
Average Is Over - mjfern
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html
======
mtts
Ridiculous.

The solution to average people becoming less relevant in the economy (which I
don't dispute, btw) can of course never be to make everyone above average as
that is by definition impossible.

It's a feel good message for average folk that papers over the truth, which is
that average folk that used to make a decent living doing average work will
become poor. All of them, eventually. How poor exactly? Well, you could do
worse than to look at Chinese factory workers for an indication of where
things will end.

Of course it's more complicated than that: if the average man has become as
poor as a Chinese factory worker, he will no longer be able to afford
expensive gadgets and value added services, so it'll be in the interest of at
least some sectors of the economy (think Apple and Google) to keep the
impoverishment of the middle class down to a minimum. On the other hand there
are other sectors of the economy (think McDonalds and Walmart) that will do
just fine even if everyone is poor, so it'll be interesting to see how this
plays out.

But, like I said, this article is ridiculous. Giving everyone a PhD won't
solve a thing.

~~~
muyuu
The solution is none. There is no "solution" because it, in itself, is not a
problem. The problem is that everybody feels entitled to a top 10% salary and
many would _kill_ for "their fair share" when nowadays even the lower 10% have
their basic needs covered and some left for leisure.

The problem is that a society where everybody have similar incomes is somehow
fairer, when there is no logical chain leading there and to top it off it
causes ruination. Did cause it already just after industrial revolution, when
this disparity in productivity first became natural, and does more and more
now.

Having everyone highly educated would solve many things. Not salary disparity
though, as it isn't a problem in the first place. The problem is having a
significant chunk of the population hungry or homeless. This can perfectly be
eradicated "even" with a higher disparity.

~~~
_delirium
_nowadays even the lower 10% have their basic needs covered and some left for
leisure_

Only really because of what's left of the welfare system, mainly Medicaid,
Section 8 housing, food stamps, and the EITC; which I agree does help on the
low end, but is increasingly being time-limited and rationed (e.g. Section 8
is hard to get into). The 10th-percentile household income in the U.S. is
around $12,000. If that's all you had to live on, even in cheapish parts of
the US it'd be quite a stretch to pay rent+food+transportation+healthcare out
of that, especially for more than one person.

 _The problem is that a society where everybody have similar incomes is
somehow fairer, when there is no logical chain leading there and to top it off
it causes ruination._

Well, I've lived in both the U.S. and Denmark, which have very different
levels of income inequality, and I wouldn't say Denmark has suffered
ruination. There are pros and cons, of course. The logical chain isn't _that_
complex if a society actually wants to implement it; it doesn't require some
kind of communist revolution, just high and highly progressive taxes
(including on capital gains), a national healthcare system, and a strong
safety net.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_The 10th-percentile household income in the U.S. is around $12,000. If that's
all you had to live on..._

It's not all you have to live on. People in these income ranges tend to have
_consumption_ of $18-22k.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt

The missing piece of the puzzle is that a lot of people in these income ranges
receive many benefits which do not qualify as income.

~~~
_delirium
That's what the first part of my reply is, isn't it? EITC, Section 8 housing,
food stamps, Medicaid, etc., are where the extra money comes from. Which I
agree is a good thing, and what makes it at all possible to claim that the
10th-percentile income is one that's possible to live on. But I don't think
those programs are very secure (they've been significantly cut, many are hard
to get into now if you weren't already in, and I think more cuts are likely),
so the prospects aren't great.

~~~
jpadkins
Umm all of those programs budgets grow year over year every year.. Some of
them spiking in recent years.

Cuts from future growth rates are not cuts, they just slowed growth of a
program..

You might be able to paint a picture of cuts per capita, but that is due to
immigration driven population growth, not cuts to the program.

------
steder
“Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an
assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near
midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s
dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and
a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a
12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the
plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. ‘The speed and flexibility is
breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match
that.’ ”

Ah yes, at midnight I'll just go walk over to my "dormitories" on my
"plantation" and wake my "employees" and tell them to get to work harvesting
cotton. In exchange for their 12 hour work day (and a comfy dormitory in which
to live) I'll give them tea and a biscuit!

