Gen X > interesting READ

[Mackin USA]

http://gizmodo.com/5851062/generation-x-is-sick-of-your-bullshit

[littleman]

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?

[rcjordan]

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.
----------------------------------------------------------
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.

[rcjordan]

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21594298-effect-todays-technology-tomorrows-jobs-will-be-immenseand-no-country-ready

[littleman]

Looks like yet another employment door shutting on millennials...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKWrWH0CapY

[rcjordan]

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

[littleman]

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.

[rcjordan]

I hear you, but that goes against the urbanization trend in 1st-world populations. 

[nffc]

>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.

[rcjordan]

>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.

[Brad]

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.

[BoL]

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.

[littleman]

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/

[rcjordan]

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.

[Rupert]

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)