Do we really need jobs?

[wolfigor]

I was thinking that the economy would develop brand new industries (good and services) through new technology and science, which is something I don't believe the OP considers. The OP emphasis is on technology streamlining production, displacing labor in the process, and not creating additional capital opportunities. Which basically I call BS on, which is what I meant by "economy growing". Basically, I'm optimistic that new sectors of the economy would form.

There is a clear fact that the rapid technology evolution of the last decades increased enormously the productivity of each single worker in every field of economy, from production to services.

Mechanization, better fertilisers, genetic, etc. allowed one person to make the work previously made by maybe 100 people.

Spoiler :

see this graphic about productivity in former soviet republics and east European states after the fall of USSR that allowed them to get modern processes and technologies.

Similarly technology allowed huge increase in productivity in all production work and into services too.
In the service area one person, thanks to computers and always more powerful software, can do the work previously done by tens of people.
The economy "grows", but it doesn't produce jobs with the same speed.

I agree with you new industries got created, and they created new jobs: but did they created enough jobs to replace all those that went lost?

This is why there are less jobs available for everybody and a lot of people have now skills that are no more needed: a clear picture of the state of things right now with many people without any good chance to get a decent job.

The "old" industries do not need them anymore.
The new industries created by the new technologies do not need them too, they require workers with completely different skills.

These unemployed need a complete re-training to acquire new skills and be able to aim for the jobs.
However they have to compete with both new generations and with people living far away: Globalization of labor is another consequence of technological advances.

In my view we will see more and more endemic high unemployment in the future.




At the same time salaries did not grow with the same speed of productivity: companies pocketed the difference leaving even less money into the hand of consumers.
Money went into financial institutions that lent it to people to fuel consumption... this leads even more to today situation.

 

[brennan]

Considering this, policy makers may want to try changing labor regulations so job-hop preventions like the example you have given will cease being lucrative.

I know a couple of people, a client of mine and one of my friends, who have offered to sign a fixed 1 year contract and still not been successful. Many people are offering to work free for up to a month and not getting anywhere.

Honestly, it's absolutely shocking how tough it is to secure a job right now, when I see people accusing jobseekers of laziness my blood boils.

 

[squadbroken]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "job".

If you mean the current exploitative arrangement, then no, I don't think we need it. It exists because it benefits certain people. Gains in productivity are increasingly marginalizing more and more people and wealth differences continue to grow.

The idea that modern capitalism is somehow the end of the road is the same as medieval kings thinking that the feudal system would last forever.

And I agree with the other posters that the attempt to blame the unemployed or poor for their situation is nonsense.

On the other hand, I do think that most people have a psychological need for fulfilling work, so it's not like a jobless society would involve people lounging around in togas eating grapes peeled by robot servants. But this would be work that they actually want to do, not work they have to do if they don't want to starve or freeze to death in the winter.

 

[Tani Coyote]

What happens when the wealthy become unemployed?

The wealthy will become unemployed because the masses, denied any opportunities for advancement, tire of the bread and circuses and finally get rid of them. Labor and capital alike are abolished. There is simply "human" as one's class.

Exactly, what about it? That's speculation of the future, not the present. For the present, that doesn't exist, so labor still requires humans.

Why are we talking about such advanced machinery as a possibility, but not their automation as well?

Meh, to each their own. I think there are a lot of problems with modern society. A lot of advantages too but the latter doesn't necessarily cancel out the former.

Oh of course. The decay of the family unit would stand out most to me.

It's relevant because it hasn't happened & doesn't appear to be happening. People have talked since recorded history about technology making our lives more leisurely but people are as stressed as ever.

I could see why one would be cynical with that in mind, but either way there's been progress and improvements. We may be stressed, but I'd say we get a lot more profit from that stress.

You could use that argument to say eventually anything will exist : time machines, mind-reading devices, immortality serum, the ability to morph into floor tiles like the T-1000, anything.

Time machines can be discarded, due to the simple fact that any time travel that will happen/has happened has already had its effects been felt by us.

All the others however, who's to say the wonders of science can't accomplish them? It may not be for 1,000, 10,000 or a million years, but who's to say it can't?

 

[Disgustipated]

I know a couple of people, a client of mine and one of my friends, who have offered to sign a fixed 1 year contract and still not been successful. Many people are offering to work free for up to a month and not getting anywhere.

Honestly, it's absolutely shocking how tough it is to secure a job right now, when I see people accusing jobseekers of laziness my blood boils.

