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Comment by ffjffsfr | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't present any sound evidence for hypothesis in the title. Manufacturing output has declined sure, but real gross domestic product grew and it is still growing. This means that maufacturing production is replaced by other sectors of economy: mostly services.

It seems logical to expect that in the future we'll have more jobs in services (e.g. tech) and less jobs in manufacturing. This is good for everybody, good for workers, because jobs in services are less dangerous, and good for economy too.

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> jobs in services are less dangerous

This depends on how you define dangerous. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States killing ~614,000 people per year whereas accidents account for ~136,000. Sedentary behavior has been shown to increase the odds of heart related disease. Moving from more active manufacturing jobs to more sedentary service jobs could arguably be more dangerous to the longevity of a person's life.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

"Physical inactivity has become a major public health concern because it is the second leading single cause of death in the United States, trailing only tobacco use (31)."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857522/

Also to note: when I worked retail, I was significantly less active than when I started working software. With retail, my feet just hurt too damn much for me to want to play sports on my days off. When I started a software job, I had 3 weekly semi-organized games I played in most weeks, as well as occasional pickup games on other days.

Could you clarify why this should be noteworthy? I mean this in the nicest and most respectful way possible - I'm not sure how the statement fits into the discussion.

Always happy to clarify!

My logic is roughly this:

1. The comment I replied to was talking about harms to health by being sedentary.

2. A lot of people on HN are young professionals with desk jobs, which at first glance seems more sedentary than most service jobs.

3. I thought it would be enlightening to realize that many of those service jobs can cause one to be more sedentary than a desk job. If I had not experienced it myself, I would not have considered this.

I think I've identified my confusion.

I had interpreted the original post to be a comparison of the levels of physical danger in manufacturing vs. service industry jobs. From my perspective both programming and retail are service industry jobs since they don't involve creating physical products by hand or through the use of tools.

Service industry is where no goods are produced. Non-live entertainment and software development both produce intangible goods, but still produce goods.

Furthermore when one talks about the movement of low-wage jobs from manufacturing to services, it's assumed we aren't talking about professional services (e.g. lawyers, accountants), but unskilled and low-skill service jobs such as retail, food-services, and child-care.

The article presents clear evidence that the overall output has declined. This is far more consequential than just employment.

The example given with agreeculture is also spot on - during the industrial revolution, total farm employment plummeted, but total farm output soared, and continues to grow to this day.

Automation in the manufacturing sector would look similarly - job losses, but increased production. That's not happening. Instead we have a shift of production base out of US.

Swiss seem to be getting some of this right with their automated factories: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-17/robots-or...

> Manufacturing output has declined

I don't see any evidence for this. Here's a source which contradicts that: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

Right. A big dip with the recession that took its time recovering. But comparing total output today vs. the "golden years" of manufacturing in the 60's betrays the lie.

Construction is a solid category to replace manufacturing.

Have open borders. Market the shit out of America. This causes millions of people to immigrate into the US.

Each of these people are going to need housing. 15 million houses at 200k each = $3 trillion growth. BOOM. just like that. And that's just housing.

The 90's was characterized by open borders in the US. Immigration was completely wide open. It causes a HUGE boom in our economy, and we need to return to those halcyon days of open borders. (and, no, it wasn't the dot-coms that grew the economy - there are far too few computer programmers to do that)

And what happens when many of those people are automated out of work? Too many people at the lower end of the skill spectrum will eventually become a liability that need to be supported with welfare. Communities will generally need to minimize the number of people that will need welfare and maximize the number of people that are productive enough to provide the welfare. If the welfare burden on the productive members becomes too high, the productive members will try to flee because they aren't being fairly rewarded for their productivity.

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