[ronimacarroni]

I think there is an unspoken fact that we all know of but dare not say.
Machines are replacing human labor.
Yet despite that people are working more hours and getting paid less at the expense of other who want to participate in the labor market.
So the solution to the technology problem is for the government to pass laws limiting the amount of time an employee is allowed to work.
That means more employees working different shifts less hours.
That does pose the a problem regarding salary though, so maybe the government could subsidize the difference in the form of food stamps or section 8 housing.
Regardless of how the salary difference is solved, less working hours will solve the employment problem, which is the most pressing problem right now.

[Poelmo]

I think there is an unspoken fact that we all know of but dare not say.
Machines are replacing human labor.
Yet despite that people are working more hours and getting paid less at the expense of other who want to participate in the labor market.
So the solution to the technology problem is for the government to pass laws limiting the amount of time an employee is allowed to work.
That means more employees working different shifts less hours.
That does pose the a problem regarding salary though, so maybe the government could subsidize the difference in the form of food stamps or section 8 housing.
Regardless of how the salary difference is solved, less working hours will solve the employment problem, which is the most pressing problem right now.

As long as capital doesn't become too concentrated new jobs in the services sector can replace jobs lost through automation, this has happened many times in the past, but eventually the price people are willing to pay for unskilled services may fall below minimum wage, necessitating better education to keep everyone employed. At some point people start falling behind because they're simply not intelligent or interested in learning enough to stay with the increasing demands of education. There are ways to deal with this that do not entail the government keeping tabs on individual worked hours. Here are some examples: increasing the minimum wage per hour & shortening the work week (the number of hours you have to work before you are officially entitled to overtime compensation), and/or instituting a guaranteed minimum income that's considerably higher than today's welfare.

On problem with such measures is that they increase the price of labor in your country so you will lose part of your export sector and foreign investment.

[Potemkin]

eventually the price people are willing to pay for unskilled services may fall below minimum wage, necessitating better education to keep everyone employed.

A burger flipper with a degree does not provide better service than a burger flipper with only a high school diploma. Increasingly everyone's level of education will not increase the number of people in employment; it will simply result in lots of highly educated unemployed people with a student debt to pay back, which is a very bad idea, politically speaking.

[Decky]

it will simply result in lots of highly educated unemployed people with a student debt to pay back, which is a very bad idea, politically speaking.

Shame on you Pote.

It is a bad idea for the ruling class sure.

It is most certainly not a bad idea in an objective sense, it is a very good idea.

[Poelmo]

A burger flipper with a degree does not provide better service than a burger flipper with only a high school diploma. Increasingly everyone's level of education will not increase the number of people in employment; it will simply result in lots of highly educated unemployed people with a student debt to pay back, which is a very bad idea, politically speaking.

Jobs like burger flipping are under threat from automation, people need education to be able to move to new services sector jobs. The problem of unemployment you describe is the result of 1) lots of investment and jobs being outsorced to low-wage countries and 2) the number of people studying medieval Icelandic literature, etc... is too damn high.

[Potemkin]

Jobs like burger flipping are under threat from automation, people need education to be able to move to new services sector jobs.

No, they need training to be able to move to new service sector jobs. And where, by the way, are these extra service sector jobs to come from?

The problem of unemployment you describe is the result of 1) lots of investment and jobs being outsorced to low-wage countries and 2) the number of people studying medieval Icelandic literature, etc... is too damn high.

Item 1 is due to the onward march of globalisation, which now seems to be irreversible and unstoppable, and item 2 is based on a conflation between education and training. A burger flipper doesn't need a degree in anything, not even Business 'Arts'. He or she needs training.

[Poelmo]

No, they need training to be able to move to new service sector jobs.

Training is a form of education.

And where, by the way, are these extra service sector jobs to come from?

The money that is saved through automation has to go somewhere, buying more services is an excellent (and the only one besides hoarding goods) alternative to just hoarding your extra money.

