The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

http://econ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/05/pdf_paper_paul-beaudry-great-reversal.pdf

by tacon • 11 years ago

82 90 11 years ago

econ.sites.olt.ubc.ca

marvel_boy• 11 years ago

high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers

I dont know about USA but this paper describes exactly labour southern european market

rewqfdsa5• 11 years ago

Enact a 20-hour work week. Our machines are powerful enough now that we should be able to devote our lives to human dignity, not work. Technology will only turn our world into a Dickensian hellhole if we let it.

justinmk3• 11 years ago

Humans want services from other humans. If humans aren't willing or able to pay other humans to do things, something is preventing that. Anything that can be provided by machines at negligible cost becomes a "general condition" (like air), so it isn't relevant to scarcity. If something is still scarce after that, it means some human labor is needed to provide it (or a bad actor is preventing it--e.g., labor laws or whatever).

rewqfdsa5• 11 years ago

But I'm not sure what point you're making. If market forces can operate in a world with a 40 hour default work week, they can operate in a world with a 20 hour work week. At the macroeconomic level, we're talking about tweaking a coefficient. So what? By shortening the work week, we can give many more people an opportunity to engage in dignified work, give them more leisure time, and spur further investment in labor-saving machinery, all in the same stroke.

gfodor2• 11 years ago

Serious question: what's special about now, as opposed to 10 years ago or 10 years from now?

rewqfdsa5• 11 years ago

I can't think of anything special about this instant, but look at prevailing conditions: the employment-to-population rate has plummeted in recent years [1]. The number of zero-margin-product people on disability has skyrocketed [2]. Income inequality has increased markedly [3]. Yet our GDP has increased tremendously during that time [4].

We just don't need as many person-hours as we used to need. The trend is only going to continue. Except in the case of people with exceptional cognitive endowments (like most of the HN readership), there's a labor glut.

We could just wait. The trend will continue. Eventually, things will come to a head (or several, under a guillotine). Instead, let's gracefully adapt to increased productivity by increasing the cost of labor. That's how we can let the population as a whole benefit from this productivity miracle.

[1] http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000 [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-disability... [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gini+coefficient+unite... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=United+States+real+GDP...

the_cat_kittles• 11 years ago

you can kind of do that now. of course it doesn't work for everyone's occupation as easily. you just have to decide not to care how you compare to other people. most of humanity lived with nothing!

winter_blue2• 11 years ago

Enact a 20-hour work week

"Enact" implies the government restricting everyone to working 20 hours per week. That's a violation of our freedom to work as many hours as we want.

I do support you in that all of people shouldn't have to work in order to meet the basic needs of life today (food, housing, and connectivity). Agricultural and industrial efficiency and automization has advanced to a point where we can provide these basic needs to 90% of the populace with only 10% of people maintaining/operating these machines.

A lot of people will continue to work 50 or 60 hours, because a lot of humans are naturally inclined to work. They derive pleasure and satisfaction from it. I would myself personally continue working, perhaps even harder than I do now, but would direct my efforts towards things that I enjoy more, and that are potentially more impactful, meaningful, and beneficial to society. Ensuring that everyone's basic needs are met would give people great personal freedom to pursue what they want.

How would we implement this? One possible way is basic income -- although it might be beneficial to incentivize productive and meaningful use of freedom that basic income gives people. We don't want a country where 50% of the population spends time watching soap operas, and eating junk food.

Just some of my thoughts...

AngrySkillzz• 11 years ago

Maybe, in the same way that industrial safety regulations violate our freedom to work in whatever environment we want.

nightski4• 11 years ago

I just can't get behind basic income. It makes sense from a very self-motivated individual's point of view (which many/most on HN are) but if you look at the majority of the country in my opinion most people are not driven this way.

I really feel like we would end up with a country where the majority just live on basic income and do nothing. At least now they must contribute to society on a basic level to earn an income, even if it is unsatisfactory (welfare and social programs aside).

prostoalex3• 11 years ago

I haven't seen a model of basic income where math makes sense.

