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Take a look at this chart: http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/workforce-changes.html?LFPR-25-54-since-1990.gif http://www.advisorpersp

Take a look at this chart: http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/workforce-changes.html?LFPR-25-54-since-1990.gif http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/employment/... I fear that 1999 was "peak labor" -- the point at which technology started to destroy more jobs than it created. We HN types live in a bubble in which times couldn't be better -- but in the larger economy there are fewer jobs paying and they're paying lower wages. It's troubling.

jryan49 12y ago
That graph is pretty misleading being only from 80% to 85%. Also it's only over a period of <20 years.
clavalle 12y ago
'fear'? That's an odd response to our most precious resource, human minds, being freed from time sucking drudgery. We've created the economic systems. They are not the Laws of the Universe. We can change them if they become a problem
- nostromo 12y ago
  I'm with you. Long term, this is good news. If we had basic income I'd be cheerful rather than worried. But we're not there yet, and you can't tell someone that is unemployed and can't find work that they should be happy to be free of the time sucking drudgery of employment. That's clearly a "let them eat cake" response.
  - abstractbill 12y ago
    I agree with (both of) you. How might I contribute to making Basic Income happen? I've been seeing more and more people talk seriously about it, which seems like a great sign, but perhaps not enough to change anything. Are there any advocacy efforts I could donate to?
    - maerF0x0 12y ago
      Sell your circles on the idea. Show them why its cheaper than the alternatives. Show them all the benefits . Put a sticker on your laptop, wear a t-shirt, write a politician, go on TV. Start giving away your money to someone (implement your own "basic income" to someone really really poor) and (b/v)log/write a book about it . As soon as it becomes "How could we not do this" in people's minds, it will happen.
    - jgon 12y ago
      What you can do to truly contribute to making Basic Income happen is to actually get yourself ready to support it. I'll explain what I mean by this. I think that a lot of people hear Basic Income, and if they have some form of compassion for their fellow man and an awareness of computers currently allow and where they are headed, they understand that pretty soon we'll have to figure out a way of living in which a large portion of the population, or at least a large enough amount to comprise a real threat to social stability, will be unemployable. Completely. There will be no job that actually contributes to moving our society forward that either a machine or another person with greater abilities will not be better suited for. There will literally be no place in the economy for them to contribute. So what do we do with these people? Well we say that they get a Basic Income, enough money to live, and not just survive, but live. We're not going to be able to consign a hundred million people to lives of depredation, so Basic Income is going to have to cover the basics and some of the stuff that makes life good. In a lot of these discussions there are examples of the money currently spent on the welfare bureaucracy and how all that money can be rolled into BI, and I think that a lot of people stop listening there, convincing themselves that we'll be able to create a BI, provide for people who can no longer work, and nothing in their lives will have to change. And my gut tells me that this is dead wrong. So what can you do to contribute to making BI happen? Well you can realize that taking care of those people is not going to be free. You can start making yourself comfortable with the idea that taxes will have to go up. Definitely on the ultra rich and the very rich, but also on us programmers, sitting here on HN and complaining about making 180k a year because San Francisco. BI is going to mean that the people we put out of work get taken care of, but its also going to mean that you'll be driving a camry and not a tesla. Because we are the top 5%, and even if the 1% and the 0.1% are definitely going to have to be taxed way way more, we are going to have to do our part for the 95% below us. You've got to square yourself with the possibility that having a job will be something that very few people get, and that you will not be rewarded with incredible riches for doing so. BI will probably bring a bunch of us a lot closer together, and hey if we're lucky it might even be awesome Star Trek style. But to get there we're going to have to sacrifice to take care of our fellow man, and it won't all just magically take care of itself. If you start preparing for this now, hopefully you won't be like so many of the baby boomers I see, my parents and their friends included, who pay lip service to taking care of their fellow man, but whose actions in the voting booth betray these principles, as they just can't bring themselves to make even a small sacrifice in their current living condition. That's what I try to work on every day, making sure that I am not so addicted to my lifestyle and material goods that when BI and a 90% marginal top tax rate are on the ballot, I don't blink and find myself voting for the man who promises "tax cuts and forget about the other guy". That, I think, is the biggest thing you can do to make BI happen.
  - tomohawk 12y ago
    A negative income tax would probably work out better than basic income. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
- dtlawhon 12y ago
  I'm not sure you can call it being "freed" when freedom in this context is the freedom to starve or live on disability/food stamps/whatever you can find. And while I agree that economic systems can and should be changed as we shift towards a post-labor society, I'm worried about political obstacles to that. Even in the height of the worst recession in 70 years, we couldn't get Congress to approve food stamps for people out of work. How are those same politicians going to feel about cranking the work week back to 20 hours and tripling the minimum wage to make everything balance out? And if companies end up having to pay the same in labor costs to offset their automating, then what's the point in them automating? Will we actually see automation-enabling technology (3D printing, robotics, etc) hit their own peak and slide backwards in the face of higher fees/social unrest/political change/etc etc etc? It's a trickier situation than you're giving credit.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    >How are those same politicians going to feel about cranking the work week back to 20 hours and tripling the minimum wage to make everything balance out? They will feel how the people tell them to feel (ideally). Now, the real problem, how to change people's minds? I see that as a job well suited to HN frequenters: intelligent, imaginative, creative people need to take their responsibility as harbingers seriously and evangelize for a better future. Smack one molecule at a time and eventually the whole pot boils. Show people that the way things are done are not necessarily how they must be done. As a group, we've done a pretty good job in certain areas but I definitely see a lot of reluctance to tackle macro-social problems with the same zeal as attacking other historical accidents that impede progress like Uber taking on cab companies. It's tricky, sure, but its all in our collective head.
