
Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two - colanderman
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/business/economy/productivity-inequality-wages.html
======
arandr0x
I saw this when I arrived in America, and it's the reason I left. I take the
bus and seeing literally every day that there were people with families who
worried and laughed and were kind who spent 2 hours a day transporting
themselves to service or manufacturing industry job when I sat in an air
conditioned office making 3x their wages was making me feel terribly guilty. I
eventually went back to a country with a social safety net where the working
class people on my bus talk about their vacations.

Maybe if the "favored class" Americans took the bus or went to the laundromat
like I did for years they'd want poor people to do well too.

~~~
aantix
Without incentives, there is no innovation.

And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the
incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort
and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.

~~~
lghh
Trust me, I don't work 3x harder than most of the people I make 3x of. My wife
is a teacher and I am in tech, I make 3x her salary. She works way more and
spends more of both her physical and emotional labor on her job. I work hard
and I do good work, but what she does is not even in the same stratosphere as
what I do. I'm not innovating anything, I'm just writing decent code. She's
finding new ways to help kids learn. Which sounds more demoralizing?

~~~
shanusmagnus
It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the
salary. Either

a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to supply and
demand, or

b) she doesn't want to do it, because she gets a whole bunch of joy from the
job which is invisibly priced into compensation (and which indirectly goes
back to supply and demand.)

I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.

~~~
athenot
> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.

What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating
life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business
objective.

The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system,
human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If
you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the
cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people
unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching.

I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become
qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of saying teaching is easy. At the
very least, a much larger subset can learn to teach than can learn to code.

~~~
beefalo
Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be
able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business.
Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay
terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the
teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business,
they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
>The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school
doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.

This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk
about testing teachers in some way.

I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from
a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of
standardized test. If you can take those into account, as long as a teacher
comes into work on time I'm not sure how you could differentiate the good from
bad.

An example I like to use is my AP Calc teacher from highschool, who had an
average score of 4.7 for her students on the AP test. The average in 2012 was
a 2.9 (the year I took it, it seems to be higher now, I can't say to as if
they made it easier or if people got better though) [1]. In many school
systems though, if your teacher has an average score below the national
average, you can't do anything about it.

[1] [https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-
Servi...](https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/AP-
Exam-Score-Distributions.php?year=2012)

~~~
lghh
Part of the problem with doing that, especially in younger grades, is that so
much of it depends on variables outside of a teacher's control. A lot of
reading at a young age comes from life experiences. For instance, someone who
has never been outside of an inner city is going to have more trouble reading
a story about someone sailing on the ocean because they are so far removed
from even the most basic plot elements that the things in the story that are
actually meant to challenge are not ever gotten to. Additionally, time spent
outside of classroom compounds the effectiveness of time spent inside of
classroom, but the teacher has no control over that. A teacher can't even
control if a student shows up for school or not. Student's performance,
especially cross-school comparisons, are nearly worthless and would unfairly
punish those that teach at low schools.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
I would say you'd have to compare them to similar schools in the area or
similar areas in the U.S. Between income range in the surround neighborhoods
and population density you should be able to come up with a decent comparison,
I would think.

------
toomanybeersies
The problem is that as a society we believe that people need to work 40 hours
a week to survive.

We replace people with robots and retain the same output. We are more
productive than ever before, yet work the same amount. Physical and uneducated
work is being replaced by automation, yet we expect these people replaced by
robots to find jobs to survive where there are now none.

