We need to start talking about a post-work economy and how that will work. Because that's going to happen. If automation pushes us there without the appropriate policies in place, it is going to be absolutely devastating.
And as this article touched on, the working-class generation is going to be deeply troubled by the idea of anyone getting anything without working hard for it. The concept of "if you don't work, you don't eat" is deeply ingrained into their psyches. So it is going to be a very uphill battle.
At any rate, that would be the optimistic viewpoint, that they could actually get retrained and get jobs and compete for wages. What is likely to happen is that they'll have extreme difficulty finding any work, the income gaps will widen and there'll be even more disaffected workers.
This is the product of a particular culture that goes back to how the places currently employing the most programmers are currently funded. When the bubble bursts, the macho candle-at-both-ends death march bullshit will give way to professionalism.
There also will probably be a glut of programmers by then so it doesn't help the hypothetical retrained truckers.
The safest jobs, at least for another 20-30 years, will be things like doctors, where you can't just retrain to do it. If you didn't start right out of high school in college, you're not getting that job.
This is one of the things we'll need to solve. Nobody should be desperate to feed their families. If someone still is, it's because our civilization still gets a failing grade.
It's a vicious circle.
One would be that, in the 1800s, they would have been predicting _fewer_ entry-level jobs in a given field (e.g. replacing bunches of manual workers with machinery to allow one person to do the work), not _no_ entry-level jobs in said field.
The other difference, here, is that the job shift you're discussing (except, arguably, for "programmer") is into jobs which require prior training to have any likelihood of getting a position.
One additional problem - even assuming that new entry-level positions in other industries existed, that's going to be a huge loss of income for the families affected, and anything that causes that drastic a reduction of income across any significant population of people is going to have huge ripple effects.
1. Stay the course and endure further entrenchment of inequality and rising under/unemployment due to capitalism's innate tendency to concentrate wealth by favouring capital over labour (unearned vs earned income) and technological changes leading to reduced opportunities for low skilled work.
2. Bite the bullet and accept that a political solution is needed to reduce inequality (most likely through some kind of redistribution mechanism). There are plenty of historical precedents for this (Bismark's social contract, rise of the labour movement, the New Deal).
A few commonly discussed solutions are: 1. Universal Basic Income 2. Governments introducing money into the economy directly through spending on infrastructure (or UBI) rather than through assuming debt. 3. Shifting taxes away from income to assets. An example of this would be Land Value Taxes.
Personally, I am in favour of (3), with the focus being on taxing unproductive investment first. Lower income taxes and and more incentive to invest in actual businesses (rather than say, flipping houses or other speculative activity) would do a lot of good. It would be great if we had an economy where money was a bit easier to make and a little bit harder to keep. A higher velocity of money is good for an economy.
Totally agree with this. People on welfare aren't parasites, unproductive rent collectors are parasites.
I get that they don't like being too stupid to help themselves, it sucks. But cheap access to a community college and some kind of "displaced worker" program that helps keep families fed while someone gets a degree would be so much more beneficial than trying to reboot a bunch of dying industries.
I don't believe that education is the root problem here. The root problem is the vast scale of job losses. Education can benefit some of the people affected, who can then move to other jobs and careers. But it can't help the majority if the opportunities simply don't exist. And I think that harsh reality isn't properly acknowledged. A vast number of people have been essentially abandoned without hope. The alternative jobs and careers simply don't require enough people to make up for the losses.
(I'm writing this from the UK, but there are a lot of parallels in the massive industrial decline here as well, and I don't think any good long-term solution has been found here yet either.)
You go to the bakery and offer your shiny new breadmaking education and they say "sorry we got all we can use."
Retraining for millions of jobs in the skilled trades. This is the program championed by Mike Rowe [0]. It also happens to dovetail perfectly with Trump's so-called $1 Trillion infrastructure plan. If he actually puts his money where his mouth is, he stands a good chance of being the most popular Republican president in history (while simultaneously being the most hated).
Trump isn't hated because he is Republican. People are afraid of losing hard won rights like marriage equality or the right to healthcare if they are unfortunate enough to have a preexisting condition. The violent rhetoric he used during his campaign doesn't help at all - condoning crowds chanting "kill her/hang the bitch/lock her up", saying that he wishes he could "smash the shit out of protesters", and offering to pay the legal costs of people who assaulted protesters. That is not normal in a health democracy and sets a dangerous precedent.
If Trump is a moderate on issues such as gay marriage and somehow manages to control healthcare costs without people losing their coverage he could be popular.
I see Trump as a necessary evil to shake up the establishment, and I believe he will be tempered as he adjusts to the gravity of the office (as he has already started to do).
What gets you into office is it what you say once in office.
Actually many highly skilled trades were absolutely decimated by the collapse of American industry: machinists, tool and die makers, boiler makers, to say nothing of all those plant supervisors and other blue collar management positions.
And it can and probably will eventually happen to us digital tradesmen too.
Are you under 40? I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate. Yes, having had life experience helps somewhat but not all that much.
It's easy to say "Just do X" but pretty much everything becomes harder to do after 40 or so.
Yes.
I assure you that it's really quite challenging to undergo retraining after 40 and then essentially start your career all over again as a fresh graduate.
You don't have to retrain everyone. Retrain younger people as machinists and toolmakers. The older people can have their old jobs back, working in the same supply chain as the newly-retrained tradespeople.
In talking about economic policies, and free trade deals that supposedly shipped jobs off to China, I wish the article (and more importantly politicans) would emphasize the importance of technology being the driver behind manufacturing job loss.
It's only a matter of time before robots replace most manufacturing jobs. The only reason they haven't full-scale yet is that wages in China are still too low to make it cost effective (but that's changing).
Otto just delivered the first self-driving truck shipment. In a few short years, the most common job in what was it, 30 or so states? It'll be all but gone.
The article hit the nail on the head with having working class economic policy being front and center on the campaign, not bathrooms. But a tariff on Chinese exports ain't it. Nobody is bringing steel back to Youngstown, and though Clinton touched on this a little bit (the renewable energy jobs for example), creating new jobs that are actually here to stay for a while -- whatever they may be (while unfortunately not seeming elite and professional) -- is the only message the Democrats can deliver if they want to win office again.