Item 1 is due to the onward march of globalisation, which now seems to be irreversible and unstoppable

Yeah, but how's that relevant?

and item 2 is based on a conflation between education and training. A burger flipper doesn't need a degree in anything, not even Business 'Arts'. He or she needs training.

Again, training is a form of education. What is a conflation is thinking that the same person moves on from burger flipping to a service sector job, it's more likely a descendant of the burger flipper, why should they be confined to non-university level education? As education requirements for new service sector jobs keep increasing "training" will be insufficient for an increasing number of jobs.

[Potemkin]

As education requirements for new service sector jobs keep increasing "training" will be insufficient for an increasing number of jobs.

But why do you think the education requirements for service sector jobs are constantly increasing? It's because there are fewer and fewer of such jobs available, and so the employers are weeding out potential applicants in the easiest way possible - by demanding a university degree before they will allow you to flip burgers for minimum wage. Giving everyone a university degree will simply mean that employers will start demanding at least a Masters before they will let you flip burgers for them.

[mikema63]

My masters in molecular biology may one day allow me to herd the cattle rather than flip burgers.

[Poelmo]

But why do you think the education requirements for service sector jobs are constantly increasing? It's because there are fewer and fewer of such jobs available, and so the employers are weeding out potential applicants in the easiest way possible - by demanding a university degree before they will allow you to flip burgers for minimum wage. Giving everyone a university degree will simply mean that employers will start demanding at least a Masters before they will let you flip burgers for them.

No, you're thinking too much of the short term. 100 years ago most people worked on farms and in factories, jobs for which you didn't even have to know how to read and write, now most people work in offices where even the entry positions require you to work with computers and (in most countries) know a foreign language. Those who still work on farms or in factories need specialized training because they work with complicated machinery. All the simple tasks are taken over by machines, the jobs of the future are in designing, building, maintaining and supervising machines, in addition to science, medicine (inlcuding nurses) and entertainment. It's no different at the top of education: Albert Einstein received 4 years of higher education that started when he was 17, today a scientist starts 5 years of tertiary education at age 18 and pretty much has to go through a 4 year PHD program afterwards to be considered a "real" scientist.

Giving everyone a master's degree TODAY will lead to people with a master's degree flipping burgers, but in the future more and more jobs will require a master's degree (or some other form of in-depth specialized tertiary education) simply because what you do at the job is very complicated. With the university graduation rates of 100 years ago today's white collar based economy could not function and this trend will not reverse in the future.

[SueDeNîmes]

But why do you think the education requirements for service sector jobs are constantly increasing? It's because there are fewer and fewer of such jobs available, and so the employers are weeding out potential applicants in the easiest way possible - by demanding a university degree before they will allow you to flip burgers for minimum wage. Giving everyone a university degree will simply mean that employers will start demanding at least a Masters before they will let you flip burgers for them.

No, you're thinking too much of the short term. 100 years ago most people worked on farms and in factories, jobs for which you didn't even have to know how to read and write, now most people work in offices where even the entry positions require you to work with computers and (in most countries) know a foreign language. Those who still work on farms or in factories need specialized training because they work with complicated machinery. All the simple tasks are taken over by machines, the jobs of the future are in designing, building, maintaining and supervising machines, in addition to science, medicine (inlcuding nurses) and entertainment. It's no different at the top of education: Albert Einstein received 4 years of higher education that started when he was 17, today a scientist starts 5 years of tertiary education at age 18 and pretty much has to go through a 4 year PHD program afterwards to be considered a "real" scientist.

Giving everyone a master's degree TODAY will lead to people with a master's degree flipping burgers, but in the future more and more jobs will require a master's degree (or some other form of in-depth specialized tertiary education) simply because what you do at the job is very complicated. With the university graduation rates of 100 years ago today's white collar based economy could not function and this trend will not reverse in the future.

What does seem to be reversing, though, is the tendency of technology to create more jobs than it obviates. Those white collar jobs are going too now. More jobs requiring master's degrees doesn't necessarily mean more jobs, and neither does more masters degrees.