I don't understand why the "Average" American won't come work for me given
these perks.

~~~
hello_moto
I'd like to see the author in the shoes of those workers :)

------
richardburton
This is fascinating. I think the big (and scary) meta-trend is this:

The population is increasing and the requirement for people is decreasing.

This gap is made wider by increased birth-rates and better automation. More
people are being born into a world where fewer are required. That is quite a
scary thought. Computers and machines automate and replace people everywhere.

I have some anecdotal evidence of this:

At my last business we used to follow-up twice via email with all of the
people who had not responded to a quote that we had sent them. We had 50-100
enquiries a day so the follow-ups soon mounted up. I tried every CRM and mail-
list manager out there. I could not find one that would trigger an email from
my Gmail account if a contact had not responded. I was spending 3-4 hours a
day doing the follow-ups. So were my staff. It got to the point where I wanted
to hire someone to do it. Eventually I learnt more about the software and read
up on ruby on rails. I hired a small software house to help with the backend,
built the front-end myself and a month later, a machine replaced the humans
and prevented a new hire. That is just one job at a tiny 5-person company. At
scale, computer-based automation creates huge efficiencies. The flip-side of
that are huge deficiencies in employment.

Here come the machines.

~~~
wladimir
I think it's also a matter of what kind of world we want.

For example: Do you choose to use software instead of employing a person
because you prefer the software, or would you prefer to hire a person but
choose software because it is cheaper (which helps the company survive) and
kind-of can do the same job?

If it's the first, there's a good reason to be scared. If it's the second,
then market forces might eventually balance out and make hiring people an
attractive choice again.

Ideally, tools such as computers will go back to being tools, "human helpers"
and not "human replacements".

I do not like to think about an automated, antisocial world in which less and
less humans are needed because machines have taken over. Isn't that self-
defeating anyway? When did we start putting our tools above ourselves?

~~~
Riesling
> Do you choose to use software instead of employing a person because you
> prefer the software

I think in the long run the software will do a much better job than a person.
It's inevitable in my opinion. We are not even a century into computing and
look what we already have achieved.

> I do not like to think about an automated, antisocial world

That is because you define your world as the action of going to work in order
to receive food and shelter. This does not necessarily have to be your world.
I say we should leave this world to machines while everybody can go on to do
what he is really passionate about.

Of course we need a different distribution mechanism of goods created by the
machines. But that's a different question.

~~~
bzbarsky
Some people are in fact doing jobs they're passionate about.

What you should really worry about is a world in which a person can't do
anything except consume entertainment and goods, because everything else is
handled better by machines....

~~~
cgmorton
And what exactly is wrong with that? You've gotten 'consume entertainment and
goods' confused with 'do absolutely anything they want'. Maybe that's making
movies, or writing, or painting, or travelling, or maybe spending their time
getting to know interesting people. And even if this person really prefers
sitting at home watching TV (even though they haven't spent their energy at
some demeaning, labour-intensive job), well, who are you to say that's a
problem? Let people decide for themselves what they want to do. Increasing
their free time and decreasing scarcity can only give people more options.

~~~
bzbarsky
No, I don't have it confused.

Some people really like producing something someone else can use. Especially
if people then actually use it. There are quite a lot of people like that,
actually. And such people would be absolutely screwed in the world you
describe.

What's the point of making movies no one will watch? Is it worth writing if no
one will read it? Painting if no one wants to see them? For some people, yes.
For many, no.

------
jmtame
It was only a few centuries ago that we paid this exclusive, elite upper class
in society called scribes to write and transcribe things for us, because we
weren't literate enough to do it ourselves. The parallels are pretty
surprising today: we're paying an exclusive, elite class called programmers to
write in the languages understood by computers. Software is eating the world,
jobs are being displaced, and the demand for technical talent is as high as
its ever been.

~~~
rythie
Is programming that elite though? wages seemed to have hardly changed in the
U.K. in the last 10 years (accounting for inflation). Also programming pays a
similar amount to other jobs requiring a degree and is certainly a lot less
than jobs like accountancy, finance, law and medical doctors.

For example, average programmer salary in 2004 was about £31k and in £38k
<http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/programmer.do> and if you calculate £31k
in today's money you get £38,440
[[http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/His...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-
inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html)]

~~~
reader5000
I don't know about the UK but in the US accounting, law, and medicine require
appropriate licensing keeping supply low and wages high(er). But I dont think
programming will ever reach the prestige of law/medicine since in the former
you are engineering machines whereas in the latter you are engineering the
human body and society, which will always be way sexier.

~~~
rythie
I'm just talking about supply and demand which should have kicked in if there
is a shortage. Perhaps shouldn't have mentioned Doctors thing, which a
different issue.

------
adamgravitis
The author's sudden and poorly supported conclusion doesn't really fit.
Because people with bachelor's degrees have the least unemployment, it is
imperative we pass a GI Bill to ensure everyone gets a bachelor's degree?!

He's getting the causality wrong. It's not because they have bachelor's
degrees that they're getting jobs. They're getting jobs because they're
(minimally) bright and (minimally) ambitious.

Printing 100 million bachelor's diplomas "solves" the unemployment problem in
much the same way that printing 100 trillion dollars solves our financial
problems: not at all.

