
Recession, tech kill middle-class jobs - dgunn
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
======
up_and_up
So is it Man over machine or machine over Man?

Seem like the real issue lies in the trend toward optimization in every part
of the economy, from the small business owner to large corporations etc.

Case in point, I worked for a startup in 2008 that had a FT sysadmin and
actual rack servers/real hardware etc. Same guys started a new company in
2012, minus a sysadmin and hardware. The ease/price of EC2 just makes too much
sense. I saw that happening.

One has to be careful to watch the trends and not be on the wrong side of
history (like a sysadmin who is not open to cloud and devops at this point).
But how are most non-tech savvy employees going to keep up with the times?
Most likely they will be outmoded and seen as expendable.

My question is how far will that go?

~~~
up_and_up
Not sure why this was downvoted. Care to give feedback?

------
greghinch
This seems like an inevitable outcome of everything that "we" (the startup and
tech communities) are doing. Nearly every startup business I've seen on HN is
about an optimization of an existing industry. Almost invariably, optimization
means cutting people out of the loop, as people are quite slow at a lot of the
tasks computers are suited for.

The problem is of course the growing disparity between pay. As the existing
middle is eliminated, the majority of people are trending towards the lower
segment of pay (the 29/2/~70 ratio mentioned). Ideally we'd find a way to
elevate a large portion of those in the lower 70% area to higher paying jobs.
I think the reality is, many of those people probably will never be suited for
jobs in the $100k+ range. The only solution I can see being viable is further
socialization (in the US) of things like medical care, transportation, etc. in
order to ensure that just because you don't have a high salary, doesn't mean
you can't have a high quality of life. Either that or accept that the US is
devolving into a 3rd world country.

Bring on the "socialist" flames.

~~~
kyllo
All repetitive labor will eventually be automated. It is only a matter of
time.

The problem with capitalism and tech is that the efficiency gains realized
through automation nearly all go to the owners of the firms. The human
laborers replaced by programs and robots are just S.O.L. Capitalism only works
for a society as long as capital owners need human labor to carry out
production.

"The only solution I can see being viable is further socialization (in the US)
of things like medical care, transportation, etc. in order to ensure that just
because you don't have a high salary, doesn't mean you can't have a high
quality of life. Either that or accept that the US is devolving into a 3rd
world country."

Yes. Either we implement basic income and universal healthcare, and improve
access to public services, or we will end up with a tiny, but very wealthy
"owner" class, and a very large, unemployed, impoverished majority.

Better to do it soon, while it's still a choice, rather than later, when it
isn't. History has shown that the masses will only put up with so much
inequality before they openly revolt.

An opposing force to this, though, is that increased automation will continue
to reduce costs and barriers to entry, allowing people with almost no
resources to start some form of income-generating online "lifestyle business."
A lot of people are doing this now, but not nearly enough people are capable
of it, for it to be a sustainable career option for almost the entire American
middle class. Yet.

~~~
greghinch
The lifestyle business prospect is interesting, as mentioned in that Forbes
article that hit the front page[1], there is the possibility for many to start
making a steady living in the sharing economy. I'm involved with a business
working in the arena, and the possibilities are intriguing. Whether or not it
becomes a sustainable economy for the longer term is still pretty up in the
air

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/01/23/airbnb-
and...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/01/23/airbnb-and-the-
unstoppable-rise-of-the-share-economy/)

~~~
kyllo
I read that article too. The possibilites are interesting but i dont think
sharing your stuff for cash will be a sustainable career option for most,
especially if the cost of that stuff keeps going down.

Another possibility is that inequality and exponential growth in CEO
compensation are due to the fact that most companies are not free marketplaces
internally. They are run like little communist dictatorships where
compensation is allocated by social/political rank, not by value created. If
companies had to pay people according to the actual marginal value of their
work, perhaps the inequality wouldn't get quite so severe. But human workers
would still have to gradually retrain themselves to perform non-automatable
tasks en masse, and the transition period is still going to be painful. That
part seems unavoidable.

------
confluence
You know what I find funny? Those who argue against income redistribution -
aka socialism - are probably going to be some of the first people to become
permanently unemployed.

If you understand what's about to happen - you'll quickly realise that
everyone will be out of a job and unless we keep people consuming - things
start to get scary - like revolution scary.

We're all socialists now.

