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> The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with
by wolverine876 2y ago
> The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the average intelligence requirement for jobs increases over time (though never stated directly). This means that as time and technology progress, a growing percentage of people will have no jobs that they are capable of doing.
You might look up what economics has to say; this issue is well-addressed there. Some fundamentals:
The comment above assumes a static marketplace - the same technology, needs, etc. - and one that addresses the entirety of economic demand, rather than a dynamic market where those things change and resources are scarce (thus when resources become available, they are applied to other unfilled needs).
For example, which skills are in demand changes but there is still growing demand: If you look at the jobs performed 100 years ago, you'll see that most of them are no long needed. Yet not only are most people employed today, we have ~3-4x as many people - most of the jobs disappeared, yet, 3-4x people have jobs.
And yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.
- ameister14 2y ago>yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay. The problem, of course, is that wages stagnated from '99 to 2014 and the job participation rate has been decreasing since 2000 while cost of living and general production increased; so no, in a dynamic market work does not necessarily come with higher pay. It actually wouldn't really make sense for all new work to come with higher pay; if you have changes in supply (which is what we are really talking about) that come with associated lower labor costs, the people that used to provide higher cost labor for the initial supply level will have to accept significantly reduced salaries in their industry. That's what happened with the industrial revolution. Wages overall increased because people entered the workforce for the first time as skill requirements went down, but the average wage of previously employed people went way down as artisan and highly skilled labor was outcompeted by factory work.
- bamboozled 2y agowhile cost of living and general production increased This is a major problem! Why ? Corporations chasing profits without enough competition ?
- wordpad25 2y agowages stagnated, not total compensation which continued to grow employee preferred form of compensation has just shifted towards other benefits
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago> employee-preferred More like Congress-imposed (through tax incentives)
- ameister14 2y agoDid that even keep pace with inflation? Looking at a generous measure of that in the form of ECI, I don't think it did.