I don't believe in Universal Basic Income though, we live in a society and it
is our duty to contribute to that society. I think the answer is that we need
to move towards a shorter workday. Raise wages and shorten work hours. People
used to work 12 hours a day, now we work 8, why not move to a 6 hour workday?
Eventually we may move into a post-scarcity society where all our basic needs
are automated and work becomes an optional extra, but we're not at that point
yet.

~~~
TomMckenny
Higher wages with shorter work hours would be a great step in the right
direction. I believe Keynes even suggested it.

But, a post-scarcity society, where labor is nearly valueless, still requires
everyone have their needs met regardless of what they "own". But in that
future as through all the past, most people are born owning little more than
their labor.

So a post-scarcity society does not just require the technology we are
approaching. It also requires a radically different perception of ownership.
This is the harder problem.

In the language of today, it means a person without property and whose labor
will always be essentially valueless, gets the produce of someone else's
robots, ownership of which will be passed down though generations. Changing
this is close to unthinkable in current society.

But unless this massive social shift emerges, it appears that larger and
larger portions of society will be converted into a euphemistically renamed
servant class where their labor has not intrinsic value except prestige or
amusement value to the person hiring.

Pardon the following if it's upsetting, but I notice our current path is to
add more and more store clerks, waiters, maids, sign spinners etc. Not because
machines/systems can't do theses things (amazon, self serve restaurants,
billboards) but because the customer enjoys/gets a kick out of them.

On the current path, what would have become a post-scarcity society will
instead have vast numbers of such people earning their minimum requirements at
such jobs. Plus perhaps homeless people permanently converted into a prison
workforce.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Higher wages with shorter work hours would be a great step in the right
> direction. I believe Keynes even suggested it.

No he didn’t. He suggested we’d have chosen to work fewer hours and have more
leisure because we could afford both greater consumption and greater leisure
than were possible when he wrote. Higher wages than now, with shorter work
hours than now is possible only with growth in economic productivity so we can
produce more (goods, services) with less (material input, labour). We can’t
just decide to work 20 hours a week and maintain our current standard of
living by fiat.

Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)

[https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/cont...](https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/files/content/upload/Intro_and_Section_I.pdf)

~~~
pnutjam
The parent's point was we have made those strides in productivity, but the
wages were denied us.

~~~
barry-cotter
Measured in 1960 US$ the UK’s GDP per capita was 1181[1]. In 2016 US$ U.K. GDP
per capita was 40,341[2]. Even if we assume the 2016 dollar is worth half as
much as the 1960 one because of inflation the average U.K. resident is 15
times better off. If people wanted to live in 1960s houses with what people in
the 1960s would have considered a lavish standard of living they could do it
easily by working half the year, or having a part time job. The 1960s were
already a hell of a lot better than 1930, when the essay was written.

If you want to live in the paradise Keynes described you can. That’s what the
financial independence, retire early subculture is about[3]. Work for 20 years
and retire instead of 40 or 50. Or those people who contract half the year and
spend half of it in Thailand. If we wanted to take more of our compensation in
leisure we absolutely could. People choose not to. They need to keep up with
the Jones.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

[2][https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD)

[3][http://www.financialindependenceretireearly.com/](http://www.financialindependenceretireearly.com/)

~~~
nybble41
> Even if we assume the 2016 dollar is worth half as much as the 1960 one
> because of inflation...

Try one-eighth as much.

[http://www.in2013dollars.com/1960-dollars-
in-2016](http://www.in2013dollars.com/1960-dollars-in-2016)

> Converted amount ($100 base) $810.83

------
jedberg
There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will
help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax
policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the
products that the wealthy are creating.

Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to
5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth
redistribution is this controversial. I'm curious as to why people would be
against it. Is it really just "I worked hard for it why should I give it away"
or something deeper?

~~~
ipnon
If the average IQ of a STEM graduate is a standard deviation or more above
average [0][1], then how does a more educated populace result in something
besides the stratification we see today? STEM education can help a person get
on the right side of the tech split, but the STEM education itself is already
prohibitively difficult.

[0] [https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-
iq-...](https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-iq-64811) [1]
[http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-
students...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-
college-major-and-gender-ratio/)

~~~
freehunter
Because IQ is not scientifically proven and is inherently flawed.

~~~
pmiller2
What is your evidence? IQ tests undoubtedly measure something, and that
something correlates with things like academic performance and certain types
of job performance. What’s flawed about that?

