Death of the working class... and of Capitalism, as we knew it?

How fighting one pandemic can deepen another Review of “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton

By Carlos Lozada, Book critic
May 1, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. PDT
DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton.
Princeton University Press. 312 pp. $27.95

Even before the coronavirus struck, America was suffering an eviscerating epidemic. Its cause was not a virus; its spread could not be blamed on foreign travelers or college kids on spring break. No masks or gloves could slow its contagion, no vaccine could prevent new cases. Its toll is clear in the rising deaths of white Americans in their mid-40s to mid-50s over the past two decades, particularly in states such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call these “deaths of despair” — the deaths from suicide, drug overdoses and alcoholic liver disease ravaging swaths of the country. The victims, overwhelmingly, are less-educated Americans whose loss of life was preceded by a loss of jobs, community and dignity, and whose deaths, the authors argue, are inextricable from the policies and politics transforming the U.S. economy into an engine of inequality and suffering. “The American economy has shifted away from serving ordinary people and toward serving businesses, their managers, and their owners,” Case and Deaton write in their new work, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”

Although the authors completed this book before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — it was published four days after President Trump declared a national emergency — their diagnosis is still painfully relevant. Mass unemployment and mass infection, occurring simultaneously in a nation where health insurance often depends on employment, threaten to both prove and aggravate the conditions Case and Deaton describe. The debate over how quickly to ease social distancing restrictions and get the economy moving again forces a reckoning: How do we balance the risk of increased coronavirus infections if we reopen the economy too soon against the risk of more deaths of despair if we do so too late? “Jobs are not just the source of money; they are the basis for the rituals, customs, and routines of working-class life,” Case and Deaton write. “Destroy work and, in the end, working-class life cannot survive.”

Reading this book during a pandemic, I found myself bracing for more death — from the virus or from despair, and, more likely, from both.

Many memoirs, histories and investigations have been written on America’s white working class in recent years, probably too many, but fewer purely economic studies. Case and Deaton are world-renowned practitioners of the dismal science (Case is a top expert on the links between economic and health status, while Deaton snagged a Nobel in 2015 for his work on household poverty and welfare), and their lens on the subject makes for stark reading. They estimate the magnitude of the deaths of despair in the United States by comparing the improving trend lines of recent decades — i.e., if mortality rates had continued falling as before — with what actually came to pass.

“When we add up those numbers from 1999, the critical point where the turnaround began, to 2017,” the authors report, “we get a very large total: 600,000 deaths of midlife Americans who would be alive if progress had gone on as expected.” Case and Deaton liken that number to “what we might see during the ravages of an infectious disease, like the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” They also compare it to the roughly 675,000 deaths of HIV/AIDS in the United States since the early 1980s.

Case and Deaton are largely dismissive of arguments that stress the supposed individual or cultural failings of the white working class, and they focus instead on systemic shortcomings that lead to deaths of despair. Manufacturing towns and cities have seen their factories boarded up, they write, and “in the wreckage, the temptations of alcohol and drugs lured many to their deaths.” Education is another consideration, the authors argue, with “almost all” of the increase in deaths due to suicide, alcoholism and drug overdoses found among people who lack bachelor’s degrees. Deteriorating health matters as well. “Many people are experiencing pain, serious mental distress, and difficulty going about their day-to-day lives,” Case and Deaton write. These conditions make it harder for them to work, which reduces income and undercuts work as a source of “satisfaction and meaning” in their lives.

Who lives, who dies, who decides: How the virus makes us weigh the value of one life

More than 30 million Americans have sought unemployment aid since mid-March, a level of dislocation not seen since the Great Depression. In this context, the impulse to return to work is understandable. Yet the loss of earnings, Case and Deaton contend, is just part of the challenge. “Much more important for despair is the decline of family, community, and religion,” they write, a decline they regard as related to falling wages and disappearing jobs, but distinct from them. Other authors have tackled this problem recently — see, for instance, Timothy P. Carney’s insightful 2019 book, “Alienated America” — and collectively, their conclusion is clear: Long before we began social distancing, Americans had already grown far too distant from one another.

Case and Deaton focus on the white working class because it is undergoing a particularly harrowing shift, not because they believe this demographic matters more than others (they don’t) or because it is worse off in absolute terms than others (it isn’t). Black mortality rates remain persistently higher than white ones, the authors point out, even considering the increased deaths of despair among white Americans. But black mortality rates are falling faster than white rates — and the deaths of despair among white citizens are the difference. “The main reason why death rates of blacks fell more rapidly than death rates of whites at the beginning of the twenty-first century is that blacks were not suffering the epidemic of overdoses, suicide, and alcoholism,” Case and Deaton explain. [...]

It's worth reading the whole thing. While I don't consider myself an anti-capitalist at all, there have been changes in the economy, locally an globally, that have been eliminating working class jobs and incomes. It's a reality.

When Obamacare tried to force small businesses to provide health care for full time employees, the employment industry responded by making all employees part time. I worked as a tax preparer, dealing with all their W-2 forms, and was astounded at how many families were raising children, with two parents working at an assortment of part-time jobs, to pay their bills and keep thier families alive.

This article touches on many causes, and asks many questions we need to face, as it's only going to continue to get worse for the majority of people, if viable solutions are not found.

Many of these people are Trump supporters. And they will vote for Trump, no matter what anyone says, because they feel that the Democrats don't care wether they live or die, so they will vote for anyone who opposes the Democrats. You can argue about wether that perception is right or wrong. But it won't change the fact that they percieve it that way. If the Democrats are serious about winning more votes, they should be addressing this, instead of only attacking Trump non-stop. They have been doing that for the past four years, and it hasn't worked. Isn't it about time they try something that does?

I have Democrat friends who believe that all Trump supporters are racists, bigots and morons. And that if they keep repeating that mantra, it's going to win them the elections. But I think they have forgotten, what every election is about: it's the economy, stupid. Duh. It affects the most people. And the majority will vote for whoever they think, whoever they perceive, will do the better job of that.

