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Exactly. Thinking that "the world" will miraculously support anyone is to be willfully ignorant of how power and money actually get distributed. And while "the

by andkon 13y ago

Exactly. Thinking that "the world" will miraculously support anyone is to be willfully ignorant of how power and money actually get distributed. And while "the market" (lol) will create new jobs every time some previous labour marketplace is disrupted, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will provide the same amount of jobs (or, really: demand for the same units of labour). From there, it sorta follows that everyone's wages will drop: same number of people looking for work, but much less need for workers? The workers lose income as a result, meaning that there's both less demand for workers, and the work that is now available isn't going to pay your bills.

ThomPete 13y ago
It has NEVER created the same amount of jobs. It has always looked like that because new markets where liberalized, but technology creates less jobs than it destroys. The upside of this is that it make many things very cheap. But it's not good news for most of us unless something change.
- wyager 13y ago
  >technology creates less jobs than it destroys. What a blisteringly stupid sentiment. If this were true, there would have been an obvious monotonic decrease in employment since humans started inventing things.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    Technology today is not the same as technology 50 or 70 years ago. You are assuming that just because something used to be the case it will always be so. But that is missing the point. The situation we have today is increasingly that you either need a STEM degree or primarily have jobs that are loosing their ability to provide a middle-class income. Those jobs in Wallmart jobs will be automated sooner or later and there is no alternative. So call it stupid all you want. The reality is that the US is loosing jobs and not because it doesn't have a great environment for creating jobs, simply because technology allow for automation, outsourcing and the decline of the middle income job.
    - wyager 13y ago
      >Technology today is not the same as technology 50 or 70 years ago. You're kidding, right? The industrial revolution "unemployed" orders of magnitudes more people than current technological changes. >The situation we have today is increasingly that you either need a STEM degree God forbid that the only jobs open to humans require mental exertion, right? I sure do love the fact that a huge fraction of the minds on earth are spending eight hours a day doing the really important things, like putting more Duck Dynasty t-shirts in aisle 12.
      - ThomPete 13y ago
        you just showed that you dont get what this discussion is about. once you do get back to me.
rz2k 13y ago
There's production and there's consumption. The allocation of that production and how it's consumed is dependent on the structure and the vagaries of the rules of all economies, regardless of which definition of meritocracy they most closely resemble. However, the miracle is that it's possible to get more output from the same amount of human effort with better business practices and better technology. (Though really it is more like a closer adherence to some hypothetical perfectly efficient economy than it is a miracle.) For increases in productivity, and more production not to produce more consumption would be the economics equivalent of violating the laws of conservation of mass and energy, or being able to slow down your car without converting that kinetic energy into heat. There aren't differing opinions about whether increased production enables greater consumption, because the relationship is equivalent to a mathematical identity. However, that does not mean that there can be no debate about the effects of automation and other technological leaps in productivity. For instance, there is the notion that making sure those who are responsible for leaps in productivity are well compensated incentivizes continued innovation. Then there is the concern that since the ultimate purpose of economies is human quality of life, those productivity gains don't actually accomplish anything if most participants in the economy fail to realize the benefits of those gains. And furthermore, sufficiently large disparities in wealth and influence are likely to establish a patronage system in place of a formerly meritocratic system, such that the talent pool for the next round of innovation is greatly constrained. The dynamic between productivity and income is counter intuitive at times. However, consider that there were past instances where people were ready to violently riot for the opportunity to be sent down into a mine where they would possibly contract black lung, only to bring up coal that was worth less than their compensation packages. Measuring such work by the sweat and risk would mean that it was worth a considerable income. However, there were other energy sources that required less effort and factory equipment was efficient enough that a bucket of coal simply wasn't that important. Those developments were good things! That tens or hundreds of thousands of people should be paid to hurt themselves, for something that was worth less than they needed to be paid sounds nonsensical today, but was debated seriously only a few decades ago. Changes in economies that lead to fewer people being eaten up by their jobs into an early death are good. Anyway, one final interesting aside. The term "unemployment" when used during the era before the industrial revolution didn't refer to not being able to find how to employ oneself, but to people choosing not to work. Not-starving was a measure for being okay, and common people didn't have too many worthwhile goods and services they could buy if they had more income. The term was used by the equivalent of that eras policy makers in addressing concerns about building up surplus stores, so that they would not suffer blame and revolts when the weather was unseasonably bad, or they wanted to collect more taxes for their own consumption, or they wanted to be able to feed an army.
wyager 13y ago
Perhaps you should extend your analysis a little further. What do you think happens when the supply of workers increases, and wages drop? => Production prices drop => The results of this are split between: 1. The rich make more money, and buy more stuff, draining the supply of labor and increasing wages 2. Things become cheaper, which counteracts the wage drop. This is not rocket science. Before you just had people making things, and now you have machines and the same people making things. There are more things being made. This is, on balance, positive.
- andkon 13y ago
  So those are empirical questions: how much do prices drop? Do they drop enough to offset the loss in wages - wages that get put principally towards the cost of living? I think the empirical question has been answered unequivocally: wages, corrected for inflation, have been stagnant for thirty years. More value is definitely being made, but it's being captured by different people: that's why we've got so many more rich people who are so much richer. That last bit, though - that there are people and machines making things - seems wrong to me. Like in a car factory: let's say I used to use machines to mount car doors. Now, there's a machine that does it a lot better than me, and I don't need to operate it. Unless I live somewhere that labour's dirt cheap, it seems unlikely that I'm gonna be (a) making things or (b) in a job doing my car-door-mounting best.