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, I don't have a solution to the situation, but when you look at the
topline profits (going up), and employment (going down) at almost every
corporation.. the rhetoric about "job creators" is a bit much.

------
expralitemonk
In 1890, 43% of the US population were farmers. Because of technology (fossil
fuels, internal combustion engines), most of those jobs are gone for good.
We're going through a massive change and some people's livelihoods will go
away permanently. They're not entitled to make a living at an obsolete job,
but I think we owe it to them to provide a comprehensive safety net so they
can survive and retrain.

------
RyanZAG
This has been a trend over all of human history. Going to keep it brief and
technically incorrect to paint a picture...

Initially, everyone was required to either hunt or gather food (probably).
After a bit, humanity settled down into farming, and fewer people were
required to keep everybody fed. This allowed for more time for childbirth.
Better understanding of agriculture led to the creation of larger towns with
specialized jobs such as blacksmiths and stables which led to farm animals
helping to improve yields even further. To create the tools, some people had
to go into mining jobs.

The pattern here is that advancement allows fewer people in each economic area
to provide the same benefits, freeing up labor for new economic areas.

So clearly, the modern move to automate jobs isn't _necessarily_ anything new.
People are now free to move into creating accounting software instead of
manually filling out journals. The problem occurs when the people freed up
from advances do not have any new work to move into.

The result may simply be de-urbanization - people moving back into the
countryside to grow their own food. Most people can afford to buy a small plot
of land in the middle of nowhere (small piece of land in the middle of Africa
is practically free). Or the result may be socialism. Or the result may be new
economic sectors being revealed by innovation. Fortune telling won't get us
very far.

~~~
georgemcbay
As the original article alludes to the big difference now is that the rate of
advance is increasing. When whole industries are being upended within a few
years and this turnover is getting faster all the time, it is difficult to
point to "retraining" (the historical fix for this) as a solution. Most people
just aren't that intellectually flexible. Those that are will prosper, the
vast majority will, I think, be screwed.

I'd love to see some sign that the US Government is starting to take this
issue seriously and planning for it. While we're still years away from this
becoming a _critical_ social problem, I do believe that the brunt of the
impact from this trend is inevitable and not too far off (certainly within my
lifetime and I'm pretty old now).

I'm personally very much in favor of a hybrid socialist system where everyone
gets a guaranteed minimum income but people who are able and willing to can
still work to earn more. I think this helps in a number of ways, the first
being avoiding societal collapse and possible revolution due to the massive
amount of unemployed there will be relative to the current population and
secondarily, it gives even driven people a buffer to live on while chasing
their dreams. I think the end result would actually be more positive for
humanity than the current system, though for obvious reasons it will not be
supported by the capital gatekeepers who currently wield the money (and thus
the power).

I find the idea that any degree of socialism will result in no progress is
pretty insulting towards humanity. There will always be people who are driven
(whether it be by ego or curiosity or whatever) to do great things.

~~~
afterburner
Krugman has touched on this a bit in recent posts, although he's still in
"gathering evidence" mode on the issue.

It's a very interesting and serious problem, and I very much agree that a
"hybrid socialist system" is not the disaster some say it would be. We're not
talking about centralized bureaucratic communism, but rather what is already
in place in parts in many Western countries.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Besides, some studies by professional economists provided evidence that a
"regulated capitalist" economy with imperfect markets is really not
substantially more efficient (in the strictly economic sense of the word) than
a "liberalized socialist" economy. Market optimality apparently turned out to
be an all-or-nothing property of the mathematical models that gave rise to
significantly different (but still amenable to scientific examination when we
alter the models) behavior in the real world.

<http://jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the-red-and-the-black/>

------
rthomas6
Speaking from an economics viewpoint, new technology kills jobs _temporarily_.
Eliminating/automating jobs is obviously a good thing over the long term: how
often do we lament the cotton gin because of how much cotton harvesting labor
it eliminated? Over the short term, it caused job loss for many cotton
harvesters, and a concentration of wealth for cotton gin owners. But over the
long term, it caused the cotton industry to boom, and created a higher
standard of living for everyone. It just took time for the market to reach a
new, higher equilibrium. The same thing is happening today with technology,
albeit at a much faster pace.