~~~
orky56
Although your argument is perfectly valid, one should not underestimate the
value of the Bachelor's degree as just a piece of paper. I'm not trying to be
facetious but a lot of employers filter, and sometimes hire, applicants based
on their education level. In these cases, some employers assume these people
have the skills. The important point here is that skills can be acquired in
post-secondary education or on your own. However if done on your own, you face
a hurdle of not having the college degree.

~~~
jpadkins
if 95% of the population have a BS/BA, then it no longer serves as a filter...
Business will find a new filter.

Also if 95% have a BS/BA, then you no longer have negotiating power for your
higher wages...

Giving everyone 4 more years of education will certainly benefit society, but
it doesn't solve the inequality problem.

------
dave_sullivan
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I think he's right about many things there: manufacturing jobs are leaving and
not coming back. Automation is becoming more and more advanced, particularly
if you factor advances in robotics and ml since 2006 or so.

Things move faster and average just doesn't seem to cut it when you can
manufacture excellence. Hell, lawyers and doctors will be next, how about faux
ai that can write simple web apps or come up with good designs? Give
generative models a few more years to advance, we'll see how far fetched that
is. Some people will get very rich from all that. But that wealth will go to
those who control what amounts to the means of production and they'll be able
to defend those means with patents. I guess workers could strike back in the
day, good luck with that now, the little guy has even less negotiating power.

All this to say, I think these trends and the shift they bring are going to be
the most fundamental shift in economic organization since the industrial
revolution. Not sure what the answer is, but I'm concerned that those in power
dont even recognize the issues (they're not "nerds", as they say.) Time will
tell, but I'm not all that optimistic about the average joes out there.

PS I wish the answer was everyone will start their own business, but honestly
I just don't think that will be practical.

~~~
simonh
>how about faux ai that can write simple web apps or come up with good
designs?

A major class of workers that software has a tendency of replacing is
programmers themselves. Bespoke solutions are replaced by what used to be
called shrink-wrapped applications. In the web area, look at how services such
as Squarespace replace bespoke sites by providing easy to use site design
tools.

~~~
average_joe
I am that guy, the average programmer. I used to wire up mobile apps to back
end services. I have had no interest in my services for over a year. I think I
have been replaced by iCloud, urban airship, parse, etc...

~~~
UK-Al05
Depends what you mean by average. If you've been programming in objective-c;
that most likely means you understand memory management; small-talk style oo
etc. Corporate Java programmers have forgot this stuff, yet they will always
be in demand.

------
noonespecial
I think he meant "ordinary" not "average". Average has a specific meaning and
as many have pointed out, you can't make everyone above average.

What we've got to figure out is how to keep the large mass of ordinaries from
being made into Eloi by a combination of welfare states, machine productivity,
and wealth disparity.

Or, failing that, find a way to prevent the Morlocks from eating the Eloi when
it suits them.

~~~
ScottBurson
_you can't make everyone above average_

Yes, you can, because there's an infinity of dimensions and each person only
has to be above average on one of them.

I'm really surprised how many people here aren't getting this.

~~~
billybob
Infinity of dimensions, sure. But we're only talking about one of them:
__number of dollars of economic value you can create __.

Whether you're an above-average Scrabble player is irrelevant to a discussion
about work and wages. Unless there's something of economic value that you can
do better and more cheaply than a robot, there is no reason for anyone to pay
you.

~~~
kokey
I think a better way to describe it would be to say that in order to make sure
you earn an average salary, you have to be above average at something, and
more so than in the previous century.

------
hammock
Folks are harping on the meaning of "average," but it's clear to me that in
the article, "average" here is a euphemism for "unskilled."

When you've been working as an semi-skilled laborer in a textile mill for 20
years, and suddenly your job is made redundant in favor of automation- your
mill training becomes worthless. You don't need to become "above average," you
just need to learn a different semi-skilled trade. Like pushing around excel
spreadsheets.

------
jharding
This article reminds me of Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano>

It's a pretty good read. It has an interesting take on a future where machines
do the majority of the work. With the way things are headed, I'd say a society
like the one described in Player Piano might not be to far off. I'm still
undecided whether that's a good thing or not.

------
invalidOrTaken
One question I've had for...a while now.

If

    
    
      a) corporate profits are up                         
    
      b) hiring isn't happening, or is seeing a skills mismatch
    

then where exactly are all these profits going? If they're going to capital
goods for the company, that just moves the question on down the line. If
they're going to shareholders, then what are those shareholders buying? And if
it's just sitting in the bank, where is the bank lending it out?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Many of the profits were earned overseas, and are being left there. If they
bring the profits home to the US, they will be taxed. Essentially, the US is
levying a tax on (certain) foreign investment, specifically investment by
Google Ireland in Google USA.

Additionally, most of the private sector is deleveraging and building up cash
reserves to use in lieu of debt financing.

