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Comment by celer | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to imply that that I agree with the author. I agree that it is an amazing thing that only a fraction of the population needs to work in order for us all to live. I also agree with you that society will continue to grow richer for the foreseeable future barring massive loss of human life.

At the same time, unless something changes rapidly, unemployment will rise as low skill jobs go away. If we keep our current societal structure, or continue to cut benefits for the unemployed, we will end up with a more divided society than ever before. A wealthy elite and a starving mass is, to put it mildly, unstable. It doesn't matter that even the poorest will still have an improving standard of living. The perceived gap will be a problem because while society as a whole is "getting richer and more productive," the majority of those gains are going to the top.

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"...unless something changes rapidly, unemployment will rise as low skill jobs go away"

You sort of toss this off as if it was fairly obvious - but it's not. There is no historical evidence that this has ever happened (even in very similar circumstances to what we're living through now), nor is there any model or theory for why it might happen in the future. When you make a prediction with no prior empirical or theoretical grounding, it doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does means you won't be taken very seriously unless you make an argument as to why you're right.

Your mistake, I believe, is in thinking that the total number of low skilled jobs is decreasing. There is no evidence that this is taking place, nor a theory for why it might in the future. Many low skill jobs are disappearing, but the same could be said of, well, every moment of the last 200 years.

(You also seem to be talking about a society with a "starving mass" where nonetheless the poorest have an improving standard of living. This is very contradictory.)

I think that there is very strong evidence that this has been happening for a significant period of time. When I look at the length of time children are expected to be in school, I see a trend of a long rise spiking recently. If a large part of the importance of schooling is job training, that is strong evidence for a decline in low skilled jobs.

To look at a model for what is causing this, I point to automation. Scivener is an archaic term today because the job is no longer needed. A Roomba helps replace a maid. The United States manufactures more today than ever before, using fewer jobs. The last log table I saw was printed in 1906. Google Earth is more accurate than most, if not all, surveyors. All because we have technology to do our jobs for us.

On the other side, assembly line manufacturing did produce an increase in low skill jobs, Amazon's Mechanical Turk suffers no lack of customers, and some modern day sweatshops engage in gold farming and CAPTCHA breaking. I argue that new technology tends to remove more low skilled jobs than it creates, and that the pace of new technology increases over time. Is this a claim you would disagree with?

The starving masses is what I think many people will see themselves as. The lack of truth to this claim is barely relevant, and inequality has always been able to produce anger.

This is getting quite off-topic, however...

1) Your comments about education are fine, but this is not evidence of a decline in low skilled jobs.

2) You say that automation is a model for causing this, but what what I'm asking for is a model in which increasing automation leads to increasing long-term unemployment. To the best of my knowledge, there are no accepted models which predict this. You seem to have an implicit model inside your head where automation leads to unemployment; I would suggest that every time such a model has been written down, it's been trivial to pick holes in it.

3) I suggested that you are confusing a loss of particular low-skill jobs with a decline in the total number of low-skill jobs. Your response is...a list of particular low-skill jobs which have been lost. We are clearly talking past each other.

4) You conclude by saying that "technology tends to remove more low skilled jobs than it creates". Technology and automation can be very disruptive - think of the riots which gave us the term "Luddite" - but I am aware of no instances where it has done this. Nor am I aware of any theories or models where this would happen. Current economic theory says this will not happen, and current economic data is consistent with that.

(On the other hand, I agree than inequality is a real issue and potentially a major problem in way that absolute poverty or long0term unemployment simply aren't and won't be.)

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