Umm...er...WTF?!?!? --- Commentator at CNN asks: "Are jobs obsolete?"

[kpete]

Commentator at CNN asks: "Are jobs obsolete?"

"I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a problem? I understand we all want paychecks -- or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money buys us. But do we all really want jobs?

We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That's because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working."



http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. WTF is right!

How can jobs be obsolete?

What is the nature of work? Why do we want to do it? Maybe some people might be happy doing nothing...lying around, having a beer or whatever, but most of us want to be doing something, anything. Money is just part of it.

:shrug:

[AngryAmish]

4. As a lazy person, I would be fine laying around all day drinking beer.

My wife would not like it much though. I really don't work that much, 10 hours a week usually (with a couple of eighty hour weeks per year.) Business kinda runs itself now.

[enough]

12. Curious what kind of business you have that kinda runs itself, and how long have you

been doing it?

[AngryAmish]

13. Law firm, over a decade.

[jberryhill]

16. The weird thing about law practices

Is that associates are paid (or were paid when I was doing that) about 1/3 of what they bill.

Some folks look at that as "I can make the other 2/3 if I was on my own", and very few look at it as "I can work 1/3 the time and make the same".

If they aren't partners by the time they hit the point where they are ready to do that, say goodbye.

[kelly1mm]

19. That's exactly what I did. Left big firm life after 3 years of 60-80 hour

weeks (where I could bill 35-45 hours) and a 1.5 hour commute each way. Now I run a low income family law clinic 6 hours, once a week, with a 15 minute commute. My actual take home after subtracting expenses ($$$$ when working in DC, lunches, parking, gas, dry cleaning, power suits etc.) is about 3/4 of what I was making. And I am SOOOOOOOO happy!

I also have time for other pursuits, including a niche used car parts business that actually brings in more money than the law practice and takes an average of 15 hours a week.

I will never work for someone else again.

[jberryhill]

31. Amen

I'd bet more law firms would retain better people if they had an option of "I would like to work less time for less pay".

But they run everyone on maximum burnout.

It's very different from "Did I make enough this month or should I do more work?"

[Liberal_in_LA]

28. +100

[AngryAmish]

2. If you were an employer, what percentage of the population would you consider employable?

Meaning people with enough brains to help the business.

My estimate is about 20%.

[JoeyT]

46. Depends on what the business is and what it needs.

Someone doesn't have to be brilliant to be a big asset. If what you need is someone that can do manual labor in the heat it's probably still 20%, but an entirely different 20%. If you're in a field that requires knowing absurd amounts of regulations that change on a weekly or even daily basis, it's probably 10%. Same for technology related fields.

Pretty much everyone is employable in one capacity or another and would be an asset to the right business with the right manager.

[WingDinger]

3. Put down the imperial crackpipe

[AsahinaKimi]

5. Like my friend told me

The problem is there are so many Part Time jobs and few Full time jobs. If you get laid off, no unemployment insurance for you. This seems like an advantage to the corporations because they don't have to give any benefits to part timers what so ever.

[Peacetrain]

6. actually computerization, robots, jobs that put the bread on the table

are fading away.. as our population increases, we have fewer and fewer non technical jobs. It is going to be a huge headache.


Even coal mining.. what used to take 30 to 40 people can be done with 5 to 7


It is a changing world..and if we do not have a working populace, we do not have a tax base.

It is something we are going to have to face and deal with.

Look at the Post Office. It has more workers now than needed. The use of mail has dropped by 20% because of email and computers and Facebook, twitter etc.

Good jobs that brought people into the middle class.

If we lost the Post Office, think of all the people who work putting out magazines etc..how it would impact them.

We are moving to a society not city driven as it morphed into during the early 20th century..but back to people working out of their homes etc.

We have some interesting times ahead.. how do you unionize the home worker?

[global1]

21. Is 9% Unemployment The New Norm?........

Thinking about this just the other day - look at how computers and technology has taken over our society and how many jobs they are displacing. Not as much need for secretaries as most of us use our computers to do just about everything a secretary use to do. What about all the self-service checkouts at stores. No need for as many people there. We are living in a digital world. Think Bar-codes and RFID. Go to a machinery meeting now and look at all the robotic arms they have doing the work of people.

We are making people obsolete. Maybe 9% or even higher unemployment is the new norm.

[Peacetrain]

39. It is a brave new world.. that is for sure..

Every time I go to the store I avoid the self check out like the plague.. Not only are we losing jobs for people to overseas venues..but we are losing them to technology.

