5 ms·

>But this report presents a more nuanced view, stressing that the productivity benefits from automation should boost growth, meaning as many jobs are created as

>But this report presents a more nuanced view, stressing that the productivity benefits from automation should boost growth, meaning as many jobs are created as lost. Way to bury the lede, Rory.

true_tuna 7y ago
High technology jobs that you can only get if you went to college and got a technical degree. Which is disproportionately available to families who are already wealthy. Meaning the working class gets hollowed out, the rich and powerful get more rich and powerful and the unemployment and related addiction crisis get even worse. Yay! Brave new future.
- pault 7y ago
  Well, given that many of the readers of this forum, including myself, never went to college yet manage to pull down a healthy six figure salary, I think the actual situation is a bit more nuanced. Developers making a cushy living are firmly within what used to be considered the middle class, and if you take into account the stagnation of wage growth over the last 40 years we're all getting fucked. Also, many white collar office jobs are paying relatively poorly these days, and those are more likely to require a degree than a job in tech. A $50k salary in 2019 isn't what it used to be.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Devs making more than six figures anywhere but the bay area and perhaps NYC are upper middle class, probably in the top 10% of earners in their area, may even qualify as wealthy.
    - tjr225 7y ago
      This is changing rapidly as housing costs skyrocket in anywhere remotely urban.
    - pault 7y ago
      Technically yes, although as a specific example $100k/yr is the 80th percentile in Austin, TX[0]. My point was, if you define middle class as the middle of the income distribution, yes; if you define middle class more subjectively, like "being able to afford a house in the suburbs and pay for 2.5 college tuitions", that privilege is now out of reach for pretty much everyone except the 80th percentile and up. [0] https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Texas/Austin/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Texas/Austin/Household-In...
      - learc83 7y ago
        >Technically yes, although as a specific example $100k/yr is the 80th percentile in Austin, TX You're comparing household income to individual income. If you look at individual income, $100k/yr in Austin is much going to be much higher than 80th percentile.
      - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
        Nitpick: When people talk in terms of class, that traditionally encompassed far more than monetary wealth. It's also your education, your status, your social circle, your distance from aristocracy, etc.
      - ovi256 7y ago
        >you define middle class as the middle of the income distribution I don't think that's a good definition for the middle class. There's strong support for the fact that income distribution is an exponential distributions - just google "income distribution exponential". A exponential distribution is not symmetrical, so its mean or median is not a great centrality measure, it does agree with intuitions developed from observing, say, a normal distribution (like the weight or height of persons). The mean or median are very far from the mode (the most frequent individual) in an exponential, whereas they're almost identical in a normal.
    - pascalxus 7y ago
      Top 20% is the new middle class in CA and other housing regulated markets
- crdoconnor 7y ago
  shrug I meet a lot of young people without degrees doing jobs that didn't exist 10-15 years ago too (e.g. social media managers). And there are way more people with degrees these days. I think there are other less impersonal, more policy driven reasons than robots why the middle class is being hollowed out, but it sure feels like they'd rather we believed it was robots.
- markvdb 7y ago
  The US are the anomaly. In most of the developed world, higher education is actually quite affordable. Technical education is also the easiest to get funding for. It turns out financial limitations are the easy factor to solve. Other, non-financial limits to social mobility are so much more stubborn.
  - Nyandalized 7y ago
    In fact, in some northern countries like Finland, all education is completely free, and the government pays you allowance so you can focus on studies. The only requirement is to pass the entry exams, which anyone can take
ranci 7y ago
Why in gods name would anybody pursue any of this if it resulted in the same amount of jobs, except the new jobs cost a company more money than the old ones? That is completely and utterly delusional.
- astazangasta 7y ago
  That's not what it's saying. It's saying that, as usual, productivity gains lead to new wealth, which produces new jobs as a result. E.g., the automation that allowed us to mechanize agriculture allowed laborers to move into other industries that were also being automated, where they could be more productive.
  - ranci 7y ago
    And we should assume that there is an infinite number of industries for humans to constantly move onto why? It's not like there is a law of the universe that says there must always be more industries for humans to move once another industry became obsolete. Some may successfully move into other industries. Others will just develop a drug habit or commit suicide. Fun facts: once the internet started becoming pervasive in the very early 2000s, the labor participation rate went down soon after, and suicides went up at about the same time. Both trends have held since.
    - logicchains 7y ago
      >And we should assume that there is an infinite number of industries for humans to constantly move onto why? Because humans have an infinite amount of wants/desires they'd be willing to pay for if they could afford to hire someone to do it. Practical example in Australia: aged care. The baby boomers, the richest generation, is rapidly aging, so one of the biggest growth industries is aged care/nursing.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - wvenable 7y ago

