More accurately, he didn't resonate with old America... people stuck in their ways. The simple fact is, automation is continuing to replace more and more jobs... soon enough, there won't be enough jobs left, regardless of how menial, for everyone to have work capable of sustaining them...
Simple, yes, but it isn't any more a fact than it has been for the previous 150 years it has been a prediction. It may eventually come to pass, but I see no reason to believe this time is the one.
Well, for starters, we're reaching the point where even minimum wage jobs such as fast food order takers are at risk of being replaced with kiosks... so there is that.
It has indeed been a fact for at least the last 150 years. Automation is steadily replacing jobs - that started when the cotton gin* allowed farmers to process the same amount of cotton with 1/10 the workers. For most of that time, the increase in productivity gains that were incurred by replacing menial labor actually resulted in MORE employment** overall; there were always more supervisors needed for the machines, and more downstream jobs created. That, however, is changing now with the advent of better artificial intelligence. As an example, call centers are now vulnerable to replacement by good AI-driven voice recognition software, and the additional supervisory jobs gained does not offset the losses of the operators themselves. And dhere is no additional employment made possible by such a replacement. (* - the cotton gin was invented around 1800 but did not have a significant impact until 1840 or so.) (** - or in the case of the cotton gin, slavery.)
"At risk" = hasn't happened yet. (And that's eliminating a job without there being other work to replace it.)
Your tone makes it sound like you are disagreeing with me/agreeing with Kitt, but you aren't. Kitt doesn't exactly connect the logic, but implies that jobs being eliminated by technology results in fewer jobs, when the reality has been (as you correctly point out) that jobs being eliminated by technology results in MORE jobs. As I said to Kitt, you are suggesting something that might happen ("vulterable") as if it has already happened. What is the fact/reality today is that the USA is near full employment (which is to say that pretty much anyone who wants a job can get one).
That is not a law of the universe. It is a circumstantial fact correlated with a particular phase of the industrial revolution. The mechanism is not well described, and has been somewhat mysterious and/or unexpected - there are good indications that it is no longer happening. What is mysterious is not therefore inevitable, in short.
I was agreeing with Kitt. The simple fact is that automation is continuing to replace more and more jobs. It is happening now. What were once considered middle-class jobs are dwindling and forcing the remaining workers into service-industry jobs. A good article on this: ==================== MIT Technology Review How Technology Is Destroying Jobs Automation is reducing the need for people in many jobs. Are we facing a future of stagnant income and worsening inequality? by David Rotman June 12, 2013 Given his calm and reasoned academic demeanor, it is easy to miss just how provocative Erik Brynjolfsson’s contention really is. Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine. That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s claim is more troubling and controversial. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other technologically advanced countries. Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence, according to Brynjolfsson, is a chart that only an economist could love. In economics, productivity—the amount of economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of labor—is a crucial indicator of growth and wealth creation. It is a measure of progress. On the chart Brynjolfsson likes to show, separate lines represent productivity and total employment in the United States. For years after World War II, the two lines closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern is clear: as businesses generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverge; productivity continues to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call it the “great decoupling.” And Brynjolfsson says he is confident that technology is behind both the healthy growth in productivity and the weak growth in jobs. It’s a startling assertion because it threatens the faith that many economists place in technological progress. Brynjolfsson and McAfee still believe that technology boosts productivity and makes societies wealthier, but they think that it can also have a dark side: technological progress is eliminating the need for many types of jobs and leaving the typical worker worse off than before. Brynjolfsson can point to a second chart indicating that median income is failing to rise even as the gross domestic product soars. “It’s the great paradox of our era,” he says. “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up. Brynjolfsson and McAfee are not Luddites. Indeed, they are sometimes accused of being too optimistic about the extent and speed of recent digital advances. Brynjolfsson says they began writing Race Against the Machine, the 2011 book in which they laid out much of their argument, because they wanted to explain the economic benefits of these new technologies (Brynjolfsson spent much of the 1990s sniffing out evidence that information technology was boosting rates of productivity). But it became clear to them that the same technologies making many jobs safer, easier, and more productive were also reducing the demand for many types of human workers. ======================
Trump announced his senior strategist would be Stephen Bannon. That's bad news. Bannon is the leader of Brietbart and the alt-right which is associated with racism and white nationalists. That's a very poor choice, and it won't go unnoticed by Democrats and some Republicans. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-presidency.html?_r=0
Well, times change and governments may have to be redefined as well as the way we live. You can create other types of jobs or at least there will be more leisure time or time itself for families as well as more time to pursue education etc.