Its a reality we have to acknowledge.

Even Doctors can now analyze conditions over the computer with out a face to face consultation.. no nurses.. no medical office personnel

It goes on and on.

[DoBotherMe]

7. I agree

Mother or father or both could stay home with children, family caregivers could spend more time with ill family members. More people could volunteer for things like Habitat for Humanity. I remember during the 90s, we believed that with job sharing and technology we would be working fewer hours for the same pay. Dana ; )

[WinkyDink]

8. We "want" food...." Food is merely a "want" to this colossal a**hole.

[Overseas]

9. Guess he wants to tax the rich at the Eisenhower rate then.

Shift those trillions back from the top 1% and we could have a much better country.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. "we have pretty much everything we need. "

Oh yeah?

So ell me, brain ded shit head, where does that "everything" come from?
and how does it get to "we"
and how do we pay for "everything we need" if there are no jobs or money?

what he means is "we rich people have everything we need".

[WilliamPitt]

11. The article's actually pretty interesting.

The snip doesn't really represent the full article that well.

[enlightenment]

15. I agree - it's worth reading to the end.

Rather short on substance, but it is obviously just a thought he's knocking about.

"Job" and "employment" are two different things for the author - as they are for most of us. The author of the piece doesn't define his vocabulary very well and I think that's what leads to the perception that he is advocating the end of . . . well, paid labor. Which he is doing, but not for the reasons some here seem to assume.

His comment at the end does a bit better at explaining his position (emphasis is mine):

start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This sort of work isn't so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another -- all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

[county worker]

14. It always gets to me when people use macro ideas to solve micro problems.

Sure we produce enough food to feed everyone in this country but everyone must pay a price or they don't eat.

[bhikkhu]

48. So its not a production problem, but a distribution problem

Its a different way of thinking of things anyway. In any case, there are about 135 million jobs in the US, which is about the same number as it was 12 years ago. The difference that makes then pretty much ok and now miserable are that we have added population without adding anything else - wages or jobs.

A "sustainable economy" model would probably say keep the 135 million jobs, moderate population growth, and rely on wage growth to improve standards of living. We don't necessarily need more employment, as the percentage of working people as a portion of the population is really high and there are plenty of necessary roles in society that aren't work-for-pay, but we do need better paying jobs.

[CJCRANE]

17. No, unless you want to live in a third world country.

Otherwise it still takes a lot of people to build and maintain major infrastructure, provide education, transportation and healthcare to a high standard etc etc.

[0rganism]

18. i wonder how much he was paid to say that

one thing's for sure: among the last people to lose their obsolete jobs will be the propagandists

[kelly1mm]

20. Here is the issue. There are people like me that are blessed to make

a relatively large per hour income. I kind of do have everything I want. So, 4 years ago, I switched from working 60-80 hours a week at a DC law firm (I did that for 3 years) to running a once a week, 6 hours a session low income family law clinic. The income pays the bills. I have time to do other things, one of which actually makes money and is fun (to me).

Can everyone do this, absolutely not. But I have a question for everyone here - why should I work more hours just to make more money that I don't need? I would rather have the time to spend on other pursuits.

I will have say that the self employment tax issue does also come into play in my decision to not work more.

I will never work for someone else again.

[WI_DEM]

22. I wish the jobs of commentators and pundits were--but they seem to be a dime a dozen.

[Taverner]

23. Let them eat cake

[FLAprogressive]

24. I think his job should be made obsolete.

[MisterP]

25. give everyone the necessities--housing, education, food, shelter, healthcare, nursing,

transit, utilities, basic communications--for free in exchange for state labor and money won't be an issue
things are WAY easier when you have a motivated, upbeat, industrial Communist society

[FrodosPet]

37. What if they don't show up for work?

Or if they have poor performance, are abusive to coworkers and the public, etc? How do you reward good performance and disincentivize poor performance? That's one of the major sticking points of socialism for me.

Many people have pride in what they do, and do their best regardless of pay. Others perform poorly no matter how much they are paid. Different people have different abilities and motivations.

[MisterP]

45. that's why I said "motivated"

;) it's a "realistic pipe dream"--quite paradoxical, no? Capital is a critique rather than a programme

[AndyTiedye]

40. Can You Cite an Example of Such a Society?

transit, utilities, basic communications--for free in exchange for state labor and money won't be an issue
things are WAY easier when you have a motivated, upbeat, industrial Communist society

Where are all these "motivated, upbeat, industrial Communist" places?