~~~
freehunter
The quickest Google search for "flaws of IQ tests" comes back with so many
studies showing that IQ is not correlated to intelligence that at this point
the burden of proof is on anyone who says IQ _is_ relevant. Even if IQ does
measure _something_ , it's not an indicator of anything other than the ability
to pass a standardized test. It certainly is not an indicator of intelligence.

In other words: what is your evidence that IQ measures anything actually
relevant?

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-
fund...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-
fundamentally-flawed-and-using-them-alone-to-measure-intelligence-is-a-
fallacy-study-8425911.html)

[https://www.popsci.com/why-iq-is-flawed](https://www.popsci.com/why-iq-is-
flawed)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-
marker-o...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-marker-of-
intelligence-study-shows/)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/07/the-
tru...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/07/the-truth-about-
iq/22260/)

[https://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligent](https://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligent)

~~~
pmiller2
I never said anything about IQ tests measuring intelligence. No doubt the
“something” that is measured is, at least in part, “intelligence,” at least as
it applies in an academic setting. However, for you to dismiss them outright
is simply not supported by the literature. For example:

> Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in
> conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic
> success, even greater health, and longevity.[0]

Yes, you can improve your performance on IQ tests with practice and
motivation, but that does not make them “scientifically invalid” in any way.
The fact is that so many things are correlated to IQ that it’s a useful
theoretical construct, even if it’s misnamed and has little to do with what
you’d call “intelligence.”

[0]: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-
really-...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-
measure)

~~~
freehunter
If IQ can be improved through education, then you cannot use it to argue that
lower IQ people cannot be educated to be better at STEM jobs as the parent was
arguing.

Sure, I'll give you that IQ measures _something_. The question is, is that
_something_ relevant to the argument that you can only be competitive in STEM
with a higher IQ and therefore many people cannot be educated into STEM
careers? Does IQ make you better suited for those jobs, or does the training
for those jobs cause you to score higher on IQ tests?

It's no shock that richer and healthier people do better in school. If you
want to call that "IQ" then fine, but saying the correlation goes the _other_
way is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Without proof
that a higher IQ makes you richer and healthier rather than the other way
around, then yes, it is entirely scientifically invalid. Especially if you're
not exactly sure _what_ IQ is actually measuring.

If the parent wants to argue that some people can never be trained in STEM
careers because STEM careers require too high of IQ, I demand proof that this
psuedo-science malarky is defined and that it is proven to be inherent and
cannot be trained during the course of STEM education.

------
habosa
I am in favor of higher taxes, but that does not solve the dignity issue at
all.

Taking from the rich to give to the poor only solidifies the division between
the two groups. It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on
both sides.

We as a society need to find a way to not only feed and clothe and house
everyone but to give them purpose and a voice. Paying off half the workforce
doesn't do it.

~~~
phkahler
I'm beginning to think increasing minimum wage will help. You don't need to
tax the rich, just make them pay their people better. But that's still at odds
with two thing. 1) it will increase incentive for more automation - but that's
already happening as fast as the engineers can do it. 2) it will increase the
incentive to use undocumented workers who can be paid under the table below
minimum wage. Before we can talk about increasing the minimum wage I think we
need to make sure everyone who works is actually getting it.

~~~
snarf21
I don't think minimum wage increases work. There are some unintended
consequences. Let's say you pay people $15/hour to flip burgers. They have a
higher wage but companies generally pass this cost increase on to consumers.
All companies that raised these prices tend to be the ones that the poor
people shop at. In the end you don't get the increase in buying power that you
might think just by raising wages.

Additionally, what about the EMT that went to school for 2 years and makes
$36K ($18/hour)? You have now totally destroyed the value of their education
investment and made this job undesirable. Over time, people won't choose this
job without wage increases. This may not happen instantly but eventually this
ripples higher and higher. As it does so, the wage increase cause higher
prices. Eventually at equilibrium it doesn't seem likely to me that anyone's
buying power is really improved.

I still think the only solution is to tax the "rich" more and move to almost
no taxes for those that are poorer. There is no reason at all to tax someone
who is making minimum wage. Given the wage gap, the tax doesn't even need to
increase very much to do this.

