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Honestly I think this is why unemployment is so high. At first they had to let people go during the recession, and then they were like, "oh hey, we didn't need

Honestly I think this is why unemployment is so high. At first they had to let people go during the recession, and then they were like, "oh hey, we didn't need a lot of those people in the first place.." I wouldn't call myself a marxist, but I do think we're entering an era where something like a universal basic income might make sense. Nothing against people getting wealthy off their labor, but it seems apparent to me that the job market will continue to shrink as things become more and more automated, and shaming people that don't have some distinct skill-set that can't be automated doesn't sound like a recipe for a great society...

nickik 12y ago
The problem with this argument is, that the same argument has existed for 200 years. Its exactly the same argument, replace 'maschine' with 'robot' and you could reprint a 200 year old opinion piece on this in the NYT and nobody would notitce. What has changed now that was not the case 200 years ago. New maschines replace people and those people have to do something else. The problem is not that there is not enougth work to be done, there are tons of industries and tons of places where people are needed. The problem is far more institutional, why are people not effectivly switching? There might still by some cyclical unemployment but some of it is structural and blaming robots is the cheap way out.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  I am worried in the long run about automation, but it's true that labor participation right now is about the same relative to the number of retirees as it has always been. Unemployment is very low. The number of "discouraged" workers is 2x what it was before the recession, but we're only talking about a swing of 500k people -- less than half a percent of the labor force. So, the robots/automation replacing jobs explanation doesn't really float for me right now. First, it's not clear that there's a phenomenon that needs to be explained at all. People have a feeling that there are fewer jobs, but that doesn't actually seem to be true. And, as you said, this has always been a go-to complaint. I'm sure it will be accurate someday, but it doesn't seem to be today.
  - nickik 12y ago
    I think, once we have singularity we will have this problem. But lets face it, trying to predict or plan for post singularity is kind of pointless.
- aswanson 12y ago
  People are not effectively switching because they are not evolutionarily or socially hard-wired to do so. We are going through a societal disruption on the order not never seen before in human history. To place all the blame on workers not adjusting is akin to blaming a person for not being prepared for their first cardiac arrest.
  - nickik 12y ago
    What? We have been doing it for 200 years, faster then ever befor in history. If anything the change has been slower in the last years.
- overgard 12y ago
  There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though. For example: secretaries. Sure the job still kind of exists, although they give them weird fake names so that people aren't insulted (executive assistant!), but it's a lot smaller than it was. It's just not that important when you have email and text messages. Same thing with factory work. Yeah, you still need people.. but you need less people. Do we really think that all the people that got displaced from their factory jobs are suddenly going to become robot mechanics or something? Sure some of them, but I just don't buy this argument that technology always creates new jobs when it destroys the old ones. There are also a lot of jobs that currently exist that I suspect are not particularly necessary, they're just convenient. You see this all the time: a manager will hire someone to do something that they just don't like to do themselves. A convenience hire, basically. As long as the budget is there, everyone feels good. For instance: "project managers" (Different places call them different things). I'd define this role as people that don't actually have any hiring or firing authority, or significant design role, but rather, they're mostly in charge of client relationships. Useful? Sure. But mostly that role exists so that the people doing the actual work have a buffer between them and the client/customer. If the economy fell of a cliff again, we'd probably not have that many project managers. I just think different economic systems make sense in different contexts. Capitalism was a pretty good idea when growth was the most important factor, but now the US Government literally sets extra wheat on fire to keep prices at a certain level. I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense.