     

South Dakota: Where The Jobs Are

Why people are moving to South Dakota
60% of people who moved to South Dakota did so for a new job or job transfer

South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore, topped the list of states with the most inbound movers in 2016, and it’s mostly for the jobs.

The state, which has seen a 23% increase in people moving to the state in the last five years, took the No. 1 spot for the first time, beating Oregon, which had been in the top place for the past three years. South Dakota also attracted those looking to live closer to family and retire, according to the 40th annual moving study by St. Louis-based moving company United Van Lines. The study based its findings on states’ inbound and outbound percentages compared to total moves the company handles.

Of the people moving to South Dakota, 60% came for jobs. The state is home to financial services firms, like Citibank C, +0.83% , and has a low unemployment rate and reasonable home prices, said Michael Stoll, an economist and professor and chair of the Department of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked with United Van Lines on the study. High demand jobs with high wages in South Dakota include registered nurses, accountants and auditors, general and operations managers, elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers and management analysts, according to the South Dakota Dept. of Labor & Regulation.

“There are more pull factors than push factors,” Stoll said. The unemployment rate in South Dakota was 2.7% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with the U.S.’s unemployment rate that same month of 4.6%. The median home in South Dakota is about $170,000, according to real estate website Zillow’s home value index.

The top inbound states after South Dakota were Vermont, Oregon, Idaho, South Carolina, Washington state, then Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. [...]

Interesting, that Oregon had been the top state drawing new people for the past three years. I'm pretty sure though, that most people coming to Oregon are looking to retire, not find work. Read the whole article for embedded links and more.

     

The Rapid Advance of Artificial Intelligence: is it the problem, or the solution?

In some ways, it's both:

Davos Highlights AI's Massive PR Problem

[...] Artificial Intelligence: The Evolution of Automation

Perhaps Henry Ford was able to build a market for the Model T by paying his assembly line workers a living wage, but it’s not clear if everyone buys into the same principle when it comes to the economic impact of automation today.

In fact, the problem may only be getting worse with the arrival of the next wave of innovation in automation: artificial intelligence (AI). AI has been playing a role in automation for years in the form of assembly line robotics, but innovation in the technology is now reaching an inflection point.

One of the concerns: AI will increasingly target white-collar jobs. “AI is going to focus now as much on white-collar as on blue-collar jobs,” explains John Drzik, President of global risk at insurer Marsh, in the ComputerWeekly article. “You are looking at machine learning algorithms being deployed in financial services, in healthcare and in other places. The machines are getting increasingly powerful.”

[...]

Given the sudden and rapid acceleration of innovation in AI, some Davos attendees even sounded alarmed. “The speed at which AI is improving is beyond even the most optimistic people,” according to Kai-fu Lee, a venture capitalist with Sinovation Partners, in the Financial Times article. “Pretty much anything that requires ten seconds of thinking or less can soon be done by AI or other algorithms.”

This kind of alarmist talk emphasizes AI’s greatest public relations hurdle: whether or not increasingly intelligent computers will cast off human control and turn evil, à la Skynet in the Terminator movies. Increasingly intelligent robots replacing humans is “a function of what the market demands,” explains Justine Cassell, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, in the Washington Post article. “If the market demands killer robots, there are going to be killer robots.”

Killer Robots? AI Needs Better PR

Aside from the occasional assembly line worker getting too close to the machinery, killer robots aren’t in the cards for AI in the near term. However, the economic impact that dramatically improved automation might bring is a very real concern, especially given populist pushback.

[...]

Wealth and income inequality remain global challenges to be sure, but the accelerating pace of technology innovation brings benefits to everyone. After all, even the poorest people on this planet can often afford a smartphone.

In fact, the ‘killer robots’ context for AI is missing the point, as technology advancement has proven to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem for the woes of globalization. Actually, the disruptions businesses face today are more about speed to market than automation per se.

It’s high time to change the PR surrounding AI from killer robots to digital transformation. “Companies must adapt their business models to driver new areas of revenue and growth,” explains Adam Elster, President of Global Field Operations at CA Technologies. “With digital transformation, the biggest factor is time: how fast can companies transform and bring new products to market.”

Where populism is a scarcity-driven movement – ‘there’s not enough to go around, so I need to make sure I have my share’ – technology innovation broadly and AI in particular are surplus-driven: ‘we all benefit from technology, so now we must ensure the benefits inure to everyone.’ [...]

Read the whole thing, for embedded links and more. This will be an ongoing debate for many years to come.

     

Death rates rise for middle aged white Americans

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds

[...] The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” wrote two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, in a commentary to the Deaton-Case analysis to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Wow,” said Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on mortality trends and the health of populations, who was not involved in the research. “This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”

Dr. Deaton had but one parallel. “Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.

In contrast, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline during the same period, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups.

Middle-aged blacks still have a higher mortality rate than whites — 581 per 100,000, compared with 415 for whites — but the gap is closing, and the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.

David M. Cutler, a Harvard health care economist, said that although it was known that people were dying from causes like opioid addiction, the thought was that those deaths were just blips in the health care statistics and that over all everyone’s health was improving. The new paper, he said, “shows those blips are more like incoming missiles.”

Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case (who are husband and wife) say they stumbled on their finding by accident, looking at a variety of national data sets on mortality rates and federal surveys that asked people about their levels of pain, disability and general ill health.

Dr. Deaton was looking at statistics on suicide and happiness, skeptical about whether states with a high happiness level have a low suicide rate. (They do not, he discovered; in fact, the opposite is true.) Dr. Case was interested in poor health, including chronic pain because she has suffered for 12 years from disabling and untreatable lower back pain.

Dr. Deaton noticed in national data sets that middle-aged whites were committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and that the all-cause mortality in this group was rising. But suicides alone, he and Dr. Case realized, were not enough to push up overall death rates, so they began looking at other causes of death. That led them to the discovery that deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning also increased in this group.