If the government has a significant source of non-income revenue (Alaska), the payouts seem to be too trivial ($1,884 annually at yesteryear oil prices). Nice, but not a deal breaker.

US on the federal level is so dependent on income tax revenue, that you have to tax income to distribute that income.

jes7• 11 years ago

In the online dictionary I consulted, dignity is defined as "The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect."

I think productive work is one means by which individuals can become more worthy of honor and respect.

Thoughts?

pjmorris2• 11 years ago

Are you saying that work, not people, is what is worthy of honor and respect?

jjoonathan2• 11 years ago

Any successful scam is very productive in the economic sense. Does that make the scammer worthy of honor and respect? If Bill Gates gives away a billion meals to starving African children then he is 0% productive (no revenue!). Does that make Bill Gates unworthy of honor and respect?

Ken Levine (of BioShock fame) calls this the "circus of value." The disparity between economic terms and their moral/intuitive counterparts grows very large in certain important limits.

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

What's the value of your honor and respect?

I realize that sounds pretty dismissive, that isn't what I'm getting at. I'm asking a serious question about why you are framing the discussion in that way.

tbrownaw5• 11 years ago

Unused and less-used skills deteriorate over time. For skilled professions, how much time practicing is needed to counteract this?

Technology is changing very rapidly. As a software developer, I need to put in some amount of time keeping up with the changes. Someone specifically focused on web stuff would probably need to put in even more time keeping up. Lawyers will have to keep with new laws, and case law. I understand it's typical for licensed professions to require members to have ongoing education in order to keep their licenses. How much time keeping up is needed to stay current?

If you try to force a 20-hour work week, what do you do when people try to evade this by taking multiple jobs? What do you do about independent business owners who only employ themselves?

mahyarm2• 11 years ago

That only works if the fixed costs of a worker (benefits) are negligible at best. If employers need to keep on paying for health care, then it's always cheaper to overwork a worker unless the overtime makes it more expensive. So you need govt. health care for one to get rid of a fixed cost of employees before it becomes feasible for companies.

Also a single worker can produce more work until exhaustion effects start kicking in than a single worker. That equilibrium is probably around 40hrs. Communication and management overhead alone adds more fixed cost to adding an employee.

But if you look at the charts of average work weeks, you'll notice that they are going down. In parts of europe, a full time worker is becoming something between 30-40 hrs.

greggman• 11 years ago

How does gov health care change this? I pay $500 a year to health ins or $500 a year more in taxes. Either way I pay $500 a year. That's not an argument for or against gov health care I'm just asking for clarification why it matters for your point

prostoalex3• 11 years ago

They already have, more or less, with ACA coverage provisions. Old article, but

"Along with more workers clocking just below 30 hours in their primary jobs, CPS data show the number working 20-29 hours in secondary jobs rose 105,000, or 7.6%, from a year ago. Other Labor Department data also suggest an ObamaCare effect. The average retail workweek for nonsupervisors shrank to a three-year low of 30 hours in July, down from a post-recession peak of 30.8 hours in January 2012. That's the sharpest decline in the retail workweek since the early 1980s."

http://news.investors.com/080513-666340-obamacare-cuts-part-...

justinmk3• 11 years ago

It turns out that when you optimize for a specific statistic ("college graduates!") irrespective of market forces, the market becomes distorted. This happened in housing, and now education. Subsidized student loans (and other programs) optimize for education at any cost, so the costs of education are not weighed by students proportionately to the benefits. This is an accounting identity.

alexro• 11 years ago

short version: software is eating the world

uberdeveloper• 11 years ago

Mediocre people are getting pushed out. This is a good thing for the efficiency of the economy.

cubano• 11 years ago

By definition, "mediocre people" make up approx. 66% of the workforce. We are supposed to celebrate their inability to make a living?

walod• 11 years ago

Well if the trend is right, and continues, it means future generations will have to have education and a society that by default works in a critical thinking - always learning - always thinking kind of mode. This could be huge for humanity. I think it's mostly culture and societal norms that dictate the normal modes of thinking, and that most people can do just fine if they are brought up in the right environment. The other option is some kind of transformation or crash, or that technology fails somehow and crashes. Or? Well it could be a very bright future if the conditions are right and the planet allows it

tbrownaw5• 11 years ago

I thought "mediocre" was the middle one third, rather than the middle two thirds? ;)

qntty• 11 years ago

It might be, but it's probably not a good thing for the people who get pushed out.

