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Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#131

Post by barry-cotter »

peisistratos wrote: post #69
president wrote: post #29

I honestly don't think there is a solution here. There will always be a large percentage of the population that don't have the motivation or capacity to learn the skills required to get "good jobs". Unless top earners are willing to sacrifice (tax reform, charity, etc), which is extremely unlikely given human nature, others will need to scrape by with low paying menial jobs. That's how it's always been.

The top earners are the heirs who collect dividends, interest and rent - the rentiers in documentaries like Born Rich. They are unwilling to work, as the real hourly wage has sank in the US since the early 1970s, they have reaped all the benefit. Far below them is a work force which is split in different skill levels. Only a handful of top school STEM majors graduate every year, then there are the rest. Since in your…

This bears no relation to reality. The overwhelming majority of the rich in Western countries are members of the executive or professional class or entrepreneurs who work for their money.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise...

> The rich different from you and me. … today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind. … Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25442

> > Have the idle rich replaced the working rich at the top of the U.S. income distribution? Using tax data linking 11 million firms to their owners, this paper finds that entrepreneurs who actively manage their firms are key for top income inequality. Most top income is non-wage income, a primary source of which is private business profit. These profits accrue to working-age owners of closely-held, mid-market firms in skill-intensive industries. Private business profit falls by three-quarters after owner retirement or premature death. Classifying three-quarters of private business profit as human capital income, we find that most top earners are working rich: they derive most of their income from human capital, not physical or financial capital. The human capital income of private business owners exceeds top wage income and top public equity income. Growth in private business profit is explained by both rising productivity and a rising share of value added accruing to owners.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#132

Post by mpweiher »

darawk wrote: post #31
mpweiher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is purely a systemic problem That's a bold claim. Evidence?

China.

Wow.

That's another bold claim as support for the the thesis that STEM is "natural" for kids.

Remember: natural

First, China in general is not a free society, the state enforces what it wants its citizens to do, sometimes quite brutally.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

"Xi Jinping wields a level of social control not seen since Mao, posing a direct threat to democratic values worldwide"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/23/chines...

So using China as an example of "naturalness" of human behaviour seems at the very least wilfully ignorant.

So let's look at children and schools.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150611-chinas-parent-army

"For the past year, 18-year-old Zhang Hao has been studying for 12 hours a day. He spends a minimum of nine hours in class taking practice papers, then continues to study at home. His parents worry that he sometimes crams up to 17 hours work in to a single day. "

https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/18/china-sounds-the-...

"LIN MING, a ten-year-old who has two years left at his primary school in Beijing, does not remember the last time he returned home before 6pm on a weekday during term. As soon as school is out, his mother, Yang Mei, shuttles him around the city, dropping him off at tutoring agencies where he studies advanced maths and English grammar. Ms Yang accepts that she is “maybe putting a bit too much stress” on her son. But she has no choice. “Around 90% of my son’s classmates attend after-school lessons. It’s a competition I can’t lose.” "

"Chinese officials worry that pupils’ achievements may exact too heavy a mental and physical price"

"As long as admission to senior-high schools is based on results from the gruelling zhongkao exam, parents are likely to exploit every loophole to give their children an edge."

So, if you think that pushing kids beyond their limits with something like 16h work days in ways that negatively impacts their mental and physical health is a demonstration of "naturalness", then I just have to concede the point that this is all natural.

But then you have to also claim that schoolchildren killing themselves is also somehow "natural"

https://www.theglobalist.com/will-china-be-able-to-curb-adol...

"In the last few years, several studies have shown that adolescents and young people in China, Japan and other Asian countries have a large number of psychological problems that may lead them to commit to suicide."

"There are several causes for adolescent suicides. In many cases, suicides relate to fear of performing badly in exams."

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#133

Post by mpweiher »

g9yuayon wrote: post #109
darawk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, all east asian countries, you're right. China is interesting especially to me though because, just anecdotally, there seem to be an unusually high number of Chinese female STEM graduates. Not sure what's going on there, but they seem to have solved the gender gap in STEM somehow. Could just be i've encountered an unusual sample too, though.

Easy, just tell everyone that anyone can study STEM as long as they work hard. Do you know Noether, Marie Curie, Grace Hopper, Chien-Shiung Wu, and many more female scientists and engineers are household names? They are featured in mass media, in text books, and in our bedtime stories. Gender bias in STEM? That's a god damn first-world problem.

Yep. Reduce wealth and increase economic pressure enough so that survival is dependent on a finding a good job, and suddenly, magically, "bias" disappears.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321

"Most of the girls we talked to from other countries had a slightly playful approach to Stem, whereas in Russia, even the very youngest were extremely focused on the fact that their future employment opportunities were more likely to be rooted in Stem subjects."

Then, when wealth (and all other measures of gender equality) dramatically increase and people become free to choose to do whatever they want, largely free from economic survival pressure, suddenly, magically and inexplicably, "bias" pops up again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#134

Post by mpweiher »

echevil wrote: post #49
darawk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China.

Probably most east Asian countries? Likely India as well.

Let's talk about South Korea:

"South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children ages 10-19 and extremely high elderly (60+) suicide rates. For children, most suicides are caused by stress relating to education. Korean children have a school year of 11 months and often spend over 16 hours a day at school and at afterschool programs called hagwons."

https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/10/31/the-scourge-of-south-kor...

India: India has an average income of $2134 per person. Not per month, per year. It has 872 million people living below the poverty line. One quarter of the population lives on less than 60¢ per day.