------
drewg123
We're heading toward a future where more and more is automated and there is
less and less room for non-creative work. Let's face it, not everybody can be
creative in a way that is lucrative. Do we really want to doom more and more
of the population to a subsistence income, while more and more of the gains
due to automation go to a shrinking segment of the population? I tend to think
that a generous UBI is really the only sensible thing to do.

In case anybody has not read it, Mana, is a short story based on an
extrapolation of this kind of rise of automation. I highly recommend it:
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

~~~
mooreds
Came here to post the link to manna. Thanks for doing that.

It's important to emphasize that while it seems like our economy is beyond
human control, it is a human constructuon and the rules can be changed. They
were changed in the late 1800s in the USA by populists and they can be changed
again. Not easily, to be sure. But possible.

------
aphextron
It is splitting our entire society in two.

There are people who work in the old economy, actually _doing things_ in the
world. These people are still "tied to the land" in a sense. Their income
isn't high enough to live alone, so they still maintain strong familial and
neighborly bonds. Their work is physical (that doesn't mean unskilled or low
paid, just that it requires physical manipulation), and requires them to
physically be in a specific location at a specific time. For the most part
this refers to the interior US, so housing is cheap and they generally don't
have too much of a commute; they live and work in the same community. They
have pride in a sense of place, and feel that they definitely "belong"
somewhere because of this. They pinch pennies, compare prices, and generally
are not overly wasteful. They might take _a_ vacation once in a lifetime.
These people are _not_ poor, they just know the true meaning of a dollar
because they are forced to physically work for it.

Compare this to the newly emerged technologically enabled upper middle class
whose lives have become entirely abstracted from their physical existence. Our
jobs are remote. Our "worksites" are mental abstractions. Our communities are
digital. Our clothes are cheap and meaningless. Our connection to neighbors is
nonexistent. Our physical location is arbitrary and changes based on a whim.
Weekend vacations to Paris are a thing. We don't acknowledge strangers on the
street, and if you do _you 're_ the insane weirdo. The result is two
completely separate world views. A member of the former class simply cannot
comprehend things like $14 sandwiches and $50,000 cars because it offends
their sensibilities, not because they don't have the money.

~~~
Domenic_S
I've been in tech my whole professional life and I can't relate to the second
class at all. The technologically enabled upper middle class are fighting over
Yeezys, Supreme drops, and Rolexes (seriously, try to find any of those at
retail price). My neighborhood is filled with WFH techies, and we all head
outside in the evening for our kids to ride bikes with each other while we
sample microbrews together.

Those trucks you see electricians and plumbers driving, they cost $50k and up.
I don't get that remark, either.

~~~
wil421
You do know a lot of trade people either have a truck stipended or if they are
self employed the business pays the bill. My friend is an electrician on
commercial sites. He gets a $600-$700 truck stipen from his employer.

~~~
Domenic_S
I don’t dispute that at all, what I was responding to was gp’s remark that a
$50k vehicle “offends their sensibilities”.

------
president
I honestly don't think there is a solution here. There will always be a large
percentage of the population that don't have the motivation or capacity to
learn the skills required to get "good jobs". Unless top earners are willing
to sacrifice (tax reform, charity, etc), which is extremely unlikely given
human nature, others will need to scrape by with low paying menial jobs.
That's how it's always been.

~~~
peisistratos
The top earners are the heirs who collect dividends, interest and rent - the
rentiers in documentaries like Born Rich. They are unwilling to work, as the
real hourly wage has sank in the US since the early 1970s, they have reaped
all the benefit.

Far below them is a work force which is split in different skill levels. Only
a handful of top school STEM majors graduate every year, then there are the
rest.

Since in your universe larger social analysis is excluded, the answer comes
down to each individual - their motivation and such.

~~~
barry-cotter
This bears no relation to reality. The overwhelming majority of the rich in
Western countries are members of the executive or professional class or
entrepreneurs who work for their money.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-
rise...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-
new-global-elite/8343/)

> The rich different from you and me. … today’s super-rich are also different
> from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to
> the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are
> leaving ever further behind. … Our light-speed, globally connected economy
> has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree,
> of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly
> educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of
> a tough, worldwide economic competition.

