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Medical? Ok, one good field that will see growth and likely continue to expand as we move closer and closer to everyone having actual coverage.
There are a lot of very bright people who believe many -- perhaps most -- physicians can be replaced with AI. Watson already does a better job at differential diagnosis than most physicians, and Watson gets better every day.
The actual job themselves have changed, and will continue to change.
Very true. The best thing the government can do is to get out of the way. We can start by completely eliminating the corporate income tax, as corporations are pass-through entities; the burden of the corporate income tax is paid by people: a combination of end-consumers, employees, and shareholders. So let's just get rid of the corporate income tax altogether and raise the requisite tax revenue by raising taxes on people (it can be as progressive as you like).
If we did this, that giant sucking sound you would hear would be international corporations relocating their operations to the USA and competing for employees.
There are also a lot of very bright people who understand that automated support systems for diagnostic and treatment regimes is a helpful maid-and-butler service that was made possible by the electronic records-keeping requirements of the now-endangered PPACA.
Watson-like systems can and do reduce malpractice claims by assuring that unusual diagnoses are considered, that the proper drugs are dispensed on the proper schedules, and that treatment equipment is replaced on at the proper times.
Why do you think orphanages were more commonplace in the first half of the century? No welfare. My grandma's sister's husband left and she eventually had to give her kids to the orphanage. She's not the only one.
Moving costs money. Living in BFE and being poor and not highly intelligent leaves many people stuck.
Are there some lazy people? Yes. Are there some people who never get a break? Yes. My ex BF used to teach in the rural south and many of the (white) girls wanted to work and gtfo but they can't even get a pos car to get to work.
There is another way. We like to support the idea of individual freedom. People can pack up and move to areas where there are jobs. That has been going on for a long time.
We already have very low unemployment and many areas of the country where businesses are having a hard time finding workers. The jobs that were lost are not coming back, ever. Many of the jobs were in agriculture and ranching. Those industries have changed and mechanized. Fewer workers are needed. In fact very few are needed and the number keeps decreasing. Lots of jobs in small towns and cities involved retail sales. Those days are ending as well. Retailing is becoming more efficient with larger stores, fewer jobs, and in many cases internet sales have taken over. US manufacturing jobs started to decline in the 1970s well before globalization. The reason was automation, then computers and robotics. The old, low skilled manufacturing jobs are largely gone, forever.
A final issue is the matter of skills and education. There are plenty of jobs for those with an education, even specialized Associates level training, or for those who have skills as tradesmen. Those without skills are sinking to the bottom of the economic ladder.
What do you do when people don't have the money to move? Perhaps some relocation assistance might be a better usage of tax dollars than having people stay on public assistance.
A major consequence of modern economics (outsourcing & automation specifically) is that America has been hollowed out. People are jamming into a handful of major cities and causing a housing crunch there, while many small towns and cities have been half-emptied. They have no more industry and are just ghost towns with most remaining people on welfare, and dependent on the State or Federal govt to support basic services. I recently read an article about small towns in Pennsylvania that got rid of their local police departments and rely on the state troopers instead.
I can only think of 4 options:
1) Just accept that a large number of people will remain on welfare programs.
2) Declare these places "Economic Disaster Areas" and buy out the people the same way that the govt does for flood prone areas. Demolish the towns or just leave them there. Close the highway exits to the towns. Relocate the residents to areas where there are more jobs. This of course assumes that the majority of people will try to find jobs, and not just continue to milk welfare in a more expensive area.
3) Hope that Trump is successful in bringing back the jobs from overseas.
4) Similar to #3, impose some kind of incentives for companies within the U.S. to spread jobs out again from major cities to these low-cost areas.
Like a lot of popular thought, the original post is naive, in that it only takes into account a few highlighted issues and ignores or misses many others that make up the whole.
There is an obvious problem with moving people from "ghost towns" and into cities with an existing housing crunch. That alone is a recipe for disaster. Demolishing the towns is ridiculous. Aside from a massive trampling on property rights, the cost of legal fees, demolition costs, moving costs, and construction of new housing, etc. make this an absurd proposition.
The idea of a reset to a different economic time is also an opium dream. We might as well wish for buggy whip manufacturing to become great again. Politicians sell themselves by saying what gets them elected. What keeps them in power is money from those who understand the system and know which strings to pull. Sorry to burst that fifth grade view of the U.S. political system.
Some towns do shrivel up and die. There was a town in the 1800s in Vermont where everyone left after the year without a summer. Economics force moves. I had to move eight times in my career to follow jobs. Some people try to hunker down and make do, some people have remarkably low costs of living and moving makes little sense. Rural poverty has always been real and people survive. Survival in a city can be much harder and meaner.
Not everyone works. Trying to force everyone into labor of some sort is another naive notion, one that has been pounded into brains since before the great depression. Life doesn't work that way. Parents support kids, kids support parents, and family units don't put as much drain on the system as treating people as individuals. Moving people around breaks family ties and costs money.
Rural areas do have some jobs, perhaps more per person than some failed cities. There are still small farms. There are about three dozen or more within a two mile radius of me. There are also about that many failed farms and empty farmhouses from when cotton growing became mechanized. Those cotton picking jobs are never coming back and thank Gahd. You can't do a reset, no matter how great it sounds.
The costs of infrastructure in cities is Yuge. In contrast, the costs of rural wells and septic systems are completely borne by the homeowner. Power runs on inexpensive overhead distribution systems and not overbuilt underground systems that have to be constructed with excess capacity for any new apartment complex or skyscraper.
Distributed resources and populations are more resilient in disasters. I've been through hurricanes and seen how cities are effectively stopped for two weeks or more after a storm.
A real way of reducing costs is reducing the overreach of government and mandates and regulation. I remember growing up in a small town with a single police officer. The town has grown, but I'd be willing to bet the ratio of police officers to citizens is double what it used to be, and part of the reason is required paperwork and less time on the street.
This problem is nothing new. As changes are made in the USA, there are always going to be this problem. 60 years ago, it took 1/3rd of all working Americans to just grow the food for the residents. Now it takes 1.5% to do the same, due to the modern machinery. What happened to all the buggy wheel makers, and buggy whip makers. The truth is, it is not as much a change today as in the past.
Question: What should we do about all those towns with no jobs? Re-locate people?
Answer: "We" should not do anything.
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