In the former Soviet Union, motivation was a big problem with a few exceptions.

Their space program did very well. It is likely that a national space program would be staffed with people who really enjoy that kind of work.
Money is not the only motivation or even the best one. If you can get everybody doing the work they love, motivation won't be a problem.
Is it possible to do that throughout the society though?

If not, who decides who gets to be an artist and who has to pick up garbage?

[Occulus]

41. It was like that moment in "Star Trek: First Contact"

when Lily and Picard are wandering the Enterprise trying to avoid the Borg, and Lily says, "How much did this thing cost? It took me six months to scrape together enough titanium for our hull" and Picard responds with "the economics of the future are somewhat different than they are now" or some such.

I was like, "OH, Picard? Do tell!" and then they just glossed it over and went on as if nothing had happened.

[deutsey]

26. Serfdom...it's the new black n/t

[Xithras]

27. No, but we're getting there.

Like it or not, computer science is slowly catching up with human reasoning ability. Fairly soon, and probably within the lifespan of our current generation of children, we're going to reach the point where a semi-sentient robot will be capable of performing most jobs that humans currently do. Only highly technical jobs, or jobs that require genuine creativity and intelligence, will remain.

A human can't compete for a job against a robot that works 24/7, never gets sick, never needs a vacation, has no interest in unionizing, and doesn't require a paycheck.

The technology isn't there yet, but it's getting inevitably closer.

[eridani]

29. Not entirely, but the commentator is on to something

http://www.truth-out.org/jobs-mirage-how-much-more-work-do-humans-really-need/1314284068

While honest toil is honorable, a day to honor labor does make it easy to overlook certain realities, such as: Why do both left and right clamor for more jobs? Would those who get to opine for a living be willing to perform the jobs they'd impose upon others? And why jobs? If work is the only way one can be worthy of an income, why not also clamor for self-employment and start-ups? Must the jobless look forward to having a boss their entire lives? And are more jobs needed, or even possible?

Instead of clamor for jobs, why not clamor for a shorter workweek and divide the necessary work among more people? How'd 40 hours a week get to be some sort of magic number? Why aren't automation and globalization whittling that down to 30, 20, 10, going, going, gone? Juliet Schor in her "Overworked American" (1991) calculated that if increases in productivity (more output from less labor input) over the course of a baby boomer's career were applied not to things like fatter CEO salaries, but to shrinking the workweek, it'd now be 6.5 hours. Why isn't it?

<snip>

Now, days with billions of humans on the globe, land is not quite as accessible, but it could be made more affordable. When that happens, jobs sprout and wages climb, as has happened several times: In the 1960s and 1970s, New Zealand's employment rate averaged 99 percent for ten years. In the late 1950s, Danish workers received the biggest one-time raise in wages in Dansk history. And in the 1920s, New York City spurred the construction of numerous apartment buildings that provided jobs and slashed unemployment to negligible.

What was the one thing those places did in common? Their governments levied land. Whenever landowners must pay a heavier land tax, they eschew speculation and put their parcels to good use. The new construction puts people to work as do the resultant shops, offices and factories, as does the spending of wages by the gratefully employed workers.

[Bragi]

33. People need income, jobs will follow /nt

[enough]

34. I'm wondering about the environmental costs of forcing landowners to put their land

"to good use," meaning to use their land to make money to pay the "heavier land tax." This idea of seeing land primarily as a money-generator has been at the bottom of a lot of the destruction of rural and wild areas. It's a very hard thing for landowners to resist. I'm not sure it would turn out to be beneficial to society and the environment if that were actually required by law.

[eridani]

49. I think the policy is not to require anything in particular, but to tax land per se

--not improvements.

[fascisthunter]

30. self-delete

[Bragi]

32. I think he's basically correct, people need income, not jobs

Give money to the people who are struggling, who will spend the money, who will create demand, and jobs will follow. It's the trickle-up theory.

[Sirveri]

50. You've got the right idea. We need everyone to work less.

Of course this irritates the corporate class, who would rather squeeze as much cash as they can out of everyone, and those left behind simply starve to death in the streets.

That's not really what he's saying at all.

