Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

buzzmachine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 270 posts

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#241

Post by JeffL »

clarkevans wrote: post #196
JeffL wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't fall for the broken window fallacy. If the government wasn't taking money from people via taxation to pay for pothole fillers, then the taxpayers would have their money to spend on what they really want, which would also maintain the virtuous cycle. What you see is the pothole fillers spending money, but what you don't see is all the people who had their money taxed spending less. (If the taxpayers weren't spen…

Well, yes, instead of having potholes fixed, we'd be repairing the frame of our cars instead, at much much higher cost (and not doing other things). Further, pothole fillers end up employing lots of different kinds of people than a millionaire would. Finally, banks tend to loan to people with money... they don't typically loan to those who don't have money; it's not a zero-sum game.

I think you have a good point about filling potholes being cheaper than repairing cars, but that wasn't really the point I was making. (I'm not necessarily against filling potholes, just filling potholes excessively as make-work.) I was just pointing out that saying that government spending to hire pothole fillers for the express purpose of stimulating the economy is falling for the broken window fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#242

Post by achompas »

JeffL wrote: post #241
clarkevans wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, instead of having potholes fixed, we'd be repairing the frame of our cars instead, at much much higher cost (and not doing other things). Further, pothole fillers end up employing lots of different kinds of people than a millionaire would. Finally, banks tend to loan to people with money... they don't typically loan to those who don't have money; it's not a zero-sum game.

I think you have a good point about filling potholes being cheaper than repairing cars, but that wasn't really the point I was making. (I'm not necessarily against filling potholes, just filling potholes excessively as make-work.) I was just pointing out that saying that government spending to hire pothole fillers for the express purpose of stimulating the economy is falling for the broken window fallacy. http://en.w…

It's actually not--you're misunderstanding the broken window fallacy.

The classic example goes like this: "Let's break windows and hire people to replace them! That's a stimulus!" OP did not suggest digging holes into the street and filling them, however--fixing road wear-and-tear is an investment in public infrastructure.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#243

Post by achompas »

Unseelie wrote: post #231
achompas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those housewives and Indians will not be out of work for long. They are experiencing frictional unemployment right now; they'll retrain and take on a new role soon enough. You don't see the happy ending yet because this was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We love to trash finance types, but banks facilitate a lot of transactions--including home purchases and capital expenditures. When they hurt…

Frictional unemployment is a good way to handwave away the discovery, or not, of new jobs. You just wiped out that whole -type- of job, replaced it with (much lower employment) error checking. If you assume that for a portion of the people in the transcribing job, that the transcribing job was the best marginal fit, then some of them don't re-enter the job market. Others have to take a worse job. If they could have b…

If they could have been in a better job, they likely would have been.

There are a number of reasons this is not the case. I'd wager that a main reason is "re-training takes too much time." If a worker gets laid off, gets his Associate's, and starts something new, well, that's a net positive scenario. He or she produces output in a new field, while the transcription software replaces their old output. Net positive outcome.

You call it "handwaving," but the above happens to many people. This is not some accounting trick economists have developed.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#244

Post by [deleted] »

Troll_Whisperer wrote: post #238
[deleted] wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

My disagreement was with the claim that "the Flynn Effect is in full swing". The recent small downwards trend you acknowledge is incompatible with that claim. From everything I've read on the topic, the Flynn Effect ended in the US about 20 years ago. FWIW, I administer Raven's APM tests in the course of my work. Please speak for yourself about trolling wikipedia. I simply responded to the lazy GP's need for a citati…

[deleted]

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#245

Post by hugh3 »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

I'm a little late to this party, but:

Short answer: technology destroys jobs for dumb people and creates jobs for smart people. Until now this has been okay, because there have still been enough dumb jobs for all the dumb people. But as technology continues to progress, we (without genetic engineering or eugenics) run into the point where we have more dumb people than useful things for them to do. There are no jobs doing manual labour, and the dumber members of society aren't smart enough to perform the new jobs of maintaining the robots which do the manual labour for us. What, then, is the use of these people, and what do we do with them?

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#246

Post by ldar15 »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

Technology does not kill jobs: instead it allows the new jobs to be created elsewhere.

50,000 BC: your "job" (finding food) so dominated your life that your entire community followed it around.

20,000 BC: farming began. Your "job" is in the field by your house.

1700 AD: agricultural revolution. Technology allows smaller number to produce food. This allows industrial revolution. More specifically, this creates surplus food which means people can move. And so jobs can move. But it also means that areas that cannot produce food competitively no longer have to. Surplus food allows jobs to move to where the water wheels and resources are to commence industrialization.

1800 AD: The invention of the steam engine frees jobs from the need to be near flowing water: i.e. to move to where the resources are, or where the need to be. For much of the UK this was near ports as raw materials (e.g. cotton) came by ship. Bonus if the port is near a coal field. Again, areas that do not have cheap access to transport and coal, no longer have jobs.

1970 AD: Oil, giant ships, containerization and "free" trade allows jobs to move where wages are cheaper. Entire nations are uncompetitive at manufacturing.

2005 AD: Communications revolution. International calls are free. Service industry jobs move to where wages are cheaper. Entire nations are uncompetitive for service industry.

2008 AD: Computer Vision revolution: computers can now do picking and sorting that previously required a human.

201X AD: Robot Dexterity revolution: computers can now do fine motor skills, such as stitching shoes. Nike finally stops using child labor.

What is left for humans?

Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries.