So the real issue is not permanent job loss, but rather how do we take care of
people as industry reinvents itself? The pace of this reinvention is
accelerating, and has been accelerating for hundreds of years. In the near
future, 20 years could result in a completely new job skills need. In fact,
compare 1993 to 2013. Entire industries have sprung up while others died since
then. Yet we do not lament the advent of the omnipresent internet because of
the lost jobs in the newspaper, movie, music, and publishing industries. At
least, not most of us. The same thing is simply happening today. Jobs will
continue to exist. Just not right away. The real problem is only the short
term: figuring out what to do when people get optimized out of some obsolete
industry. There are many answers, we just have to think about it.

Socialism is an answer proposed by many people. I think I agree with them to
some degree. Some kind of economic floor below which no person can descend. I
don't know how this could be created, but I would argue that the "economic
floor" has been steadily rising for hundreds of years. In the US, even poverty
currently results in a significantly higher standard of living compared to the
median income life in 1850.

------
danso
I think tech's overall optimization/automation effect is good/great for
humans, but only if society adapts. In Star Trek's utopia, it's said that the
limitless bounty created by tech has basically removed the need for currency
and competing economies...but will that happen in reality? If it becomes
technologically possible to cheaply produce robots that replaces nearly
everyones' jobs...will society be able to say, "Awesome, let's all relax
now!"? I can't imagine that we'll ever accept that, even if natural resources
become nearly limitless.

~~~
angdis
The ugly reality is that the effect of automation seems to be further
stratifying the haves from the have-nots. By definition, automation makes
things cheaper and more profitable by taking away jobs. If there aren't OTHER
JOBS also created, we have a situation where the owners are systematically
getting richer and the workers are systematically getting poorer.

~~~
joonix
Isn't that the end result of capitalism? To optimize returns on capital. It
says nothing about labor or workers.

~~~
afterburner
I thought capitalism was centered around labour providing value and being
rewarded accordingly? I'm not sure myself. Although the other inputs to
production are land and capital goods, the latter of which could I suppose be
interpreted as "the robots that will take care of everything".

------
polskibus
Technology has always been killing jobs, however in the history of man there
have always been room for long-term job growth. Otherwise we would not be
where we are now. The article is fairly shallow in blaming only one thing for
the recession and joblessness. Suddenly the massive debt is no longer a
problem, the fact that there are lean manufacturing methods that can compete
with mass production is overlooked, etc. The situation really is more complex
than one or several journalists can hope to investigate by crunching several
time series.

~~~
akiselev
Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it
or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the
middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand. Now the
middle class which benefited from new, cheaper, better products is shrinking
with substantial (but by no means comprehensive) evidence that job growth as
we've known it in the last hundred years isn't coming back.

Even in software development, there may only be limited growth due to its open
and exponential nature. As more developers work on software, the more tools
will be developed to make their work more productive and efficient. It's a
self reinforcing feedback loop that might have an equilibrium that won't be
sufficient to account for all of the jobs lost as a result of software.
American manufacturing, for example, is still one of the biggest sub-economies
in the world and is insanely productive compared to Chinese manufacturers per
person, but it doesn't create anywhere near as many jobs as we have lost
overseas. At the same time, manufacturers in industries like medical, aero,
and defense are complaining that they can't get the skilled workers they need
to grow and as a result are forced to invest way more into automation.

It's very likely that I just can't look at this period of human development
without heavy bias but it seems to me that the ridiculously easy flow of
information allowed by the internet has destabilized the equilibrium we've had
with creative destruction and job growth.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_Classically, the new technology created a new class of work to operate/use it
or decreased the cost of something so much that it was affordable for the
middle class and required a lot more workers to handle the new demand._

