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There are 90 million working-age Americans who do not currently have a job and also do not want one. These people do not seem to have trouble "finding meaning" in their lives. Those who believe that all they are is their work may have a little more difficulty with such things should they ever come to leave the labor force,
There are 90 million working-age Americans who do not currently have a job and also do not want one. These people do not seem to have trouble "finding meaning" in their lives. Those who believe that all they are is their work may have a little more difficulty with such things should they ever come to leave the labor force,
So I'm curious. Who is going to be willing to work at entry-level or low-paying jobs knowing that people are bringing in nearly as much as they are just by sitting at home and watching their big screen TVs all day?
You wanted change and technology has produced that change. People have to adapt. You can't blow off school and learning, take recreational drugs, run afoul of the law, and decide to put forth no effort and then expect to have the same life outcome as people who've made better choices.
Sometimes life is about luck, good or bad. I got it. But most times, your chances at having a decent life are amplified by following the rules and becoming competent at providing some good or service needed by society.
Nobody wants to be a slave to providing some healthy but lazy person's UBI. Nobody.
Today it snowed where I live. Who wants to be the one to slog through the slick and nasty weather to open up a BP gas/convenience store so that you can help guarantee a "rational distribution of purchasing power" to a capable person who'd just rather stay snugged up in his/her own bed? Geez. Talk about inequality.
At some point in the future many of the low end jobs will have been automated away.
At the present time, many of the low-end jobs of the past have already been automated away. This is part of a process that has been going on since 1750 or so.
So I'm curious. Who is going to be willing to work at entry-level or low-paying jobs knowing that people are bringing in nearly as much as they are just by sitting at home and watching their big screen TVs all day?
Because the income from an entry level job on top of basic income would provide a decent lifestyle.
Those who chose not to work are probably the same who are not working much now, and maybe we should be glad about that. There will never be work for everyone anyways so we should be happy that their are those who are ok with existing on the minimum.
At some point in the future many of the low end jobs will have been automated away.
Many are already gone due to automation and a great many other reasons including globalization, changes in agriculture, ranching and retailing and competition from millions of unskilled illegal aliens.
The message should be clear. Without education and/or skills, the future looks bleaker than ever. The world is changing rapidly. Not very long ago, families could get by decently in the middle class with jobs that required little education or training. Those days are coming to an end. The subsistence farmers in rural China are rapidly moving to the cities. They start with low paid, low skill jobs and many gain skills and advance. There are now many millions of fairly prosperous to rich Chinese. Those who sit on the farmer will find their jobs are being replaced by mechanized farming.
The message should be clear. Without education and/or skills, the future looks bleaker than ever.
Nope. The future looks bleaker than ever even if you DO have education and/or skills
This is the take away, the lesson, the point that is yet to be absorbed.
Focus on it.
The raw number of jobs, of any sort or kind, that will need to be done declines annually.
The raw number of humans who will need jobs increases annually.
The first fact is largely impossible to counter.
The second fact is entirely possible to counter.
Find a way.
But the problem today is more specific than just the raw numbers.
it's about the "quality" of the people who make up the numbers.
Or more accurately the lack of quality regarding the employment & compensation
capacity of far too many of us. We have too many of them to ever 'grow' out of the hole.
Whatever we might do to help this extant population (and indeed we have that obligation)
we can't embark on any program that doesn't first and primarily address them adding ever
more of themselves to be yet another obligation for our children and grands to pay for.
The raw number of jobs, of any sort or kind, that will need to be done declines annually.
.......
Clearly that is not the case. Unemployment is low and new job growth is still outpacing what is needed for population growth. On top of that everyone is still complaining about our sluggish economy. Now that the economy looks like it will pick up speed, it seems sure that inflation will grow and businesses will be limited by a lack of labor.
Clearly that is not the case. Unemployment is low and new job growth is still outpacing what is needed for population growth. On top of that everyone is still complaining about our sluggish economy. Now that the economy looks like it will pick up speed, it seems sure that inflation will grow and businesses will be limited by a lack of labor.
The unemployment rate masks the huge number of people who have dropped out of the workforce. Most of the jobs created since 2007 have been McJobs.
Another person asked how do people become unemployable? One answer is that they fail to work hard during school and their career. Of course there are many of these people.
However there are others who are born without the ability to do any work because the most routine jobs have been automated. Intelligence is normally distributed, and some jobs require more intelligence than others. Automation targets jobs with a low intelligence threshold first, then moves up the value chain.
Obviously we are not X-Men and are not evolving new powers every generation. The distribution of intelligence is fixed, and the median IQ moves very slowly. However machines are gaining new powers every generation. This is accelerating now. It's not hard to see that as the abilities of machines improve faster than the abilities of people, a larger and larger fraction of people will become unemployable.
So another answer to the question is that people become unemployable when they are born.
..and new job growth is still outpacing what is needed for population growth.
Check your figures. Look below the surface just a bit.
In particular at the low and no skill level of the job market.
Even at the higher levels the quarterly plus/minus of manufacturing hires/ layoffs is trending downward.
But even if what you assert were actually so (it isn't)...
we're still left with the issue of an ever expanding population.
This is NOT a good thing.
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