Personally I feel compassion for people that have made a living doing something they love for 30 years only to find that livelyhood made obsolete virtually overnight.

Unfortunately, learning new skills is time consuming. There is no pause button on life while you research a new job. I don't know the percentage off hand, but I would not be surprised if more than half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Perhaps if you had a year of runway, were smart (as in able to learn quickly), you could weather such a catastrophe and keep your dignity along with a place to live.

It's possible to have compassion for people and disagree with them at the same time.

A lot of countries are looking at UBI others are looking at options for having more people working less hours and sharing the jobs. Whatever the solution the future is very scary, I can't think of many jobs that won't be disrupted by automation and AI.

Self sufficiency is a fallacy. There are degrees of dependence, and if you lose enough of your dependencies, you may find yourself the subject of such an article.

You mitigate the risks you can, within reason. I can do something about the possibility of social security failing and not having a pension. There's not much I can personally do about the US economy completely collapsing. I guess I could buy a farm and learn small-scale farming and stock up on canned goods and ammunition, but at some point you have to balance preparing for the future with living your life in the present.

The thing is that here in the US, we (collectively) tend to define a large part of our identity by the job that we do. We are definitely more than just cab driver, just developers, and just data scientists. We are also parents, musicians, woodworkers, authors, gamers, teachers, pilots, and a number of innumerable things. Yet before we even stop to ask what people do for fun, we ask, "What do you do," with an implicit "For money?" tacked on the end.

This turn of phrase tickled me.

Unfortunately for lots of people, where do you find the time to learn how to do something else? Are there jobs overflowing with compassion that will hire you with no experience and teach you for months? Are there lots of places to live where you don’t need money for rent, food, health care, etc. while you find your next career? You see the problem.

I can't help but feel that your statement is highly misleading or possibly outright false. The US population is estimated around 323 million. That would make social safety net spending at an average of $8,173 per PERSON per year.

That's incredibly difficult to believe.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid consist of almost 50% of the federal budget. If you include "Other," which includes other welfare programs such as veterans benefits, federal food stamps, as well as "Non-defense," which includes additional veterans benefits/housing/health, you can see that a very large percentage of the federal budget is on social safety nets.

And again, that is only federal. The amount of money locally and statewide that is put into affordable housing, homeless shelters, planned parenthood, etc at the local level contributes to what amounts to a nontrivial amount spent on social safety nets.

Social Security and Medicare are not particularly redistributive, so I don't think it's appropriate to include them either. The terms "welfare" or "safety net" implies to me taking from the well off and helping a relatively small number who are in need.

But then, again, the US is going to look pretty good compared to others.

(and I would like to add that there are plenty of economists saying that in fact most or all of a country's military budget is a social welfare program, as it's a job-of-last-resort for young people, which definitely helps them)

You'd never know it from the contempt for the deceased individual drenching this discussion.

Not only are humans capable of serial careers, they are capable of having lives outside of their careers, and emotional experiences which completely exceed the context of the role they play within their careers.

Would it kill folks here to dredge up a mote of sympathy for those whose time has gone by? Ever see "Death of a Salesman"?

that has always been true, however looking at my father and friends' experiences it seems it was a lot easier in the past to switch to completely different careers due to entry level jobs being widely available, previous experience not being as important, career paths where joining entry level and being "promoted from within" were the norm rather than the exception, and the "youth cult" where a new graduate is seen as a safer hiring bet compared to a 40+ hire did not exist. In addition the workplace was seen as the workplace, the place you go to work, which you leave and go home to live your life, it wasn't seen as a "24/7 place" where you have to "culture fit" and you are always available.

Nowadays everybody wants previous experience, and the specific experience for your particular position too, because you have to "hit the ground running" from day 1 and the "a single bad hire can doom your company". You also should not be too old, or too experienced, be good at the interviewing gauntlet (which often has little to do with the actual job) and you must fit in whatever arbitrary "culture" the prospective company has. This means it can get difficult to switch jobs in the same industry, let alone move to something unrelated.

Talking about our field, everybody knows that if you have a 10-15 years solid track record in several different languages and environments you could be adding value in most companies after a couple months ramp-up, but would you even be invited to an interview if you don't have a specific X years of experience in language Y with Z1,Z2,Z3... libraries? I mean, some job postings I've seen even express preference for candidates familiar with a particular IDE, if that is not treating people like single-purpose machines I don't know what is...