    - dtlawhon 12y ago
      Well, the overwhelming majority of people support an increase in the minimum wage, immigration reform, and a host of issues that Congress has not budged on. Why? Because they're beholden to a handful of special interests. I consider myself liberal, but if we're being bluntly honest both parties are stuck for the same reason. Even if one is worse than the other. ;) I absolutely agree that we are in a great position to influence debate. If anything needs to be disrupted, it's the political system. I wish more folks with our skill sets were interested in tackling something like that.
- lbotos 12y ago
  While this is true, the "freed" minds (read: unemployed) aren't able to contribute to the current economy because their skills are no longer relevant. Do you see a change happening in the near term that is going to help these "freed minds?"
  - clavalle 12y ago
    I, personally, am hoping for a more creative based economy. We must tackle some serious issues before that is viable as I'd like it to be, though. First is that we must value creators and be eager to pay them for their work. Right now that is a serious problem in an era of glorified piracy. Hopefully, with technology bringing creators closer to their audience, this attitude will change. Second, it wouldn't hurt to turn our incredible per capita productivity into more free time. This is time to both create and consume more of those creative works.
- jobu 12y ago
  Your definition of "time sucking drudgery" is another's way to make a living. Sometimes the factory job that was just automated was the only job in town, and companies aren't going to retrain a 50y/o to program computers. Many people just don't have the resources to learn a new job, or move and find a similar one. Right now we're on a path to automate jobs more quickly than people can reorganize into new careers. In the long term the economic systems will work themselves out, but in the short term there's a huge potential for social and economic unrest.
- ibebrett 12y ago
  "changing them when they become a problem" is a huge understatement. changing economic systems is incredibly complex and extremely hard to predict. even just engineering enough people to collectively act is very difficult.
- puranjay 12y ago
  Except any drastic change in the economic system (say, a Basic Minimum Wage) would come about only through strife. The people with entrenched interests in the present order aren't just going to roll over and say adios.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Odd to someone who is a recipent of the riches of such a system. If you were supporting your family on "time sucking drudgery", your perspective might be a little different.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    I'd probably want another system to replace the current one as fast as humanly possible. It's sad that for all the progress we've made we have to say "If these people don't spend all day doing something mind numbing and tedious all day their families will suffer!". Is that how we want people deciding to do what they do with the bulk of their time, avoiding suffering with their family's survival at stake? It seems like a way to bake terrible exploitative inefficiencies into the system. Then again, I am in a very 'hopeful for humanity' mood today. Perhaps there are a lot of people for whom, even in the best of circumstances, can only hope to contribute just that much to society.
    - crpatino 12y ago
      > I'd probably want another system to replace the current one as fast as humanly possible. Exactly how is the people in the receiving end of automation to develop the many skills needed to put together a "replacement system"... overnight... and execute flawlessly with no safety net below??? > Is that how we want people deciding to do what they do with the bulk of their time, avoiding suffering with their family's survival at stake? It seems like a way to bake terrible exploitative inefficiencies into the system. YES, pretty much it. This is not the first time this has happened. Think of the liberation of the slaves in 19th century US, or women's right to divorce. If those freedoms do not come hand in hand with reliable access to means of production, they predictably turn into weapons. You get "free" but get cut off access to any legal means of earn your keep. Then you are free to either die or go rouge and join the underworld of predators and parasites.
mikecb 12y ago
Labor force participation isn't adjusted for age of the population, so as a population pyramid squeezes through, like that of the baby boomers retiring, you would see a peak and drop naturally.
- nostromo 12y ago
  Please note that the chart only includes the working age population.
  - jobu 12y ago
    It includes 25-54. Currently the age of retirement for full Social Security benefits is 67. Seems likely that they're missing a large chunk of Baby Boomers that are working longer.
    - 6stringmerc 12y ago
      ...and not accounting for the health care costs, present or future, which the Baby Boomer cohort is going to take out from the economy from a productivity / wealth standpoint. Basically, to exaggerate, the inheritance tax is relatively a moot point because other than a small percentage, most Baby Boomers didn't save enough to retire and didn't pay enough into the system to keep them alive from 67-80 something, because there has been little to no upward mobility for the rank and file spend and be taxed lower classes.
- 6stringmerc 12y ago
  Except that hasn't happened, at all, since the mid/late 1990s. ZeroHedge has been very adamant about exposing the problem with your assumption: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-03/hiring-grandparents-only-230k-september-were-added-55-69-age-group-10k-lost-prime-25 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-03/hiring-grandparents... You assume the Baby Boomers can retire, and I assert that they are the most indebted, non-saving, addicted to their lifestyle cohort the US has ever seen. The only natural drop is when they drop dead naturally...but they'll go out kicking and screaming, demanding free healthcare that they didn't pay for, etc, etc.
refurb 12y ago
Labor force participation rate should be dropping. The baby boomers just started to retire. Since they make up a much larger proportion of the population than their age range implies.
hnnewguy 12y ago
>I fear that 1999 was "peak labor" A few percentage points over the course of 25 years? How significant is that over the course of millennia? People have been "fearing" peak labour for centuries. Guessing where technology will bring is 100+ years is futile.