Is this true? Or is it the case that as technology kills jobs, the unemployed find make work? That is, even if the unemployment level in a country has stayed the same, does it mean that the new jobs that the displaced workers perform are useful, or just a drain on society? Sure in the 19th century there were new non-make-work jobs. But today? Example: people working at Hallmark stores. Example: layer upon layer of middle and upper management. Perhaps it doesn't matter: if society can support make-work jobs, because of efficiencies elsewhere, then as long as people are employed it doesn't matter how. The problem would be if those make-work jobs could no longer be supported. This is what is happening: it is not in China's interest any more to support the vast inefficiencies of the US economic system. Make-work jobs are going away.

Finally, WWII: we destroyed most of the world economy to the point where the US was the world economy (ok, 75% of it). Does this have anything to do with the US having full employment (i.e. hiding technology's job kill) - and if so, now that the rest of the world has caught up, might we now see that the US economy cant support the make-work jobs?

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#247

Post by Detrus »

pg wrote: post #24

"Our new economy is shrinking because technology leads to efficiency over growth." Anyone who wants to make the claim that technology is net killing jobs has to be prepared to answer the question: why now? Technology has been killing (but not net killing) jobs for centuries. It's possible that technology could start to net kill jobs. But why now, when it hasn't in the past?

I wouldn't bet that technology should net kill jobs now. There's still a lot that must be done by humans to get to the next technological plateau. If jobs don't come back now it will be because of economic reasons. It's possible that our education and economic systems are weakened and can't keep up with the moderate tech advance we're experiencing.

But there should be a point in the foreseeable future at which technology will progress too quickly for mortals to keep up, despite the best education and economy. It wouldn't be the first paradigm shift of this magnitude. At one point in our past human population increased dramatically from farming, so even if people wanted to go back to hunting they could not. Then towns sprung up because farmers learned to produce a surplus. Then there wasn't enough land for everyone who wanted to farm.

Similarly today, we can have some people "farm" or do the essential work and produce such a large surplus of food, raw materials, technology, etc., that others will be freed from jobs, just as ancient towns were freed from farming.

Frankly we could make such changes with today's technology, but the economy and culture may not be ready. Instead we create contrived jobs.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#248

Post by wallflower »

patrickk wrote: post #75
dstein wrote: post #52

Fixing the economy will require more than entrepreneurs. I think it will ultimately require major socio-economic reform, possibly a conversion to Technocracy. Technology isn't just eliminating jobs, it's eliminating trade altogether. I can replace my watch with a smartphone app. That means the watchmaker, supply chain, retail store, and clocksmith are all out of business. And 3D printers could be the next mega-disrup…

"I can replace my watch with a smartphone app. That means the watchmaker, supply chain, retail store, and clocksmith are all out of business." I work as an iOS app developer, a role which didn't exist just three years ago. There are millions of developers out there on the various smartphone platforms, a market that Apple spawned after seeing what hackers could do by jailbreaking iDevices and loading apps on the iPhon…

> I work as an iOS app developer, a role which didn't exist just three years ago.

I respectably counter your statement with the idea that the job category existed, just not the platform specialization.

> I wouldn't have a job now if I weren't for the iPhone

You could have been able to find a job. What was your background before iOS development? (or was iOS development your first job)

I'm not trying to disprove the fact that your source of income is iOS specialization. If you are indeed making the majority of your revenue from your own apps, big congratulations! My point is even though Apple created a tremendous ecosystem for independent developers, it may be a less than net zero gain (e.g. jobs in Visual Basic programming were lost and either there are much less new jobs in the new ecosystem and/or previously gainfully employed developers are unable to develop iOS competency and proficiency (no mean feat).

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#249

Post by rayiner »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #216
ellyagg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, thought that the job losses were permanent. Until there was an article posted here the other week with quotes in news outlets from several different eras since the industrial revolution claiming the same thing. Plenty of reasonable sounding explanations are offered elsewhere in this thread for why this time is different, but then lots of reasonable sounding explanations were offered in the past. I'd say it's…

> I, too, thought that the job losses were permanent. Until there was an article posted here the other week with quotes in news outlets from several different eras since the industrial revolution claiming the same thing. // It's like peak oil isn't it. We keep getting "we're at [or passed] peak oil" but then a new oil field or new extraction method makes this seem less likely. Thing is that oil will run out. To me te…

Oil doesn't have to run out to drastically change the economy. The new methods of extraction are more expensive than the old, and the price of oil per barrel is a lot higher. One can easily imagine a system where the equilibrium unemployment with oil (ie: energy) at $X+10 per barrel is much higher than one with oil at $X per barrel.

Re: We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future

#250

Post by wallflower »

twakefield wrote: post #150
Eliezer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG, what probability would you assign to the propositions "This time things are different" (empirically: the jobs won't come back 5 years from now) vs. "This time things are not different" (empirically: the jobs will come back 5 years from now)? Warning, if your probabilities are extreme enough, someone might want to bet you on it. Presuming things are different, I see five obvious answers to the original question (a…

Regarding 3), I would guess that re-education always seems more difficult initially and the hurdles are reduced overtime. It must seem have seemed impossible that a farmer would be able to operate a machine in a factory, initially. Also, there are always new people entering the work force that are being educated under the new paradigm. These days it appears that a lot of effort and innovation is focused on creating s…

To be fair, assuming you are a developer or an entrepreneur, your basic job description could be boiled down to either constant self re-education (coding skills transferred to platforms that did not exist when you started) or adaptability.

I feel, being in this field that requires constant learning (there are some jobs that require only static ability, e.g. COBOL mainframe), that we have a jaded view of what it takes to learn something new. Going from accounting to HR is a big leap, completely different domain (not like picking up iOS after doing server-side Java)

Post reply on HN