It’s not ‘a Bizzaro World, Alice-in-Wonderland’ that he pulled out of his ass. It’s the technical definition of Full Employment…which you would have known if you actually knew anything about economics.
As he pointed out, this doesn’t mean 0% employment…which is a BAD thing (again, as he pointed out to you had you listened).
As to the rest, I think I’ll refrain. I believe that others have said every thing I would have, and said it much better. You are simply not listening, so no real reason for me to also beat my head against the same wall. Besides, I’m wondering how long it will be before Kendall Jackson’s head explodes.
I was making fun of the fact that economists have a definition of “full” that is hilariously different from the usual definition of “full” employed by the rest of the world. And how amazingly flexible as well. The link the the Krugman chart Kendall Jackson supplied was most useful for the letters section. For instance this bit:
For instance, today’s unemployment rate of 6.1% is >8% using 1980 definitions and GDP is strongly negative.
Were both “full”? A difference that large looks like the data has been fudged to make things look better.
And this letter:
Take a look at the employed-to-population figures (broken down by age cohort) at http://www.bls.gov.
The E2P metric helps counter the distortions of the BLS’ definition of “labor force” (which essentially ignores the long term unemployed and new graduates who can’t find jobs).
Also, you might want to take a look at the absolute job holder numbers reported by the BLS - by using the “year-over-year percentage growth” function on the Java engine, you can easily tell how the the last 6 years have seen some of the slowest employment growth that the US has ever seen.
So, I take it you’re not going to take a crack at the challenge? It was:
Name some new product categories invented in the last five years that are not created with with automation or outsourcing. Name some that are employing significant amounts of labor. Not prognostication, just find some new, sizable industry that is currently employing large numbers of employees.
Until one of you comes up with an answer to a simple question about these new industries are going to come from, all the discussion about economics is interesting, but fairly pointless and appears to be ways of avoiding dealing with the question posed in the OP.
The fervent believers in the market really do appear to be religious zealots on this point with all the fear of questions about the basis of their beliefs that implies. “The market will provide” is their mantra, and I’m a heretic for daring to ask, “if it’s going to provide, where’s the evidence?”
I wish at least one or two of the people responding to this thread gave some evidence of having read the OP. It was all about jobs that have been recently been automated that have never before been automated. Most are in the “service industries” that were supposed to be the source of new jobs for those who lost jobs when manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas.
Before web sites folks in sales weren’t in any significant danger of being automated out of a job. There were catalogs, but they were out of date as soon as they were mailed and the costs associated with sending them out to every potential customer was prohibitive. Buying lists and calling potential customers was cost-competitive. Now, a decent web site can have more information than even the most knowledgeable and well-trained sales person, as well as accurate stock numbers. So, of course businesses are going to shift away from direct sales to web.
An even better example is travel agents. Most people now book travel via the web, or via voice response phone systems where a decade or two ago the vast majority of travel was booked through agents.
Both are “service” jobs, and are perfect examples of jobs being automated that were never previously automated.
Manufacturing arose to replace the jobs lost to automating agriculture. “Service” jobs were supposed to replace the manufacturing jobs lost to automation and outsourcing/off-shoring. So, what type of jobs are going to be created the replace all these service jobs that have been automated out of existence? And, if the market was going to create this new type of job, shouldn’t there be some evidence of this new job category right now?
So, how are you doing on the challenge? Remember, it’s:
Name some new product categories invented in the last five years that are not created with with automation or outsourcing. Name some that are employing significant amounts of labor. Not prognostication, just find some new, sizable industry that is currently employing large numbers of employees.
Why put the caveats on it, ehe? Why ‘not created with with automation or outsourcing’? Jobs is jobs after all. Essentially you can’t be convinced at this point due to the silly level you will accept. It’s rather like debating a creationist who insists on a long string of caveats and exceptions that can NEVER be fulfilled. You don’t accept historical trends, you don’t acknowledge when your own theories are shown to be flawed and you want to narrow down the ‘debate’ so fine that there is no answer that you will accept but your own theory.
I’m not seeing the benefit of playing this game, since better posters than I have already said what I would have anyway. If THEY couldn’t convince you, I certainly won’t be able too.
Until someone SHOWS me a monkey evolving into a person all this talk of evolution, while interesting, is fairly pointless. Yeah…I know it. Guess you win, ehe?
It’s not that you are daring to ask for evidence, it’s that the evidence that you will accept is silly. You’ve been GIVEN evidence that your theory is flawed…you simply put your fingers in your ears and then say you haven’t been given any. Again, it’s rather like a creationist boldly proclaiming that ID is proven but that all those silly ‘experts’ just won’t accept what is obvious to creationist and the true believers. The responses to you haven’t been from the ‘fervent believers’ free marketer types…there is no reason to even get into that when your theory is so blatantly flawed.