jryan49 12y ago

That graph is pretty misleading being only from 80% to 85%. Also it's only over a period of <20 years.

clavalle 12y ago

'fear'? That's an odd response to our most precious resource, human minds, being freed from time sucking drudgery. We've created the economic systems. They are not the Laws of the Universe. We can change them if they become a problem

nostromo 12y ago
I'm with you. Long term, this is good news. If we had basic income I'd be cheerful rather than worried. But we're not there yet, and you can't tell someone that is unemployed and can't find work that they should be happy to be free of the time sucking drudgery of employment. That's clearly a "let them eat cake" response.
- abstractbill 12y ago
  I agree with (both of) you. How might I contribute to making Basic Income happen? I've been seeing more and more people talk seriously about it, which seems like a great sign, but perhaps not enough to change anything. Are there any advocacy efforts I could donate to?
  - maerF0x0 12y ago
    Sell your circles on the idea. Show them why its cheaper than the alternatives. Show them all the benefits . Put a sticker on your laptop, wear a t-shirt, write a politician, go on TV. Start giving away your money to someone (implement your own "basic income" to someone really really poor) and (b/v)log/write a book about it . As soon as it becomes "How could we not do this" in people's minds, it will happen.
  - jgon 12y ago
    What you can do to truly contribute to making Basic Income happen is to actually get yourself ready to support it. I'll explain what I mean by this. I think that a lot of people hear Basic Income, and if they have some form of compassion for their fellow man and an awareness of computers currently allow and where they are headed, they understand that pretty soon we'll have to figure out a way of living in which a large portion of the population, or at least a large enough amount to comprise a real threat to social stability, will be unemployable. Completely. There will be no job that actually contributes to moving our society forward that either a machine or another person with greater abilities will not be better suited for. There will literally be no place in the economy for them to contribute. So what do we do with these people? Well we say that they get a Basic Income, enough money to live, and not just survive, but live. We're not going to be able to consign a hundred million people to lives of depredation, so Basic Income is going to have to cover the basics and some of the stuff that makes life good. In a lot of these discussions there are examples of the money currently spent on the welfare bureaucracy and how all that money can be rolled into BI, and I think that a lot of people stop listening there, convincing themselves that we'll be able to create a BI, provide for people who can no longer work, and nothing in their lives will have to change. And my gut tells me that this is dead wrong. So what can you do to contribute to making BI happen? Well you can realize that taking care of those people is not going to be free. You can start making yourself comfortable with the idea that taxes will have to go up. Definitely on the ultra rich and the very rich, but also on us programmers, sitting here on HN and complaining about making 180k a year because San Francisco. BI is going to mean that the people we put out of work get taken care of, but its also going to mean that you'll be driving a camry and not a tesla. Because we are the top 5%, and even if the 1% and the 0.1% are definitely going to have to be taxed way way more, we are going to have to do our part for the 95% below us. You've got to square yourself with the possibility that having a job will be something that very few people get, and that you will not be rewarded with incredible riches for doing so. BI will probably bring a bunch of us a lot closer together, and hey if we're lucky it might even be awesome Star Trek style. But to get there we're going to have to sacrifice to take care of our fellow man, and it won't all just magically take care of itself. If you start preparing for this now, hopefully you won't be like so many of the baby boomers I see, my parents and their friends included, who pay lip service to taking care of their fellow man, but whose actions in the voting booth betray these principles, as they just can't bring themselves to make even a small sacrifice in their current living condition. That's what I try to work on every day, making sure that I am not so addicted to my lifestyle and material goods that when BI and a 90% marginal top tax rate are on the ballot, I don't blink and find myself voting for the man who promises "tax cuts and forget about the other guy". That, I think, is the biggest thing you can do to make BI happen.
- tomohawk 12y ago
  A negative income tax would probably work out better than basic income. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
dtlawhon 12y ago
I'm not sure you can call it being "freed" when freedom in this context is the freedom to starve or live on disability/food stamps/whatever you can find. And while I agree that economic systems can and should be changed as we shift towards a post-labor society, I'm worried about political obstacles to that. Even in the height of the worst recession in 70 years, we couldn't get Congress to approve food stamps for people out of work. How are those same politicians going to feel about cranking the work week back to 20 hours and tripling the minimum wage to make everything balance out? And if companies end up having to pay the same in labor costs to offset their automating, then what's the point in them automating? Will we actually see automation-enabling technology (3D printing, robotics, etc) hit their own peak and slide backwards in the face of higher fees/social unrest/political change/etc etc etc? It's a trickier situation than you're giving credit.
