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Question A was about consumers and Question B was about "on average, citizens of the U.S." Too bad this article, as it says right in the headline, is about wor

Question A was about consumers and Question B was about "on average, citizens of the U.S." Too bad this article, as it says right in the headline, is about workers and not consumers or the average U.S. citizen. Nice try, though.

noobermin 11y ago
Therein lies the conundrum that we face: while the net is good for society, there will always be people who get burnt while rest of society benefits. You saw this at the advent of the automobile which left the horse and buggy industry in the dust and it is what we see now with "green" tech and fracking leaving oil and coal industries in the dust, not to mention the current hubbub of Uber/Airbnb vs Taxis/Hotels... Given a large enough N, there is bound to be a sizable subset[0] who will get hurt when society advances. It's hard to argue about this though with people that is better because it comes off as economist being elitist and unconnected with the person you're in fact hurting. The best corollary I can imagine for me is if there was an influx of cheap PhD labor for doing science and putting me out of a job or forcing me to take >20K per year. But would it be better for science? Of course! But it would suck for me... And I'm not sure of anything that could solve this problem. This is just the reality of the economics effects of any advancement. [0] Small subset normalized to the total N, but a large subset compared to say, the number of fingers on one's hands.
- look_lookatme 11y ago
  Here's your [0]. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y
  - noobermin 11y ago
    I think this is a more representative graph[0]. I'm assuming that what you linked includes non-factory workers. [0] is specifically "Production and Nonsupervisory Employees" in Manufacturing. This is in no way weighted by the population at the time or the labor force at that time, but let's look at it this way. 8.5M around 2014 was about 5% of the total labor force in that year the US. I suppose 1 in 20 is a number of people if you're just looking at that one graph. Here[1] is an informative graph (it'd be better if it were normalized to the total). Manufacturing is a major piece still, but the total is growing as manufacturing is somewhat changing little (overall absolute increase by [0] but might looks flat compared to growth in other fields, shrinking as a fraction of the total private industry workforce per [1]) with what looks like increases in other fields, specifically in the "education and health services" part on the bottom of the graph. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 [1] be it noted that this graphic claims to come from the same source as [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/media/File:EmploymentUSbranchFredgr.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/...
    - look_lookatme 11y ago
      We have more employed people than ever, yet we have regressed in terms of %of population between ages 25-54 participating in the workforce. We have lost 4,000,000 manufacturing jobs in 15 years, despite wages languishing (in real dollars) and productivity increasing. We have gained jobs in health -- this is to be expected with the aging boomer population. We have gained jobs in transportation/logistics -- this is to be expected given all the stuff made in Chinese factories we buy from Amazon. Very soon these jobs will be automated, trucks will drive themselves and warehouses will stock themselves. Worshippers at the altar of Free Market Economics (A Real Science) can wave around normalized, adjusted graphs all they want but if society doesn't figure out what to do with the people we graduate from high schools and colleges or layoff to pad quarterly earnings, we are going to have some serious issues on our hands in the next decade -- if not sooner.
      - DrScump 11y ago
        <We have more employed people than ever> Only because we have more people, period, than ever. We are actually closer to our lowest-ever percentage employed than our highest ever[0] since 1950. And our workforce participation rate (i.e. where you don't ignore longstanding unemployed to dishonestly suppress reported unemployment stats) is still well below even the worst of Bush 43's tenure[1]. [0] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-perso... [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa...

noobermin 11y ago

Therein lies the conundrum that we face: while the net is good for society, there will always be people who get burnt while rest of society benefits. You saw this at the advent of the automobile which left the horse and buggy industry in the dust and it is what we see now with "green" tech and fracking leaving oil and coal industries in the dust, not to mention the current hubbub of Uber/Airbnb vs Taxis/Hotels... Given a large enough N, there is bound to be a sizable subset[0] who will get hurt when society advances. It's hard to argue about this though with people that is better because it comes off as economist being elitist and unconnected with the person you're in fact hurting. The best corollary I can imagine for me is if there was an influx of cheap PhD labor for doing science and putting me out of a job or forcing me to take >20K per year. But would it be better for science? Of course! But it would suck for me... And I'm not sure of anything that could solve this problem. This is just the reality of the economics effects of any advancement. [0] Small subset normalized to the total N, but a large subset compared to say, the number of fingers on one's hands.

look_lookatme 11y ago
Here's your [0]. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3Q3Y
- noobermin 11y ago
  I think this is a more representative graph[0]. I'm assuming that what you linked includes non-factory workers. [0] is specifically "Production and Nonsupervisory Employees" in Manufacturing. This is in no way weighted by the population at the time or the labor force at that time, but let's look at it this way. 8.5M around 2014 was about 5% of the total labor force in that year the US. I suppose 1 in 20 is a number of people if you're just looking at that one graph. Here[1] is an informative graph (it'd be better if it were normalized to the total). Manufacturing is a major piece still, but the total is growing as manufacturing is somewhat changing little (overall absolute increase by [0] but might looks flat compared to growth in other fields, shrinking as a fraction of the total private industry workforce per [1]) with what looks like increases in other fields, specifically in the "education and health services" part on the bottom of the graph. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES3000000006 [1] be it noted that this graphic claims to come from the same source as [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/media/File:EmploymentUSbranchFredgr.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#/...
  - look_lookatme 11y ago
    We have more employed people than ever, yet we have regressed in terms of %of population between ages 25-54 participating in the workforce. We have lost 4,000,000 manufacturing jobs in 15 years, despite wages languishing (in real dollars) and productivity increasing. We have gained jobs in health -- this is to be expected with the aging boomer population. We have gained jobs in transportation/logistics -- this is to be expected given all the stuff made in Chinese factories we buy from Amazon. Very soon these jobs will be automated, trucks will drive themselves and warehouses will stock themselves. Worshippers at the altar of Free Market Economics (A Real Science) can wave around normalized, adjusted graphs all they want but if society doesn't figure out what to do with the people we graduate from high schools and colleges or layoff to pad quarterly earnings, we are going to have some serious issues on our hands in the next decade -- if not sooner.
    - DrScump 11y ago
      <We have more employed people than ever> Only because we have more people, period, than ever. We are actually closer to our lowest-ever percentage employed than our highest ever[0] since 1950. And our workforce participation rate (i.e. where you don't ignore longstanding unemployed to dishonestly suppress reported unemployment stats) is still well below even the worst of Bush 43's tenure[1]. [0] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-perso... [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa...