Emory University Psychology Professor Drew Weston captures the top spot in the New York Times "Sunday Review" Section, with an examination of President Obama's ability to tell us a believable story.
I tend to think our problem is we are going through one of those ever more frequent economic transitions, like when someone invented the plow, or someone invented weaving, or someone learned to ship goods from A to B. We, here in Lowell, experienced the impact of water power. Then we had increasing mechanization and now the digital revolution.
As current jobs become more effectively and efficiently done by machines, including computers, how do we employ those displaced?
Over at the Dick Howe blog is a piece by Paul Hudon that looks at part of this issue.
Regards — Cliff
Cliff, Brazil doesn't seem to be having any difficulty with full employment....even paying to import AMERICAN engineers. Have you looked at Embraer aircraft stock lately??? Somebody has to build the technology...it can be us.....or it can be someone else....and right now...it isn't us.
ReplyDeleteTo Cliff's question on the effect of productivity increases on job availability - it is certainly an issue. We could reduce work hours, but that would counter the productivity increases - unless we reduced pay at the same time! Maybe we could strike a compromise - a 20% reduction in work hours for a 10% reduction in pay.
ReplyDeleteTo the general loss of jobs offshore (Neal's point), we can reduce the rate of loss if we would be willing to modify our tax code and benefit packages away from a burden to work and more to a weight on our consumption.
Maybe we are experiencing the limits of growth, and are forced to stagnate.