~~~
marvin
Do you have numbers or references on the deleveraging point? I know that
Google, Apple and Microsoft are sitting on vast cash reserves...but is this
what is happening in the economy in general? If this is the case, then this is
as far as I can tell good news. Debt serves a purpose, but if it causes
systemic problems like we've seen in recent years then it should be kept low.

~~~
justincormack
I recommend this paper for some numbers on the US, UK and Spain, and the
different sectors.

[http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Financial_Mark...](http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/Research/Financial_Markets/Debt_and_deleveraging_The_global_credit_bubble_Update)

------
phatbyte
" Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation
and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into
beveled frames. " - This is true in the actual times, since China (no matter
how they want you to forget it) is living under very harsh communist regime,
but that will change when chinese workers start demanding better working
conditions, more time for family, better salaries, etc..as far as I know, it's
China who's living in a bubble.

------
WalterBright
The flip side is that all this automation makes stuff cheaper, and a better
lifestyle is available for less money.

~~~
dclaysmith
I think that _should_ be the flip side but aside from 2009-2010 (the bulk of
the recession), inflation has remained constant over the last ten years.
Inflation adjusted wages have continued to decline to record numbers. The jobs
that are returning in the current recovery have been primarily low paying ones
(clearly IT is exempt from this).

What has been going up is corporate profits. Apple's latest figures are mind
boggling. A billion dollars in profit a WEEK. Someone up higher in the
comments wrote that we are at peak-capitalism and headed towards
Marxism/Socialism. While I doubt that's going to happen (Wall St too strong,
progressive politicians too weak) I think America _needs_ to go that way.

As Elizabeth Warren said 'There is nobody in this country who got rich on his
own'. I feel that corporations (they are people right) and "The 1%" need to
pay as much or more of their income in taxes to repay society for their
success. This money should be used to address the problems in this article.
The US needs to make higher education and retraining free/affordable, make
health care free, and provide better social safety nets. With these things in
place, Americans will be able to start getting competitive again.

~~~
danieldk
_I think that should be the flip side but aside from 2009-2010 (the bulk of
the recession), inflation has remained constant over the last ten years._

While this may be true, technology has definitely become cheaper and more
accessible. Eg. in my country, which is a Western economy, few people could
afford computers in the 80ies, except maybe for the very low end (C64, MSX).
Now many families have multiple laptops, smartphones, and maybe even a tablet.

Also, fixed Internet connections used to be expensive, pay per minute.
Nowadays, for 20 Euros per month you get an internet connection without data
limits and plenty of bandwidth.

Technology did become more accessible for the average family. And the impact
is real: snail mail is almost killed, records stores have mostly disappeared,
and next up are book stores. The price of e-mail is near-zero, iTunes music
purchases are often cheaper than new physical albums (especially if you have
to pay S&H fees), and Kindle ebooks are often cheaper than paper equivalents.

------
beatpanda
So we're currently building an economy that the "average person" doesn't have
the skills to participate in.

OK.

So who are we building this economy for, and why?

~~~
UK-Al05
Consumers. The economy serves the consumers.

~~~
justincormack
But as Henry Ford realized, if the consumer has too low an income he or she
cannot afford to conume, so your fctory will be unprifitable.

------
joelrunyon
Better titled

 _Average is looking less attractive than it did 10 years ago_

There will always be a place for average. However, I don't think it's going to
be as attractive of a place to be as it has been. It's going to be much more
costly to try and coast through life.

~~~
joelrunyon
It's also worth noting that it's never been as affordable or easy to escape
"average" as it has been today - interestingly enough, thanks to technology.

~~~
wladimir
What is this "average"? Obviously, it is a statistical measure. But what does
it mean in terms of people?

In those terms, "the average" is just a narrative of what the average person
would be like. Which seems to be breaking down.

Sure - you can make a list of specific things that every person needs or
desires, as there is a lot of commonality between people. Aside from that
commonality, we do different things, which are specific to persons or groups.
You cannot really speak of a mathematical average there, as those are
qualitative differences not quantitative differences (and the groups also
overlap...).

How do you "escape the average"? How is it to be "average"? How will you and
other people escaping, affect that average? Will the average catch up with
you?

I think the term is losing meaning, more than anything else, due to the
specialization inherent in our technological society, and due to non-
geographical clustering of people made possible by faster means of
communication.

~~~
joelrunyon
Er by "escape" I meant "opt-out."

A while ago, if you were average, there were too many barriers to not being
average to let you to escape the middle and it was easy to just "be."

