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A disaster is looming for American men

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#81

Post by candiodari »

daviddavis wrote: post #9
mohamedattahri wrote: post #2

> "Job destruction caused by technology is not a futuristic concern. It is something we have been living with for two generations" If American thought leaders such as Larry Summers think that technology destroys jobs and that it's a relatively recent phenomenon, then America is truly screwed.

I think you miss the point of the article. It's not that technology destroys jobs but that in the next century, technology could potentially destroy jobs at a faster rate than it adds new ones. That would be an unprecedented event in American history.

I think the point of the first graph in the article is that this is not true. Technology is destroying jobs faster than creating them for ~45 years now.

The thing people forget when comparing to past technological advances is that for the largest part of history unemployment was 90%+ at the best of times, ever since a few hundred years into the Roman Empire, if you count subsistence farming as unemployment (and since people didn't do that unless they had to, you should).

I think this is what's really happening. The economy is reverting to it's natural state. Of course for most of us that's not a good description of what's happening. Better would be to say "conditions are returning to what they were in the middle ages".

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#82

Post by sn9 »

jewel wrote: post #38
hrgeek wrote: post #19

Disaster is already here. In the 1950's you could raise a family with 2.3 children on a 40 hour work week. Today, families are struggling to make ends meet with 60-70+ hour work weeks. Technology was supposed to have made things more efficient. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

The average home size in the 1950s was just 953 square feet. Now it's 2500 square feet. You likely would have a single car. Your utility bill would be a lot lower (no internet, no cable, no air conditioning). You'd eat a lot of home-cooked meals, have a serious vegetable garden, would sew and mend your own clothes, etc. You wouldn't need to pay for your own clothes. I suspect it's quite possible to raise a family on…

This 2008 talk by Elizabeth Warren shows how much more complicated the situation is than the picture you paint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#83

Post by sn9 »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #61
nabla9 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) If you are climbing the S-curve, most of the journey looks like exponential growth. 2) It's less of unemployment argument than reduced value argument. Unemployment is result from the lower limit for the living wage. People in India can find work for $1 per day even in automated society. If we are willing to reverse wage increases, remove laws regulating working conditions and remove all kinds of welfare, we can ke…

Totally agree. I think the real issue is that education is not catching up.

There's also the issue of paying people to work 60+ hours when you could just hire two or more people to work ~30 hours per week.

You'd have more rested people being more productive and have more people employed while giving an opportunity for improved work-life balance.

That and on-the-job training seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#84

Post by IncRnd »

falcolas wrote: post #35
blowski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partly because the definition of comfortable has increased faster than the average salary.

In the 70's, middle-class "comfortable" consisted of a 16-30,000 sqft house with a yard, two cars, and remarkably good job stability (pensions, etc). Today, it takes nearly 2x the median household income to get something resembling that kind of life. Granted, you're still considered middle class at that level of income...

Are you sure that you meant 16-30,000 sqft house in the 70's was middle-class "comfortable"?

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#85

Post by SEJeff »

jdhawk wrote: post #8
SEJeff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do suspect some industries, such as trucking, will get hit with a severe blow. Many truckers make decent money without many skills to transfer to alternative industries. It will be really rough for them even if it will make shipping safer and cheaper.

In the interim, I imagine that long haul truckers will be decimated - and short haul trucking (last 20 miles) will flourish. That should soften the blow through the transition period; where AI is good enough to drive straight out of a loading facility, down the highway, and straight into another facility, but not quite good enough to back down an ally in a congested city and get the paperwork stamped by the right per…

But the fallacy with that train of thought is that last mile truckers already exist, and are flourishing. More often than not long haul truckers drop loads at regional depots where last mile drivers pick them up and deliver things. You'll see increased competition between last mile drivers due to less trucking jobs overall with a constant demand for work. The one law which is hardest to break is that of supply and demand.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#86

Post by sp527 »

blowski wrote: post #28
sp527 wrote: post #10

I love this version of Larry Summers effecting an air of concern for the common man. It's almost like he never pushed for the deregulation of the derivatives market. Magic!

It's possible to observe a trend without believing it should be prevented from happening. His argument is that we need to deal with the consequences.

Sure. But pardon me for believing the only consequence he's liable to care about is a pitchfork mob assembled outside his gates.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#87

Post by bargl »

jsteinbeck wrote: post #49
bargl wrote: post #43

Here is what I don't understand about this argument. When the USA first started we lived in a very agricultural society. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-employment/ You would think by this logic that removing these jobs would have caused a MASSIVE unemployment issue in the USA. Which it did to some degree. I mean farmers were pushed off their land by bigger farmers, and other groups and they went out to find…

Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck https://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John-Steinbeck/dp/014303... “The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land --wants tractors, not families on the l…

This is part of why I was able to pull my question together the way I did. I read that book and I feel like it changed my perspective. It shows the damage that happened to individuals but it doesn't stick with how people responded after the depression.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#88

Post by knieveltech »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #60
knieveltech wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?

That's exactly the point. People fail when they look at what exists today. Technology opens opportunities people did not imagine before.

Demonstrably incorrect. Technology reduces labor force participation. Some portion of that void has been filled with McJobs in the last 15 years but that isn't sustainable.

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#89

Post by knieveltech »

tdb7893 wrote: post #73
knieveltech wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. I encourage you to point out a single industry that has cropped up in the last 50 years that generates large numbers of high paying jobs that aren't subject to being automated away. In 1985 people freaking out about computers and networking was luddite behavior. Where are the 3.5 million currently un-filled jobs waiting for the truck drivers who are about to lose their careers en masse?

I don't know. So far unemployment due to more efficient technical advances hasn't lead to overall structural unemployment so I'm not too worried in the long term. For example if we can ship goods much more efficiently it could lead to increase in production of goods, mining of raw materials, even the service industry as people have more disposable income and that's not even counting the jobs running and maintaining t…

Like it's been adjusting for the last 40 years? Do we need to review graphed data for labor force participation, real wages, and income inequality?

Re: A disaster is looming for American men

#90

Post by angmarsbane »

jewel wrote: post #38
hrgeek wrote: post #19

Disaster is already here. In the 1950's you could raise a family with 2.3 children on a 40 hour work week. Today, families are struggling to make ends meet with 60-70+ hour work weeks. Technology was supposed to have made things more efficient. It seems to have had the opposite effect.

The average home size in the 1950s was just 953 square feet. Now it's 2500 square feet. You likely would have a single car. Your utility bill would be a lot lower (no internet, no cable, no air conditioning). You'd eat a lot of home-cooked meals, have a serious vegetable garden, would sew and mend your own clothes, etc. You wouldn't need to pay for your own clothes. I suspect it's quite possible to raise a family on…

The reason people buy clothes is because clothes are significantly cheaper than they used to be. By the time you've purchased fabric, a pattern, and put in the labor the cost to make clothes far exceeds the cost to buy clothes.
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