So I'd respectfully suggest that there might be good, ahem, motivation to try your best to get good at STEM even if you don't find it particularly natural.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#135

Post by Shivetya »

jedberg wrote: post #2

There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the products that the wealthy are creating. Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redi…

there is another solution, get government off the backs of the poor and middle class. from costs of simple government services to the the fees associated with occupational licensing it is not cheap being poor and trying to work.

then throw in the ever fun new ways cities try to make money by trumping up trivial issues like declaring someone's home needs repair, a stack of firewood done "wrong", or a crack in a drive way, and fining them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. all fines against people who cannot afford to dispute the charge and may not even be able to pay it. Traffic fines starting over two hundred dollars for even the most minor infraction.

or school systems where the number of non teaching positions are inflated all the while at the same time politicians are raising taxes to under the guise of improving education but its merely to pay for non teaching jobs.

The idea that the "wealthy" are not paying sufficient taxes ignores the reality of how much taxes everyone is already paying. People tend to just focus in on the "income tax" and ignore all the fees and embedded taxes in every day living. the US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world and when you look at who pays the bulk of the taxes its not even close. As a percentage the "wealthy" already pay many times percentage wise than other classes. The US governments own figures on taxes at federal, city, and state, levels shows this- it is not even disputable.

Yet, when Congress recently passed a law to limit state and city deductions from the Federal taxes to TEN THOUSAND dollars who complained? The same supposed champions of the poor and why ? because their OWN wealthy people were having to pay more taxes.

Simple truth, you could confiscate every billionaires fortune and not pay for our government or the proposals in the offing. however where you will find that wealth is the investments backing pensions and 401ks. you think that once they "nip" the wealthy they will stop? After all its already been stated by many in one party about the unfairness of 401K programs you can damn well bet they will get their wish.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#136

Post by Zigurd »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #7
jedberg wrote: post #2

There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the products that the wealthy are creating. Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redi…

What if the jobs require higher IQs than 85? Suddenly we have 15% of the population entirely unemployable? Wealth redistribution is a choice of ethics. What if we start to create better technologies that augment the economic usefulness of the lowest IQ people?

There are some indications that the bottom 15% of IQs will not become the STEM man's burden. Instead, AI will hit the fat underbelly of knowledge work, first, where people get paid more than the bottom 15%, to do the things that can be automated without interacting with real-world objects.

The problem won't be robot shopping cart fetchers or grocery baggers, but that knowledge work, which is the last refuge of human usefulness in the workforce will get hollowed out from the lower-middle. There is no "next thing" after knowledge work.

Optimistic characterizations like "post scarcity" don't seem like they will be applicable before mass disemployment hits. Instead of having to implement redistributive policies for the 15% outside the knowledge economy, we will be faced with a bigger, more educated cohort that can't be retrained to other knowledge work faster than AI will automate those categories.

Shorter work-weeks will help. Perhaps for long enough to figure out a solution. Better start soon, though.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#137

Post by 52-6F-62 »

baroffoos wrote: post #118
gumby wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it is our duty to contribute to that society. There are plenty of things people do that are valuable to society yet are not captured in the GDP, and are thus not highly valued by contemporary society. They range from visiting and looking after elder parents, playing with your children, writing poetry etc. Then there are undervalued activitie…

I knew a guy who worked 6 months a year doing contract work and then spent the other 6 months on hobbies and personal projects. I remember asking him if he gets bored during those 6 months not working and he said to me "I don't base my life enjoyment off of making someone else money". That advice has really stuck to me and its really cool to see the electronics projects he builds in those 6 months.

That sounds pretty pleasurable.

IIRC that second six months is the true classical definition of a life of leisure.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#138

Post by croh »

baroffoos wrote: post #118
gumby wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it is our duty to contribute to that society. There are plenty of things people do that are valuable to society yet are not captured in the GDP, and are thus not highly valued by contemporary society. They range from visiting and looking after elder parents, playing with your children, writing poetry etc. Then there are undervalued activitie…

I knew a guy who worked 6 months a year doing contract work and then spent the other 6 months on hobbies and personal projects. I remember asking him if he gets bored during those 6 months not working and he said to me "I don't base my life enjoyment off of making someone else money". That advice has really stuck to me and its really cool to see the electronics projects he builds in those 6 months.

any link to projects ?

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#139

Post by mooreds »

drewg123 wrote: post #64

We're heading toward a future where more and more is automated and there is less and less room for non-creative work. Let's face it, not everybody can be creative in a way that is lucrative. Do we really want to doom more and more of the population to a subsistence income, while more and more of the gains due to automation go to a shrinking segment of the population? I tend to think that a generous UBI is really the…

Came here to post the link to manna. Thanks for doing that.

It's important to emphasize that while it seems like our economy is beyond human control, it is a human constructuon and the rules can be changed. They were changed in the late 1800s in the USA by populists and they can be changed again. Not easily, to be sure. But possible.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#140

Post by pnutjam »

barry-cotter wrote: post #130
TomMckenny wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher wages with shorter work hours would be a great step in the right direction. I believe Keynes even suggested it. But, a post-scarcity society, where labor is nearly valueless, still requires everyone have their needs met regardless of what they "own". But in that future as through all the past, most people are born owning little more than their labor. So a post-scarcity society does not just require the technol…

> Higher wages with shorter work hours would be a great step in the right direction. I believe Keynes even suggested it. No he didn’t. He suggested we’d have chosen to work fewer hours and have more leisure because we could afford both greater consumption and greater leisure than were possible when he wrote. Higher wages than now, with shorter work hours than now is possible only with growth in economic productivity…

The parent's point was we have made those strides in productivity, but the wages were denied us.
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