If you are in your 50s, with health insurance tied to your disappearing job, knowing there is no safety net and you're a few months away from living on the sidewalk, don't you think you would be desperate? If there was a safety net where you could live somewhere while you are retrained and have a chance, of course you would take it, but in today's world that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Here in the UK we have people who have become, kinda, qualified tradesmen in a few weeks. Some of them go on to be fairly proficient, others still get by when (atm) demand far outstrips supply.

The temporary lack only pertains too skilled technicians and nor people who can install and uninstall a ready made module.

However, there's still plenty of old buildings around and, in the UK at least, a real shortage of people with the necessary skills to maintain them.

In the context of the tread, a middle-aged taxi driver, looking at a future of redundancy, only has to worry about the next 15 years or so, not how things are going to play-out in the distant future. Maybe?

Just because we can adapt doesn't mean this transition won't be extremely difficult for society and have major consequences. Just look at the riots in Greece when people were told the age of retirement eligibility for state pensions was going from 61 to 63.

The attitude towards learning really depends on what one is learning, what the experience of learning is like, and why one is learning it.

People tend to view learning very positively when they are learning something they are intensely interested in, that they feel is very important, and when the process of learning feels effortless and fun.

When learning is painful and frustrating, when it's learning of something one is not at all interested in, that one feels indifferent or even hostile towards, that one thinks is unimportant, and when one feels forced to learn because of economic or other considerations where the power dynamic is highly skewed against the learner, and where the learner has little control over what and how they learn, yes, people tend not to like that.

So even though you want what you are learning to be important. If it is TOO IMPORTANT the scale tips in the opposite direction.

In addition to the research, one seems to find many stories of exactly this happening.

Quite the opposite is true: people don't like learning UNLESS there is a clear reward. That's even true for the video game case, where it's simply that the reward is social rather than economical.

I love to learn a new level or video game characters future is at stake. Mario's death is not a loss that triggers great anxiety for me.

Needing to get certification in a field that I am not familiar with, so that my family can stay fed and not be homeless, tends to take the "joy" out of learning for me.

I knew another Computer Scientist who got his EMT certificate and worked in an ambulance service for two years, but ended up coming back to IT.

If I personally leave the work force again, it would be after getting funding for a PhD. I'd gladly take a greatly reduced wage if I could be on my way towards teaching and researching in a university.

Did they complain that they now had to learn a new way to hunt bison or perhaps a new way to find food entirely? Probably some of them did. Maybe they didn't like that they were forced by circumstances to learn something new. Still, nature doesn't care whether you like what you have to do to survive or not. Adapt or die. Such is life.

This isn't nature we're talking about here. It's other humans.

When I spend 20 or 30 years of my life specializing in a particular task, and doing it to generate a large amount of wealth for my employer, who passes a much smaller amount of wealth on to me, there are and should be strings attached to that from the employer's side.

In the US at least, there are already PLENTY of strings attached from the employee side. I can't see a doctor without a job. I can't borrow money without a job. I can't smoke grass, yadda yadda yadda. And I live in an "at will" state as well.

Sorry. This is not nature we're dealing with. It's humans exploiting other humans. The "adapt or die" philosophy is not justified.

> I can't see a doctor without a job.

I wasn't aware doctors ran employment checks before seeing patients. I haven't been to the doctor in a long time, though.

> I can't borrow money without a job.

Uh, yeah? People who lend you money like to see that you have some means of paying it back. How is that relevant?

> I can't smoke grass

Depends on the job, but that is a legal issue. I doubt most employers would care if the law didn't force them to.

> The "adapt or die" philosophy is not justified.

This is not a philosophy, it's a statement of the reality of the situation. Circumstances change due to forces beyond your control This will happen to everyone at some point. You can stamp your feet and whine and moan and demand that someone else (Who exactly?) put them back the way they were, or you can figure out how to deal with them.

Sounds callous and egotistical.

Driving, as a job, is going away. Not much is going to change that, nor should it. What is your advice for the drivers? "Sit on your hands, and hope that someone gives you some free money at some point"? Would they not be better served by taking some action to find a new line of work now?