[https://www.nber.org/papers/w25442](https://www.nber.org/papers/w25442)

> > Have the idle rich replaced the working rich at the top of the U.S. income
> distribution? Using tax data linking 11 million firms to their owners, this
> paper finds that entrepreneurs who actively manage their firms are key for
> top income inequality. Most top income is non-wage income, a primary source
> of which is private business profit. These profits accrue to working-age
> owners of closely-held, mid-market firms in skill-intensive industries.
> Private business profit falls by three-quarters after owner retirement or
> premature death. Classifying three-quarters of private business profit as
> human capital income, we find that most top earners are working rich: they
> derive most of their income from human capital, not physical or financial
> capital. The human capital income of private business owners exceeds top
> wage income and top public equity income. Growth in private business profit
> is explained by both rising productivity and a rising share of value added
> accruing to owners.

~~~
peisistratos
Koches, Waltons, Mars's, Johnson's, Newhouses, Catgill-Macmillans, Coxes,
Pritzkers, Hearsts.

The first link is shot through with holes, I would not know where to start.
The Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances says otherwise.

The second link is obvious on the face of it - in a country with 325 million
people, if you look at 11 million firms, the majority are not run by 1%ers.
The data parameters make the outcome a foregone conclusion. Of course the
owner of the median firm out of 11 million will be more middle class than the
heirs who own a lot of stock in Walmart.

------
ctoth
Argue about immigration and whose country is best while they gather the
torches.

Reduce the 'techlash' to another front in the forever culture war without
considering how your hacker birthright is under attack.

Associate yourselves with megacorps and money, nice cars and 401(k)s.

Ally with those who hate privacy. [0]

Ally with those who practice psychological manipulation on a global scale. [1]

* Stallman warned us. [2]

* Wu warned us. [3]

* Doctorow warned us. [4]

* Schneier warned us and tried to explain it to everyone. [5]

> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I
> come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.

> On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. [6]

[0] [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/29/zuckerberg-
privacy...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/29/zuckerberg-privacy-
stance_n_556679.html)

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2018/8/8/17664580/persuasive-
technology-...](https://www.vox.com/2018/8/8/17664580/persuasive-technology-
psychology)

[2] Anything the man has written in the last 35 years

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empire...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empires/dp/0307390993)

[4]
[https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html](https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html)

[5] [https://www.lawfareblog.com/security-or-
surveillance](https://www.lawfareblog.com/security-or-surveillance) (He has
another better article about the start of the new crypto wars but I can't find
it)

[6] [https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-
independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence)

------
azakai
> Adair Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in
> London, argues that the economy today resembles what would have happened if
> farmers had spent their extra income from the use of tractors and combines
> on domestic servants. Productivity in domestic work doesn’t grow quickly. As
> more and more workers were bumped out of agriculture into servitude,
> productivity growth across the economy would have stagnated.

That's an interesting point - maybe extra income is being spent in ways that
don't encourage further growth.

Perhaps things are even worse, though: you could argue that in the past the
average person used technology to make themselves more productive (a washing
machine instead of hours spent washing by hand, etc.) but in recent years
technological innovation is used for entertainment purposes - people use their
new smartphones to play games or for social networking, etc.

------
SovietDissident
How many years do people spend in Prussian-model government schools or private
schools with mandated State-sponsored curriculum? 12? And the average person
isn't imparted enough skills to work on anything besides a precarious
assembly-line or perpetual min-wage job?

The story here is not an indictment of robots taking menial jobs; rather, it
is an indictment of the atrocious education system that teaches people NOTHING
of value. Maybe even less than nothing, since it propagandizes and
infantilizes them.

If Walmart ran the schools and produced a bunch of know-nothings as a result,
we would never hear the end of it. But somehow the State gets a pass. Even
worse; they get more money!---per capital spending has increased 3x in the
last 60 years with worse results.

------
ENOTTY
Is this inherently a bad thing, or does it just call for more progressive
taxation that can fund services that benefit the broader set of people
(transit, housing, health care, etc).