Now, with the internet, the barrier to escape has been lowered to a laptop +
an internet connection.

------
spinchange
I can't believe those Presto touchscreens at restaurants are $100 per month. I
love gadgets and technology, but much prefer dealing with a server and think
most people do. My kids like the games and nag incessantly to play the "pay"
ones, but I hardly think this is the end of waitresses and waiters. (I hope)

~~~
barefoot
Agreed, I think replacing waitresses with touchscreens removes an important
part of the whole dining out experience.

A touchscreen waiter seems very cold and utilitarian. It reminds me of the
cheap LCD displays that have replaced gas station attendants. Almost all of
the gas stations that I've used recently have them, and they all have very
poorly worded prompts that show no regard for the time that I spend
interacting with it.

I can't help but feel that we're headed the same route with eating food:

WELCOME. PLEASE SWIPE CARD.

SELECT FOOD.

THANK YOU. DISPENSING FOOD. PRESS ENTER DESERT?

COME AGAIN. SPC. 2 MEAL LOBSTER FRIDAY.

That's not the experience I'm looking for when I want to go out on a friday
night. I want a real person to show up at the table and all of the
imperfections that comes bundled along with it.

Is that just because it's what I'm used to? Will our kids grow up in a world
without waiters and not even care?

~~~
rsheridan6
If people really wanted gas station attendants, they would go to gas stations
that had them instead of LCD displays, and you would see more of them. In
reality, you can hardly find a gas station that has an attendant outside of
states that don't let you pump your own gas, because the demand isn't there.

~~~
droz
Same goes with the the self-checkout lanes at grocery stories.

------
MaggieL
When a liberal talks about how somebody "should have access to" something,
hang on to your wallet. Because you will pay for it.

~~~
funkah
Do people seriously consider this guy a liberal? He spent most of the 2000s
talking about how awesome globalization is and how the free market was gonna
fix everything.

~~~
rsheridan6
"Liberal" is a relative term. If you like Noam Chomsky, Friedman probably
looks pretty conservative, but if you like Ludwig von Mises, yeah, he's a
liberal.

------
mikebracco
Great article. This illustrates a fundamental mistake that many believe which
is that just because they have a college degree they deserve a certain job,
income or lifestyle.

~~~
zoltarSpeaks
Yeah I completely agree with this. There is an attitude just like this in
England at the moment. There aren't enough graduates using their initiative
and being creative in either finding jobs or making work for themselves to
fight the declining level of jobs. The assumption is, leave school, go to
University, get a job. Unfortunately for them that route is failing now.

~~~
robryan
In the past, when less people were attending university, this would be true as
in getting a degree you were putting yourself into a fairly exclusive group.
Now though, when so many are getting degrees, you need to go above and beyond
them to put yourself in a group as exclusive as the degree would give you a
generation ago.

~~~
zoltarSpeaks
Yeah i think you're spot on, it's that ability to shine out from the crowd
that is required. Although i guess the exclusivity of being a graduate could
easily return with recent hike up in fees within the last couple of years.

------
exit
did you mean to link to the comment field in particular, or the entire
article?

in any case, it reminded me of

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee>

~~~
_delirium
I tend to agree with that solution, though I think there are more and less
sustainable vs. conflict-inducing ways of structuring it. The simplest way is
just to pay out cash collected from taxes, but that's always subject to
conflict around "my tax money going to support lazy bums" type stuff, and easy
to cut (or fiddle with in various ways to meet other budgetary goals).

More sustainable basic incomes tend to be structured as royalties imo, like
Alaska's oil fund. One possibility would be to look at what might happen in a
future where agriculture is mainly mechanized, so in effect food is being
grown by robots. Initially what that'll mean is whoever got in place first
will profit from them; whoever had the land and the capital to invest in the
robots will then own the results of their production, even in a hypothetical
future where they run 100% on autopilot henceforth. So it's a sort of strong-
dependence-on-initial-conditions type situation, where who gets the results of
the robots' labor depends basically on who was on top in the last pre-robot
generation (granted, it may not be a purely black-and-white pre-robot/robot
transition). I think in that case we'd have to eventually (somehow) transition
towards a bunch of arable land + robots being held in trust for the population
as a whole, splitting up the proceeds, or at least a portion of them, like the
Alaska oil fund.

Lots of details and questions around exactly how the numbers work out, but at
a high level I like a solution of not intruding much into the "normal" part of
the economy, like humans doing things for other humans, but operating some
basic minerals/land/agriculture in some sort of trust arrangement, with
proceeds distributed to everyone, as their share of the proceeds of the
earth+robots (as opposed to the proceeds of other humans' labor).

