The devalued American worker

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/14/the-devalued-american-worker/

by petethomas • 12 years ago

28 27 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

binarymax• 12 years ago

Its going to get worse. When cars and trucks drive themselves we'll see the loss of millions of jobs.

talideon• 12 years ago

You might be interested in CGP Grey's 'Humans Need Not Apply' video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

walterbell2• 12 years ago

That may take a while, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...

"But the maps have problems, starting with the fact that the car can’t travel a single inch without one ... all 4 million miles of U.S. public roads will be need to be mapped, plus driveways, off-road trails, and everywhere else you'd ever want to take the car. So far, only a few thousand miles of road have gotten the treatment .., The company frequently says that its car has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand mapped miles, driven over and over again."

nl• 12 years ago

The vast majority of professional driving is done on predictable routes, from a port to a warehouse or from one warehouse to another.

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

I'm looking forward to it.

You read that correctly. The sooner we have a huge portion of the population become unemployed and unable to find other work (because all similar unskilled labor is automated), the sooner we can start to seriously reconsider the notion that everyone must have a job. I predict that the day automated driving becomes the norm is the day the first unconditional basic income bill is debated in Congress.

eli_gottlieb• 12 years ago

Good. It's about time. We really ought to be working to bring this about: people should be freed from their godawful jobs to do something enjoyable and meaningful with their lives.

nchelluri2• 12 years ago

Is this paper taking a significantly more left-leaning direction over the past couple of years?

That's my perception, just curious if anyone else thinks so as well.

glesica• 12 years ago

Or maybe reality has a left-leaning bias in this case...

gpvos• 12 years ago

I think it's more that society has veered to the right.

cowardlydragon2• 12 years ago

Depends, has the mere mention of anything that doesn't benefit / isn't in the interest of the top 1% of 1% qualify as commie?

nchelluri2• 12 years ago

Though this post was from a while ago, I now realize I was confusing The Washington Post with The Wall Street Journal.

Not sure how I made that mistake, but that would explain the "change in viewpoint"...

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

"That’s what happens in recessions. But for decades after World War II, lost jobs came back when the economy picked up again."

Before WWII there was 1930s depression(stock crash). In the WAR ALL CAPITAL was destroyed outside the US, making US to become the ruler of the world.

Today there has not been depression yet, the stock crash or hyperinflation or whatever happens is not here yet.

Bailouts, QE, Keynesianism, stock pumping means those that have created the crisis have not paid for it, but the people.

Everything else is just noise and confusion. The people that are controlling more and more wealth also control the media.

They are really scared about the future. They prefer to confront each other against each other("they are taking your jobs"), or against an external enemy(Russia, China) that to lose their current status quo.

You see all those articles about automation or immigration taking people's jobs, but in reality is as simple as those controlling the wealth's representation(money) giving it all to themselves first with the geometric, not algebraic methods of redistribution printing money gives them.

I have actually earned hundreds of times what I "invested" on the stock market. It is not because I am smarter, but because I understood the game. I have a company in the real world in which a 10% profit per year is great news. In the stock I have won 200% profit rates!! on recent years. This is unsustainable.

alvarosm3• 12 years ago

This is logical. Engineers sell their talent for peanuts to technology companies, who then own all their work that automates tasks, which makes unqualified workers worthless. A lot of you might bitch and moan about it (you're "socially conscious", a socialist or whatever)... well, you're enabling this, so know your responsibility in it.

The big problem with this trend in the long term is that big masses of uneducated people might take control eventually; populist revolutions and communist-like rule of a Stalin-like redneck dictator is not at all out of the question. They may confiscate the technology, but they can't simply make a worthless worker do worthy work so they might be paid barely enough, for doing nothing worthy, an aberrant lifestyle anyway. And we may very well get there without a bloody revolution too, with most oblivious to the slow shift even.

logn4• 12 years ago

Engineers are subject to the same problems of labor scarcity (or lack thereof) as the people whose jobs are automated. Engineers are also automating their own jobs. If they could sell their talents for more than peanuts, they would; many try and fail ("striking out on their own").

I think a social awakening is more likely than a populist revolt. Simple solutions such as raising effective corporate tax rates, banning money from politics, and minimum wage reforms could avert revolution.

might be paid barely enough, for doing nothing worthy, an aberrant lifestyle anyway

I don't agree this is the direction. And if we do head there, it's more likely due to total automation and AI (rather than a Stalin-like ruler). In that future, people won't starve in the streets, they'll be working subsidized jobs. And that sounds a lot like today's reality anyway (not a sci-fi dystopia).

alvarosm3• 12 years ago

I'm thinking more of those who make, say $200k, and are content with solving puzzles all day long without caring for much else. Those who can make a difference who don't care what difference they're making.

Awakening is the opposite term for what that is. Rising the corporate tax until when? until businesses are barely profitable? that's effectively confiscating the technology and letting them run it more efficiently than the state can, that's the road to the new communism. Minimum wage reform, same thing. Plus, this is all economic suicide if we look at the rest of the economy, not just the automation-enablers, but that would be going too off-topic here.

Yes, this all sounds like today because we're on our way to that dark future. And we're calling it awakening apparently, see why I said people would be oblivious to the shift?

caniscrator• 12 years ago

With great power comes great responsibility. With the help of technology, despite our plans of paving ways to make this world a better place to live. The future still tends to be scary for many.

cowardlydragon2• 12 years ago

Demand starved economy is starved of demand...

NO WAY

Minimum Wage leads to inflation, but printing money to bail out banks doesn't...

fred_is_fred• 12 years ago

Green made a bunch of mistakes. Drop out of school. Leave a job with a pension when instead he could have moved his mother to New York. It sounds like he just moved without a job or a plan. I know the economy is changing but anyone who just bails on a decent paying job and moves with a family and no job prospects would be in the same situation. There's obviously more behind this story.

The devalued American worker

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