4 ms·

Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.

by weberc2 10y ago

sophacles 10y ago
Not the parent, but all other things remaining the same, population growth alone will drive the need for more cashiers. Since ATMs did not stop population growth, percentage based metrics help account for that. So the different types of numbers can help drive home different points: * in absolute numbers, ATMs didn't cause any job losses. * in relative numbers, there are less job opportunities in this space. (e.g. there used to be a need for 1 cashier per N people, not there is only a slot for 1 cashier per 2N people). The second type of thinking is what people are worried about - if we keep reducing percentage of people who are needed to do stuff, what the other folks do?
- Anderkent 10y ago
  There's also the factory vs car improvement difference. Factories did not make workers obsolete; cars did make horses obsolete. I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars. When those improvements are AI-driven automation, we can.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      AI is a huge area that will lead to many advances, each one with different impact.
- scott00 10y ago
  I think the second is actually much less worrisome than the first. With absolute job losses, people who lose their jobs need to retrain or accept (probably much) lower pay in different fields. Both of those are hard on people psychologically, and requires very expensive government intervention to mitigate. With the second you just alter the mix of what young people are trained in originally. It will be more expensive to train a young person in programming as opposed to truck driving, but it's not nearly as bad as training a 50 year old trucker in programming, fiscally or psychologically.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Because difficulty of finding a job is related to jobs per unit population (absolute numbers aren't important, and labor force is the wrong comparison because jobs becoming scarce causes people to exit the labor force, which includes only those working or actively looking for work, which people stop doing when actively looking for work doesn't pay off.)

Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.

by weberc2 10y ago

Why is your proposed metric better than the original? Honest question.

Not the parent, but all other things remaining the same, population growth alone will drive the need for more cashiers. Since ATMs did not stop population growth, percentage based metrics help account for that. So the different types of numbers can help drive home different points: * in absolute numbers, ATMs didn't cause any job losses. * in relative numbers, there are less job opportunities in this space. (e.g. there used to be a need for 1 cashier per N people, not there is only a slot for 1 cashier per 2N people). The second type of thinking is what people are worried about - if we keep reducing percentage of people who are needed to do stuff, what the other folks do?

Anderkent 10y ago
There's also the factory vs car improvement difference. Factories did not make workers obsolete; cars did make horses obsolete. I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I'm not sure we can ahead of time tell whether particular technological improvements are more like factories or cars. When those improvements are AI-driven automation, we can.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    AI is a huge area that will lead to many advances, each one with different impact.
scott00 10y ago
I think the second is actually much less worrisome than the first. With absolute job losses, people who lose their jobs need to retrain or accept (probably much) lower pay in different fields. Both of those are hard on people psychologically, and requires very expensive government intervention to mitigate. With the second you just alter the mix of what young people are trained in originally. It will be more expensive to train a young person in programming as opposed to truck driving, but it's not nearly as bad as training a 50 year old trucker in programming, fiscally or psychologically.

dragonwriter 10y ago

Because difficulty of finding a job is related to jobs per unit population (absolute numbers aren't important, and labor force is the wrong comparison because jobs becoming scarce causes people to exit the labor force, which includes only those working or actively looking for work, which people stop doing when actively looking for work doesn't pay off.)