~~~
matt4077
It’s preferable to have somewhat equitable outcomes while preserving a mostly
bottom-up market economy. Because that remains the unchallenged champion of
organizing an economy, both in terms of productivity as well as dynamism.

It seems, however, that the 50s and 60s were sort of a fluke: WW2 had
destroyed the remnants of feudalism. And with even many scions of the upper
classes experiencing turmoil and breaks in their CVs, such as going to war
instead of college, class mobility reached an all-time high. As long as you
were white & male, that is, of course.

The nature of the dominant industries was also beneficial: construction or car
dealerships are inherently local, giving many people the opportunity to share
in the spoils of growth.

Today, the knowledge economy and other zero-marginal-costs businesses
dominate. They who would have run a well-respected local vinyl shop in 1974
are now despised middle managers at Spotify.

Taxation definitely plays a role. Inheritance taxes may the only tax where I
care more about the taking-away than the giving-to. Obviously nobody is
arguing for a complete leveling of income differences, or even anything close
to it. But school budgets should certainly not depend on the wealth of the
immediate neighborhood or the specific parents.

I’m not sure if something like UBI could ever be sold to the public. But
within the next decade, the 10%-20% of the population work as some sort of
‘driver’ will be asking their new Wayno 5000 to take them to a political
rally. What happens next will be interesting.

------
malandrew
A big problem is looking at markets locally and ignoring all the people who
contribute to that economy but don't live locally. Many of the tools and other
resources used by those in Arizona are produced by workers elsewhere. Software
might be created by people in the Bay Area. Robots may be designed and
engineered by people in Germany or Japan. Etc.

When you only looking locally, you miss out on all the employment elsewhere
that contributes to the local economy you're analyzing.

------
ummonk
_> But automation is changing the nature of work, flushing workers without a
college degree out of productive industries, like manufacturing and high-tech
services, and into tasks with meager wages and no prospect for advancement._

Meanwhile wages for construction continue to grow as the labor shortage
intensifies. Something doesn't add up.

------
maerF0x0
in a sense there is a split between bodies and brains.

The bodies are competing with robotics and other physical manifestations of
things that people value. This field seems to be decades ahead of the other
group.

The brains are competing with AI and other informational/decision value sets.

~~~
skybrian
I don't know how you fit caregivers into that? The closest thing to automation
is that some gadgets might make it easier for relatives to do more.

------
throwaway98121
The wage gap is real, although I feel like I see an anti
${insert_tech_company_here} article on NYT just about everyday attacking
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc.

None of these tech companies are on a moral pedestal but also, none of these
media outlets are on any moral pedestal. These are the same folks who
championed the Iraq war. Look, I’m not saying there isn’t a significant wealth
disparity, but I do think people should consider the NYT motives.

It couldn’t be that thry hate tech because these large tech companies are
direct competitors in the advertising space?

------
noonespecial
No, tech is continually rendering an ever increasing section of the
population's labour economically irrelevant.

It just looks very dramatic right now because its left the lower strata and is
now sweeping across the middle.

The end game is a tiny few that have acquired the keys to all of the machines
through natural consolidation. The only question is, will the machines be off
because there is no reason to run them because the world is full of poor sods
who can't buy anything, or will we be running them because we finally figured
out how to share their output.

------
kyleperik
I agree. I thing Americans are drifting apart because we aren't making an
effort to create a social fabric that can support those less fortunate around
us.

But I strongly disagree that this is a good job for the government. I think
empathy exists, but we aren't going to find it in the hearts of the government
_or_ enterprises. Empathy comes from people.

------
dba7dba
Even in 'Tech' companies, there are the very highly paid and the others who
are not paid enough.

Execs, senior programmers, project managers make a lot.

And than there are the office support staff, customer service staff, etc that
are not really in the 'Tech' company pay scale.

------
Nimitz14
Regarding the whole "automation is making people lose jobs", this survey may
be of interest (particularly Question B):

[http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/robots](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/robots)

------
Bakary
Society will just return to the age-old model of kings, clergy, and peasantry.
Except this time it'll be the owners of capital and automation served by the
highly educated. The rest will fight for the scraps as they have for thousands
of years.

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purplezooey
"...the use of robots explains the decline in the share of national income
going into workers’ paychecks over the last three decades."

That is such horse sh*t. Share buybacks are much worse of a problem.

------
soniman
An article like this is worthless if it doesn't mention immigration, which it
doesn't. It's basically a way to say "LEARN TO CODE" when the real problem is
an unlimited supply of cheap labor via uncontrolled immigration. This is the
same newspaper which has run "trucker shortage" stories for the last twenty
years.

