http://gizmodo.com/5851062/generation-x-is-sick-of-your-bullshit :o
I don't know man. I'm square in the gen X, but I feel bad for the kids today. It seems that they have a lot less opportunity than I did. I met a smart 22 y.o. college graduate who has applied to 100 jobs and hasn't gotten an interview yet.
I'm a dyslexic dude in my early forties, I have four kids and I'm still able to pay my bills. I'm worried for the generation coming up after the millennials. When you have robots making hamburgers, driving trucks and building buildings what are people going to do for a living?
I copied this post from reddit --didn't write it myself.
I dunno what the answer is, but I do know that this post is right. The example I use is toll-booth attendants. In the 60s, there were hundreds of thousands of people employed as toll collectors. Now we have hoppers, transponders, even license-plate scanning cameras.
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For every job opening in the US, there are 3 people looking for work. That's really all you need to know.
And it's going to get worse.
You know that fancy billing program that generates quotes and invoices automatically? That used to be someone's job.
That fancy spreadsheet? That was someone's job once.
I remember when I was going to school for Drafting and all of the instructors were insistent on the fact that you absolutely, positively, 100% HAD to have an expert knowledge of trigonometry in order to draw.
But you don't. The best grade I ever got in Trig was a D+. And I can draw. I've never needed to do anything beyond basic math when using AutoCAD.
It's more than just robots that are going to take our jobs away. Automation in software is going to do as much if not more damage to the outlook. Engineering degrees are becoming less and less about the concepts behind design. They are teaching you less and less why to design something a certain way and more and more how to do so. A modern engineering degree is more of a "How to use software programs X,Y and Z" course than a "how to engineer" course.
Back before these tasks were automated in software, they had to be done by hand, by very smart people, who were in extreme high demand, and made lots of money as a result.
Software has dumbed-down so many of those advanced tasks that someone with barely any knowledge of the concept behind it can do the task equally as well as the knowledgeable person. Companies see that and the "Cost savings! Cost savings!" alarm goes off in the board room. No need to hire the engineer who got straight As and has 30 years of experience when the intern knows the software better.
We're moving very quickly to becoming a post-scarcity society where automation and advances in information technology make just about everything so cheap to make and obtain it basically becomes free.
Now, we may laud these advances and say "that's the whole point! We don't have to work as much!" But when you look at what's actually happening, it's the opposite. My generation (I'm either a millenial or a gen-xer depending on who you ask, but this applies to both) works longer hours than the generations before us. We take fewer vacation days. We are more productive.
But at the same time, we are getting paid less. Why? Because we're still living in that old mentality where hours worked has a direct correlation to added value to the company. Most of us know that's not true, and few companies are under the illusion that everyone is exactly as productive at 4:30 pm on a Friday as they are at 10 am on a Wednesday. But how do you measure productivity? We haven't figured that out yet, at least not in a way that's fair, consistent, and manageable. Until we do, we're still largely going to pretend that hours = value, and watch as hours get cut, benefits get slashed, and older, more skilled workers are put out to pasture and replaced with younger, cheaper workers. All of the value automation adds to a process go directly to the top, and the human workers get their wages slashed and their jobs cut.
The unemployed are sneered at with derision for not "wanting to work," as if there is some pressing task that needs to be accomplished that isn't already being done. That's the old farmhouse mentality again. 100 years ago if you didn't work, you died. That's not true now. It can't be true because there isn't enough work to keep everyone busy in the first place. We've corporatized, mechanized, and automated farming, banking, government, you-name it. We have unemployed because things don't need to get done like they used to. But the concept of paying someone not to work is such an anathema to the down-home, work-based, agricultural values we were raised with that most of us simply shut our brains off when we even hear the notion.
Either we accept the fact that even if every job opening were filled today, there'd still be millions of people who will be perpetually unemployed and deal with that in a humane manner; or, we continue to let the system work as if we're all agricultural workers and let those increase profits reaped by automation rise to the top, and wake up one day realizing the middle class has all but disappeared and the feudal system has returned.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21594298-effect-todays-technology-tomorrows-jobs-will-be-immenseand-no-country-ready
Looks like yet another employment door shutting on millennials...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKWrWH0CapY
Geez, and I thought I was pessimistic
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-rich-and-their-robots-are-about-to-make-half-the-worlds-jobs-disappear
This may sound like a very odd idea, but maybe the future will look a lot more like the past, where people tiller their own small parcel of land, raise their own food and build their own houses.
I hear you, but that goes against the urbanization trend in 1st-world populations.
>This may sound like a very odd idea, but maybe the future will look a lot more like the past, where people tiller their own small parcel of land, raise their own food and build their own houses.
I think you are right, but only in the west.
Asia has already conquered the economic world, we just haven't realised it yet, the best the west can hope for is that we get labour costs low enough to be able to supply cheap stuff to Asia instead of North Korea.