~~~
yesbabyyes
Georgism is interesting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism>

My issue with that is that it would drive us to extract the maximum value from
the land, which could worsen the environment even more. I would like to hear
more about what people think about this.

------
rdouble
More bachelor's degrees won't increase the number of exceptional people, it
will just mean more average people with bachelor's degrees. A side effect of
this will be that the number of jobs for average people with bachelor's
degrees will increase. Some of the most stable and best paying jobs are in
education, law enforcement, state and local government, school and health care
administration and so forth. Basically anything that is full or partially
funded by tax dollars.

In many places there is already an attitude of why would you be so dumb to
subject yourself to the logan's run of working in private enterprise when you
can get an easy job with a pension by simply working directly or indirectly
for the state.

------
pnathan
What's usually missed is the value of being a skilled tradesman.

Who fixes your robot?

Who builds your house?

Not everyone is cut out for college, actually, most people aren't.

~~~
quandrum
> who fixes your robot?

Who fixes humans? Robots will do this eventually.

> Who builds your house?

Robots here too.

Just because they can't do it today doesn't mean you shouldn't plan on them
being able to do it.

~~~
ams6110
The question is, will a robot that is autonomous enough and sophisticated
enough to build a house be cheaper to operate than a human worker? As
complexity of machines increases, the number of ways they can break down
increases exponentially. Humans bodies are self-repairing for the most part
except in cases of severe traumatic injury and disease.

~~~
rsheridan6
The complexity of a robot is mostly in the software. Input (cameras and
microphones) and output (robotic arms, etc) have been around for decades, but
robots have not been able to interpret a picture of the world effectively.
That's a software problem.

The thing about software is that you write it once and then it's free to copy.
The first general-purpose robot workers will probably run expensive
proprietary software, but 10 years later there will be usable open source
versions. The physical robot itself will become cheaper, if anything, due to
economies of scale.

------
nchuhoai
I always wondered, is it actually possible for us to ever assume that we can
achieve better unemployment rates or is there a practical minimum which we can
never get below again.

If you think about it, in a world without technology, the money we spend has
to go to someone in the economy. However, since we know have artificial
workforce in play, we effectively pay less, which means that we in consequence
pay out less than we receive. So eitheir we all get paid less (yay communism),
or some people just naturally have to be unemployed (yay income inequality).

------
smattiso
There is no "solution" per se.

As I see it it's like this.

Most people are paid with how much labor they provide. $X amount of hours
worked equals $Y amount of money. Call these people Group A. Some are paid
using a different scale in line with the value of their creations. E.g.
inventing a better battery, opening a well positioned McDonalds, etc. Call
these people Group B.

Technology is reducing the amount of hours of labor from Group A the world
actually can use. Similarly most of Group A won't be able to create something
that actually adds value to the economy and transition into Group B.

So what are we going to do with all these people from Group A that are not
adding "value" to the economy? The only reasonable solution is to subsidize
these people in a way we deem socially acceptable.

Social Darwinism isn't acceptable, so the trick is finding a way to do this
without causing side effects and hopefully that adds benefit to society. Note
these people won't generate benefit to the economy in any meaningful way.

------
DamnYuppie
One point of the article that rankled me was his concept of a G.I. Bill so
that everyone had access to higher education. That seems very misguided in my
opinion. Instead of focusing on "higher education" should we not attempt to
remake our primary education system such that we provide people with more
relevant knowledge and skills?

------
RyanMcGreal
> Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra

This is Tom Friedman's socioeconomic policy in a nutshell: America as Lake
Wobegon.

Heaven help us.

------
lcargill99
Tom Friedman's Lake Woebegone bias is showing. Again.

------
mhb
A more optimistic counterpoint:

[http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/22/prediction...](http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/22/predictions_about_the_death_of_american_hegemony_may_have_been_greatly_exaggerated)

~~~
redschell
I think the numbers from Harvard B-school grads isn't really that shocking or
terrifying. Of course the US is losing ground to the BRIC countries. They were
bound to make progress eventually. Also, the 21% that felt America is "falling
behind" probably didn't mean to suggest that the country is finished. They're
reacting to events of the past year, such as the demotion of our credit
rating, which, as that particular snippet states, reflect a negative trend
worthy of greater public attention. Nice article overall though, especially
the point about the country successfully deleveraging.

------
rushabh
Siri has changed the discussion about voice recognition and semantic search.
Hard to imagine what will happen to all the call-centers in India if the use
of this technology becomes more widespread. How many years are we away from
this?

~~~
jpadkins
Speech recognition has been displacing Indian call centers for 10+ years.
Tellme Networks and Nuance have been leading this space... Siri has done
nothing in the call center sector.

------
MengYuanLong
The majority of comments seem to praise the programming/IT community or
question the state of our government/economic system but I have a different
question.

What future skill set should people be retooling to have? What can our economy
use more of?