~~~
tosser0001
Immigration has become so politicized in the past few years that it's
basically radioactive. Any notion of immigration restriction is inevitably
conflated with white nationalism, fair or unfair.

The very idea that immigration may be having an impact on wages among the
lowest wage tier seems to be treated with the same contempt as the denial of
climate change. It's as if the law of supply and demand doesn't apply to
labor.

------
olleromam91
How do we convince the wealthy elite classes on our planet that - in order to
have the highest odds of sustaining our species in a way that WE desire, it
will require the strength of _every_ human being, which will require
individual investment to foster each human's strengths for the time we live in
?

------
fouc
Demand for Taser is up? That's not good.

------
0x262d
in 1847, Marx wrote Wage Labour and Capital, an accessible pamphlet that made
the prediction that over time, the middle classes will be squeezed out of
prosperity and the majority of people's wages will trend downwards, until they
hit a fundamental low point: the minimum amount required to reproduce the next
generation of workers. the key point is that this is completely endemic to
capitalism, which is characterized by capital owners having diametrically
opposed and competing material interests to workers.

we have seen surges of militant class struggle reverse this trend at specific
points in history, but in 2019, with decades of dormancy of class struggle
leading up to the present, it's happening again.

abolishing private ownership of capital and democratically allocating
society's productive resources is the only solution.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> abolishing private ownership of capital and democratically allocating
> society's productive resources is the only solution.

But attempts to do so have resulted in _more_ suffering and death, rather than
less. Maybe we don't need to solve it at that price. Or maybe there's a better
solution than the one you propose.

~~~
0x262d
have you considered that socialist countries are intentionally sabotaged and
crushed, and mainstream understanding of the history about it is distorted, by
people who don't want their wealth expropriated?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Even were you correct, have you considered that this will also happen the
_next_ time socialism is tried?

That said, I will admit that there are almost certainly such attempts as you
say, but I deny that they are the actual cause of the problems. The problem is
that socialism _doesn 't work_. The rich just give you a nice comic-book
villain to explain away the real cause of the failures.

------
chooseaname
I think tech workers should be worried too. If you don't have the skill set to
automate someone's job away, yours will likely go away as well. IE: If you
ain't building the robots, you're job's in danger.

------
NoblePublius
This guy will probably be feted across academia for his insight, even though
it’s fundamentally the same argument made in The Bell Curve that gets Charles
Murray banned from college campuses. Yes, the cognitive elite is a thing and
no, they don’t work at Walmart. There is no answer to this problem, either.

~~~
zimablue
There's nothing in this article that mentions "cognitive elite", it talks
about education and skills. You brought that to the article completely on your
own.

For what it's worth, I think that there are definitely innate differences in
ability, but they're very much overstated and the education system is
effectively money laundering for privilege. Education != innate ability in a
world where elite colleges charge massive fees and all the selection processes
are rigged every step of the way by the middle classes.

I have a decent job because I went to a decent uni, if I replay my life with
the same ability and different parents who didn't work hard to squeeze me into
the best school in the area or push me to value education I'd have no chance
at all to be here now, I would be writing javascript for the local bakery for
20k pa. Good tech companies and finance all hire based on degrees.