If you go back and look at Kendall Jackson response earlier where he lays out REAL issues…well, some of THOSE may spark fervent assertions from market creationists. YOUR theory and subsequent responses though have drawn fire from everyone with even a clue about economic theory and market mechanics because the only one making faith based assertions in THIS thread is…you.
Wow. You really didn’t read the OP. It was all about what I think the future will bring.
At least you have the honesty to come back and admit that you failed. Thank you. Presumably the others are going to do so at some point, rather than just continuing to insist that somehow, some way, a miracle will occur and some new category of employment will appear. These changes could bring either a utopia of limitless leisure and goods, or a distopia of the vast majority in unending poverty with a small elite running robotic factories. Barring substantial changes, the latter is the course we’re set on.
I have a question: if the “vast majority” are in “unending poverty,” who exactly is buying and using the stuff made in the robotic factories? How long can the “small elite” use their own, and each other’s, goods and stay sustainable?
Jobs are not jobs if they don’t have anyone doing them! If a product can be made or a service can be performed without the involvement of any people, there are no jobs!
It’s not a silly level. This request was entirely in line with the original post, which posits that most new manufacturing and services will require as few people as possible, and that most existing jobs will be automated or outsourced/off-shored.
Calling it “silly” because you can’t come up with any disproof only makes you look foolish.
[quote]
It’s rather like debating a creationist who insists on a long string of caveats and exceptions that can NEVER be fulfilled.
This is ridiculous. You know the additional challenge to RickJay was in line with the original thesis. It’s not a “long string of caveats”. It’s quote simple:
Name some new product categories invented in the last five years that are not created with automation or outsourcing. Name some that are employing significant amounts of labor. Not prognostication, just find some new, sizable industry that is currently employing large numbers of employees.
Let’s take these point by point:
Name some new product categories invented in the last five years that are not created with automation or outsourcing.
I specify the “last five years” because RickJay claimed that I was demanding that he see into the future. So I said, “OK, not the future. The recent past then”. All that requires is a small amount of searching. Hell, I’ve provided dozens of examples of how whole categories of jobs are primarily using automation and out-sourcing/off-shoring. You folks can’t find one counter-claim?
Name some that are employing significant amounts of labor.
This is a reasonable request. There will always be some small amount of new companies making custom products or performing personal services. I’m talking about things that will employ the same number of workers as are being displaced by automation and outsourcing/off-shoring.
The last line is just a restatement of the previous two.
This is a historical trend. It’s the logical outcome of the trend. The whole OP (which I suspect you have yet to read) shows a historical trend dating back to the dawn of man. Up to recently, we’ve been able to grow past it.
Just give me an example of where these new jobs are coming from. Apparently, you can’t and, rather than admit it, you launch a laughable attack in an attempt to protect your ego and run off claiming “victory”.
I’m winning because the people who disagree, even when given a chance to provide a proof of their counter-claim, can’t. I don’t know why. It’s a reasonable enough thing.
“The market will provide new categories of employment to millions of people!” they say.
“OK…let’s assume it will,” I say, “Show me where they are. I’ll make it easy, I’ll limit it to new categories created in the past five years. That should be easy enough.”
No, a few people have said that classical economics theory says that the market will provide new jobs. One pointed to BLS data that other posters and sources have shown has been thoroughly cooked by their bosses.
The free marketeers haven’t been able to provide a single example of these new jobs they claim will appear. Not one.
He and I agree on some things, and I’ll gladly participate in a discussion of those issues in a different thread. But in this one, it doesn’t matter how poorly the working class is rewarded for their labor, because eventually most of them won’t be employed at all.
Again, I suppose these sort of statements are easier than thinking of what these jobs you claim will appear are going to be. I’m not quoting history or a learned dogma. These are my own observations of trends from working in a variety of different industries.
I guess I made a mistake in naming the thread with a topic guaranteed to attract the most fervent devotees of the Church of Milton Friedman. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably title it “Automation and off-shoring will decimate US jobs. Discuss.” and get a lot more interesting level of discourse.
Gee, now I’m nostalgic for the olden days, when entire industries would instantly pop up around new categories of products, and be employing significant amounts of labor within half a decade. How sad that those glory days will never return again. If only we had held to our forefathers’ example of only allowing a job to be automated on the condition that it was already automated to begin with.
There is a small elite that buy outrageously expensive goods already (see: the couture fashion business and $20,000 cell phones). The very wealthiest don’t need to own companies selling goods to the poor and middle class - that’s just the traditional way to become very wealthy. America’s wealthy will not concern themselves with the plight of America’s future permanently unemployed and unemployable any more than they are concerned with the plight of the unemployed and unemployable right now.
The wealthy didn’t starve during the last great depression, they just had to be less conspicuous in their consumption.
People have given you examples but you wave them away. 15 years ago there was no such thing as a web developer and now there are millions of them. A huge industry has popped up almost overnight around the web.