- clavalle 12y ago
  >How are those same politicians going to feel about cranking the work week back to 20 hours and tripling the minimum wage to make everything balance out? They will feel how the people tell them to feel (ideally). Now, the real problem, how to change people's minds? I see that as a job well suited to HN frequenters: intelligent, imaginative, creative people need to take their responsibility as harbingers seriously and evangelize for a better future. Smack one molecule at a time and eventually the whole pot boils. Show people that the way things are done are not necessarily how they must be done. As a group, we've done a pretty good job in certain areas but I definitely see a lot of reluctance to tackle macro-social problems with the same zeal as attacking other historical accidents that impede progress like Uber taking on cab companies. It's tricky, sure, but its all in our collective head.
  - dtlawhon 12y ago
    Well, the overwhelming majority of people support an increase in the minimum wage, immigration reform, and a host of issues that Congress has not budged on. Why? Because they're beholden to a handful of special interests. I consider myself liberal, but if we're being bluntly honest both parties are stuck for the same reason. Even if one is worse than the other. ;) I absolutely agree that we are in a great position to influence debate. If anything needs to be disrupted, it's the political system. I wish more folks with our skill sets were interested in tackling something like that.
lbotos 12y ago
While this is true, the "freed" minds (read: unemployed) aren't able to contribute to the current economy because their skills are no longer relevant. Do you see a change happening in the near term that is going to help these "freed minds?"
- clavalle 12y ago
  I, personally, am hoping for a more creative based economy. We must tackle some serious issues before that is viable as I'd like it to be, though. First is that we must value creators and be eager to pay them for their work. Right now that is a serious problem in an era of glorified piracy. Hopefully, with technology bringing creators closer to their audience, this attitude will change. Second, it wouldn't hurt to turn our incredible per capita productivity into more free time. This is time to both create and consume more of those creative works.
jobu 12y ago
Your definition of "time sucking drudgery" is another's way to make a living. Sometimes the factory job that was just automated was the only job in town, and companies aren't going to retrain a 50y/o to program computers. Many people just don't have the resources to learn a new job, or move and find a similar one. Right now we're on a path to automate jobs more quickly than people can reorganize into new careers. In the long term the economic systems will work themselves out, but in the short term there's a huge potential for social and economic unrest.
ibebrett 12y ago
"changing them when they become a problem" is a huge understatement. changing economic systems is incredibly complex and extremely hard to predict. even just engineering enough people to collectively act is very difficult.
puranjay 12y ago
Except any drastic change in the economic system (say, a Basic Minimum Wage) would come about only through strife. The people with entrenched interests in the present order aren't just going to roll over and say adios.
Spooky23 12y ago
Odd to someone who is a recipent of the riches of such a system. If you were supporting your family on "time sucking drudgery", your perspective might be a little different.
- clavalle 12y ago
  I'd probably want another system to replace the current one as fast as humanly possible. It's sad that for all the progress we've made we have to say "If these people don't spend all day doing something mind numbing and tedious all day their families will suffer!". Is that how we want people deciding to do what they do with the bulk of their time, avoiding suffering with their family's survival at stake? It seems like a way to bake terrible exploitative inefficiencies into the system. Then again, I am in a very 'hopeful for humanity' mood today. Perhaps there are a lot of people for whom, even in the best of circumstances, can only hope to contribute just that much to society.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    > I'd probably want another system to replace the current one as fast as humanly possible. Exactly how is the people in the receiving end of automation to develop the many skills needed to put together a "replacement system"... overnight... and execute flawlessly with no safety net below??? > Is that how we want people deciding to do what they do with the bulk of their time, avoiding suffering with their family's survival at stake? It seems like a way to bake terrible exploitative inefficiencies into the system. YES, pretty much it. This is not the first time this has happened. Think of the liberation of the slaves in 19th century US, or women's right to divorce. If those freedoms do not come hand in hand with reliable access to means of production, they predictably turn into weapons. You get "free" but get cut off access to any legal means of earn your keep. Then you are free to either die or go rouge and join the underworld of predators and parasites.

