The Downward Ramp
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1) What if you had a brother with an IQ of 98. Would you rather he had a respectable factory job, or become homeless?
2) Are you aware that many of the least-tradable services are the least "cognitively demanding"? So I guess you want to tailor the bell curve of the population so that everyone is either > 120 so that they can do very highly cognitive work, or < 80 (so that they are content doing extremely menial work). Isn't it a little inconvenient that around 68% of the population is 85-115 IQ?
Rereading it again. He basically foreshadowed Amazon warehouse workers. Though he may fall short on the leap from Amazon to the rest of the working class.
It was interesting to see where one futurist believes we could go.
All the people getting replaced by automation will be less able economically to buy stuff, use services - and pay taxes. Automation removes a lot of costs, frees up a lot of resources and increases profits. But all those positive effects does not compensate for the negative effects unless there is real net gains. For most of the society.
The industry I'm most curious about with respect to the downward ramp is medicine. The hollowing out and automation is likely to happen with doctors more than nurses. With that in mind, will doctors suffer the most or will they push out the nurses underneath them.
If you graduate from an elite university, and you are sharp enough to find the next wave to surf, America is still a fine place to be. But the cost of that education is crazy now. Your parents have to among the fortunate to afford it. The ladder has been cut off under, and in a few cases, above many of the people reading this.
Not really. That's a pernicious myth. The elite universities have amazing financial aid which actually makes it easiest to attend for those who can least afford it. The hurdle is getting in, which by definition is impossible for the vast majority of Americans.
Not that any of this matters. The continued success of the elite is irrelevant to the continued struggles of the 99.5%.
That's just false. Huge numbers of middle class students enroll in elite institutions.
My family is decidedly middle class and, in line with their standard financial aid policies, every elite university I applied to offered an aid package which would make it affordable. The total debt required would have been around $5k over 4 years (just books).
Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I do elite education's unaffordability is a pernicious myth which keeps great students from applying.
As I see it, there have been two milestones in corporate IT history.
The first was around getting things into databases that could be shared by multiple users. A good example of this is stuff that used to run on the VAX.
Then there was a desktop revolution triggered by the combination of the internet, and Windows NT/2000. You could now push a computer around without being a hobbyist, and microsoft office brought various kinds of productivity.
The mindsets created by the previous revolutions are holding us back now.
* IT departments suffer from the architectural mistake of creating vast databases with multiple dependent systems on them, making maintenance and quality very hard. How many times have you asked your gas company to make one change that has resulted in some bizarre side-effect on your account?
* The dominance of single-user document-centric systems like Microsoft Office hampers effective collaboration.
This narrative explains why we're bogged at the moment. It's similar to much of what was written in the 90s - at the time, writers complained that that return on investment in IT was very low, and wealth was shifting to Japan not China.
Yeah, right. This flies in the face of everything we have learned about human nature. When faced with economic shortages and crises the first to be thrown overboard are the poor.
It depends on the subject.
For the United States, there is even a site where you can help plan your next ten years, find something that's high growth:
You can sort occupations by projected growth rate:
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm?pay=&education=...
Looking to the government to enact keysnian economics didn't work so well for Japan. And anyway policy matters and is important, but people at the same time need to take their lives in their own hands and make changes. Hard changes.
Just like we're always trying to get everyone to give up their gas guzzling carbon emitters, we should also be trying to get everyone to adopt a little bit more of a responsibility of managing their own lives. For the social good. The more people earn, the more wealth we have to lift all boats.
Don't get me wrong: many undergrads would be better off for paying greater attention to the job market and their coming role in it, but education can also be a step towards less tangible goals or an end in itself.
The problem is that this value is intangible and cannot help with more worldly problems such as paying the bills. Until we have social policies that take care of those worldly problems (such as basic income), people are better off treating undergraduate education as vocational training.
Yes, there is value in philosophy etc, but it is value for you. It is selfish. In a fair and free market society you need to give in order to receive. Once you render yourself unable to deliver value to others, you shouldn't expect others to deliver value to you.
Maybe I don't care if my degree (philosophy) has questionable utility in the work force. Maybe I don't want to be "employable". Maybe I chose to study philosophy and didn't fall into into because I was undecided.
For you realism is adapting to the world. For me realism is making sense of the world, figuring out if perhaps there could be a better world, and constructing the world that I would like to live in and that I would like my kids to live in.
You don't get to decide for me what I should study in the same way I don't get to decide for you what you should study. If you'd studied philosophy you'd be able to see stuff like that easily.
Good! That's the utopia we should all be aspiring to. In the foreseeable future (perhaps 100-200 years), increases in automation and efficiency should allow us to support most of humanity in at least passable comfort with minimal labor.
