Disappearing Jobs

We hear the economy must get better and we need more jobs. There is an inescapable fact and not many are talking about it. The fact is automation is taking jobs away at an ever increasing pace. It seems to me we will never have the employment we used to have and things can only get worse. We have automated many of the jobs in factories and there are photos available which show only one or two people on a floor surrounded by robotic machines where there used to be hundreds working. We can change the dynamic for a short time if the government decides to hire people to repair the roads and bridges of this country, employing a work program of some sort. This would be like the New Deal President Roosevelt put into action which got us out of the great depression. The irony of all this is there are more people affected by the state of the economy now than there was then. The employment figures are so skewed no one knows exactly how many are truly unemployed but most agree it is more than 20% of the work force.

Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist has been feeling pretty glum about what is happening on this planet. He previously commented that we should not try and contact aliens, because they would destroy us much as we destroyed the lesser races we came into contact with on earth. His latest prediction is artificial intelligence (automation), will take over our jobs and the money saved by the companies will just go into the pockets of the rich and not go to solutions. There is something about all this which I think will eventually force manufacturers to find a solution and this is the fact eventually if no one is working there will be no one buying anything. If the very rich decide to let their employees all go and no one hires them they will just become more former employees without funds.

This trend actually started years ago and when the government became aware of it, the elected officials had a fit and decided it was time to hide the truth from the citizens, because they were afraid they would not be reelected if people found out how many of us were actually without a job. They devised a system which exempted people from the total of unemployed. Ironically if you were unemployed for more than a certain period of time you were dropped from the list even though you were unemployed. They claimed after that period of time it was obvious these people didn’t want to work. If one happens to only be able to find a part time job he or she is considered employed. There are all sorts of exceptions where people are not counted as unemployed and this has disturbed many and is the reason for the higher than announced unemployment rate.

I have been saying for years as distasteful as it will be to employers, they have to put more employees on the payroll, but for lesser hours and still compensate them with enough money for them to have decent lives. The other alternative is figure out some other economic system, because this one will not survive an army of a hundred million angry unemployed and this is the course we are on. There are even robots being developed to replace service employees. I saw one which they claimed will not only make hamburgers, but fries and dispense soda, take cash and engage in short polite conversation. Traditionally there have been jobs which were thought to be irrevocable such as pilots and soldiers in the military and yet we are now building drones and many pilots are worried about their jobs. Even the foot soldier may eventually disappear as robot soldiers take the field. There may be a time in the future where no human will be on a battlefield or even on ships.

The situation is reminiscent of a time in our past. Think about this, there was a time when most people were relegated to growing crops and unfortunately they didn’t even own the land and most of the crops went to others and they were only given enough to survive. There has been talk of a New World Order where the ultra-rich would reduce us all to surfs, while they live a life of luxury like the royalty in the Middle Ages. The talk has been they want that power back over the people which used to exist. In those days the royalty in most places had the power of life and death over the people. In ancient Japan if one was perceived not to have bowed low enough in the presence of royalty a head was chopped off. This is the real power they want.

When we look at the United States and give careful examination to what is happening in this country on the economic front we find a country which has a ballooning debt and the debt ceiling is constantly being raised. No country can sustain this type of thing. Some suspect there is a connection between the debt, unemployment, robotics and the rich companies and people. They feel the country is being destroyed on purpose because the United States is too hard to control and the best way to solve this problem is to destroy the country by bankrupting it and causing fiscal unrest, then it can be taken over. Will it be some combination of huge companies and the ultra-rich who would take over? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know we cannot keep going down this path.

Something has to be done which recognizes the fact there will be far fewer jobs in the future and it seems to me this must be accomplished somehow on the government level, but here lies the problem. The government is bought and paid for by the lobbyists for the rich companies and the ultra-rich. This` is what Stephen Hawking said, “Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”