mikecb 12y ago

Labor force participation isn't adjusted for age of the population, so as a population pyramid squeezes through, like that of the baby boomers retiring, you would see a peak and drop naturally.

nostromo 12y ago
Please note that the chart only includes the working age population.
- jobu 12y ago
  It includes 25-54. Currently the age of retirement for full Social Security benefits is 67. Seems likely that they're missing a large chunk of Baby Boomers that are working longer.
  - 6stringmerc 12y ago
    ...and not accounting for the health care costs, present or future, which the Baby Boomer cohort is going to take out from the economy from a productivity / wealth standpoint. Basically, to exaggerate, the inheritance tax is relatively a moot point because other than a small percentage, most Baby Boomers didn't save enough to retire and didn't pay enough into the system to keep them alive from 67-80 something, because there has been little to no upward mobility for the rank and file spend and be taxed lower classes.
6stringmerc 12y ago
Except that hasn't happened, at all, since the mid/late 1990s. ZeroHedge has been very adamant about exposing the problem with your assumption: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-03/hiring-grandparents-only-230k-september-were-added-55-69-age-group-10k-lost-prime-25 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-03/hiring-grandparents... You assume the Baby Boomers can retire, and I assert that they are the most indebted, non-saving, addicted to their lifestyle cohort the US has ever seen. The only natural drop is when they drop dead naturally...but they'll go out kicking and screaming, demanding free healthcare that they didn't pay for, etc, etc.

refurb 12y ago

Labor force participation rate should be dropping. The baby boomers just started to retire. Since they make up a much larger proportion of the population than their age range implies.

hnnewguy 12y ago

>I fear that 1999 was "peak labor" A few percentage points over the course of 25 years? How significant is that over the course of millennia? People have been "fearing" peak labour for centuries. Guessing where technology will bring is 100+ years is futile.