They concluded that taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths. The effect was largely confined to people with a high school education or less. In that group, death rates rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education.

It is not clear why only middle-aged whites had such a rise in their mortality rates. Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner, in their commentary, considered a variety of explanations — including a pronounced racial difference in the prescription of opioid drugs and their misuse, and a more pessimistic outlook among whites about their financial futures — but say they cannot fully account for the effect. [...]

Read the whole thing for more details, embedded links and more.

I think key to this is the fact that it's affecting whites with only a high school education or less. The job market is particularly tough for them, and their coping skills are likely less resilient. They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. The article goes on to talk about physical pain issues rising in this demographic, also. The combined health and financial problems, with a pessimistic attitude and substance abuse issues, may be proving lethal.

Of course there are those who are quick to say it's merely the Death of White Privledge; Whitey is finding out what it's like to be poor, and can't cope. That authors' agenda isn't mine, I prefer a bit more scientific objectivity. I include the link merely because it's a narrative we are going to hear more and more, as everything continues to get more and more racialized and radicalized.

I think the article about Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case that I've excerpted from here is more objective, and therefor more balanced.

Here is a link to readers comments about the study:
Readers React to Rising Death Rates of Middle-Aged White Americans.

Since the same demographic in other industrialized countries is NOT dying at such an increased rate, I would suggest that the difference is, that many other countries have a permanent unemployed class, that receives better, permanent unemployment benefits and health care. The same demographic here does not, which explains why they gravitate to Bernie Sanders: They want the government to take care of them, European style. Is that the same as the "End of White Privledge"? You decide.

This will be a growing issue as the automation of job tasks continues and jobs continue to disappear. What is to be done with the growing pool of unemployed people, not just here, but globally? It's one of the major challenges we face in the coming Brave New Word.
     

Writing computer code: not for everyone?

Not only not for everyone, but not for most people:

Coding Academies Are Nonsense

[...] I see coding shrinking as a widespread profession. Not because software is going away, but because the way we build software will fundamentally change. Technology for software creation without code is already edging toward mainstream use. Visual content creation tools such as Scratch, DWNLD and Telerik will continue to improve until all functionality required to build apps is available to consumers — without having to write a line of code.

Who needs to code when you can use visual building blocks or even plain English to describe intent? Advances in natural-language processing and conceptual modeling will remove the need for traditional coding from app development. Software development tools will soon understand what you mean versus what you say. Even small advances in disambiguating intent will pay huge dividends. The seeds are already planted, from the OpenCog project to NLTK natural-language processing to MIT’s proof that you can order around a computer in your human language instead of code.

Academies had better gather those revenues while they can, because ultimately they are the product of short-term thinking. Coding skills will continue to be in high demand until technology for software creation without code disrupts the entire party, crowding out programming as a viable profession. [...]

Kinda what I suspected. The technology is changing quickly, and whats valid today is obsolete tomorrow. I think eventually there will be software that can create code. There were also some interesting comments about people who try to learn computer coding, and why they give it up. If you need more convincing, read the whole thing for further arguments, embedded links and more.

     

I agree with President Obama...

...about this Nike thing:

As Obama Visits Portland, Trade Deal Divides Liberal Community

As President Barack Obama visited Nike's headquarters in Portland — a city known for lush greenery, constant drizzle and liberal politics — the left-leaning enclave has become ground zero Friday for the debate over the administration's push for a sweeping, multinational trade deal.

The president acknowledged that he's faced hurdles in his quest to garner support for an ambitious trade accord between the United States and 11 South American and Pacific Rim nations, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He told workers at the Nike campus that the people opposing this "typically they're my friends and coming from my own party. On this one, they're like, whooping on me."

Obama insisted the trade push is not political for him, since he's run his last election. He said the trade accord is the right thing to do for working families.

"The only reason I do something is because I think it's good for the economy," Obama said.

Still, in Portland, with its normally laid back vibe, the debate over the trade issue is splitting residents into two camps.

On the one side are companies like Nike, one of the city's largest employers. The company employs 8,500 people in Oregon and 26,000 nationwide. Nike says its economic impact on the state of Oregon is $2.5 billion.

And the company promises to add 10,000 jobs and an additional 40,000 indirect and supply chain service jobs if the trade deal is approved.

"We believe agreements that encourage free and fair trade allow Nike to do what we do best: innovate, expand our businesses and drive economic growth," said Mark Parker, Nike's president and CEO.

On the other side are labor unions that argue that the trade accord would repress worker wages and encourage companies — like Nike — to outsource jobs.

Those differences were on display Friday morning as Nike workers, most wearing Nike shoes, lined up to cheer the president. Meanwhile, about a hundred protesters crowded outside and chanted their outrage.

"Nike represents everything about corporate America that stinks," said Andrew Crosby, as he carried a protest sign.

The pact has even split Oregon's senators, both Democrats.

Sen. Ron Wyden is helping lead the charge to pass "fast-track" authority which would grant Obama and future presidents the right to ask for an up-or-down vote in Congress on trade agreements. Obama and supporters say the president needs this authority to better negotiate with other nations.

Opponents worry that such large trade deals deserve vetting by Congress. Sen. Jeff Merkley has said he is "dubious" about the impact of such broad trade accords. [...]

Wyden is a reasonable Democrat. Merkley is a Moron. Oregon desperately needs the jobs and revenue. The unions here are too powerful, and dragging our state down. I have to agree with president Obama on this one.

     

Future-shock, accelerated?

Is the pace of technology suddenly accelerating? A case can be made for it:

The Acceleration of Acceleration: How The Future Is Arriving Far Faster Than Expected

One of the things that happens when you write books about the future is you get to watch your predictions fail. This is nothing new, of course, but what’s different this time around is the direction of those failures.

Used to be, folks were way too bullish about technology and way too optimistic with their predictions. Flying cars and Mars missions being two classic—they should be here by now—examples. The Jetsons being another.

But today, the exact opposite is happening.