I think it's called capitalism.

The adaptation here is not to switch or become the slave master yourself. It is to resist and fight the problematic system of exploitation in all available alternative ways.

The "job" system is enforced at as low level as getting or not credit based on whether you get paid regularly or by whom. It is enforced by preferential rated for insurance and taxes for employers. Etc.

Unfortunately the solution, which is organized resistance to these ideas, is easy to pervert or bribe away.

Attachment to stories keeps us where we are, good or bad..

Operating elevators was not.

We're ruining these people's lives in the same way that we ruined the lives of those who were talented at manually separating cotton. In a way, I feel bad for these people, in the same way anybody who has to re-evaluate their identify and path in life and develop a new skillset or profession. And frankly, most of the people on this site have a stable career path, savings, and little threat to their immediate survival (at the very least), so we probably can't really even empathize, but still - that's the entire point of survival - adaptation to meet the needs of a changing world.

Trying to flesh this out. In the case of taxi drivers that need to adapt shouldn't they have the benefits of the same environment?

Ride sharing services are unencumbered by the regulations/laws facing taxi drivers. The taxi drivers "environment" doesn't allow the adaptation.

Had Uber needed to follow the regulations/laws in place for taxis in a city like New York would they have succeeded?

If I were a taxi driver 5 years ago, I would have began driving for Uber and potentially looking for other career paths and finding opportunities to invest. I think there are a lot of people who come over with families and poor language skills and taxi driver is the obvious job. I really would not want to be a person in that position.

Yes, I absolutely think that whether or not it was Travis Kalanick or any other tech entrepreneur rolling the initial die, but that it's inevitable that in 10 years we're going to press a button on our phone and a self-driving car will pick us up with less people owning vehicles. It was a great idea that was going to succeed unless it was deliberately quashed. The concept of a taxi driver will be memory in 20 years from now.

There are several classes of taxi/limousine in NYC regulations and the medallion'ed yellow cabs are only one of them, ubers just count as a different kind. I think as a livery cab ("black car") where the number of them was never fixed like the medallions were. Distinction is you're only allowed to hail yellow (and green) cabs on the street. Black cars have to scheduled and or sent from a dispatch, which uber counts as.

BTW, the black cars pre-uber were notorious for brazenly ignoring the hailing law, they would show up where the yellow cabs didn't and you could still "hail" them and you would have to play hardball negotiation on the price like you were in a third world country or else they would try to demand an abusive price.. Much more clearly illegally competing with the yellow cabs but not centralized into a single corporate villain and therefore more difficult to feel outraged towards.

Often seeing a therapist or clinical social worker doesn't mean someone will tell you what to do. They'll help you see options you can't.

"I'm so sick of my career" "Well then go back to school." "I can't, I have to live and provide." "Well there are night programs and scholarships and grants."

The medallion system is probably the worst part of this. Either the state needs to come in and offer some form of debt relief (which they failed to do in 2008 with outright fraud in the housing market; bailing out lenders and screwing over homeowners) or taxi drivers need to declare bankruptcy. This is the worst option, because they could forfeit all their savings, retirement investments, housing .. everything because what was sold to them as a sound investment didn't pan out.

What I want to know is: can an Uber/Lyft driver earn that $80k/year, or even $60/year if they drove full time (and minus what they have to pay in comparable health coverage).

The thing I hate to say, but is the reality, is that the Taxi drivers might just need to stick it out. They should get into jobs they can live on, but keep paying off the medallions/permits.

Uber is not sustainable. Lyft has already increases rates in a lot of cities to be more livable (I think they realize a lot of people will use them just to avoid Uber). If Uber's IPO doesn't do well, it could be dead in a few years, and ride sharing services will have to start charging sustainable prices to not end up like them. Prices will probably be cheaper than cabs, but more expensive than what they are now.

If they can switch fields and still make the principal/interest payments on those permits, they might just need to bank on them being sellable one day or sell them at a loss when they retire.

If this were reduced to say 12h total it is (barely) workable but now were talking about a part time job which can sustain the person for a few years. That mythical beast exists only in a few specialties. (All of them high tech and very well paid. Not something you would expect a typical taxi driver to be able to pull off without education and training.)