  - nickik 12y ago
    > There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though. I think you have not understood my argument. My argument is that this happens ALL THE TIME. Do yourself a favor and go back and read the discussion going on 150 years ago. Its the same thing you are saying now. Blablabl the basket makers are unemployed because of plastic bags. The barrelmaker because of plastic barrels and so on and so on. The point is that this happens constantly and the market is the exact tool to deal with this. People get insentivised to move into the next best thing humans can still do. This has lead to more and more investment in human capital and it has been a good thing. Capitalism is the best if you want to give people as much freedom and choices as possible, it is also the best if you want to get BILLIONS of people out of poverty and since there are still BILLIONS of people in poverty turing away from it to some sort of 'lets just leave everything as it is' policy is simply madness. > I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense. Thats that terrible thing. It is done to please special intrest groupes and has nothing todo with acutal markets. I would suggest reading about the politcal economy of farm subsidisment and protectionsim. Its a terrible thing and helps make us all poorer, and it worse because it makes it harder for BILLIONS of people to move out of poverty.
- collyw 12y ago
  I think there is always more work that can be done. Look around you. Is your street clean, is everything working, are old people being cared for, are children being well educated? The problem is misallocation of resources and apparently that is down to free market economics.
  - nickff 12y ago
    Education is not an example of the free market at work; it seems that the constantly increasing spending, and level (at best) results are a clear failure of government.
    - collyw 12y ago
      Free markets have allocated billions to the creator of a social network, which really doesn't provide much value to the world (ok I am sure you can argue that it has some value). Yet you complain about increased spending in education. I personally think the resources would be better spent on the things I mentioned amongst others, but the free market says otherwise. Recycling would be a perfect example, but it is far cheaper to destroy the planet than solve the problem.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Tell that to horses.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
>unemployment is so high Unemployment is actually not that high in the US. This is why I think a lot of policies people such as basic income, make work schemes, etc are really not that needed right now. The economy is generating jobs.
- XJOKOLAT 12y ago
  But how many of those jobs being generated are "high quality" and/or reasonable/high-paying jobs? I'd be interested in any stats which measure that - say, coming out of this recession versus previous recessions.
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    This might be a place to start. http://www.bls.gov/jlt/ http://www.bls.gov/jlt/
- cmurf 12y ago
  U.S. unemployment is ~3x higher now than in 2007. A more important statistic is underemployment, and that's still high. And this includes part-time workers who can't find full time employment. While job growth is slightly positive overall it's extremely misleading for two reasons: a.) wages are flat to negative, b.) the grow is geographically disproportionate with more than 1/2 of U.S. states seeing negative job growth. Most of the gains have come in oil fracking boom states. That's a bubble about to pop due to downward pressure in oil prices, and New York state is just one of the first likely to ban the practice. So the state of employment in the U.S. is actually dismal.