If 5 people can produce enough goods for 20 working 16 hours a day, then you could have 20 people working 4 hours a day and get the same productive output while insuring that everyone gets their needs met and the burden is shared across society. The problem we have is that we're simply too efficient, and we work too many hours. If we had groups that would actually stand up and fight for lower hours, the companies would be forced to hire on more staff to maintain the same production rates. Of course most people are working these additional hours because their pay is too low for their labor and they simply have to, or out of fear that they'll lose their jobs.

Unions fix all of these things, but that requires a functional society where people actually talk to each other and work together and have a shared tribal identity and are willing to sacrifice. That spirit no longer exists in America, or if it does it has been crushed, medicated, and smothered in suppression gadgetry (ever seen a guy texting walk in front of a moving car before?). That is why we will fall.

[Bragi]

51. Interesting perspective

I especially like your assertion that unions fix these things, but the US now lacks the social cohesion needed to support any collective action.

As I'm sure you are aware, the central contradiction in capitalism that Marx talked about was basically affirmed just a week ago by a quite respectable and highly-regarded economist.

http://online.wsj.com/video/roubini-warns-of-global-recession-risk/C036B113-6D5F-4524-A5AF-DF2F3E2F8735.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_mpvidcar_1

I agree that the U.S is screwed beyond repair and will collapse economically and socially before it can rebuild.

[Quantess]

35. Oops I accidentally recommended this.

I meant to Unrec it, sorry.

Well, he's got a kooky premise, but it's interesting to bend the mind a bit and tweak our perspectives a bit, even for a minute.

[Kat45]

36. If you read the whole article, you can see he has some points.

"We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.
This sort of work isn't so much employment as it is creative activity."

But I think he should also include health care as a basic human right. The article reminds me of stuff I remember reading when I was younger, touting technology as something that would free us from work that was drudgery and allow us to spend our time with more meaningful and enjoyable pursuits. Unfortunately, in neither the older works nor in this article does anyone come up with ideas on how we will be able to support ourselves, and thus be able to enjoy these meaningful pursuits. I wish someone would.

[DeSwiss]

38. Many are.

Many jobs have been or could have been made obsolete for quite some time now. The way jobs are done, and how much time is necessary to accomplish certain tasks have also been drastically reduced and altered. Alvin Toffler called it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock#Term">"Future Shock".

The problem is that the value derived from improvement in productivity through new inventions and automation in the past two decades in particular, has accrued to a bare few at the top instead of throughout society as a whole. Another drawback to a capitalist society. At the same time, there is also a point where these conflicting values can skew the intended outcomes -- where new inventions or improvements in productivity may itself undermine the existing ruling oligarchy. The oil industry is a good example of this.

However, America is going through this "shakeout process" right now, shedding jobs and people as it molts into something different. A monster, it looks like. The financial industry is now the Big Dog in the marketplace of the world. They can "make" more money now by trading in debt and disaster, than they could back when we used to make "things." That's China, India's and a host to smaller 3rd worlder's job now. And if this process is not stopped and reversed -- there won't be much any middle class left in ten years time.

- When we observe this sort of behavior under a microscope of an organism's cells acting in this way, we call it cancer......

"The reality is that institutions of codified thought, societal influence, power, dogmas, corporations and governments -- each have a high propensity to engage in denial, dishonesty, and corruption to maintain self-preservation and self-perpetuation.... The profit mechanism creates established orders which constitute the survival and wealth for a few groups of people. The fact is that no matter how socially beneficial new advents may be, they will be viewed in hostility if they threaten an established financially-driven institution. Meaning social progress can be a threat to the establishment, and so therefore abundance, sustainability and efficiency are the enemies of profit." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPmHaTirnCc">~Peter Joseph

[Modern_Matthew]

42. Technological singularity is still a few decades away. nt

[kenny blankenship]

43. His should be

[anarch]

44. I would love for jobs to be obsolete

but only if that meant we could all concentrate on just having a good time, and machines would do all the shit work for us, and we'd all have plenty, and nobody would be oppressed. Shit, I don't really care for my job, taken just on its own merits...I could think of a thousand more productive ways to spend my days, if I had the option of leisure, and the freedom to express myself without having to worry about where my next meal was coming from.

[Matariki]

47. It's a good, valid question. And the answer really calls in to question distribution of wealth.

I like this quote from the article: "Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff—it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff."

[Bragi]

52. Yep, a leading economic said that last week

See http://online.wsj.com/video/roubini-warns-of-global-recession-risk/C036B113-6D5F-4524-A5AF-DF2F3E2F8735.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_mpvidcar_1