And the thing is.. do we actually want more jobs rather all working less? The ability to produce surpluses with less labour ought to be a good thing. But not if we endelssly create more work just for work's sake.

[Negotiator]

I think there is an unspoken fact that we all know of but dare not say.
Machines are replacing human labor.
Yet despite that people are working more hours and getting paid less at the expense of other who want to participate in the labor market.
So the solution to the technology problem is for the government to pass laws limiting the amount of time an employee is allowed to work.
That means more employees working different shifts less hours.
That does pose the a problem regarding salary though, so maybe the government could subsidize the difference in the form of food stamps or section 8 housing.
Regardless of how the salary difference is solved, less working hours will solve the employment problem, which is the most pressing problem right now.

That doesnt make sense.

What is the development you are talking about ? Progress in production technology results in productivity raises. That means, per worker and work hour, one can now produce more products.

Now theres a number of rational strategies to handle this:
1. Make the worker work less, so the production falls to previous level. Especially also the wages have to stay on the same level, otherwise consumption would fall.
2. Keep the worker and raise wages, in hope that consumption will raise, too.

What you propose is that we lower the work hours of the worker, but also lower the wages. This will reduce consumption - to a certain degree. Unless the physical minimum wage is reached - the worker will then be unable to lower their consumption any more, because otherwise they would starve to death.

Especially your idea will raise profit (unfairly) and increase unemployment.

[Poelmo]

What does seem to be reversing, though, is the tendency of technology to create more jobs than it obviates. Those white collar jobs are going too now. More jobs requiring master's degrees doesn't necessarily mean more jobs, and neither does more masters degrees.

This may not be due to the technology itself: globalization, the financial crisis and an increased concentration of wealth at the top may be to blame for this (the effect that I spoke off where a permanent unemployable class will begin to grow is too slow to explain today's numbers).

And the thing is.. do we actually want more jobs rather all working less? The ability to produce surpluses with less labour ought to be a good thing. But not if we endelssly create more work just for work's sake.

No, of course not, we want to have shorter work weeks in the future, that's what technology exists for in the first place and it's the only way to deal with the future unemployable class. However a shorter work week is a choice, people may choose to continue working long hours and increase their wealth over their spare time and in the short term this is our only option because otherwise globalization will take away even more jobs to low-wage countries than it has done now.

[Potemkin]

No, of course not, we want to have shorter work weeks in the future, that's what technology exists for in the first place

No, it isn't. Technology exists to increase productivity and thereby increase profits. A shorter working week may or may not be an unintended side-effect of this process.

[Poelmo]

No, it isn't. Technology exists to increase productivity and thereby increase profits. A shorter working week may or may not be an unintended side-effect of this process.

If you ask an economist, yes. If you ask an inventor/scientist/engineer they'll give the answer I just gave. I'd say the people who actually bring us new technology are the ones we should be listening to first, not the useless modern day fortune tellers who barely contribute anything of use.

[Potemkin]

If you ask an economist, yes. If you ask an inventor/scientist/engineer they'll give the answer I just gave. I'd say the people who actually bring us new technology are the ones we should be listening to first, not the useless modern day fortune tellers who barely contribute anything of use.

The motivations of the people who invent the technology (usually on a work-for-hire basis) are irrelevant. It is the use to which that technology is put which matters.

[Conscript]

If you ask an economist, yes. If you ask an inventor/scientist/engineer they'll give the answer I just gave. I'd say the people who actually bring us new technology are the ones we should be listening to first, not the useless modern day fortune tellers who barely contribute anything of use.

That explains why people are working less hours but making the same amount of money. Technology more or less just expands the market for a position and its widespread use pretty much negates the gains for labor.

also, there's lots of heresy in that avatar.

[Poelmo]

The motivations of the people who invent the technology (usually on a work-for-hire basis) are irrelevant. It is the use to which that technology is put which matters.