Take Abundance. In 2011, when Peter Diamandis and I were writing that book, we were somewhat cautious with our vision for robotics, arguing that we were still ten to fifteen years away a major shift.

And we were wrong.

Just three years later, Google went on a buying spree, purchasing eight different robotics companies in less than six months, Amazon decided it was time to get into the drone delivery (aka flying robots) business, and Rethink Robotics released Baxter (a story explored in my new release Bold), the first user-friendly industrial robot to hit the market.

Baxter was the final straw. With a price tag of just $22,000 and a user-friendly interface a child could operate, this robot is already making the type of impact we were certain would show up around 2025.

And we’re not the only ones having this experience.

Earlier this year, Ken Goffman—aka RU Sirius—the founder of that original cyberpunk journal Mondo 2000 and longtime science, technology and culture author—published Transcendence, a fantastic compendium on transformative technology. Goffman has spent nearly 40 years working on the cutting edge of the cutting edge and is arguably one of a handful of people on the planet whose futurist credentials are truly unassailable—yet he too found himself way too conservative with his futurism.

You really have to stop and think about this for a moment. For the first time in history, the world’s leading experts on accelerating technology are consistently finding themselves too conservative in their predictions about the future of technology.

This is more than a little peculiar. It tells us that the accelerating change we’re seeing in the world is itself accelerating. And this tells us something deep and wild and important about the future that’s coming for us.

So important, in fact, that I asked Ken to write up his experience with this phenomenon. In his always lucid and always funny own words, here’s his take on the dizzying vertigo that is tomorrow showing up today:

[...]

Read the whole thing, for embedded links and more examples of this phenomena, and what it means for the future.

It a way, this also relates to this article: Welcome to the Failure Age!, that I blogged about recently. It's about the relationship between technological advancement and the evolution of economics and the ways both shape our societies. About how technological advancements cause failures of older technologies, and how that causes massive disruptions in the workforce and economies, locally and globally.

Our societies are struggling with ways to deal with that, and now that the pace of change is accelerating (according to both of these articles) it's more important than ever to understand this technological/economic relationship, and how we may cope with the many possibilities it's creating in the near future.

I really recommend this article; it's not pessimistic! I think it identifies the dynamics involved very well, and is optimistic that we can find ways to adapt, if we remain flexible and adaptable, and able to change with the changes. If we can, many good things may become possible.

     

How it all works, and where it's taking us

I'm talking about the evolution of economics; how it started, where we were, and where it's all going. I found this article to be intelligent, stimulating and exciting:

Welcome to the Failure Age!

[...] An age of constant invention naturally begets one of constant failure. The life span of an innovation, in fact, has never been shorter. An African hand ax from 285,000 years ago, for instance, was essentially identical to those made some 250,000 years later. The Sumerians believed that the hoe was invented by a godlike figure named Enlil a few thousand years before Jesus, but a similar tool was being used a thousand years after his death. During the Middle Ages, amid major advances in agriculture, warfare and building technology, the failure loop closed to less than a century. During the Enlightenment and early Industrial Revolution, it was reduced to about a lifetime. By the 20th century, it could be measured in decades. Today, it is best measured in years and, for some products, even less. (Schuetz receives tons of smartphones that are only a season or two old.)

The closure of the failure loop has sent uncomfortable ripples through the economy. When a product or company is no longer valued in the marketplace, there are typically thousands of workers whose own market value diminishes, too. Our breakneck pace of innovation can be seen in stock-market volatility and other boardroom metrics, but it can also be measured in unemployment checks, in divorces and involuntary moves and in promising careers turned stagnant. Every derelict product that makes its way into Weird Stuff exists as part of a massive ecosystem of human lives — of engineers and manufacturers; sales people and marketing departments; logistics planners and truck drivers — that has shared in this process of failure.

Innovation is, after all, terrifying. Right now we’re going through changes that rip away the core logic of our economy. Will there be enough jobs to go around? Will they pay a living wage? Terror, however, can also be helpful. The only way to harness this new age of failure is to learn how to bounce back from disaster and create the societal institutions that help us do so. The real question is whether we’re up for the challenge.

[...]

The original age of innovation may have ushered in an era of unforeseen productivity, but it was, for millions of people, absolutely terrifying. Over a generation or two, however, our society responded by developing a new set of institutions to lessen the pain of this new volatility, including unions, Social Security and the single greatest risk-mitigating institution ever: the corporation. During the late 19th century, a series of experiments in organizational structure culminated, in the 1920s, with the birth of General Motors, the first modern corporation. Its basic characteristics soon became ubiquitous. Ownership, which was once a job passed from father to son, was now divided among countless shareholders. Management, too, was divided, among a large group of professionals who directed units, or “subdivisions,” within it. The corporation, in essence, acted as a giant risk-sharing machine, amassing millions of investors’ capital and spreading it among a large number of projects, then sharing the returns broadly too. The corporation managed the risk so well, in fact, that it created an innovation known as the steady job. For the first time in history, the risks of innovation were not borne by the poorest. This resulted in what economists call the Great Compression, when the gap between the income of the rich and poor rapidly fell to its lowest margin.

[...]

For American workers, the greatest challenge would come from computers. By the 1970s, the impact of computers was greatest in lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs. Factory workers competed with computer-run machines; secretaries and bookkeepers saw their jobs eliminated by desktop software. Over the last two decades, the destabilizing forces of computers and the Internet has spread to even the highest-paid professions. Corporations “were created to coordinate and organize communication among lots of different people,” says Chris Dixon, a partner at the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. “A lot of those organizations are being replaced by computer networks.” Dixon says that start-ups like Uber and Kickstarter are harbingers of a much larger shift, in which loose groupings of individuals will perform functions that were once the domain of larger corporations. “If you had to know one thing that will explain the next 20 years, that’s the key idea: We are moving toward a period of decentralization,” Dixon says.

