Technology is killing jobs. (construction job, employment, debt, average)
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The view that technology is killing more jobs than it is replacing is finally hitting the mainstream. The AP has a story on it, and 60 Minutes recently (1 or 2 weeks ago) did a piece on it. If this keeps up, capitalism may prove to be obsolete.
25% of the American workforce worked in manufacturing about 40 years ago. Today, that number is at 8%. We're producing more goods however. How can that be? Replace a human doing repetitive tasks with a computer or robot.
40 years ago, how many American workers worked in IT? How many American workers work in IT today?
Much of the workforce has migrated to IT work, or migrated into non-IT work(payroll, sales, HR, accounting) for IT companies that have their hand in the automation.
Capitalism isn't what people think it is. Capitalism really is rich people using middle and lower class people to generate income through a business. A capitalist gets to use the market, use the banking/monetary system to their advantage at the cost of others. Capitalists get to go bankrupt over and over when their idea doesn't work with infinite chances to get it right and entice others into indentured servitude.
It isn't 'killing jobs' it is changing the nature of jobs. Technological progress is essential to a capitalistic system. Productivity increases which is the only reason wages are able to increase with inflation as they have done over the last 70 years in this country.
We need to thank technology, not fight against it.
In healthcare it is one of the best things going. Take a lab at the hospital, our hospital anyway. Your in the hospital and a Doctor orders tests done on your blood lets say. The Doctor wants 5 tests done on the blood. In the past someone would draw your blood and deliver it to the lab where it would be taken to five differant diagnostic machines. As soon as one test is done the blood would be removed and delivered to the next machine. Information from each machine would be diagnosed and after all tests were completed information would be hand delivered to a Doctor to look at the results. A report would be put together and your Doctor would get that information.
Today someone still draws your blood and takes the sample to the lab where it is placed on a machine. A tech enters into a computer the kind of tests that are needed for the sample. The machine delivers the sample to each diagnostic device. Results are compiled and a report is sent to the Lab Doctor. Results are also sent to your Doctor, more than likely ending up on their phone or iPad in real time. You have eliminated anywhere from 3 to 7 people in the process. At the same time few people were taking the jobs anyway. What you had was employees getting lots of overtime to make the process happen.
In todays hospital information is king. Getting it fast is what is wanted. We used to have machines that would process your X Rays. Those are done on computer now. Charting used to be done by hand, it is done on computer now and all that information is available to all concerned parties in real time. You used to have to fill out tons of paperwork in the past most of it redundent. Not so today. So many things to mention that it would take pages of posts to mention it all.
Still people are working. They just do differant things. When jobs close down other jobs open up. The problem that I see is old school workers are not always prepaired to take on the new jobs.
Just because technology advances doesn't mean we will all be out of jobs and living poor as unemployed people. There will always be jobs to be had. Whether you want to grow WITH technology or slowly be overtaken by it is up to you. Anybody currently residing in a first world countries have a one up against other underdeveloped countries. That is why its a waste when we see people who don't take advantage of our education system and availability of technology.
The problem that I see is old school workers are not always prepaired to take on the new jobs.
THAT is the real problem. Well, I wouldn't use the term "old school", but anyways...
I could eventually find myself and my occupation phased out through pervasive technology. It won't happen overnight though. My field will always be here, but the wide spread need of it will die down substantially, eventually. But at what point do I retrain? Now? Or in 20 years? Give up a nice paying job that I love for something else that might get phased out in 20 years?
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