So let's ask, then: what does the middle class lack today that an increase in
production efficiency could make widely available?

~~~
akiselev
I can't really answer this question.

The two major areas I can think of are health care and capital equipment.

Health care because surgeries and even basic procedures can be really
expensive, especially for the uninsured. Already we can see hair transplant
robots [1] that take the cosmetic doctors almost entirely out of the picture
and I'm sure surgery robots are being developed. I don't see how this kind of
industry can create more jobs than it eliminates. However, better education
and awareness of chronic illnesses caused by lifestyle I think would help free
up hundreds of billions of dollars that would then stay with the consumers (or
non-healthcare corporations which might then just hold on to it).

If you decrease the cost of capital equipment by automating their production
(aka, by making automation easier and cheaper), it will allow many more people
to buy them and drive their price down further because of increasing volume.
This could then lead to a diaspora of small time manufacturers and service
providers who replace large entities, become more local, and drive down the
prices of everything through competition. The consequences here would be wild
and unpredictable. Maybe the sum generated economic activity would be much
greater than the whole (as it often is with manufacturing industries), but we
can't say that for sure because of the limited value add that these
manufacturers can provide over their equipment (as it currently is with
manufacturing...). The other consequence would be the devaluation of the
equipment causing a devaluation of the service contracts, which would probably
lead to more automation through modularity, machine learning, and data driven
remote diagnostics of equipment.

But honestly all that above is wild speculation. The future is damn near
impossible to predict and I think the presence of economic incentives going in
all different directions for all parties involved just makes it a lot more
uncertain.

[1] <http://restorationrobotics.com/>

------
dgunn
This makes me wonder what a world without jobs will look like. Will a good
quality life, food, shelter, money, etc just be human rights?

~~~
mjolk
Don't confuse a reduced number of jobs that can be replaced by machines or
algorithms with total capacity or demand for human labor.

~~~
dgunn
I'm not sure anyone would confuse those things. I just think eventually,
employable people will be greater than the number of jobs to perform. In a
world where you've always received money, food, etc as a result of your
contributions, how do you get these things without a means of contributing?

~~~
groby_b
Well, we've been there before - more people than needed to do all the work
available. As a result, we instituted the idea of servants.

So get used to a future where you either have a personal entourage, or will be
busy doing errands for people who actually have money. And chances are much
higher for the latter.

------
Permit
They cited Andrew McAfee in the article, but I believe he's come to a
different conclusion than the authors of this article did.

He gave an excellent talk called "Are droids taking out jobs?"
[http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our...](http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our_jobs.html)

------
DirtyCalvinist
This phenomenon is called pauperization. Many countries in Europe experienced
it acutely during the early 19th century. People were allowed to starve back
then until production shifted to take advantage of the surplus labor. And
though people in developed countries are unlikely to starve this time around,
the real challenge for us is figuring out how to allow the change to continue
(because we will all be better off for it) without destroying people's dignity
and/or creating an economically futile and dependent underclass.

------
colmvp
Tech kills but also creates. It's up to the people to decide whether they want
to adapt to that environment or lament the old.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Technology _can_ create new jobs, but only if the economic demand is available
to support the new professions, products, and fields.

This is where capitalism breaks down: its productive engine is one of the most
powerful we know of, but its allocation system continues to write off large
and _growing_ portions of the population as _undeserving_. And the more people
are undeserving, the less demand is available to support businesses, so the
vast productive power of technology gets "eaten" as profits and rents for
capital-owners rather than transformed into innovation and growth.

These are important lessons that the Western world was _supposed_ to have
learned through the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war period of
_immense peace and prosperity unprecedented in human history_. Eventually it's
_either_ support a working class (including both the "lower class" and the
"middle class") secure and well-off enough to fuel the growth of industry,
prop up your economy using government spending, or watch your economy
collapse.

~~~
rthomas6
Surely you don't think that 1950 was better in terms of quality of life
compared to 2013. Right _now_ is the most prosperous time in human history.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The questions are: prosperous _for whom_ , and in what sense of the word?

1950 was "better" in that it was both more egalitarian (for whom) and also
more secure (which, I should note, made it inherently more egalitarian).
Things like the GI Bill and post-war reconstruction made Major Life Purchases
like housing, infrastructure, and education very affordable for large masses
of the population. Production booms, government income-support programs, and
unionization made incomes more secure (even when employment was culturally and
personally repressive and conformist), allowing families to reinvest in
building private savings. Employer-sponsored pension plans made retirement a
real possibility and Social Security a fall-back. One spouse was expected to
work, and the other spouse's labor was held in reserve for emergencies.

Contrast with today. Yes, in an absolute sense the economy is more productive,
but it's also less egalitarian (income inequality is at historic highs in the
United States and most other developed countries for which old measurements
exist) and less secure (debt and leverage are not only rampant but the _most
common and expected_ ways of gaining access to housing and education, and few
households can function without two incomes). The result is that for the
median citizen, things haven't gotten better (few to no real-wage rises) since
the 1970s, and the _mean_ citizen ( _including_ people with very high nominal
incomes) is vastly less secured against cash-flow disruptions. And since the
housing, health-care, education and energy sectors are collecting massive
economic rents, even the proliferation of cheap consumer goods hasn't actually
done as much for the median and mean citizens as it should have: someone who
has bare-minimum health insurance, and has to pay health premiums, taxes,
ever-rising housing rent, and student-debt service on a salary in the range of
$20k-$30k per year (assuming you live in the USA) simply cannot afford to
consume that many Playstation 3 games.