I'd like to have an overqualified person where I work. We have trouble filling positions with qualified people, because no one wants to work for that small amount of money. The starting wages are quite small where I work (though the top out wages are decent). We just hired someone, but he isn't too smart, and I don't think he'll work out. Why is it so difficult to find workers with intelligence?

 

[Core Imposter]

I'd like to have an overqualified person where I work. We have trouble filling positions with qualified people, because no one wants to work for that small amount of money. The starting wages are quite small where I work (though the top out wages are decent). We just hired someone, but he isn't too smart, and I don't think he'll work out. Why is it so difficult to find workers with intelligence?

You are probably screening them out by eliminating those who have black marks on their records. Intelligence tends to urge one to color outside the lines. You then are left with drones.

If you want intelligent workers do the sort and then toss out those who don't have drug or other criminal convictions. Hire the felons. It works every time except when it doesn't.

 

[Core Imposter]

We are nowhere near the point that manpower has lost its value. There is plenty of work to do that still must be done by hand. Housing alone, the repair of existing would close the hole immediately. The links of the economic system are broken because there is just too much debt. Because there was too much easy credit. We simply ran the demand forward and consumed an unsustainable amount.

We created a system of supply that exceeded our capacity to consume it with real incomes. We ate it with credit. Now we have no credit. The problem is debt. Once the debt is dealt with the links will quickly repair. It would only take a few years. But the debt has to be done away with first both private and public excess debt.

Most of this other stuff is irrelevent.

 

[GenMarshall]

Honestly, it's absolutely shocking how tough it is to secure a job right now, when I see people accusing jobseekers of laziness my blood boils.

This, and also the notorious discrimination against the long term unemployed really boils my blood .

“Once you’re unemployed more than six months, you’re considered pretty much unemployable. We assume that other people have already passed you over, so we don’t want anything to do with you.” –Cynthia Shapiro, former human resources executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know

 

[Hygro]

I don't think our rise in unemployed is coming primarily from automation. There are still jobs out there...I hired 42 people last month, and I found a new job myself (I was hiring blue collar guys without degrees), but in my country, we have a fairly substantial skills gap. That requires worker retraining.

I don't think we're going to robot ourselves into 20% unemployment. We might because our consumer market has shriveled up though.

DT is correct.

(Wow, that was so much simpler than the 1500 word post I was writing on this.)

This guy doesn't have a clue about economics, although he occassionally says intelligent things that he seems to miss himself.

* Technology has not eliminated the need for labor. It has merely reduced the COST of labor. Someone still has to produce the very devices needed to save labor.

* The more people are working, the more productive the economy. I'm sure everyone knows some people who have useless functions, but the overwhelming majority of workers are doing usefull work. The more productive the economy, the more propserous it is, and, generally, the more everyone benefits from that prosperity. (Though this benefit is not necessarily distributed equally.)

* It is going to be a long time before we are in a post-scarcity economy, as this oped suggests. Humans are still needed to perform most tasks that require survival of our civilization. Until you build an army of robots who could build anything from nanofabricators, and obviate humans from working, there will always be a need for employment.

* If we were truly in a post-scarcity economy, no one would care about recessions because we would all be living leisurely lives serviced by robots while exploring exotic places and mindstates.

These posts are valid points but aren't actually discussing the scope of the article, because they are assuming that popular economics is the only political economy, when the author's Marxian discourse is making a point that is outside the scope of our political economy.

Nothing you learn in "intermediate macro" is relevant to this *specific* discussion. We've had the technology to nigh-automatedly provide for all material needs to a reasonable level for decades if not more than a century. It's not profitable, of course. And it doesn't benefit those with power to continue their regime (it could easily be co-opted of course, similar to how Confucianism was rejected at first because the autocrats didn't like it, until the later autocrats realized they could co-opt it. Same with Christianity and the Romans, etc).

Because it's not profitable, it will halt economic growth. This is a good thing if you believe that Geoffrey West's theories of system death are inevitable if the current economic regime (i.e. since the dawn of civilization) continues, but otherwise it sucks. And it leads to political violence.* That sucks worse. So we don't want to get rid of labor yet, i.e. adopt communism. We want to grow as much as we safely can. But how much further can we go till we hit an economic singularity? And what if that singularity is not cyborg immortality ala Kurzweil but resource depletion and widespread death and destruction?