Were we simply enduring a one-time shift into an age of computers, the adjustment might just require us to retrain and move onward. Instead, in a time of constant change, it’s hard for us to predict the skills that we will need in the future. Whereas the corporate era created a virtuous cycle of growing companies, better-paid workers and richer consumers, we’re now suffering through a cycle of destabilization, whereby each new technology makes it ever easier and faster to create the next one, which, of course, leads to more and more failure. [...]

It's difficult to choose excerpts, because the whole thing is so good, and makes more sense read as a whole. Unlike the comments from the Davos forum, this goes into a lot more depth and demonstrates a greater understanding of the larger picture, the entire process. It's great to see that some people actually are paying attention. This is brilliant, a must read!

Hat Tip for the link above, from: You have to fail to move forward
     

The Business and Political Elite at Davos

Their opinions about high tech changes, and what they mean:

Internet will 'disappear', Google boss tells Davos

Google boss Eric Schmidt predicted on Thursday that the Internet will soon be so pervasive in every facet of our lives that it will effectively "disappear" into the background. Speaking to the business and political elite at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Schmidt said: "There will be so many sensors, so many devices, that you won't even sense it, it will be all around you."

"It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room and... you are interacting with all the things going on in that room." "A highly personalized, highly interactive and very interesting world emerges." On the sort of high-level panel only found among the ski slopes of Davos, a panel bringing together the heads of Google, Facebook and Microsoft and Vodafone sought to allay fears that the rapid pace of technological advance was killing jobs.

"Everyone's worried about jobs," admitted Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook. With so many changes in the technology world, "the transformation is happening faster than ever before," she acknowledged. "But tech creates jobs not only in the tech space but outside," she insisted. Schmidt quoted statistics he said showed that every tech job created between five and seven jobs in a different area of the economy. "If there were a single digital market in Europe, 400 million new and important new jobs would be created in Europe," which is suffering from stubbornly high levels of unemployment. The debate about whether technology is destroying jobs "has been around for hundreds of years," said the Google boss. What is different is the speed of change.

"It's the same that happened to the people who lost their farming jobs when the tractor came... but ultimately a globalised solution means more equality for everyone." With one of the main topics at this year's World Economic Forum being how to share out the fruits of global growth, the tech barons stressed that the greater connectivity offered by their companies ultimately helps reduce inequalities. "Are the spoils of tech being evenly spread? That is an issue that we have to tackle head on," said Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft. [...]

They are entitled to their opinions as anyone else. But I don't necessarily believe them. The problem with "Elites" is, they don't live in the same world as the rest of us. They can think whatever they like, but it doesn't necessarily make it so. And some of their ideas are downright creepy. Is their vision the Brave New World we are headed for? Because if that is what they are aiming for, I would guess that there will be unintended and unforeseen consequences that they have not anticipated.


More fun from the Davos Elites:

You’ve entered The Hypocrisy Zone: Billionaire Democrat wants YOU to downsize your lifestyle
     

How to educate Americans for jobs

How to educate Americans for jobs? Ask the Germans, employers urge

INDIANAPOLIS — Two years. That’s how long it takes William Lankin’s fast-growing electrical contracting company to teach new hires with four-year university degrees the tricks of the trade.

These college grads “have learned the book stuff, but they don’t have real-world experience,” said Lankin, vice president of Industrial Electric. “They don’t know how to work with other people, or subcontractors — how to actually do business.”

Bringing them up to speed while paying them a salary is time-consuming and expensive, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll be good enough to keep. Which only complicates the original predicament: In spite of the still-soft job market, companies like Lankin’s can’t find enough qualified workers.

Now some hiring managers, a few policymakers, and a handful of community colleges are accepting help to solve this problem from an unexpected source: Germany

Through an initiative being quietly promoted by the German Embassy, U.S. colleges, which consider themselves part of the greatest higher-education system in the world, are importing the German model of career and technical education to keep up with a demand they can’t fill for skilled American workers.

“We said, ‘What is the best model?’” said Sue Smith, vice president for technology and applied sciences at Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College, which has teamed up with Lankin’s company to create a program for prospective employees based on what the Germans do.

“And, quite honestly, the German model is the best model.”

It consists of a so-called dual system of education and training that combines a few days a week of classroom instruction at vocational schools with on-the-job apprenticeships that are designed to lead to full-time jobs for which graduates are ready straight out of school. The German students also receive a form of credential called a certification qualification.

This simple setup keeps German industry humming, and youth unemployment down to about 8 percent — less than half of what it is in the United States — according to the German Embassy.

By comparison, routes to similar careers in the United States are convoluted and confusing, even as the need for workers to fill them escalates, a study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development found. [...]

Read the whole thing for embedded links, video and more. There are some interesting comments in the comments section.

This website has a seven minute video:

Skills Initiative: Enhancing German-American Cooperation on Workforce Training

The German Embassy in Washington, DC presents the Skills Initiative as one of the cornerstones of its work.

Through the Skills Initiative, the German Embassy is bringing together German and American businesses and local education/training providers with the aim of developing training programs best suited to businesses’ needs. The Embassy launched the Skills Initiative to identify and spread best practices in sustainable workforce development in the USA.

Now the Embassy, through Skills Initiative, is seeking cooperation with federal states, locally convening groups of German companies and bringing them together with training providers so that they can work on the best fit for training programs in their area. [...]

The video has some interesting comments by American students who are participating and learning career skills, about why it is such an attractive alternative to college.
     

Would robots be better or worse for people?

There are conflicting opinions:

Pew: Split views on robots’ employment benefits

WASHINGTON — In 2025, self-driving cars could be the norm, people could have more leisure time and goods could become cheaper. Or, there could be chronic unemployment and an even wider income gap, human interaction could become a luxury and the wealthy could live in walled cities with robots serving as labor.

Or, very little could change.

A new survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center found that, when asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs, nearly 1,900 experts and other respondents were divided over what to expect 11 years from now.

Forty-eight percent said robots would kill more jobs than they create, and 52 percent said technology will create more jobs than it destroys.