~~~
rthomas6
I honestly don't care about how egalitarian a society is. I care about a
society's aggregate quality of life. If one person has a quality of life
100,000 times greater than everyone else, yet everyone else has a quality of
life 100 times greater than today, I would choose that society. You can argue
that the overall quality of life for our society now is lower than in 1950,
but I strongly disagree with you. It doesn't matter if real wages have
increased since 1970 if material goods have gotten cheaper. I would still
argue that the overall quality of life has increased since 1970. And you're
painting an incomplete picture about 1950:

>1950 was "better" in that it was both more egalitarian (for whom) and also
more secure (which, I should note, made it inherently more egalitarian).

If you were white.

>Things like the GI Bill and post-war reconstruction made Major Life Purchases
like housing, infrastructure, and education very affordable for large masses
of the population.

If you were white.

>Employer-sponsored pension plans made retirement a real possibility and
Social Security a fall-back.

65 was around the median age of death in 1950. "Retirement" was a hell of a
lot shorter if you work almost until your death age. I can't call that better
than now.

>One spouse was expected to work, and the other spouse's labor was held in
reserve for emergencies.

If you were white. And both spouses working was an emergency situation because
maintaining a household took a lot more effort in 1950 than it does today.

I just can't imagine things being _better_ for people in 1950 than now.

>someone who has bare-minimum health insurance, and has to pay health
premiums, taxes, ever-rising housing rent, and student-debt service on a
salary in the range of $20k-$30k per year (assuming you live in the USA)
simply cannot afford to consume that many Playstation 3 games.

I don't think I could afford to consume that many Playstation 3 games in 1950,
either. In fact, I don't think anyone could afford to consume any. In fact,
there would be a good chance that I wouldn't even own a television in 1950.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I do certainly take your point on the "if you were white" front, but I want to
use that to lead into something Tony Judt wrote in "Ill Fares the Land": the
post-war period was prosperous enough that political movements, in many
instances, shifted from striving to _overthrow and replace the system_ towards
striving to _be included in the existing prosperity_. MLK Jr was indeed a
black-rights activist and a socialist, but he didn't see his form of
democratic socialism as something that required a violent revolution of
genocidal proportions the way that, say, Lenin had, or even the way that
German anti-fascist partisans had.

>I don't think I could afford to consume that many Playstation 3 games in
1950, either. In fact, I don't think anyone could afford to consume any.

Thank you for making part of my point for me. If someone couldn't consume PS3
games in 1953-1963 because they didn't exist, and someone can't consume PS3
games now because they're unaffordable on today's low salaries (well, low
salaries for most people _outside Hacker News_ ), _then what good is the
existence of PS3 games to this person?_

