Are we entering an era when less and less people are going to be needed

[KlatooBNikto]

to perform work? I think even the outsourcing of jobs is only the beginning of a wave of no jobs at all in the near future ( say two decades) when most back office jobs, accounting and even legal, medical and other clerical work will be automated.

Who do we blame then? Are we all destined for the scrap heap?

[purduejake]

1. No, we will always be needed.

Increasing productivity is a good thing as long as you don't have some incompetent people running the country. We've continuously improved productivity since the machine age and we had some really good economic times since then.

[rogerashton]

2. Skills, though.

For an individual, it may depend a lot on the skills -- "human capital" as we economists say -- that the person has. It may be that not everybody has the patience and even temperament (more important than intelligence!) to go through years of schooling to get skills that will match job demand in an automated economy. There is already as problem finding jobs for low-skill males in highly developed countries. In Europe, they give 'em welfare and soccer games -- here in the US we put them in prison, a more costly alternative.

[KlatooBNikto]

8. I see this in my own case where I am able to perform many tasks

at my computer terminal which would have taken at least two more people just a few years ago. At the plant where I work, there has been a steady increase in automation eliminating many labor intensive jobs.The only jobs that seem to be surviving are the ones where a great deal of hand dexterity is needed along with hand eye coordination.If some of the new generation robots are put into play even those jobs will be gone, I think.

To me the idea of building a skills inventory seems to be a good one provided we have some people who can guide others on what type of skills would be in demand and which are not going to be needed.


That is like Wayne Gretzky saying:"Go where the puck is going to be, not where it is now."

[rogerashton]

14. My bruvver-in-law got his hand messed up

in an industrial accident. Rather than pay him disability, the company trained him in computerized process control systems. He's doing much better!

Course, it hurt his softball game, and that was the one thing that mattered most to him at the time!

Still, sometimes there is a silver lining.

[eridani]

3. Yes. Work less, and everybody works.

The solution is reducing work hours.

[Disturbed]

6. Less workers needed as...

outsourcing and mfg. re-location expands. The Middle Class will be turned into The Working Poor, displacing The Working Poor that will join the Poor and Homeless. Those that cannot afford College, most needing MA degrees, won't get jobs that they could have gotten. Amerika will be sorta like Saudi Arabia with 40% unemployment rate.

[whistle]

4. Blame the system, but people are responsible for allowing...

... themselves to be considered and treated as scrap.

[Deja Q]

7. Especially when the system engenders and engineers people TO BECOME

despondant and self-depreciating.

Forgive me, but your attitude on the issue is just as depraved as the ¢orporate ¢heap$kates who are stabbing America's economic heart while pumping cholesterol into the hearts of other countries. Killing them and hurting us.

[mhr]

5. Unemployed 55 Months - Two College Degrees - I Am Totally Useless

American society is sending me a clear signal that I am no longer needed in this country and that I should "check out" physically one way or another.

[FloridaPat]

9. I've been unemployed for about 2 years. A couple of jobs here and

there. What did you use to do? I'm a computer programmer who gets to watch our government think exporting computer jobs is a good thing.

[Deja Q]

11. Well, be happy unemployed. Your corporate friends are doing the same thing

Don't you feel warm and fuzzy and utterly jubilant knowing how your fellow Americans are treating an educated, grounded person such as yourself?

Remember: Mainstream America promotes us all as a land of 'individuals' (read: "Look out for yourself. We are not a society despite claiming otherwise. And it's okay for us to be unethical, but you sure as hell had better not screw up. Even when we change the rules without telling you."). Which will be our destruction. We are a society in many ways we don't instantly realize. And if we truly were pro-life, we sure as hell would never have condoned this joke of a system - even before outsourcing began.

[FloridaPat]

17. One very good thing about being unemployed - no tax money going

to support our idiots in Washington.

[mhr]

12. Refugee From Telecom And Aviation

I inhabited that murky world of middle management that is so easy to excoriate.

My skills are all soft in that they are not easily quantifiable. Hence, my utility to a "bottom line" corporate society has been marginalized.

Formally, I hold degrees in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration. Sadly, both degrees are virtually worthless these days.

With over 2,500 resumes out the door, I have concluded that our society has no interest in the well being of our citizens, only the well being of corporations.

[FloridaPat]

16. Do you have any hobbies that could be turned into a hobby?

Any friends that are talking about opening a business that all of you could get together and do? Any business you've ever wanted to do?

I think the only answer is to go backwards in time and have small businesses that large corporations can't compete with.

www.solari.com has some ideas on local indepence. I still haven't figured all this stuff out. It just amazes me how stupid we've been the last 25 years on allowing manufacturing plants to leave and thinking college people are better than those that work with their hands.

[Deja Q]

10. No. We're entering a period of selfishness and greed:

If overpopulation in the world is a problem, corporations would be more inclinded to truly support fellow Americans instead of pissing on them while exploiting others.

This outsourcing stuff is about selfishness, greed, and being less than friendly to visitors.

BTW: In the versions of the bible that hadn't been warped to scapegoat homosexuals for their destruction, you'll quickly find out that Sodom and Gommorrah were destroyed by God due to their selfishness, greed, and a general attitude of unfriendliness (though to everybody except their preciou$ little e¢helon of money-wielding animals.)

Check that: Unbridled, totally unrestrained selfishness and greed. Started toward 1979 or 1980, and got worse during the 1990s with the signing of several acts that were promoted as to help us, but in reality were designed from the ground up to help only a select few.

[KlatooBNikto]

13. The real change that has killed our jobs is that senior management

realized sometime in the early 80's that they had free access to loot a corporation for their own personal gain.With the aid and abetting of investment bankers, many of them raided their own corporations with the scam of leveraged buyouts and disappeared with a lot of cash leaving the corporations saddled with a lot of debt.

That made it necessary for the successors, or whoever was left, to scramble to find ways to operate the company at a profit and make debt payments.Outsourcing was born out of that desperation.

[Strelnikov_]

15. In Two Decades We Will Be Well Into The Regression Part

of the supply curve for non-renewable energy sources.

Will this create jobs, as more human labor is substituted, or will society's carrying capacity just be substantially lessened?

Either way, we are probably in the last decade of the 'status quo' that is accepted as a permanent condition by the masses.

[hollowdweller]

18. We have got to start getting into negative global population growth.

[shanti]

19. service jobs

will ALWAYS be needed. :-(