I used to be a big fan of BI, but lately I've come to think that human desires will always make BI irrelevant. No matter how much you pay every citizen, it won't be enough to sate human greed and envy. Combine that with a society that can't stand being bored, I think most people would entertain/eat/act risky themselves to death. Very few Mozart's will arise, and very many dangerously over/underweight selfie-taking alcoholics will.
Look at modern college, which when compared to any other point in life objectively requires the least work: and it's the time filled with the most hedonism and immaturity of most human's lives.
I'd rather people learn to treat work as a noble thing now, and learn to better themselves in the remaining time before we try to pull off the training wheels. I don't disagree that most work now is absolutely terrible, but I'm not sure just paying everyone to live would fix that. As things currently are, we would just pay so much that people would be willing to tolerate the terrible work. Why not try to make jobs better now?
We need a _theory_ of society that is as good model of society the way quantum mechanics is of nanoscopic physical phenomena.
We need to be able to twiddle the variables in our model and be able to see what would happen if we did X or Y.
If it is not possible to come up with this theory, construct this model, and build these simulations I want to know _why_.
Where I can debate people is if, all other things being equal, they tell me how I ought to live my life with no data other than their own opinion which I'm going to take as being a shorthand for their own ego and ideology.
I'd be fascinated to see such a model of society, it'd be incredibly helpful in economics, finance, social policy, education, fitness, law, etc, etc.
I suspect if you could make a machine that could predict human behavior that accurately, you'd want to keep it to yourself, while you became unfathomably rich and powerful.
That is why I pointed out colleges as a case study. The thing is, colleges weren't always that way. Sure students have always played pranks or messed around (I think of John Quincy Adams at Harvard getting caught streaking on the lawn drunk), but it's clear that sort of thing was uncommon. Compare that to today, when the only thing that changed is the way society treats college. I'm not sure how we can predict and change things in people's lives enough to make society as a whole take college seriously.
Compare how simple that is to the problem BI is trying to solve: some people can't find work. It boggles the mind contemplating how big an issue that is, and how much we'd have to change people for it to work.
It's interesting to see my views kind of in parallel in this instance with polar ideological opposites. One the one hand you have libertarians who don't want to pick up the tab for your life, and on the other you got social justice warriors like me who think that with social security comes social responsibility.
If a person wants to get as much from the state as they can and put nothing back in then big deal I say.
Why?
1) Because there are very few people like that anyway. This group of people, so-called welfare scroungers, are always trotted out in these arguments. I've never met one of them in all my days, I'd like to see actual proper percentages regarding this. I'm betting these people are < 1% of the population.
2) Besides there are all sorts of consumption taxes and what have you that funnel the money back into the state anyway.
3) Most people want meaningful work. What you find meaningful may not be what I find meaningful of course. And failing being able to find meaningful work most people choose to work at _anything_ at all rather than be idle. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how many people work at jobs they don't like because that's the only work they could get.
4) Society didn't wake up one morning and decide to take care of me. Social security has been and continues to be a continual struggle to redistribute the wealth from the have-a-lots to the have-very-littles and it's a struggle I identify with. Vigilance is needed as we have seen because all the gains are slowly rolled back when we're not paying attention.
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This is all beside the original bone of contention I had with you. It was with your questionable statement "If fewer people got philosophy degrees or other majors of questionable utility in the work force and instead focused on getting an education in marketable skills with job openings maybe the story might be different." Did you ever stop to think why someone would want to study philosophy before you came out with that? You're full of what people ought to do, may I suggest you ought not think like that.
edit: grammar n stuff
People paying their bills amazes you?
There are very few 'career transition' positions that are entry level and only require a positive attitude and a willingness to show up. Those were 'upgraded' to require a degree and a few years of experience for complete strangers.
Also, some people try to avoid gaps of unemployment, and that means slinging pizzas with a couple of katanas for the Mafia when there's nothing else.
I've been thinking about how to respond to you. I realize how it must sound for me to say that it amazes me that people will take on whatever is available to them at a particular stage in their life to pay their bills. I didn't mean it in a disparaging way. I meant it more in a, "wow, I would find it very hard, I don't think I'd be cut out for that". I'm not suggesting I'm better or worse. I've had plenty of jobs that didn't inspire me at all but they were still decent jobs by anybody's standards: software testing, software development ... though many people I'm sure couldn't imagine being stuck in front of a monitor 8+ hours a day.
This is a perfectly valid position and stands in no contradiction to the parent post. I think the parent post was tacitly referring to people who want to have the cake and eat it too: study subjects of questionable market utility and be employable at the same time.
It seems the theory was always that less cognitively demanding jobs would be replaced by automation/robots but more demanding ones would be safe. How to place this article in that perspective?
John F. Kennedy - January 20, 1961 - November 22, 1963
Lyndon Johnson - November 22, 1963 - January 20, 1969
Jimmy Carter - January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
Bill Clinton - January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001http://www.demonstrations.wolfram.com/StockMarketReturnsByPa...