Respondents also varied widely when asked to elaborate on their expectations of jobs in the next decade. Some said that self-driving cars would be common, eliminating taxi cab and long-haul truck drivers. Some said that we should expect the wealthy to live in seclusion, using robot labor. Others were more conservative, cautioning that technology never moves quite as fast as people expect and humans aren’t so easily replaceable.

“We consistently underestimate the intelligence and complexity of human beings,” said Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher at Microsoft, who recalls that 40 years ago, people said that advances in computer-coding language were going to kill programming jobs.

Even as technology removed jobs such as secretaries and operators, it created brand new jobs, including Web marketing, Grudin said. And, as Grudin and other survey responders noted, 11 years isn’t much time for significant changes to take place, anyway.

Aaron Smith, senior researcher with the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, said the results were unusually divided. He noted that in similar Pew surveys about the Internet over the past 12 years, there tended to be general consensus among the respondents, which included research scientists and a range of others, from business leaders to journalists. [...]

It goes on to give more opinions from educated people who make good cases for their opinions. Reading them all, it seems like no one can say exactly how it's going to play out, though a common theme of many of the opinions is, that over time, there may indeed be less jobs for people. And what changes will THAT bring? That seems to be the big question underlying it all.

     

Fatima´s "journey through life"

I had read this story somewhere, as an example of how a person's collective work experience could ultimately lead them to something very fulfilling. I think it was told as part of an article about people re-inventing careers for themselves late in life, building on their accumulated experience. I don't have the original source to link to, but I did find the story on-line:

THE SUFI PARABLE “FATIMA, THE SPINNER AND THE TENT” BY IDRIES SHAH

I want to introduce you to the story, a parable that tells the events about the "journey through life" of a young woman in the Middle East.

This parable, the Sufi Story "Fatima, the spinner and the tent", is characteristic for the "journey through life", of many people as well as my "journey through life", an odyssey apparently unwanted.



Fatima´s "journey through life":

Once in a city in the Farthest West there lived a girl called Fatima. She was the daughter of a prosperous spinner. One day her father said to her: “Come, daughter, we are going on a journey, for I have business in the islands of the Middle Sea. Perhaps you may find some handsome youth in a good situation whom you could take as husband.“

They set off and travelled from island to island, the father doing his trading while Fatima dreamt of the husband who might soon be hers. One day, however, they were on the way to Crete when a storm blew up, and the ship was wrecked. Fatima, only half-conscious, was cast up on the seashore near Alexandria.
Her father was dead, and she was utterly destitute. She could only remember dimly her life until then, for her experience of the shipwreck, and her exposure in the sea, had utterly exhausted her.

While she was wandering on the sands, a family of cloth-makers found her. Although they were poor, they took her into their humble home and taught her their craft. Thus it was that she made a second life for herself, and within a year or two she was happy and reconciled to her lot.

But one day, when she was on the seashore for some reason, a band of slave-traders landed and carried her, along with other captives, away with them. Although she bitterly lamented her lot, Fatima found no sympathy from the slavers, who took her to Istanbul and sold her as a slave. Her world had collapsed for the second time.

Now it chanced that there were few buyers at the market. One of them was a man who was looking for slaves to work in his wood yard, where he made masts for ships. When he saw the dejection of the unfortunate Fatima, he decided to buy her, thinking that in this way, at least, he might be able to give her a slightly better life than if she were bought by someone else.

He took Fatima to his home, intending to make her a serving-maid for his wife. When he arrived at the house, however, he found that he had lost all his money in a cargo which had been captured by pirates. He could not afford workers, so he, Fatima and his wife were left alone to work at the heavy labour of making masts. Fatima, grateful to her employer for rescuing her, worked so hard and so well that he gave her her freedom, and she became his trusted helper. Thus it was that she became comparatively happy in her third career.

One day he said to her: “Fatima, I want you to go with a cargo of ships' masts to Java, as my agent, and be sure that you will turn a profit.” She set off, but when the ship was off the coast of China a typhoon wrecked it, and Fatima found herself again cast up on the seashore of a strange land.

Once again she wept bitterly, for she felt that nothing in her life was working in accordance with expectation. Whenever things seemed to be going well, something came and destroyed all her hopes. “Why is it”, she cried out, for the third time, “that whenever I try to do something it comes to grief? Why should so many unfortunate things happen to me?” But there was no answer.

So she picked herself up from the sand, and started to walk inland. Now it so happened that nobody in China had heard of Fatima, or knew anything about her troubles. But there was a legend that a certain stranger, a woman, would one day arrive there, and that she would be able to make a tent for the Emperor. And, since there was as yet nobody in China who could make tents, everyone looked upon the fulfilment of this prediction with the liveliest anticipation. In order to make sure that this stranger, when she arrived, would not be missed, successive Emperors of China had followed the custom of sending heralds, once a year, to all the towns and villages of the land, asking for any foreign woman to be produced at Court.

When Fatima stumbled into a town by the Chinese seashore, it was one such occasion. The people spoke to her through an interpreter, and explained that she would have to go to see the Emperor. “Lady,” said the Emperor, when Fatima was brought before him, ”can you make a tent?'' “I think so,” said Fatima. She asked for rope, but there was none to be had. So, remembering her time as a spinner, she collected flax and made ropes. Then she asked for stout cloth, but the Chinese had none of the kind which she needed. So, drawing on her experience with the weavers of Alexandria, she made some stout tent cloth. Then she found that she needed tent-poles, but there were none in China. So Fatima, remembering how she had been trained by the wood-fashioner of Istanbul, cunningly made stout tent-poles.

When these were ready, she racked her brains for the memory of all the tents she had seen in her travels: and lo, a tent was made. When this wonder was revealed to the Emperor of China, he offered Fatima the fulfilment of any wish she cared to name. She chose to settle in China, where she married a handsome prince, and where she remained in happiness, surrounded by her children, until the end of her days.

It was through these adventures that Fatima realized that what had appeared to be an unpleasant experience at the time, turned out to be an essential part of the making of her ultimate happiness.

