Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 25, 2014

At my age, I get white hair in other places.

Mike to the rescueGood as the best sleeping pill

‘The crossbeams gone out of skew on treadle’

There’s something different about Mike today…

Even if Mike is right there is no guarantee that this will continue to be true. There is no economic law that says that old jobs will always be replaced by new ones.

Does anyone know WHAT business they are in?

Reminds me of the movie Thunder road, When the olde ways met the new rural electrification.

The economy will always create new jobs… unless government throws enough sand in the gears.

Many of the new jobs require more and more specialized skills, which excludes many people from being able to do them.

Technojunkie, government IS the new jobs being created to keep people employed.

Not necessarily…

people with “defined benefit plans” are not being paid for sitting at home. they are collecting deferred pay. and anything other than a “defined benefit plan” is a “screw you, sucker” plan.

it’s long been an aspiration of the race and a staple of speculative fiction to automate work. but the robots must be taxed at the same rate workers would be paid in order for this to work.

Isn’t the ultimate goal to free us all up so none of us have to work? Let us all be like the rich and famous and just play golf and party? Is the purpose of work to earn enough money to retire? Or do we end up like star trek where our needs are met and we work simply to explore and go where no one has gone before.

Ha ha. If your employer is the State of New Jersey, then your defined benefit plan IS the “screw you, sucker” plan.

can’t we build a robot to play golf for us?

After retirement, the idle period lasted a year. Then I had to find a volunteer job to fill my days.Sixteen hours a week at the local V A facility has filled that need. And it provides me with a long weekend. Ideal.

Higher value work? Like tourism, landscaping, lobbying, golf, and fast food?

Higher-value work. Building and maintaining machines. Yah, that’s better, not very repetitive….

Absolutely! And here’s the funny thing. As more and more people lose their jobs the less that people want to pay people a decent wage. These people go on welfare and the government tries to help, but the people who are reaping the benefit of reduce labor cost want to keep more of the money that the reduced labor cost brings. And then these people say no to paying more taxes to pay for the welfare that was brought about by there labor saving devices etc. etc. etc. The world is caught in a never ending loop. And then the complaint is made about people not wanting to work for the reduced wage and call the people who don’t want to work for slave wages lazy.

That’s been the history so far. We had armies of scribes and clerks working on documents by hand until the typewriter was invented. One typist put a half-dozen scribes out of work — but then we needed people to design, build, transport, sell, and service typewriters. Then came word processors to put typists out of work — and for every typist eliminated we wound up with two or three tech jobs..Same with the horseless carriage. We don’t have very many blacksmiths and hostlers and stable hands any more; those a niche jobs. But boy howdy did the auto industry create jobs to replace them..The issue is that the people whose jobs are eliminated aren’t qualified to fill the jobs that are created — that’s why training and retraining and livelong learning are so critical.

At least he serves some purpose… :)

My God! Trudeau has become aware of capitalism and its benefits. Keep going baby! Better late than never.