> But jobs moving to China and India isn't solving the underlying issue
I thought we were talking about automation and technology? What do China and India have to do with this? I never said it's good for a society when their jobs are displaced to another region.
> I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are
I would really urge people to think of "jobs" and "productivity" as separate metrics, since productivity will likely continue to climb as the number of jobs continues to fall. The challenge will be reacting to that effectively; trying to reverse the hands of time to bring back jobs is futile.
If jobs are moving from one region to another, that's mostly unrelated to technological progress. Instead, it's because low skill labor has moved to low cost markets with low standards of living. We'll get these jobs back when we have a lower standard of living then rural China and India.
In the meantime, our scientific and technological edge has been one of the few things keeping our economy semi-competitive. Can you imagine if we lost the low wage jobs and the highly skilled jobs? We probably won't have to wait much longer.
I am thinking about jobs and productivity as two separate metrics which is exactly why I am coming to the conclusions I am.
Productivity goes up because of technology but those who gain financially are mostly those who work in technology or own resources.
Cost of living is going up too which while salaries for most aren't. The kind of jobs you can get if you aren't in a few privileged industries are wallmart jobs or part time jobs. 12 million people are about to get a run for their money when the one job that couldn't be outsourced suddenly can to robots.
So no I don't believe the competitive edge in the US is really about it's technological or scientific edge but rather a host of other things like the dollar which allow US to stay afloat despite it's soon to be 20 trillion dollar deficit, the size of the market, it's access to the international markets, the system which doesn't redistribute well and so on.
I have no interest of low-wage jobs coming back. What I do have an interest in is that people recognize that a lot of people are being left behind not just brushing it aside as the price of progress. Because never before have so many been left behind with no real chance of a future unless it's on welfare. And if you think this election was bad just wait til the next one, unless we start recognizing the problems and actually address them.
I thought we were talking about automation and technology? What do China and India have to do with this? I never said it's good for a society when their jobs are displaced to another region.
> I would really urge anyone who think that technology creates more jobs than it removes to show where those new jobs are
I would really urge people to think of "jobs" and "productivity" as separate metrics, since productivity will likely continue to climb as the number of jobs continues to fall. The challenge will be reacting to that effectively; trying to reverse the hands of time to bring back jobs is futile.
If jobs are moving from one region to another, that's mostly unrelated to technological progress. Instead, it's because low skill labor has moved to low cost markets with low standards of living. We'll get these jobs back when we have a lower standard of living then rural China and India.
In the meantime, our scientific and technological edge has been one of the few things keeping our economy semi-competitive. Can you imagine if we lost the low wage jobs and the highly skilled jobs? We probably won't have to wait much longer.