It’s a good thing there aren’t any such products or services.
There’s no answer I or anyone else can provide that will matter, because you will simply deny any answer by saying the product falls into an existing “product category.” You’ve phrased your question in a way that disqualifies all the products ever invented in the history of the world. If, for instance, I were to point out that the iPhone, created just three years ago, has created thousands upon thousands of new jobs, you would doubtlessly say that “phones already existed, so that’s not a new product category.” If I were to point out that, say, World of Warcraft has created a thousand or more new jobs, you’d say games already existed. I could point out, quite rightly, that a customer of mine has invented a new form of keyboard that repels bacteria and virii for use in medical applications, but you would point out that keyboards already exist.
There has NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF INDUSTRY been something that was (a) invented completely from scratch without any relation to any existing device and (b) employed a significant number of people within 5 years and (c) was completely made within a single company without outsourcing anything. (No company does everything itself - even RIM, who’re proud of keeping basic functions in house, have to outsource some things they don’t know how to do, like the injection molding of the Blackberry’s case.)
If I’d answered the same question in 1958, you would have rejected every answer. 1938, you would have rejected every answer. It’s pointless. Jobs continue to be created and have been created to replace obsolete jobs for over a hundred years, and it’s still happening today, but you refuse to believe it because it doesn’t fit the conclusion you drew before you looked at the facts. You’ve made up your mind; good for you, but why pretend it’s a debate?
I am grunching a bit, as I haven’t read all of this thread. I do want to point out something going back to the OP and in response to Gaffa. He claims that jobs are being lost in the ‘service’ sector due to automation. I really don’t think they are automating Best Buy employees.
In any economic cylcle or system the people who feel the most disposable will be the least skilled. This is, unfortunately, because they are indeed replaceable rather easily. The obvious answer is to understand that without advanced skills you will continually be more subject to market forces. With the passage of Sarbanes Oxley and other regulatory demands there is a pressing need for accountants. I spoke to the president of a university recently who is desperate to keep his accounting professors on staff because there are far too few candidates to replace those who are retiring.
I am sure it is true that low wage, low skill jobs are being outsourced and automated, but I am not sure that is entirely a negative thing. It has in fact been happening for hundreds of years.
The alternative to shopping at Best Buy isn’t Circuit City. It’s buying from a web retailer. If you complete the purchase via web, there is no sales person involved, just someone in shipping. An ATM allows you to get money from a bank with no teller involved. Expedia allows you to purchase airline tickets with no travel agent involved.
These are all “service sector” jobs and they are being eliminated.
If you don’t have time to read through the entire thread for examples, here’s one: the effect of iTunes and web music retailers on the record store. The biggest chains like Tower records have gone bankrupt. The RIAA likes to blame “piracy”, but iTunes sold $2 billion worth of music last year. All without a single retail store or retail store employee. The items being sold are electronic files, and the same song can be sold over and over again without any additional human labor after the CD is ripped to hard disk.
OK. But again, Quickbooks and Peachtree have allowed vast numbers of very small businesses to do their books with only a small amount of time with an accountant. The accountants I know service quite a number of clients, while prior to PCs each client would have had so much paperwork they could only work for a much smaller number.
Right. The difference is that the skill level has been going up as automation has spread. At some point it will reach your skill level, at which point it will become a negative thing.
No, I’d point out that the iPhone is just another cell phone and is made in China on a highly automated assembly line. I might point out that, at one point, every cell phone in the world was made in the US and now most are made in China.
No, that one might actually be valid as the virtual goods and services in the game are being sold in the real world for real money. I doubt it’s employing any significant number of people though.
No, I’d ask where he plans to have it manufactured.
If five years doesn’t suit you, name a number. What would suit you?
Bull. I could have pointed to the invention of color TV and how many American jobs it created in manufacturing, how the TV stations had to upgrade their equipment, etc. On the other hand, the transition to digital TV has resulted in a net loss of jobs in that field. Employees used to load tapes into VCRs to play commercials are gone, replaced by computer-based playback systems. Ad agencies now upload their commercials to dedicated FTP servers. Camera operators in studios are being replaced with robotic systems. Small cameras are letting stations send out reporters without camera operators to do basic “stand-ups”.
I’ve been looking at the facts. You have an unsupportable conclusion, that the market will create new jobs, but can’t even think of one decent example.
Hey, I’m open to being convinced. You’re just doing a terrible job of it.
This is an area where I have some experience. Yes, Expedia potentially puts some agents out of work. However, Expedia employs a large number of workers (including travel agents). Expedia makes it cheaper for people to travel by eliminating the middle-man (the travel agent) which allows more people to go on vacation (because they can afford it.) The creates more jobs like airline pilots, hotel managers, maids, cooks, etc. because there are more travelers. In the end Expedia has been a boon to the travel industry.