>But this report presents a more nuanced view, stressing that the productivity benefits from automation should boost growth, meaning as many jobs are created as lost. Way to bury the lede, Rory.

true_tuna 7y ago

High technology jobs that you can only get if you went to college and got a technical degree. Which is disproportionately available to families who are already wealthy. Meaning the working class gets hollowed out, the rich and powerful get more rich and powerful and the unemployment and related addiction crisis get even worse. Yay! Brave new future.

pault 7y ago
Well, given that many of the readers of this forum, including myself, never went to college yet manage to pull down a healthy six figure salary, I think the actual situation is a bit more nuanced. Developers making a cushy living are firmly within what used to be considered the middle class, and if you take into account the stagnation of wage growth over the last 40 years we're all getting fucked. Also, many white collar office jobs are paying relatively poorly these days, and those are more likely to require a degree than a job in tech. A $50k salary in 2019 isn't what it used to be.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Devs making more than six figures anywhere but the bay area and perhaps NYC are upper middle class, probably in the top 10% of earners in their area, may even qualify as wealthy.
  - tjr225 7y ago
    This is changing rapidly as housing costs skyrocket in anywhere remotely urban.
  - pault 7y ago
    Technically yes, although as a specific example $100k/yr is the 80th percentile in Austin, TX[0]. My point was, if you define middle class as the middle of the income distribution, yes; if you define middle class more subjectively, like "being able to afford a house in the suburbs and pay for 2.5 college tuitions", that privilege is now out of reach for pretty much everyone except the 80th percentile and up. [0] https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Texas/Austin/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Texas/Austin/Household-In...
    - learc83 7y ago
      >Technically yes, although as a specific example $100k/yr is the 80th percentile in Austin, TX You're comparing household income to individual income. If you look at individual income, $100k/yr in Austin is much going to be much higher than 80th percentile.
    - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
      Nitpick: When people talk in terms of class, that traditionally encompassed far more than monetary wealth. It's also your education, your status, your social circle, your distance from aristocracy, etc.
    - ovi256 7y ago
      >you define middle class as the middle of the income distribution I don't think that's a good definition for the middle class. There's strong support for the fact that income distribution is an exponential distributions - just google "income distribution exponential". A exponential distribution is not symmetrical, so its mean or median is not a great centrality measure, it does agree with intuitions developed from observing, say, a normal distribution (like the weight or height of persons). The mean or median are very far from the mode (the most frequent individual) in an exponential, whereas they're almost identical in a normal.
  - pascalxus 7y ago
    Top 20% is the new middle class in CA and other housing regulated markets
crdoconnor 7y ago
shrug I meet a lot of young people without degrees doing jobs that didn't exist 10-15 years ago too (e.g. social media managers). And there are way more people with degrees these days. I think there are other less impersonal, more policy driven reasons than robots why the middle class is being hollowed out, but it sure feels like they'd rather we believed it was robots.
markvdb 7y ago
The US are the anomaly. In most of the developed world, higher education is actually quite affordable. Technical education is also the easiest to get funding for. It turns out financial limitations are the easy factor to solve. Other, non-financial limits to social mobility are so much more stubborn.
- Nyandalized 7y ago
  In fact, in some northern countries like Finland, all education is completely free, and the government pays you allowance so you can focus on studies. The only requirement is to pass the entry exams, which anyone can take

ranci 7y ago

Why in gods name would anybody pursue any of this if it resulted in the same amount of jobs, except the new jobs cost a company more money than the old ones? That is completely and utterly delusional.

astazangasta 7y ago
That's not what it's saying. It's saying that, as usual, productivity gains lead to new wealth, which produces new jobs as a result. E.g., the automation that allowed us to mechanize agriculture allowed laborers to move into other industries that were also being automated, where they could be more productive.
- ranci 7y ago
  And we should assume that there is an infinite number of industries for humans to constantly move onto why? It's not like there is a law of the universe that says there must always be more industries for humans to move once another industry became obsolete. Some may successfully move into other industries. Others will just develop a drug habit or commit suicide. Fun facts: once the internet started becoming pervasive in the very early 2000s, the labor participation rate went down soon after, and suicides went up at about the same time. Both trends have held since.
  - logicchains 7y ago
    >And we should assume that there is an infinite number of industries for humans to constantly move onto why? Because humans have an infinite amount of wants/desires they'd be willing to pay for if they could afford to hire someone to do it. Practical example in Australia: aged care. The baby boomers, the richest generation, is rapidly aging, so one of the biggest growth industries is aged care/nursing.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - wvenable 7y ago