~~~
pgeorgi
Taking care of children/elders/family/friends/neighbors.

With everything else automated, people will still be in need for social
interaction with real humans.

Currently the issue is that there's no simple economic value to put on these
tasks. Given their importance, I'd claim the bug lies in the economic model,
not in social interactions.

This all assumes that automation is put to its full potential: What will
society look like when harvesting energy, food generation and processing,
transportation and home building ("basic needs") were fully automated and
available for more-or-less free? (home building is the odd one out in this
list, as the others are for nearly instant consumtion, while most people live
under the same roof for a while)

------
mbesto
Same exact article written by Business Insider:

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-19/strategy/3064...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-19/strategy/30642154_1_recession-
millennials-change)

------
ilaksh
Better education isn't going to solve the problem of technological
unemployment.

We actually need a completely different structure.

<http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

------
Nick_C
His arguments, and many here, are moot because of the political ramifications
of disenfranching such a huge number of voters. The average worker, by
definition, commands by far the biggest voting block.

When their minds are concentrated on this one problem, irrespective of their
normal voting choice, they will vote for whoever offers them a way out.

It will end in tears as almost all wall-papering does, but not for a decade or
two.

FWIW, I think this is the beginning of the China-induced global economic
realignment. But we won't begin to see the real ramifications for a couple of
decades because of the above.

------
joezydeco
Go listen to Davidson's interview with a factory worker over the increasing
amount of automation and required technical knowledge that will eventually
shove her out of a job if she doesn't acquire the skills to keep up:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145039131/the-
tran...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145039131/the-
transformation-of-american-factory-jobs-in-one-company)

It's sobering. It makes me eternally grateful I have skills, well at least
_some_ skills, that won't be replaced by a robot and CNC mill overnight.

------
virmundi
I think that we're taking the concept of "average" too literally. Picture two
lines: average worker competency and need/requirement for the company to be
competitive. The author states that historically those two lines have been so
close as to be equivalent in management's eyes. Now the second line has moved
up.

So according to this definition, the average line is no longer acceptable. As
a result we need to move it up to realign with the need line.

Under this definition the author is not as problematic as before.

~~~
jpadkins
I like how you explained it much clearer than the professional author did...

I think NY Times needs to realign their columnists talent level...

------
narrow
Interesting. In addition to post-high school education access, it's important
that we also re-think our education system by creating environments that
inculcates learning around our individual passion/talent. Above average
performers are known to love their craft, and in a hyper-competitive economy
that requires one to learn, unlearn and relearn, passion would matter a whole
lot.

------
denzil_correa
On the contrary, I feel average is the new _skill_. There are many a time
where you need just average skilled workers. High skilled workers may find
such tasks mundane while for average skilled workers the same mundane tasks
may be challenging. IMHO, I would love to have a good mix of high skilled and
average skilled workers.

------
wisty
As a corollary, nobody average is busy.

------
goatslacker
Post high school education is overrated. In fact the American school system
won't really prepare you to face the reality.

Yes it seems like the need for these "average" jobs are decreasing but in the
end it will all balance itself out and there will be new areas that would need
to be filled.

~~~
Jach
What's overrated is the "pick a degree, any degree, you get to call yourself
'educated' in four years!" mantra. The difference between the US and (what I
hear of (so probably stereotypical)) Germany is that in the US you're told
from a very young age to go to college to "get an education". In Germany
you're told to go to college to "become a competent engineer".