T-A• 11 years ago

Until they go after the non-mediocre with pitchforks, torches and guillotines. It's not like history lacks precedents.

josephkern2• 11 years ago

If history is a teacher, there is usually a small cadre of non-mediocre people running the show.

jqm• 11 years ago

Where are they getting pushed out to? If you can't vaporize them (and you can't) what happens?

The failure of hubris isn't necessarily in obnoxiousness. It's in shortsightedness.

adevine• 11 years ago

Still, it's pretty obnoxious, too. There are a LOT of highly paid software developers with huge egos that think they are inherently special. I guarantee if we figure out how to better automate software development, they will be changing their tune, and quick. They (and I) just happen to be very fortunate to work in an industry that rewards our talents very highly.

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

A lot of people talk like humans are made to serve the economy, not the other way around.

If "the efficiency of the economy" really demands that an increasing number of people be unable to support themselves, that would mean that it's time to tear down the existing economy and replace it with something that works properly. is that what you want?

hellbanner• 11 years ago

A book about this: http://thelightsinthetunnel.com

tsotha• 11 years ago

None of this should come as a surprise. The powers that be looked at employment statistics and decided if everyone had a college degree we'd all be upper middle class and the toilets would clean themselves. But that's pushing on a string - increasing the supply of "cognitive" workers without increasing the demand just means there are going to be a whole lot of unemployed college graduates.

Johnythree• 11 years ago

Once it was assumed that increased productivity would benefit the whole community, hence the expectation that productivity would lead to higher wages and/or reduced working hours.

But that hasn't happened:

In the American version of Capitalism, any benefits from increased productivity flow direct to the super rich, leaving the poor and middle-class worse off.

Meanwhile, the European semi-socialist model is also rapidly being subverted by the American model.

tbrownaw5• 11 years ago

I suspect you are using a definition for "capitalism" that's based on something other than having private ownership of capital.

leereeves• 11 years ago

That's the view from the US and Europe, but the lives (or at least the incomes and energy consumption) of the poor in developing economies are improving.

Perhaps the benefits of increased productivity in the developed world are simply being counter balanced by increased global competition and an equalization of lifestyles.

logicchains• 11 years ago

increased productivity

Isn't part of the problem that many university degrees don't really provide any such "productivity" increases? Things like communications, postmodern art history and gender studies, while possibly contributing to the intellectual development of students (assuming students don't just spend the whole course drinking), don't really increase students' ability to do or produce anything that other people value enough to pay for.

kyllo• 11 years ago

University probably doesn't. Technology sure does.

eruditely3• 11 years ago

The super-rich seem much more concerned about the lives of the poor than the poor for each other.

sjtrny• 11 years ago

Fair enough, they're too busy being poor to care about anyne else.

switchbak• 11 years ago

Are you sure about that? I've seen exactly the opposite, that the richer you are (typically), the less empathy you express. Bill Gates being a notable counterexample.

Below a certain threshold, poverty is very damaging on a person, but nonetheless, I've seen many instances of poor people sharing what little they have.

This is all anecdotal of course, but there are studies showing an inverse correlation of wealth to empathy.

luisjgomez• 11 years ago

Ah yes. Grand conclusions drawn from 20 data points. Economic science wins again.

riazrizvi• 11 years ago

tldr; a surprising 2000 peak in white collar jobs is the reason for high unemployment today + complex mathematical models of questionable importance bury unclear economic assumptions.

The great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks (2013) [pdf]

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