Where's the worth in increased production and variety of consumer goods only
an elite minority can afford to enjoy?

~~~
rthomas6
I agree that increased production and variety of consumer goods is mostly
useless if only an elite minority gains benefits from them. But I still
disagree that only an elite minority has seen a benefit, i.e. an increase in
the quality of life over the past 40 years, and certainly over the past 60
years. And yes, income and wealth inequality may have increased since 1950,
and I agree with you that this is objectively bad. I also agree that our
country has a serious and growing problem with personal debt.

But these things do not mean that the average and median standard of living
has not risen for everyone in the United States since 1950, which I believe it
has. I don't even see how this can be argued. Almost every quality of life
metric I can think of has improved: education, life expectancy, and infant
mortality have all improved, in addition to harder to measure increases in
everyday comfort due to technology. In 2013, even most of the poor have a
mobile phone. Almost anyone can walk into a library and talk to you or I on
Hacker News. There are some metrics that have not improved, such as crime,
incarceration rates, or income equality, and these are serious issues. But
_overall_ , I believe that the standard of living for the average US citizen
has risen.

Anecdotal examples don't really prove much, but I'd like to give one anyway.
My sister hasn't made the best decisions, and dropped out of college to move
in with her boyfriend. They lived with his mother for a while, and lived on
food stamps and in poverty. During this time, they had access to an Xbox 360,
a car, cell phones, and a television. Their living situation was terrible by
normal standards, and yet their standard of living would have been seen as
good or even great by 1950 standards.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
_I don't even see how this can be argued._

Simple: median real wages HAVE NOT RISEN AT ALL since 1970, while the cost of
living (particularly prices for housing, health-care, education and energy)
has... a lot.

So you can say that consumer technology has increased the quality of life in a
non-tangible, non-quantified way. But in all the _quantified_ ways, things are
getting worse: people are losing the incomes that enabled them to access
consumer goods (like consumer technologies) in the first place.

There are also many complaints about "kids these days", that a current-day
education is "inflated" and less worthwhile or indicative of anything than a
past one.

The poor don't have mobile phones because they can afford luxuries, they have
them because mobile phones have become very, very cheap and, in some cases,
government-subsidized.

As to life-expectancy, it's actually started to tick slightly _downward_ for
young people today since the Recession started. Infant mortality, too.

So, indicators that have gotten better over the past four decades: educational
levels, life expectancy, infant mortality, crime rates (they're down quite a
bit). Indicators that got worse in the past four decades: housing, health-
care, education and energy costs, real wages, working hours (they increased
noticeably). Indicators that started getting worse since 5 years ago: all of
the above.

~~~
rthomas6
In that case, maybe I'm wrong. If it is really true that the base cost of
living has risen compared to real wages, then I'm wrong. I wonder if someone
were able to only buy amenities and luxuries to create a standard of living
comparable to the median standard of living in 1970, would it cost more or
less in real wages? Or the same? My premise was that it would cost less even
though real wages have not risen, because one would not have to buy as much to
live like 1970 compared to how the average US citizen lives today. Similar to
how mobile phones, computers, and the like are cheaper today. But if it's true
that 1970's-comparable housing, health care, education, etc. costs have all
risen, then you're right... the standard of living in some ways could be
considered to be lower today than in 1970. Which is really effed up.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I'd advise giving this a watch. The data has surprised everyone, including the
people researching it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A>

------
akiselev
"For more than three decades, technology has reduced the number of jobs in
manufacturing. Robots and other machines controlled by computer programs work
faster and make fewer mistakes than humans"

Worst of all, we haven't even seen the robotics revolution yet. In the past,
automated assembly lines, manufacturing plants, etc. were the realm of
extremely large companies with volumes in the hundreds of millions and
billions of dollars. Now, with embedded development becoming more and more
accessible and interfaces becoming an important part of software, that
automation will become cheaper and cheaper. Pretty soon we'll be able to use
off the shelf hardware with Python and OpenCV to program complicated assembly
lines and manufacturing pipelines (which we can to some extent already).

------
russell
The western democracies are in a position to be in a post scarcity world if we
choose to be. There is no reason that everyone cannot have the basics of food,
shelter, health, and security. We also do not need perpetual 20% unemployment.
One important dividend could be increased leisure time. We went from 60 hour
workweeks to 40 hours, so why not 30 hour workweeks or 6 weeks of vacation per
year. We are mot yet at the point where we can automate tasks that require
mobility and some level of skill, such as a UPS delivery person.

I think we are also at the point where we as individuals dont need a barrage
of new physical things every year. We can still make significant progress with
new virtual products and more efficient and durable physical goods.

------
dkasper
"I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and
abilities as they have over the past seven years." - Andrew McAfee principal
research scientist at the Center for Digital Business of MIT.

Seriously?

~~~
danilocampos
What's wrong with that? The last seven years contain the rise of modern
mobile. Lots of new stuff has come out of that.

------
johngalt
Technology _creates_ middle-class jobs and wealth by enabling the less skilled
to perform tasks they were previously unsuited for. Where did all those
factory jobs come from in the first place? The entire idea of assembly line
manufacturing was to replace skilled artisans with unskilled repetition.
Technology today is no different. The only issue most 'developed countries'
have is that it's lifting millions out of poverty worldwide rather than paying
union members $70/hr to tighten bolts.

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shakeel_mohamed
Alright guys, let's save the economy! This was the perfect amount of
motivation for me.

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dimitar
Its mainly recession, in good times productivity growth means more, not less
jobs.

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notmarxist
The idea that labor is something which can be traded for income is a myth.

