
The Downward Ramp - Futurebot
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/opinion/the-downward-ramp.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
======
kanamekun
This is a key quote, and anecdotally I've seen it playing out with people I
know: "[T]he drying up of cognitively demanding jobs is having a cascade
effect. College graduates are forced to take jobs beneath their level of
educational training, moving into clerical and service positions instead of
into finance and high tech. This cascade eliminates opportunities for those
without college degrees who would otherwise fill those service and clerical
jobs. These displaced workers are then forced to take even less demanding,
less well-paying jobs, in a process that pushes everyone down. At the bottom,
the unskilled are pushed out of the job market altogether."

~~~
DustinCalim
I wouldn't say this is necessarily a bad thing, but more like the effects of
market correction as our entire workforce transitions to a higher level
putting pressure on people to operate at a higher cognitive level. And, I
think we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively
demanding positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other
countries helps that happen. Now the next question I see is- 'Is our education
system ready for that?' and I don't know a lot about the inner workings of it,
but my gut feeling says we're not there yet.

~~~
kourt
"we would want as much of our population as possible in cognitively demanding
positions, and having the ability to outsource labor to other countries helps
that happen"

1) What if you had a brother with an IQ of 98. Would you rather he had a
respectable factory job, or become homeless?

2) Are you aware that many of the least-tradable services are the least
"cognitively demanding"? So I guess you want to tailor the bell curve of the
population so that everyone is either > 120 so that they can do very highly
cognitive work, or < 80 (so that they are content doing extremely menial
work). Isn't it a little _inconvenient_ that around 68% of the population is
85-115 IQ?

~~~
adrianN
I would rather that the respectable factory job is done by a robot. I don't
think we should force humans to do repetitive work that can be automated just
so that they can somehow justify their existence in a society that is obsessed
with work. Our goal should be as little employment as necessary paired with a
basic income.

~~~
wallflower
Marshall Brain's Manna which has been mentioned before on HN is an interesting
take on where automation and robots will take us.

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

~~~
brazzy
"will"?

~~~
wallflower
s/will/may

Rereading it again. He basically foreshadowed Amazon warehouse workers. Though
he may fall short on the leap from Amazon to the rest of the working class.

------
Zigurd
Since about 1990 I have been acutely that only a minority of my high school
cohort has lives as comfortable and financially secure as their parents. A
disturbingly large number of my university cohort have fallen off the upward
ramp.

If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the
next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that
education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it.
The ladder has been cut off under, and in a few cases, above many of the
people reading this.

~~~
morgante
> If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find
> the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of
> that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to
> afford it.

Not really. That's a pernicious myth. The elite universities have amazing
financial aid which actually makes it easiest to attend for those who can
least afford it. The hurdle is getting in, which by definition is impossible
for the vast majority of Americans.

Not that any of this matters. The continued success of the elite is irrelevant
to the continued struggles of the 99.5%.

~~~
Zigurd
Elite universities can offer a hand up to those extraordinary cases of highly
intelligent kids coming up from poverty. But they are MUCH less affordable for
and admit far fewer kids from ordinary educational backgrounds with middle
class parents. I doubt my own trajectory is repeatable without an added couple
$100k in debt.

~~~
morgante
> But they are MUCH less affordable for and admit far fewer kids from ordinary
> educational backgrounds with middle class parents.

That's just false. Huge numbers of middle class students enroll in elite
institutions.

My family is decidedly middle class and, in line with their standard financial
aid policies, every elite university I applied to offered an aid package which
would make it affordable. The total debt required would have been around $5k
over 4 years (just books).

Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I do elite education's unaffordability
is a pernicious myth which keeps great students from applying.

------
cturner
"Beaudry, Green and Sand make the case that the technology bubble that burst
in 2000 was far more significant than generally recognized."

As I see it, there have been two milestones in corporate IT history.

The first was around getting things into databases that could be shared by
multiple users. A good example of this is stuff that used to run on the VAX.

Then there was a desktop revolution triggered by the combination of the
internet, and Windows NT/2000\. You could now push a computer around without
being a hobbyist, and microsoft office brought various kinds of productivity.

The mindsets created by the previous revolutions are holding us back now.

* IT departments suffer from the architectural mistake of creating vast databases with multiple dependent systems on them, making maintenance and quality very hard. How many times have you asked your gas company to make one change that has resulted in some bizarre side-effect on your account?

* The dominance of single-user document-centric systems like Microsoft Office hampers effective collaboration.

This narrative explains why we're bogged at the moment. It's similar to much
of what was written in the 90s - at the time, writers complained that that
return on investment in IT was very low, and wealth was shifting to Japan not
China.

------
cornholio
"the upscale Democratic elite – a constituency historically more concerned
with social and cultural issues than economic ones. [...] If their children
begin to face hurdles similar to those confronting manual and semi-skilled
workers, interest in a more activist government may grow"

Yeah, right. This flies in the face of everything we have learned about human
nature. When faced with economic shortages and crises the first to be thrown
overboard are the poor.

