[nartsbtaa]

> That doesen't change that for some people their job is all they have. If you take that away they have no realistic future unless it's some post scarcity society.

This has always been the case throughout history: new technology makes some jobs irrelevant, and humans adapt by doing new jobs. It's unfortunate for people who cannot or will not adapt, but historically people have been resilient to such changes.

It's a legitimate issue when there aren't enough jobs to employ a significant portion of the population, and perhaps we're starting to reach that point now. We're seeing a decoupling in our economy: job growth is slowing while corporate growth and profits continue to rise. On one hand, this indicates that we are heading towards post-scarcity conditions. On the other hand, the current arrangement is that an increasing amount of wealth is being distributed to a decreasing number of people, leading to greater wealth inequality.

What can be done? We might increase wage/salary while cutting the number of hours worked per week, allowing more people to work while still providing a livable income. A basic income is another option, but that seems extreme; things would have to get much worse (or better, depending on your long-term view of automation) before that's taken seriously on a large scale.

[ThomPete]

It hasn't always been the case though.

It's only been the case for around 200 years. Before that the progress was so slow that there was no issues transitioning as most kind of work took generations to change.

The problem is that now things changes so fast that lots of people simply can't re-educate them selves and the market doesn't really need that many people, yet we have no plan what so ever for this issue besides UBI and a hope that technology will allow us to create a post scarcity society. Hourly wages rarely even make sense since thats exactly the kind of jobs that normally could be calculated that way which are going away.

I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are besides to the countries we've been outsourcing them too.

But jobs moving to China and India isn't solving the underlying issue and I simply don't understand why people don't take it more seriously and why Luddite fallacy keeps coming up. It's not that good an explanation (not saying you talked about luddite fallacy just in general)

[nartsbtaa]

> But jobs moving to China and India isn't solving the underlying issue

I thought we were talking about automation and technology? What do China and India have to do with this? I never said it's good for a society when their jobs are displaced to another region.

> I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are

I would really urge people to think of "jobs" and "productivity" as separate metrics, since productivity will likely continue to climb as the number of jobs continues to fall. The challenge will be reacting to that effectively; trying to reverse the hands of time to bring back jobs is futile.

If jobs are moving from one region to another, that's mostly unrelated to technological progress. Instead, it's because low skill labor has moved to low cost markets with low standards of living. We'll get these jobs back when we have a lower standard of living then rural China and India.

In the meantime, our scientific and technological edge has been one of the few things keeping our economy semi-competitive. Can you imagine if we lost the low wage jobs and the highly skilled jobs? We probably won't have to wait much longer.

[ThomPete]

I am thinking about jobs and productivity as two separate metrics which is exactly why I am coming to the conclusions I am.

Productivity goes up because of technology but those who gain financially are mostly those who work in technology or own resources.

Cost of living is going up too which while salaries for most aren't. The kind of jobs you can get if you aren't in a few privileged industries are wallmart jobs or part time jobs. 12 million people are about to get a run for their money when the one job that couldn't be outsourced suddenly can to robots.

So no I don't believe the competitive edge in the US is really about it's technological or scientific edge but rather a host of other things like the dollar which allow US to stay afloat despite it's soon to be 20 trillion dollar deficit, the size of the market, it's access to the international markets, the system which doesn't redistribute well and so on.

I have no interest of low-wage jobs coming back. What I do have an interest in is that people recognize that a lot of people are being left behind not just brushing it aside as the price of progress. Because never before have so many been left behind with no real chance of a future unless it's on welfare. And if you think this election was bad just wait til the next one, unless we start recognizing the problems and actually address them.

[ThomPete]

I was about to answer you first question but I can see you removed it.

With regards to your second:

We are. I was just trying to pre-empt the claim that more jobs have been created.

[nartsbtaa]

Sorry, I removed it because I realized I misinterpreted your comment.