I love this story. Of course, when I look at my own collective work experience, it adds up to something like... Tax Return Preparer.

WTF? Where's MY wealthy Prince and adoring grandchildren? But I guess I can be grateful that I've never been shipwecked twice, destitute, or sold into slavery. Tax returns actually don't look so bad, all things considered. ;-)
     

Older workers in the workforce

Here are some videos from the PBS website, part of a section called: New Adventures for Older Workers. They show many of the problems older workers face finding employment, and how some of them transcend those problems.

About half of unemployed middle aged and older workers are still unemployed two years later. If you are near retirement and an employer wants to hire you, there’s fixed costs to hiring you. They have to train you. They have to invest in you and if their investment is only going to be spread over a few years then that might not be the best investment for them compared to a worker where that investment might be spread over many more years.

— Julie Zissimopoulos
Economist, University of Southern California

This lady comes out of retirement, and finds work that she's never done before, that transforms her life:



Many older people, well past traditional retirement age, are still working:



More on late-blooming self-starters; "Encore" careers:



The advantages of a geriatric workforce. Here is a company where the median employee age is 74:

I think there’s a kind of sweet spot that’s emerging in life that’s a function of the longevity revolution. So when you’re 50 years old, you have the chance to have a whole new chapter and it’s an extraordinary opportunity for individuals to have another chance to do something important.
— Marc Freedman Founder, Encore.org

It seems that some of the oldest folks, 65 and older, who had to come out of retirement and start working again, have had even more success. It's interesting to see the different approaches that different people of different ages take, and the varying degrees of success they enjoy.
     

Suits and Blazers, canvassed or fused

I may be working part-time in an office soon. I've been going through my office clothes, which I have not worn in almost 20 years, and have found that much of them no longer fit, or have not aged well.

I don't have a big budget for new clothes, so I was looking at some things at one of the better quality thrift stores in our area. There were some nice suits, but I was in a hurry that day, and so I just got a few shirts and trousers. Despite being careful (no holes, tears or missing buttons), I discovered when I got them home, that I had made a few mistakes.

So I've been brushing up on how to shop for office attire. I've found the following links quite helpful:

How Should a Suit Fit? Your Easy-to-Follow Visual Guide

If you’re dressing on a budget, one of the most popular pieces of advice out there is to buy off-the-rack suits in the best fit you can get, and then take them to a tailor for custom adjustments.

That’s good advice. You’ll find it in several articles right here on the Art of Manliness.

But if you’re really going to get any benefit out of having your suits adjusted, you need to know a little bit about tailors and the kinds of adjustments they can (and can’t) make.

You also need to know what a “good” fit actually looks like.

Tailors vary in skill and in how they communicate the work they’re doing, so getting a suit adjusted is only going to deliver a good return if you can make your exact needs clear.

Below, we give you an easy-to-follow rundown on how your suit should fit. [...]

A Man’s Primer on the Blazer Jacket

Incredibly versatile, a navy blazer is one of the core garments a man should own if he lives in a large city, near the water, or has a lifestyle where the wearing of suits and sports jackets needs to be bridged. A blazer should always be matched with odd trousers (never a fabric too similar) and is not a substitute for a suit; rather, it is meant to fill the void between a business suit and casual dress. Technically, blazers are more formal than light colored or rough weave sport jackets and about on par with a suit worn without a tie and loafers. A blazer is at home dressed up with a tie and dark slacks and is a natural dressed down with an open collar striped dress shirt, white trousers, and boat shoes.

Blazer Jacket History

The story behind the men’s blazer jacket is a muddled one. Today what we generally call a blazer jacket is actually the offspring of two distinct jacket styles, one being double breasted and having a British military origin while the other is single breasted having evolved from the jacket worn at rowing clubs. From 1870 to 1950 there are about 10 different stories that I know of as to how the blazer became a classic – I’ll bore you with none of these. What I can tell you for certain is that the blazer jacket has been serving men for over 100 years, is a style that has been approved of and worn by kings, and because of its naval history evokes a feeling of nautical adventure in its presentation. The modern blazer is a hybrid of this heritage – it can be found in single or double breasted styles, is often cut from a wide range of colors, utilizes a variety of buttons and patches, and is used by businessmen, sportsmen, and school children to signify belonging and placement in society. [...]

The Art of Manliness Suit School: Part I – Fused vs. Canvassed Suits

Those of you who are active on the forums are aware that I believe every man should own a fine suit. As men, all of us are going to need suits, whether for interviews, work, or socializing- life occasionally demands it of us. Because we’ll all need a good suit for such occasions, we might as well make the investment in a quality suit that will provide us years of enjoyment.

Today, I’m going to start the first of a series of articles on how to find yourself that high quality, all-purpose suit.

I’ll begin by saying that price is not necessarily indicative of a suit’s quality. At least equal of weight with the elements of cut, fabric pattern and fabric quality is construction.

Today, we’re going to focus on the construction of a jacket – namely, whether a jacket is canvassed or fused. [...]

How to Build an Interchangeable Wardrobe

For the man with an unlimited budget, style is easy. The rest of us have to work a little harder to look good with the cash we have.

A key wardrobe concept for any man is interchangeability.

It sounds complicated and tedious, but it’s a very simple idea.

An interchangeable wardrobe is one with fewer specific pieces, but many possible clothing combinations.

That is to say, each piece you purchase works with the maximum number of other pieces, allowing you to mix and match in a variety of ways.

Building an interchangeable wardrobe isn’t a one-time project. You don’t just go out and buy one at the store. So treat this as a long-term goal, and in fact almost a mindset, rather than a quick fix for your look!

Work With What You Have – Check Your Current Closet [...]

Lots of good tips in the above links. And I'll throw in this, just for fun:

What Men Like in Men: An Argument from 1902

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in a 1902 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine (which started out as a quality family magazine before becoming a women’s rag). I think it raises an interesting question: What do men like or admire in other men? Lots of articles these days are about what men find attractive in women or what women find attractive in men, but rarely discussed are the qualities that men respect and admire in each other. It seems like men sort of intuitively know what traits we respect in other men, but we often cannot articulate them. This article attempts to put such thoughts into words.