~~~
mdda
If you read the sentence you quoted, you'll see that you agree with it : It
says that Democratic elites (even those that are more concerned with social
and cultural issues) don't really care about an issue until it affects their
own children. Assuming the elites aren't poor, then the poor (by that stage)
have already gone by the way-side.

~~~
cornholio
If you read my answerer you've replied to, you'll see that I disagree: the
economic game of musical chairs will always corrode social progress and
cohesion, see the Depression, neoclasical reforms of the 80s etc. Poor people
(and their parents) can't afford to be anything but individualistic.

------
avz
I hate when journalists lump all college graduates together. Going to college
can be detrimental or highly advantageous to your future employment prospects
compared to entering labor force immediately after high school.

It depends on the subject.

------
leorocky
If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility
in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable
skills with job openings maybe the story might be different. This trajectory
of being an undecided major and then just kind of getting some degree or other
with the hopes just having that paper will land you a job somewhere never
struck me as realistic.

For the United States, there is even a site where you can help plan your next
ten years, find something that's high growth:

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/)

You can sort occupations by projected growth rate:

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-
finder.htm?pay=&education=...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-
finder.htm?pay=&education=&training=&newjobs=&growth=30+percent+or+faster&submit=GO)

~~~
igravious
Because, yeah, it's individuals making dumb choices that is the problem -- it
could never be the social systems around us that is the problem.

Maybe I don't care if my degree (philosophy) has questionable utility in the
work force. Maybe I don't want to be "employable". Maybe I chose to study
philosophy and didn't fall into into because I was undecided.

For you realism is adapting to the world. For me realism is making sense of
the world, figuring out if perhaps there could be a better world, and
constructing the world that I would like to live in and that I would like my
kids to live in.

You don't get to decide for me what I should study in the same way I don't get
to decide for you what you should study. If you'd studied philosophy you'd be
able to see stuff like that easily.

~~~
leorocky
Maybe you have a responsibility to your society to the same degree that
society has a responsibility to take care of you. How's that fit in with your
philosophy? Maybe the best way to live your life isn't what you might want for
yourself.

It's interesting to see my views kind of in parallel in this instance with
polar ideological opposites. One the one hand you have libertarians who don't
want to pick up the tab for your life, and on the other you got social justice
warriors like me who think that with social security comes social
responsibility.

~~~
igravious
I disagree that with social security comes social responsibility.

If a person wants to get as much from the state as they can and put nothing
back in then big deal I say.

Why?

1) Because there are very few people like that anyway. This group of people,
so-called welfare scroungers, are always trotted out in these arguments. I've
never met one of them in all my days, I'd like to see actual proper
percentages regarding this. I'm betting these people are < 1% of the
population.

2) Besides there are all sorts of consumption taxes and what have you that
funnel the money back into the state anyway.

3) Most people want meaningful work. What you find meaningful may not be what
I find meaningful of course. And failing being able to find meaningful work
most people choose to work at _anything_ at all rather than be idle. The one
thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many people work at jobs they don't
like because that's the only work they could get.

4) Society didn't wake up one morning and decide to take care of me. Social
security has been and continues to be a continual struggle to redistribute the
wealth from the have-a-lots to the have-very-littles and it's a struggle I
identify with. Vigilance is needed as we have seen because all the gains are
slowly rolled back when we're not paying attention.

\---

This is all beside the original bone of contention I had with you. It was with
your questionable statement "If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other
majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on
getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story
might be different." Did you ever stop to think why someone would want to
study philosophy before you came out with that? You're full of what people
ought to do, may I suggest you ought not think like that.

edit: grammar n stuff

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many people work at jobs
they don't like because that's the only work they could get.

People paying their bills amazes you?

There are very few 'career transition' positions that are entry level and only
require a positive attitude and a willingness to show up. Those were
'upgraded' to require a degree and a few years of experience for complete
strangers.

Also, some people try to avoid gaps of unemployment, and that means slinging
pizzas with a couple of katanas for the Mafia when there's nothing else.

~~~
igravious
I read Snow Crash ages ago but didn't get the reference.

I've been thinking about how to respond to you. I realize how it must sound
for me to say that it amazes me that people will take on whatever is available
to them at a particular stage in their life to pay their bills. I didn't mean
it in a disparaging way. I meant it more in a, "wow, I would find it very
hard, I don't think I'd be cut out for that". I'm not suggesting I'm better or
worse. I've had plenty of jobs that didn't inspire me at all but they were
still decent jobs by anybody's standards: software testing, software
development ... though many people I'm sure couldn't imagine being stuck in
front of a monitor 8+ hours a day.

------
gtirloni
I tried to understand the original paper but it's way over my head. So the
decrease in demand of cognitively demanding jobs is an temporal economic
situation or a long-term trend?

It seems the theory was always that less cognitively demanding jobs would be
replaced by automation/robots but more demanding ones would be safe. How to
place this article in that perspective?

------
mmphosis
US Presidents during The "Upward" Ramps:

    
    
      John F. Kennedy - January 20, 1961 - November 22, 1963
      Lyndon Johnson - November 22, 1963 - January 20, 1969
      Jimmy Carter - January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
      Bill Clinton - January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001

