Our country has a two-fold economic crisis with no feasible solution in sight.
agi-automation.com
One, we need jobs now.
And two, these jobs must pay a living wage.
Whatever that is.
Consider two stark realities; one about quantity, the other about quality.
Job quantity is simply being annihilated by technology.
mit.edu
One hundred years ago 33% of all American jobs were on the farm.
doubledeclic.com
Today, just 2% are farmers producing so much food we export it.
johndeere
Kodak once employed 145,000 in New York State.
Today, Instagram services over 30 million customers with a total workforce of 13.
Yep. Thirteen.
America’s hotel business was the single largest employer of people with modest education, often minorities.
Yet we are flocking to airbnb, slowly destroying this bedrock employment.
nupge.ca
Computers are far more reliable at monitoring closed circuit tv for an intruder.
And quality is fading, because jacking up minimum wage will simply drive employers to forgo human workers for their computer and robotic counterparts.
iqsdirectory.com
A recent Oxford University employment study predicts that fully half of all of today’s jobs will no longer exist or will be automated within the next 20 years.
If you are under the age of 40,
this is the future you must prepare for.
Plan now.
limitstogrowth.org
Because truth is, the rich don’t have to care
and government has no idea what to do.
Manufacturing still exists, technology produced phone stores, making holders for ipads, ipods, and iphones.
ReplyDeleteNetflix, kindles, nooks, ebooks. That metro card will soon be a scan, your bank card might be an eye scan. New lasers fix cataract, and pin point tumors. It's not all doom and gloom. But I miss the real type, real magazines, real films and real writers too. : )
If ipads, ipods, iphones, nooks and kindles were manufactured here, that would be a start.
ReplyDeleteBut we are in an all-encompassing, global economy now. Shareholder value lies in lowering labor cost. In a similar way Detroit unions lost to cheap out-sourced automotive labor like Hyundai in south Korea, our electronics industry cannot compete with Foxconn in Taiwan. The days of a USA closed shop are all behind us so I doubt we can manufacture our way out of this and still maintain open trade borders. Something to think about. Thanks for commenting.
Sanfrancisco has a silicon valley, new york has become the home of many startups all revolving around creating programs, apps, etc. It's a different kind of manufacturing, and yes there is a global economy. Farming in NYS is coming back, with green markets all over our city. It's never going to be an orange replacing an orange.
ReplyDeleteYou might look into the cyber war threat now that everything is computerized, Bad guys can take over your car computer and drive you into the river. They could shut the water/electric off to an entire state, and we handed them that technology created to turn off Iran's nuclear enrichment. Go Government.