I didn't claim that it was, I just pointed out that the inverse, which was claimed as a fact is in fact not a fact. Again: It may some time in the future become a fact, but it is false today.
In that case, you misunderstood what Kitt said because this statement from you: "For most of that time, the increase in productivity gains that were incurred by replacing menial labor actually resulted in MORE employment** overall;" ...disagrees with him because the implication from his "...there won't be enough jobs left...." is that employment prospects have been decreasing when in fact you and I both agree that up to this point they have been increasing. It's understandable though, since Kitt's claim also conflates a prediction for the future with a fact. The idea that jobs are becoming stratified is a different claim, and also one I agree with, and also one that Kitt's claim is incompatible with.
So you claim that because automation is creating some new high-tech / high-skill jobs (the people creating, installing, maintaining, repairing the robots), that the many many more people it is putting out of work isn't a problem? Example - robots on automobile manufacturing lines; how many individuals lost their jobs in favor of a machine that could do the same repetitious job faster and more accurately (such as a robot arm that does a series of welds)? Now, how many of those positions do you think were actually substituted with jobs maintaining said assembly line equipment? We have held a sort of line on this based on the fact that machines didn't have a humans intuition nor ability to "see" what it was working on as well as a person... well, that's changing. Robots can see as well, if not better, than we can; move and articulate far more accurately, faster, and without fatigue than we can; can handle heavier tools and implements... and now, with the advancing of AI... they are starting to be able to do more than just repeat a single task, but can adapt to changing conditions and even make decisions based on evolving criteria. We are at an impasse... and we can either accept that we are no longer creating enough new work to replace that which machines are taking away or, well... we can let bad shit happen.
It kind of looks like it's true today - that was the point. The argument that what we seem to see happening isn't happening is based on historical precedent. I would make the further point that it isn't the job that is being eliminated exactly, but rather the return to labor - automation has been returning to capital only, since about 1980. So even if other jobs replace the lost ones, they do not replace the lost return to the greater productivity.
To his point, up until now that was a net benefit. The robots displaced assemblers, and thus could make cheaper (relatively speaking) cars. Most of that workforce was lost. Some was retained for maintenance workers, but most were out of a job. Still, net employment stayed the same or improved, because cheaper cars created other industries - road construction, gas station attendants, geologists and oil rig workers, construction jobs in the suburbs etc. That's why automation initially displaced jobs (and continues to do so) but increased both average income and employment. However, as McAfee points out, that is no longer true. Since labor is fairly flexible, the loss of good jobs has not resulted in unemployment, but rather movement towards lower-income jobs that are not yet competitive with automation. We are seeing this at a societal level as jobs move toward service industries away from manufacturing. This will continue until wage pressures start pushing wages below minimum wage, at which point unemployment will increase.
Not only will it increase unemployment, but it will hamper those who are working those jobs because while wages will (continue to) stagnate, cost of goods will continue to rise due to inflation.
Cost of goods will rise due to inflation; partially compensating for that will be a drop in real cost due to the savings from automation. (The local supermarket will get a bit cheaper when all their tellers are automated, for example.) So what will happen in effect is a stagnation; a growing separation from a stuck-in-place lower class with an ever-rising upper class. (We're seeing that now.) Which has its issues, but is better than a dropping lower class.
Maybe. But it won't get as much cheaper as the lost wages make necessary for the lower class to stay level - instead, some fraction of the cost savings will be passed up to the provider of the capital, rather than passed on to the grocery shopper. The net, to the local economy and everyone in it, is a loss.
Both must happen in a capitalistic society. The capital providers must be paid back, since they will expect a return on the money used to purchase the checkout machines. And the prices must then drop, since any store not doing this is quickly out-competed by other companies with better management.