I disagree: the reason why people want to invent technology and the reason why most people want to see technology invented should determine how it's put to use. That a bunch of economists get a hard on from watching production figures go up instead of working hours go down is what's irrelevant.

also, there's lots of heresy in that avatar.

The forum rules forced me... I could paste my own head into the picture to make it look (a lot) more like him, but that'd be even worse heresy I suppose.

[quetzalcoatl]

As long as capital doesn't become too concentrated new jobs in the services sector can replace jobs lost through automation, this has happened many times in the past, but eventually the price people are willing to pay for unskilled services may fall below minimum wage, necessitating better education to keep everyone employed. At some point people start falling behind because they're simply not intelligent or interested in learning enough to stay with the increasing demands of education. There are ways to deal with this that do not entail the government keeping tabs on individual worked hours. Here are some examples: increasing the minimum wage per hour & shortening the work week (the number of hours you have to work before you are officially entitled to overtime compensation), and/or instituting a guaranteed minimum income that's considerably higher than today's welfare.

On problem with such measures is that they increase the price of labor in your country so you will lose part of your export sector and foreign investment.

From The Wealth of Nations:

A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude or menial servants. The labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past...The labour of the menial servant, on the contrary, does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. His services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and seldom leave any trace of value behind them, for which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be procured.

Soi disant 'service sector' jobs are merely the modern equivalent of being "in service," with automated systems taking on Smith's leveraged output. We are left with an interesting scenario. Most working adults are now part of the downstairs serving class, with the upstairs left unoccupied. So just what are the educational requirements of this alleged cornucopia of service jobs? Who knows? No one can say what they might be, and the variations on traditional personal service are rather limited.

There is a solution, however, and it has nothing to do with shortening the work week.

Automation is limited, in its current stage of development, primarily to in situ static installations. Robots will not, within any foreseeable future, be able to crawl under the sink and fix a faucet, to climb ladders and run electric conduit, to repair damaged bridges and roads, nor any of the other myriad tasks which require a genetically endowed hand-eye coordination combined with humans' marvelous kinesic virtuosity and the mental ability to plan work schedules under shifting and unpredictable conditions.

You see the opportunity here, don't you? In the US we have a crumbling transportation infrastructure and a generation of coal-fired electric generators whose average is 40+ years. These types of capital projects fulfill Smith's description of work that doesn't vanish in the instant it is performed.

The money for such a multi-generational project could be publicly financed with no danger of inflation, in today's slack job market and persistent environment of industrial overcapacity/disinflation. It would provide work for a at least two generations of masons, electricians, pipefitters, HVAC techs, steelworkers, rodbusters, welders, carpenters, and laborers (this is only a partial list) - and the educational requirements of these trades are well understood.

Such a plan would do at least two things. It would provide a direct stimulus to the economy via workers' wages, while at the same time providing a badly needed upgrade to the physical plant that undergirds modern civilization.

[Poelmo]

From The Wealth of Nations:

A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude or menial servants. The labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past...The labour of the menial servant, on the contrary, does not fix or realize itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. His services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and seldom leave any trace of value behind them, for which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be procured.

The service sector has changed a lot since Adam Smith walked the Earth. You do realize Albert Einstein was also a service sector worker, as were the inventors of the transistor? There is no reason to look down on service sector jobs.

Automation is limited, in its current stage of development, primarily to in situ static installations. Robots will not, within any foreseeable future, be able to crawl under the sink and fix a faucet, to climb ladders and run electric conduit, to repair damaged bridges and roads, nor any of the other myriad tasks which require a genetically endowed hand-eye coordination combined with humans' marvelous kinesic virtuosity and the mental ability to plan work schedules under shifting and unpredictable conditions.

Look far enough into the future and automation is not limited to in-situ installations, that's what this whole thread is about. Also, your stimulus infrastructure program won't work if there's simply not enough capital in the United States (or other Western nations) to pay for it. If all the factories move to low-wage countires and the owners and executives of those factories also disappear from Western nations you have nothing to fund your project with unless you are willing to reduce wages to the levels of the low-wage countries.