It's not proof that you would observe a similar effect in this data, but it's enough for me to put no stock in any speculation of this sort that doesn't come with a sensitivity analysis :)
Of course, this is pretty much the opposite of what you really want. When the economy is doing well is the time to reel in spending and raise taxes. When the economy is doing badly is the time for stimulus spending and a larger deficit.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Imp...
Or did you mean - "I have no knowledge of US politics and have no opinion of these politicians"
I suppose some people can say "I'm a democrat and will always vote democrat", but don't I follow that kind of thinking. I think I've voted for almost every party in my country at one time or another, depending on who I feel is best suited for representation at that time.
1.http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
A simple example of why this idea has very little validity: the housing bubble was a global phenomenon.
As a second example: most of the questionable sub-prime lending during the housing bubble was done by private institutions not under the CRA regulation.
Some good reading on the subject: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/examining-the-big-lie-h...
Now if you want to talk about repealing Glass-Steagall or the lack of regulation of the derivatives market via the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (both mentioned in the article you link to), then I'm all ears.
Is there a link that shows the foreclosure data in different countries?
I find it hard to take at face value as some large real estate markets (e.g. China) don't even have the same structure (mortgages, underwriters, loan originator, loan repackager) as US does.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Sept...
I agree with you about China - different structure - but this chart shows how the bubble spread throughout Europe.
I think the fact that 30% of all houses here are "underwater" is a better sign of a housing bubble than the amount of foreclosures because at least where I live in many cases banks prefer not to foreclose but put the house on the regular market and hope to sell it for a reasonable prices.
JFK's supply side tax cuts are well known by Republican policy wonks, after all they were a concrete inspiration and justification for Reagan's.
Again, wonks know Jimmy Carter set trucking (and railroad???) and airline deregulation in motion (there's a cute picture of Teddy Kennedy in the background of the signing of one of those laws), but infamously didn't deregulate energy (initially, as I recall, part of Nixon's wage and price controls, but not ended like other sectors). It's one of the biggest things that wrecked his presidency.
Don't forget Carter's deregulation of the brewing industry.
While I'm sure LJB's legendary ability to work the Congress played a part in it actually getting passed, this was clearly part of JFK's legacy, especially after his assassination three months earlier.
Adding brewing to the list of 2-3 transportation deregulations does not satisfy my interpretation of "every industry he could get his hands on". There's a reason Malcolm Wallop's 1976 advertisement of a cowboy strapping a port-a-potty to a donkey behind his horse resonated long after.
In retrospect it's possible Carter was a deregulator at net, certainly the regulatory things he's infamous for were, to my memory, inherited, but it would be a hard case to make. Remember the 95% complete Tellico dam and the snail darter? He also put an awful person in charge of the NHTSA, and I believe it was their insane air bag decisions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds or more short people and children.
[1] http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/_blog/Driving_business_perfo...
At least in my area, I don't really see it happening. The majority of the people I know went to a public state school, aren't abnormally intelligent, didn't work abnormally hard, or do particularly well in school (2.5-3.5 GPAs), and all have little problems getting jobs paying 75k+ (only 25% are in software). In fact, most of us have little problems finding jobs paying 125+ in the midwest.
Companies can't find enough qualified talent. People who are always learning and adapting. It's a supply and demand problem. If you get a degree with no demand, you shouldn't expect to find employment.
In the past, the limit to economic growth was knowledge workers and a simple college degree guaranteed a middle class lifestyle. Today, the limit is entrepreneurs and companies creating value. We need to hold up guys like Elon Musk as heroes. They're the ones creating the jobs and industries of tomorrow. The government needs to stimulate entrepreneurship - not necessarily provide more grants for college educations in useless degrees.
Wow. Please elaborate, with some detail.
In the recent First Turning (1945-65) we saw broad-based improvements for all social classes, and progress on civil rights. In the Second (1965-85) Turning, technological progress continued but the working class was thrown under the bus, while the middle class continued to do well. The Third Turning (1985-2007) saw the middle class get hit as well, but the upper-middle-class did OK. In the first half of the Fourth Turning (2008-) the upper-middle class ("the 9 percent") is getting smashed and, later on, it will start to affect the upper class.
It seems to be a pattern whereby the rot travels up the social ladder. The disintegration is finally recognized as a problem only when it starts taking out the elite (as it did, last, in 1929). It's not clear what our "crisis" looks like or even whether we're in one, but I think that will be more clear in a few years.
In this light, none of this news surprises me.
Edit: What is this, constructive and sincere question getting downvoted?
Entrepreneurs are extreme outliers for any of this discussion, I think.
Given how many non-product are there, both physical and virtual, I think we've reached that point some time ago.