I really disagree with you that it will balance out, that everything will be
alright, and that the 40-hour work week will keep on going. I'll defer to the
other comments on this page for reasons why.

~~~
goatslacker
I believe new opportunities will open up. Change will come. There are plenty
of needs that will surface somewhere and it's up to the "average" to adapt to
fill those needs.

Those that don't adapt or resist the change will be the ones that suffer the
most. This is a pattern with many things in life.

------
nluqo
This seems strangely familiar: [http://www.businessinsider.com/if-youre-an-
average-worker-in...](http://www.businessinsider.com/if-youre-an-average-
worker-in-this-forever-recession-youre-going-straight-to-the-
bottom-2012-1#ixzz1k0tZFvyn)

------
n_time
Maybe added economic value is the wrong way for society to decide the quality
of someone's life?

------
unfocused
In the future, people will need more than a degree. They will need a few.
That's what our children will have to deal with. There's nothing ridiculous
about this. More and more and people are getting access to education.

------
kokey
I have been thinking about solutions to this, to get a feeling for how things
will work out in the future by itself. Technology allows us to replace manual
labour with machines, but it also can create jobs for other things we have
been struggling to automate since it's naturally resistant to being
industrialised. These are human things, which tends to be the service economy.

To work on real examples: There are tasks around the house that I don't enjoy
doing or don't do reliably. Things like laundry, taking the rubbish out,
cleaning, paying the bills, going shopping for food or new underwear. I
wouldn't mind laundry people coming into my house once a week to pick the
laundry up, doing it somewhere else, and bringing it back. I also wouldn't
mind if someone would fold and pack my laundry for me nicely. Also, if my
underwear or socks get old, drop me an e-mail allowing me to replace it with a
provider of my choice. A cleaner is also very handy. It would be nice if
someone would note when my handwash soap or toilet paper is running low, and
order it for me. It would be nice if the delivery and placing of those things
in the correct place was done for me.

Now all of these things I mention can already be done right now by employing
serving staff, but this has a few issues. The main is cost, second to that is
trust and personal space, and third to that it's perceived as a demeaning job.

Technology allows us to solve a lot of these things. From making sure that the
right people can enter the property at the right time, e.g. when you are out,
and that they do only what they are supposed to do (e.g. track their time, and
movement around the house). It can also give anyone easy instructions on what
to do when they enter the house (e.g. a mobile device with a checklist to
check on things that need replacement, and even to guide them around the house
to where these things are, and knowing what stuff has been delivered and needs
unpacking) Other things can be -done better off site with modern industrial
methods, e.g. your laundry. Also when replacement shopping has been ordered,
it can be brought into your home along with the laundry, instead of you having
to wait for a delivery. I can see this stuff potentially becoming a lot
cheaper while creating a lot of low skilled jobs, perhaps jobs people can do
while studying other things. In the long run a lot of these things will
probably also be automated, making these jobs go away again. That in itself is
a good thing, since all of us want these jobs to go away. Then humans will
just be left to making choices about what they want to consume, or be creative
if they want to be creative. We won't be happy but that's a different issue.

------
arank
He mentions most of the points in article in this video -
<http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Friedman>

------
revorad
Or more accurately, the average has changed.

------
draggnar
I believe that the solutions will be found in a change in our value system.
Things that we really appreciate, things that are uniquely human, will be
valued more. See thisismadebyhand.com Obviously solving big problems and being
"not average" will be important, but I believe that many people will be able
to find niches doing things that add value to life in ways that a machine
can't.

------
ojbyrne
I find Thomas Friedman, as a columnist, to be decidedly below average. Why
does he still have a job?

------
grego
I suppose the original author is worried about U.S. average falling with
respect to world average.

~~~
userulluipeste
That's only the globalization. The other thing affecting the (now global)
average is automation, which is faster than before.

------
specialist
I feel like I was just rick rolled.

 _Please prefix the pundit's name to these links._

As for this particular pundit, he lost me at "invade Iraq". After claiming the
earth is flat, you'd think people would have learned to ignore this asshat.

------
mcantelon
This is pretty obvious stuff.

------
n_time
tl;dr

america in decline. getting a job hard? try school.

------
wavephorm
Welcome to Peak Capitalism. This is the peak of our current socio-economic
system, and I'm fairly certain that everyone in the White House is now well-
aware and convinced of what's likely going to happen over the course of the
next 10 years. I hope they're preparing for it right now.

I believe the coming collapse of the capitalistic-democractic system is
imminent, and America needs to very seriously start planning for a conversion
to Socialism/Marxism because the current system is not going to work for very
long.

~~~
simonh
Because that worked out so well for Russia and China. Command economies have
never efficiently allocated resources, and they never will. Economies are just
too complicated for a single central authority to control successfully. They
can never have enough accurate information, and can't be flexible enough to
rapidly changing circumstances.

Just look at the hopeless response to the financial crisis from European
leaders. You really want to put politicians in charge of all business activity
as well?

~~~
rsheridan6
If the alternative does turn out to be unemployment on a massive scale due to
automation, the Soviet Union doesn't look so bad in comparison. It's probably
not optimal, but at least we know that it works (badly, no doubt, but life
went on under the Soviets). I seriously doubt Friedman's idea of sending
everyone to college would work at all.

~~~
jpadkins
The Soviet Union killed 100m of its own citizens. Now what doesn't look so
bad?

~~~
rsheridan6
That's a grossly exaggerated figure, and if you skip the Lenin/Stalin era and
go straight to Khruschev it's not nearly as bad. And if, by hypothesis, the
"average" person become redundant and unemployable, they would simply starve
to death in lieu of government intervention, which would lead to a death toll
that would make the Dekulakization look like a traffic ticket.

------
eternalban
Yet he still has a job at NYTimes.

