types of jobs and reco…
The unspoken assumption is that these more interesting jobs are plentiful enough to support the displaced workers assuming that they're willing to train and transition into a new kind of job. Is this the case today? Are the "higher" jobs plentiful enough? The question is not rhetorical; I'm asking because I can't say. I work in software development and my perspective is limited.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for asking. He's been searching in the Bay Area and in the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex primarily. Relocation is certainly an option; in fact, we would both love to live in the Bay Area, and it's a good chance that I could find rewarding work there. We're willing to spend time living apart if that's what it takes, but obviously that's not our first choice.
In an economy like this, you might be in for a rough ride only having two preferred places that are already popular for job seekers. I do wish you and yours luck.
Marshall Brain's novel http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm is one recent exploration of similar ideas.
But personally I'm sceptical if this will actually happen in the near future. As long as we don't have "Strong-AI" there are many jobs only humans can do well and a lot of those jobs don't require extensive education (nanny, nursing home attendant, customer service etc.)
While this is not necessarily untrue, the prediction has been made a few times before, most notably during the early-20th-century wave of automation. Even the rather intelligent Bertrand Russell wrote a book in 1923, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization", which spent a good deal of time worrying about that problem (though some of the other stuff he worried about did come closer to being true, like the prevalence…
I'm in the middle here. I don't think this piece holds much weight because he's connecting two unrelated phenomenon (a downturn caused by overuse of credit and automation). Note the retailers he cites (Circuit City, Sharper Image, KB Toys) were generally killed off by other local retailers (most notably Walmart but also Best Buy, Toys R Us, etc...) That said I do believe automation will begin to eat away at jobs when…
Auto workers sixty years ago didn't turn into robotics engineers either. And, largely, they didn't have to. They moved to the niches the robots weren't yet appropriate for, until they retired.
It was subsequent generations that simply didn't have the same wrench-turning job the older generation started at. What I've observed, over my years in Detroit, is that as automation pushes into the process, complexity grows, and jobs to support that complexity push out to smaller employers. GM doesn't have a million wrench turners, but a thousand CAD/CAM shops now exist.
Many of those shops are producing parts that didn't exist before automation made the more-complex, more-specialized, more-numerous designs feasible. Before the demand for precisely-designed/machined components existed.
Are there net fewer jobs? Not that I've ever seen or read. [1]
Similarly with the journalism example in the article. Thousands of dead-tree newspaper jobs are definitely going away. But how many thousands of online news jobs were created? How many people make their living blogging? Is the overall industry of bringing written information to the masses contracting? That's another argument I'd need to see employment studies on to believe.
Lastly, current unemployment isn't structural. Despite appeals to 'what we all know', there is no data to suggest that it's caused by job types going away or job seekers having skills that no-one needs anymore. All the evidence suggests that employers simply don't need many workers right now. That is: current unemployment is just a symptom of the lack of demand.
If this time is truly going to be different, it will have to be due to factors not outlined in the article.
[1] Detroit's overall labor situation might appear a counter-argument, but that has more to do with the industry decentralizing -- away from Detroit and away from the Big Three.