Are there no jobs because people are too productive?

[grouchyoldcoot]

I was reading an opinion piece on CNN, and it put me in mind of something I've been wondering about for a while- are we moving into an era where there is just no economic motivation to employ additional people? The individual productivity of employed people has been rising pretty steadily for a long time. It seems reasonable that it would

Comments

[heike]

I read the piece as well and was wondering about it. One point I was considering is that fact that comparing unemployment over time is difficult due to the changing trends of wives in the workplace, reduced agricultural jobs, etc. It is also simplification to just look at unemployment because more jobs at Starbucks do not truly replace less jobs in manufacturing.

While I agree with the idea that employment is a Industrial Revolution idea, it is very difficult to reframe the economy to reduce the need for employment of an individual (aside from making changes to go back to single employee households). Also, there is the problem that productivity has gone up in the last 20-30 years, but compensation has not. That means standard of living does not necessarily rise with productivity.

[grouchyoldcoot]

Yeah, this is the fundamental issue, I think- individual productivity is rising just fine, but even for those who remain employed salaries are staying constant or dropping. Where is all that productivity going? I guess it's turning into paper wealth in the hands of the rich.

[dagonell]

My original response was longer than your post. Check out my blog.
(http://dagonell.livejournal.com/346693.html) -- Dagonell

[grouchyoldcoot]

Hm; your point about local currencies is interesting. Money in local currencies *can't* get exported, because no one in China cares about 'Fred Bucks'.

I do think the 'everyone becomes an artist' theory is unrealistic. At least some of the long-term jobless seem to become personal disasters instead. The model that the level of entitlements just keeps rising until it reaches the equivalent of a full time minimum wage job seems plausible, but I don't know how the money gets shaken loose to implement that plan.

[genuinekfc]

I thought we were in the "Information-based Economy" over 10 years ago. Why does this guy think it's new? The Atlantic's recent article about the shift to freelance, self-employment workforce would indicate that this guy's version of the future is already on it's way. There are no meaningful numbers since 2005 to say for sure.

Mostly, this article seems to be a re-hash of Economic theory I heard for the past ten years, only re-stated in very vague terms.

[grouchyoldcoot]

I have to agree that the article is pretty vague and Utopian. Not working seems to be bad for people; at least some people. A comment on the related post I made on Facebook pointed me to Jeremy Rifkin's 'The End of Work' from more than 10 years ago, as you say.

[eggdog]

I know somebody who left a very high-paying, stressful job at IBM to become a farmer (with husband #3). She sells farm-shares, and is very happy now. Just sayin'

[bhudson]

People had this discussion in the early 90s. Then the sitcom boom brought on full employment. People had this discussion in the dotcom bust. Then full employment came back. Colour me skeptical that anything has actually changed from the standpoint of possibility for full employment.

Large inequality leads to low employment, because as you put it the rich can't consume enough. And that has been increasing in the US. But is it due to technology? Equality seems to have been increasing in the Arab world, China, and India, *because of* technology in the latter two cases.

[grouchyoldcoot]

I agree that inequality is a huge part of the problem- and I don't fully understand why the bottom 50% of the population don't just go mug the top 500 people and take back their half of the wealth.

I hope you're right about full employment. Another part of the issue is full *good quality* employment, above the minimum wage level. Looking at some numbers on Wikipedia, median incomes have been dropping since the end of the dot-com era. That is an unexpected effect of technology from my point of view- but it turns out to be easier to parse text than to pick fruit.

[bhudson]

Fundamentally, it's weird to simultaneously claim that we can afford to have 15% of the population idle, and claim that we can't afford all the nice things we want.