The high end stuff is already locked in to Italy and France, England may have a small glimmer of a chance, our colonial cousins less than zero.
>EU may have a small glimmer of a chance
From what I've seen, I don't think so. Western-EU has lead us in salting away the unemployed/unemployable in subsidized housing, subsidized everything. That will explode one day.
Quote from: littleman on January 22, 2014, 09:13:53 PM
This may sound like a very odd idea, but maybe the future will look a lot more like the past, where people tiller their own small parcel of land, raise their own food and build their own houses.
I think for the average person, the post WW II prosperity was the exception rather than the rule. We are going back to sort of a 1900 - 1920 way of life, with parents living under the same roof as children and grandchildren.
Agree the West can't compete until we work as hard or work for less.
Not sure how the 3 looking:1 job ratio is affected more, by technology taking jobs or too many people in the first place.
The robots are going to kill Chinese jobs too.
http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/12/1-million-robots-to-replace-1-million-human-jobs-at-foxconn-first-robots-have-arrived/
Here's the thing; everyone seems to focus on finding enough jobs to soak up the labor force. My thinking is that there simply will never be enough jobs, that they will continue to be automated out of existence. Essentially, if a person will be expected to 'earn a living' rather than just be supported by his country's social safety net then -well- somebody is going to starve. I think, given the advances we're seeing, that we're at or approaching peak population.
One of the problems I see with being un employed, is the potential for lack of self worth.
Its not about work, work can give people a sense of their value. So finding other ways of finding important roles is key.
Taking care of the old and infirm might be one way. Robots cannot do that. People need people still. imho. (I do anyway)
>infirmed
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/19/national/robot-niche-expands-in-senior-care/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24949081
<added>
Hell, in the US we won't even be able to depend on our employer of last resort.
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/robots-may-replace-one-fourth-us-combat-soldiers-2030-says-general
>Robots cannot do that
With their aging population acting as a driver Japan is already well on the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiUJ0PuYcsI
>if a person will be expected to 'earn a living' rather than just be supported by his country's social safety net then -well- somebody is going to starve
As you know I spend a lot of time in Asia, Vietnam mostly, and that is certainly the case there. No work? bad accident? long term illness? then you would starve to death. What saves them is family not the state, I'm not sure we can make that readjustment back to extended families in the west quick enough to stop people starving.
If you get the chance and can find it this is currently causing a big storm in the UK, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/benefits-street ,well worth a watch to see the logical end game of social "safety nets". It appears to have come as somewhat of a shock to many in the UK (not to me as that's largely how I was brought up) such a shock that I think we may start to see some real changes in the welfare system. No that it will change much in the face of the tsunami of an aging population and free health care.
I agree that there will need to be some type of base income that isn't tide to productivity, otherwise we're likely to have global civil unrest -- or even a push towards fascism as governments reign down on civil rights to control the massive amounts of poor. That said, I think there will need to be some tie to labor. I am old enough to remember the effects of having multiple generations of a family on welfare here in California before the state put in limits. Stagnation, and no need to strive caused many of my neighbors to slide down into a life of crime. I think people need more than just food and shelter, they need purpose. The model will need to provide people with a way of earning a living -- even if it means that labor is protected from replacement by machines by law in some cases. This is a really complicated mess brewing and it will be very easy to do wrong.
You cannot fix perpetual oversupply by warehousing the excess inventory.
Quote from: nffc on January 23, 2014, 06:06:08 PM
If you get the chance and can find it this is currently causing a big storm in the UK, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/benefits-street ,well worth a watch to see the logical end game of social "safety nets". It appears to have come as somewhat of a shock to many in the UK (not to me as that's largely how I was brought up) such a shock that I think we may start to see some real changes in the welfare system. No that it will change much in the face of the tsunami of an aging population and free health care.
I'm sort of embarrassed to say but I've been on both sides of the social circle.
My mum's side is well off so my childhood was pretty ok looking back on it now, but in the past due to a failed business I hit rock bottom.
I had to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. That was over 6 years ago and I found myself on the social, earning a bit but being housed and my income topped up by the state.
By the time I was weaning myself off it was a right nightmare!
Every increase I reported to the local council and the HMRC was basically replacing what I lost in benefits.
I actually found myself contemplating jacking in a few of my jobs as I was only really 15p an hour better off for doing it. That 15p extra vs less stress/having more time to myself was very appealing, especially when I had kids in toe. (you know, that time you have with them that you will never get back again).
It was a shocking thought, there I was busting a gut when I had tasted the easy life.
I can say I'm glad I didn't, but I can see why the 'social scroungers' think f### it.
I didn't mean to imply that there shouldn't be a safety-net. I just don't think it should be a way of life, where people live off the state for generations. Welfare kept me fed as a kid as well.