Ok, that seems WAY off topic, I know. I was just watching a lecture on this But it's actually relevant, and here's my summed up point:

Our system has limits. We don't want to break those limits because we want there to be a habitat to support us and our loved ones. The idea of jobs and labor is a central element to our system. Our system is intrinsically based on growth, exponential growth, so we will inevitably break those limits. So we need to change the system. To what and when? I'm not sure yet.

*That makes Francis Fukuyama look pretty smart suggesting the "end of history" is basically the point where we enter a state of perpetual social recycling and don't advance but don't have stability either. But that doesn't diminish my criticisms of his work that I posted elsewhere.

 

[Cutlass]

Saying "we don't want to break the limits" implies that people have any real concept of what those limits might be, or even that there are some. Hint, we don't know that they are, and even if we did, we have not the slightest concept of what they may be.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Nothing you learn in "intermediate macro" is relevant to this *specific* discussion. We've had the technology to nigh-automatedly provide for all material needs to a reasonable level for decades if not more than a century. It's not profitable, of course. And it doesn't benefit those with power to continue their regime (it could easily be co-opted of course, similar to how Confucianism was rejected at first because the autocrats didn't like it, until the later autocrats realized they could co-opt it. Same with Christianity and the Romans, etc).

Ahhh, yes, Conspiracy Theories as applied to economics! I thought I had imagined all the ways in which conspiracies had been applied, but apparently I hadn't seen anything yet.

So, there's this idyllic society that's possible that no one is founding because the "powers that be" are preventing it because it is a threat to their power monopoly. I've heard the same applied to a cure for cancer, AIDS, and fusion power. Despite the amazing advantages, both material and otherwise, to a large swathe of people to apply such an idyllic economy, no one is trying to do it. It must be that damned secret cabal of corporations preventing it! That's it!

 

[Hygro]

You can't accuse me pointing to a conspiracy theory when there wasn't any conspiracy to point to.

Did you ever make the decision to engage in whole sale revolution? No? Me neither. Nor anyone else. The only "conspiracy" was those small time actors who tried. They of course almost got going in a number of states but that went pretty attrociously. I was merely pointing out we've had the capability, not a good reason to do it. There's no conspiracy when it's just laziness and disinterest.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

You can't accuse me pointing to a conspiracy theory when there wasn't any conspiracy to point to.

Did you ever make the decision to engage in whole sale revolution? No? Me neither. Nor anyone else. The only "conspiracy" was those small time actors who tried. They of course almost got going in a number of states but that went pretty attrociously. I was merely pointing out we've had the capability, not a good reason to do it. There's no conspiracy when it's just laziness and disinterest.

I am merely clarifying your statements for you. You have a belief that, because it is not in the interests of some vested interests, certain upheavals are prevented from happening. If there's anything that history has taught, is that, when there is sufficient demand for something to happen, no one can stop it. To believe anything else is idle conspiracist drivel.

Rest assured that, if someone were to invent a cure for AIDS today, all the cabals in the world couldn't subsume it. For every effort made by this secret cabal to prevent it, there would be even more people fighting for it. That's because there's just too much profit in it for those selling this cure for AIDS, and as long as there is greed, there is a will.

 

[Hygro]

I am merely clarifying your statements for you. You have a belief that, because it is not in the interests of some vested interests, certain upheavals are prevented from happening. If there's anything that history has taught, is that, when there is sufficient demand for something to happen, no one can stop it. To believe anything else is idle conspiracist drivel.

Rest assured that, if someone were to invent a cure for AIDS today, all the cabals in the world couldn't subsume it. For every effort made by this secret cabal to prevent it, there would be even more people fighting for it. That's because there's just too much profit in it for those selling this cure for AIDS, and as long as there is greed, there is a will.

But that's not actually what I was saying. I was saying the sort-of contrapositive. I was not saying that the the powerful has kept down revolution, but rather non-revolution has happened because of inaction towards it by the powerful. I also didn't define the powerful, which include a variety of competing and cooperating interests that ran the gamut from social leaders (those defining cool, those defining righteous), political leaders (in and out of titled office), economic leaders (those with enough wealth to singularly make differences)... It's one hell of a web of people. But if a critical mass of those who lead in society decided, ok, time to put our technology to work: everyone is fed, clothed, etc and you didn't have to work to get this. It could be done. We don't need jobs. They are a choice. In my opinion, it's at least partially the right choice. But it's important to understand that it is a political-social choice to have jobs.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

But that's not actually what I was saying. I was saying the sort-of contrapositive.

Now you're bewildering me with your sleight of handed doublespeak.

 

[Hygro]

I can't tell if you're making a joke or not :s