Workforce Economics and Productivity

[ng_nighthawk]

I'm confused about this. Or maybe woeful is the word.

Why is it that as we get more efficient, instead of getting better livelihoods so many people get left behind? Or is this a problem that's created by the media?

Comments

[ng_nighthawk]

While brushing my teeth I came up with the answer to my own question

[srotu27]

I wonder about other things, too. Areas where automation and technical efficiency as a zero sum game might not be the better answer. Farm subsidies, for example. If we grew more of our own food in this country, if we didn't make it so prohibitive to provide food on the local level, would that create opportunity and jobs for people who lack access to the specialized training necessary for other kinds of jobs? I know pitifully little about this, this is definitely an oversimplification, and I know that this is an area you know a lot about, but it seems to me we freed people up to work in cities by moving toward factory farming. Now that we realize that factory farming etc. is not all it's cracked up to be and that a significant subset of people are positioned to and will choose to pay more for food grown and distributed using different models, can we work on swinging the pendulum in a better direction there? I'm not talking about migrant workers and sharecropping, but actually finding a way to make it profitable to run family farms and

[ng_nighthawk]

I'm not sure how farm subsidies come into the equation. When we're talking about subsidies, you're talking about corn (ethanol), cotton, and commodities. Commodity farming is a bit different than what you're talking about. Cotton farmers are very unlikely to turn to vegetable farming for local farmer's markets if their subsidies disappeared

[srotu27]

And this is where my ignorance of the area comes into play, and why I thought twice about posting at all. I've heard a lot, especially when I was in Iowa, about farmers being paid not to grow things. And I was amazed that almost all of them grow corn or soy pretty exclusively--- it's not like there's a broad diversity of crops being grown--- as you travel across the state, it's feed corn or soy in every blessed field. But we also face real problems related to our dependence on corn and soy, health problems at very least. It seems like this change from more independent farming (I've heard horror stories about everyone being forced to use the same seed and having crops destroyed or facing penalties if non-approved seed is used, but they're all very anecdotal) to more institutionalized farming (which I associate with subsidies, possibly wrongly), has narrowed opportunity for non-specialized work that has real social value. So when technology replaces workers without specialized training, there are fewer opportunities, even where there is

[thedragonweaver]

Household appliances are an interesting place to take this discussion, as before the invention of such things as sewing machines, laundry devices, electric/gas ovens and grills, and so forth, the women of the household spent their entire lives pretty much doing these tasks. "Wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday," and so forth. Sewing every evening, and you usually had only one or two outfits plus Sunday best.

On the other hand, getting washers and dryers and sewing machines made more clothing more affordable and eventually necessary, so we're still doing a lot of laundry.

But in reality, I'm fine with improving technology, because it means that instead of spending my days sewing and cooking and cleaning, I get to talk to people on teh Intarwebs and work in Photoshop. As for the buggy whip manufacturers, at least one of them saw the writing on the wall and went into braiding high-test fishing line. That was funny.

philippe beaubien

[anonymous]

Hello