~~~
girvo
As a non-American, I have no allegience to either party... but couldn't you be
mixing up cause and effect here? Perhaps instead of one party creating the
economic effects, perhaps that party is voted in when the country is doing
economically well?

~~~
kghose
"As a non-American, I have no allegiance to either party." \- this does not
follow. Just because you are not the citizen of a country does not mean you do
not have political biases that lead you to look on certain politicians/parties
with favor.

Or did you mean - "I have no knowledge of US politics and have no opinion of
these politicians"

~~~
randomdata
I take "political bias" to mean "how will this affect me". Even someone with
some understanding of US politics will typically not be able to immediately
understand the worldwide implications of a certain leader over another. For
example, take a platform of cutting taxes: How is that going to affect a
random guy who lives in Australia?

I suppose some people can say "I'm a democrat and will always vote democrat",
but don't I follow that kind of thinking. I think I've voted for almost every
party in my country at one time or another, depending on who I feel is best
suited for representation at that time.

------
JacobAldridge
If you like reading charts, check out some of the detail in this article [1].
In particular, the second of the market graphs (with the red lines) that goes
much further back than this story. It concurs with the flatness since 2000,
but rather than predicting a downward ramp, is suggesting the timing is right
for a new period of growth to commence.

[1]
[http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_perfo...](http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_performance/post/thrive-
to-innovation-first-understand-market-trends/)

~~~
musesum
Or it could be part of a sigmoid. How to interpret depends on whether you're
an optimist or a skeptic.

------
chantech
It seems like every other article I see talks about squeezing of the middle
class, inequality, etc.

At least in my area, I don't really see it happening. The majority of the
people I know went to a public state school, aren't abnormally intelligent,
didn't work abnormally hard, or do particularly well in school (2.5-3.5 GPAs),
and all have little problems getting jobs paying 75k+ (only 25% are in
software). In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+
in the midwest.

Companies can't find enough qualified talent. People who are always learning
and adapting. It's a supply and demand problem. If you get a degree with no
demand, you shouldn't expect to find employment.

In the past, the limit to economic growth was knowledge workers and a simple
college degree guaranteed a middle class lifestyle. Today, the limit is
entrepreneurs and companies creating value. We need to hold up guys like Elon
Musk as heroes. They're the ones creating the jobs and industries of tomorrow.
The government needs to stimulate entrepreneurship - not necessarily provide
more grants for college educations in useless degrees.

~~~
justin66
> In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the
> midwest.

Wow. Please elaborate, with some detail.

------
michaelochurch
I think the "Four Turnings" model of Strauss and Howe might be accurate. Their
hypothesis is that American society (actually, Anglo-American) experiences
crises about every 80-90 years (Armada, Glorious Revolution, American
Revolution, Civil War, World War II). The First Turning is the post-crisis
high (for the past 500 years, we've emerged successfully from each, although
that's not guaranteed to continue. The Second is the peak, the Third Turning
is a cynical, chaotic unraveling period, and the Fourth is the crisis. (For
the past 100 years, most of the world has been on the Anglo-American cycle.)

In the recent First Turning (1945-65) we saw broad-based improvements for all
social classes, and progress on civil rights. In the Second (1965-85) Turning,
technological progress continued but the working class was thrown under the
bus, while the middle class continued to do well. The Third Turning
(1985-2007) saw the middle class get hit as well, but the upper-middle-class
did OK. In the first half of the Fourth Turning (2008-) the upper-middle class
("the 9 percent") is getting smashed and, later on, it will start to affect
the upper class.

It seems to be a pattern whereby the rot travels up the social ladder. The
disintegration is finally recognized as a problem only when it starts taking
out the elite (as it did, last, in 1929). It's not clear what our "crisis"
looks like or even whether we're in one, but I think that will be more clear
in a few years.

In this light, none of this news surprises me.

------
affebeaf
Isn't it a cognitively-demanding task to create a new product, or to start a
new company?

~~~
TTPrograms
How many founders can one nation really have though? At some point you just
run out of useful things to build companies around.

Entrepreneurs are extreme outliers for any of this discussion, I think.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _At some point you just run out of useful things to build companies around._

Given how many non-product are there, both physical and virtual, I think we've
reached that point some time ago.

