[grecy]

For sure, but I wonder what you (or anyone) is going to do about it.

Eventually, you simply have to go to work for a roof over your head, food and healthcare.

It doesn't really matter if you like it or not. If you current job ceases to exist you will get another job, or you will die.

[EatingWithForks]

Yes, I'm just pointing out the retraining isn't actually the real alternative people think it is. It's directly lowering the quality of life and destroying the economic future of an entire industry's worth of people and all their families/dependents. This is important to deal with as it is, not with some bs "well we offered them retraining!" as if that means anything.

[grecy]

> It's directly lowering the quality of life

I would argue that any long-haul trucker or coal miner will have a much higher quality of life when those jobs go away and they re-train for something where they don't have to be away from their families doing dangerous things.

[kstrauser]

But not as much as not retraining. Given the choice between a ship and a lifeboat, I’d take the ship. Choosing between a lifeboat and treading water, scoot over and hand me an oar.

[EatingWithForks]

I'm arguing that retraining isn't really the lifeboat people are saying it is.

Just be upfront: removing jobs is drowning people. That's it. Don't comfort yourself with "retraining" programs like they mean anything. They don't. Acting like you're giving them an oar is just insulting them on top of taking their livelihoods, so I understand the anger.

[dventimi]

> Eventually, you simply have to go to work for a roof over your head, food and healthcare

No, you don't. Plenty of retired people don't go to work and yet they have all of those things.

[grecy]

> No, you don't. Plenty of retired people don't go to work and yet they have all of those things

of course, retirement is an option.

But we're talking about people that need to re-train, so I'm assuming here we're talking about people who are not yet ready to retire

[dventimi]

If somebody can't or won't re-train, don't you think maybe they're ready to retire?

[grecy]

They might want to, but obviously they can't if they don't have enough saved

[dventimi]

I don't regard that as obvious. A social safety net COULD catch them when they fall out of the workforce. We don't seem to have such a safety net in America, but that's a consequence of politics, not of economics or technology. Confronting those politics admittedly is a tall order, but consider the alternative: retarding innovation, wasting human potential, and maintaining make-work jobs because politics is hard? Is that really the hill you wanna die on?

[grecy]

> but consider the alternative

You make it sound like there are only two choices:

1. Confronting the politics of building a social saftey net in America.

2. Retarding innovation, wasting human potential, etc. etc.

Yet there is a perfectly good third solution that has worked countless times in history when technology has made certain jobs redundant, and will without a doubt continue to work long into the future.

3. Re-skill and get a different job.