nickik 12y ago

The problem with this argument is, that the same argument has existed for 200 years. Its exactly the same argument, replace 'maschine' with 'robot' and you could reprint a 200 year old opinion piece on this in the NYT and nobody would notitce. What has changed now that was not the case 200 years ago. New maschines replace people and those people have to do something else. The problem is not that there is not enougth work to be done, there are tons of industries and tons of places where people are needed. The problem is far more institutional, why are people not effectivly switching? There might still by some cyclical unemployment but some of it is structural and blaming robots is the cheap way out.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
I am worried in the long run about automation, but it's true that labor participation right now is about the same relative to the number of retirees as it has always been. Unemployment is very low. The number of "discouraged" workers is 2x what it was before the recession, but we're only talking about a swing of 500k people -- less than half a percent of the labor force. So, the robots/automation replacing jobs explanation doesn't really float for me right now. First, it's not clear that there's a phenomenon that needs to be explained at all. People have a feeling that there are fewer jobs, but that doesn't actually seem to be true. And, as you said, this has always been a go-to complaint. I'm sure it will be accurate someday, but it doesn't seem to be today.
- nickik 12y ago
  I think, once we have singularity we will have this problem. But lets face it, trying to predict or plan for post singularity is kind of pointless.
aswanson 12y ago
People are not effectively switching because they are not evolutionarily or socially hard-wired to do so. We are going through a societal disruption on the order not never seen before in human history. To place all the blame on workers not adjusting is akin to blaming a person for not being prepared for their first cardiac arrest.
- nickik 12y ago
  What? We have been doing it for 200 years, faster then ever befor in history. If anything the change has been slower in the last years.
overgard 12y ago
There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though. For example: secretaries. Sure the job still kind of exists, although they give them weird fake names so that people aren't insulted (executive assistant!), but it's a lot smaller than it was. It's just not that important when you have email and text messages. Same thing with factory work. Yeah, you still need people.. but you need less people. Do we really think that all the people that got displaced from their factory jobs are suddenly going to become robot mechanics or something? Sure some of them, but I just don't buy this argument that technology always creates new jobs when it destroys the old ones. There are also a lot of jobs that currently exist that I suspect are not particularly necessary, they're just convenient. You see this all the time: a manager will hire someone to do something that they just don't like to do themselves. A convenience hire, basically. As long as the budget is there, everyone feels good. For instance: "project managers" (Different places call them different things). I'd define this role as people that don't actually have any hiring or firing authority, or significant design role, but rather, they're mostly in charge of client relationships. Useful? Sure. But mostly that role exists so that the people doing the actual work have a buffer between them and the client/customer. If the economy fell of a cliff again, we'd probably not have that many project managers. I just think different economic systems make sense in different contexts. Capitalism was a pretty good idea when growth was the most important factor, but now the US Government literally sets extra wheat on fire to keep prices at a certain level. I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense.
- nickik 12y ago
  > There are a lot of jobs that have very obviously been automated though. I think you have not understood my argument. My argument is that this happens ALL THE TIME. Do yourself a favor and go back and read the discussion going on 150 years ago. Its the same thing you are saying now. Blablabl the basket makers are unemployed because of plastic bags. The barrelmaker because of plastic barrels and so on and so on. The point is that this happens constantly and the market is the exact tool to deal with this. People get insentivised to move into the next best thing humans can still do. This has lead to more and more investment in human capital and it has been a good thing. Capitalism is the best if you want to give people as much freedom and choices as possible, it is also the best if you want to get BILLIONS of people out of poverty and since there are still BILLIONS of people in poverty turing away from it to some sort of 'lets just leave everything as it is' policy is simply madness. > I mean if you're literally burning food and employing people in jobs that aren't that useful, maybe the whole "growth" thing has stopped making sense. Thats that terrible thing. It is done to please special intrest groupes and has nothing todo with acutal markets. I would suggest reading about the politcal economy of farm subsidisment and protectionsim. Its a terrible thing and helps make us all poorer, and it worse because it makes it harder for BILLIONS of people to move out of poverty.
collyw 12y ago
I think there is always more work that can be done. Look around you. Is your street clean, is everything working, are old people being cared for, are children being well educated? The problem is misallocation of resources and apparently that is down to free market economics.
- nickff 12y ago
  Education is not an example of the free market at work; it seems that the constantly increasing spending, and level (at best) results are a clear failure of government.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Free markets have allocated billions to the creator of a social network, which really doesn't provide much value to the world (ok I am sure you can argue that it has some value). Yet you complain about increased spending in education. I personally think the resources would be better spent on the things I mentioned amongst others, but the free market says otherwise. Recycling would be a perfect example, but it is far cheaper to destroy the planet than solve the problem.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Tell that to horses.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago

>unemployment is so high Unemployment is actually not that high in the US. This is why I think a lot of policies people such as basic income, make work schemes, etc are really not that needed right now. The economy is generating jobs.

XJOKOLAT 12y ago
But how many of those jobs being generated are "high quality" and/or reasonable/high-paying jobs? I'd be interested in any stats which measure that - say, coming out of this recession versus previous recessions.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  This might be a place to start. http://www.bls.gov/jlt/ http://www.bls.gov/jlt/
cmurf 12y ago
U.S. unemployment is ~3x higher now than in 2007. A more important statistic is underemployment, and that's still high. And this includes part-time workers who can't find full time employment. While job growth is slightly positive overall it's extremely misleading for two reasons: a.) wages are flat to negative, b.) the grow is geographically disproportionate with more than 1/2 of U.S. states seeing negative job growth. Most of the gains have come in oil fracking boom states. That's a bubble about to pop due to downward pressure in oil prices, and New York state is just one of the first likely to ban the practice. So the state of employment in the U.S. is actually dismal.