by andkon 13y ago

ThomPete 13y ago

It has NEVER created the same amount of jobs. It has always looked like that because new markets where liberalized, but technology creates less jobs than it destroys. The upside of this is that it make many things very cheap. But it's not good news for most of us unless something change.

wyager 13y ago
>technology creates less jobs than it destroys. What a blisteringly stupid sentiment. If this were true, there would have been an obvious monotonic decrease in employment since humans started inventing things.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  Technology today is not the same as technology 50 or 70 years ago. You are assuming that just because something used to be the case it will always be so. But that is missing the point. The situation we have today is increasingly that you either need a STEM degree or primarily have jobs that are loosing their ability to provide a middle-class income. Those jobs in Wallmart jobs will be automated sooner or later and there is no alternative. So call it stupid all you want. The reality is that the US is loosing jobs and not because it doesn't have a great environment for creating jobs, simply because technology allow for automation, outsourcing and the decline of the middle income job.
  - wyager 13y ago
    >Technology today is not the same as technology 50 or 70 years ago. You're kidding, right? The industrial revolution "unemployed" orders of magnitudes more people than current technological changes. >The situation we have today is increasingly that you either need a STEM degree God forbid that the only jobs open to humans require mental exertion, right? I sure do love the fact that a huge fraction of the minds on earth are spending eight hours a day doing the really important things, like putting more Duck Dynasty t-shirts in aisle 12.
    - ThomPete 13y ago
      you just showed that you dont get what this discussion is about. once you do get back to me.

rz2k 13y ago

There's production and there's consumption. The allocation of that production and how it's consumed is dependent on the structure and the vagaries of the rules of all economies, regardless of which definition of meritocracy they most closely resemble. However, the miracle is that it's possible to get more output from the same amount of human effort with better business practices and better technology. (Though really it is more like a closer adherence to some hypothetical perfectly efficient economy than it is a miracle.) For increases in productivity, and more production not to produce more consumption would be the economics equivalent of violating the laws of conservation of mass and energy, or being able to slow down your car without converting that kinetic energy into heat. There aren't differing opinions about whether increased production enables greater consumption, because the relationship is equivalent to a mathematical identity. However, that does not mean that there can be no debate about the effects of automation and other technological leaps in productivity. For instance, there is the notion that making sure those who are responsible for leaps in productivity are well compensated incentivizes continued innovation. Then there is the concern that since the ultimate purpose of economies is human quality of life, those productivity gains don't actually accomplish anything if most participants in the economy fail to realize the benefits of those gains. And furthermore, sufficiently large disparities in wealth and influence are likely to establish a patronage system in place of a formerly meritocratic system, such that the talent pool for the next round of innovation is greatly constrained. The dynamic between productivity and income is counter intuitive at times. However, consider that there were past instances where people were ready to violently riot for the opportunity to be sent down into a mine where they would possibly contract black lung, only to bring up coal that was worth less than their compensation packages. Measuring such work by the sweat and risk would mean that it was worth a considerable income. However, there were other energy sources that required less effort and factory equipment was efficient enough that a bucket of coal simply wasn't that important. Those developments were good things! That tens or hundreds of thousands of people should be paid to hurt themselves, for something that was worth less than they needed to be paid sounds nonsensical today, but was debated seriously only a few decades ago. Changes in economies that lead to fewer people being eaten up by their jobs into an early death are good. Anyway, one final interesting aside. The term "unemployment" when used during the era before the industrial revolution didn't refer to not being able to find how to employ oneself, but to people choosing not to work. Not-starving was a measure for being okay, and common people didn't have too many worthwhile goods and services they could buy if they had more income. The term was used by the equivalent of that eras policy makers in addressing concerns about building up surplus stores, so that they would not suffer blame and revolts when the weather was unseasonably bad, or they wanted to collect more taxes for their own consumption, or they wanted to be able to feed an army.

wyager 13y ago

Perhaps you should extend your analysis a little further. What do you think happens when the supply of workers increases, and wages drop? => Production prices drop => The results of this are split between: 1. The rich make more money, and buy more stuff, draining the supply of labor and increasing wages 2. Things become cheaper, which counteracts the wage drop. This is not rocket science. Before you just had people making things, and now you have machines and the same people making things. There are more things being made. This is, on balance, positive.

andkon 13y ago
So those are empirical questions: how much do prices drop? Do they drop enough to offset the loss in wages - wages that get put principally towards the cost of living? I think the empirical question has been answered unequivocally: wages, corrected for inflation, have been stagnant for thirty years. More value is definitely being made, but it's being captured by different people: that's why we've got so many more rich people who are so much richer. That last bit, though - that there are people and machines making things - seems wrong to me. Like in a car factory: let's say I used to use machines to mount car doors. Now, there's a machine that does it a lot better than me, and I don't need to operate it. Unless I live somewhere that labour's dirt cheap, it seems unlikely that I'm gonna be (a) making things or (b) in a job doing my car-door-mounting best.