I’d be curious to know if you think the same traits that the author found noteworthy in men over 100 years ago are still ones that modern men admire in each other. What traits would you leave out or add in? Share in the comments!

Please remember as you read this article that it was written in 1902. So the author has some opinions — particularly about women — that might offend modern sensibilities. [...]

     

Fun lists from Forbes

I like reading these kinds of articles on Forbes.com. Much of it is common sense, but there is often something insightful or interesting, or something new to try or remember:

5 Things Super Successful People Do Before 8 AM

[...] That’s right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs, government officials, and other influential people. Margaret Thatcher was up every day at 5 a.m.; Frank Lloyd Wright at 4 am and Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney wakes at 4:30am just to name a few. I know what you’re thinking – you do your best work at night. Not so fast. According to Inc. Magazine, morning people have been found to be more proactive and more productive. In addition, the health benefits for those with a life before work go on and on. Let’s explore 5 of the things successful people do before 8 am. [...]

6 Things You Should Quit Doing To Be More Successful

[...] We humans (that means me included) often get stuck in a hamster wheel of habit. We do things that aren’t good for us, remain where we shouldn’t and put ourselves through voluntary suffering all in the name of comfort. We don’t know these things are damaging, because it’s normal to us.

But a rare few, like Marina, snap out of it and quit before it’s too late. Here are six things you should quit doing today, before it’s too late. [...]

The 7 Types Of People Who Never Succeed At Work

[...] We all play roles in our workplaces, many of which are unique to only our office. But there’s a standard cast of characters as well. You can find varieties of them anywhere you go, but they all share the same skill sets. They are the ones who will succeed and the ones who will fail.

In lieu of filling you with fluffy “this is what a successful person looks like” talk, I thought I’d take the opposite route. The following is a list of people who stand out for all the wrong reasons. Fair warning: If you don’t know who this person is at your office, it might be you. [...]

How To Succeed In Business Without Becoming A Manager

[...] For some, reaching the top rung of the corporate ladder means joining the C-Suite and dealing with the long hours, politics, stress, and other challenges that come with the big title and financial rewards, Teach says. For others, success means finding a job that they like and are content with, one that allows them to provide for their families without them becoming overwhelmed by difficult deadlines and difficult people. “If you’re really good at your job, and others around you acknowledge that, then you are successful. If your work contributes to the team’s success, then you are successful. Success isn’t always determined by your title or salary.”

But even if you do your job well and have a successful career—once you hit a certain age and pay grade, you’re likely to be a target when the bean counters come sniffing around.

“If you’re content with staying in your present position and your department has recently hired a newbie just out of college who is aggressive, ambitious, and enthusiastic, you may need to watch your back, especially if they can do your job for less money,” Teach says. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your job is in jeopardy, but if you feel that it may be threatened, have an honest conversation with your supervisor and see what he or she is thinking, he suggests.

So how do you defend your job against the young professionals fresh out of college who can do what you do for much less? And how do you prove to your employers that you’re worth keeping?

There are several things you can do, Teach says. [...]

20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get

[...] I started Docstoc in my 20’s, made the cover of one of those cliché “20 Under 20” lists, and today I employ an amazing group of 20-somethings. Call me a curmudgeon, but at 34, how I came up seems so different from what this millennial generation expects. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own. In response, here are my 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. [...]

One of the twenty things I especially enjoyed was this:

[...] You Should Be Getting Your Butt Kicked – Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” would be the most valuable boss you could possibly have. This is the most impressionable, malleable and formative stage of your professional career. Working for someone that demands excellence and pushes your limits every day will build the most solid foundation for your ongoing professional success. [...]

That very movie was on TV when I was posting this. And it was one of my favorite scenes from that movie.



A real boss sees the larger picture. There are so many things in life that we think have nothing to do with us. And perhaps directly, they don't. But indirectly, as part of a bigger picture, many things do affect us, that we are completely unaware of.
     

The End of Work?

Uh... what exactly does that mean? Depends who you talk to:

Should We Fear "the End of Work"?

[...]  Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations recently brought together 40 leading economists, policy makers, engineers, bankers, corporate executives, social scientists, philanthropists, journalists and statisticians for a day-long exploration of how technology is shaping -- or misshaping -- the American workplace.

Coming up with answers was not the goal: Cornell's belief was that searching for consensus in a one-day meeting would be futile. Initially, I wondered about the utility of that, given the gravity of the economic challenge facing the country. But it was a good decision. The range of views on what's happening was so wide -- and surprising -- that reaching realistic solutions would have been, well, unrealistic. Precisely because this kind of a meeting has been so rare, the meeting imposed the Chatham House Rule on attendees: we could talk afterwards about what was said, but not about who said it. (I later asked some of those who attended if I could quote them directly; almost all said yes.) If I had to sum up a fascinating day -- well, let's save that for the end, after you've seen the amazing diversity of views on the future of work.

Here's perhaps the fundamental question about what's going on in the American economy as it struggles to recover from the Great Recession: "How is this recovery different from other recoveries?" Or is it?

To put it in economese, is the persistently high level of unemployment a result of cyclical factors (the traditional ups and downs of economic growth) or structural factors (new game-changing technologies, dramatic shifts in the global economy)? The NewsHour has covered this debate several times, including economists duking it out in one recent instance.

From one decades-long leading student of the American economy came a succinct one-liner in favor of cyclicality: "This isn't a jobless economic recovery as everyone insists on calling it; it's simply just not yet a recovery."

In other words, as painful as the waiting certainly is, the economy will heal -- and once again, create jobs -- in time.

"Brace yourselves," countered Eric Brynjolfsson, from MIT's Sloan School, co-author of "Race Against the Machine," a much-talked-about recent book which argues that the introduction of new transformative technologies has only just begun, and that we're dangerously unable to perceive what's actually going to happen. (Brynjolffson was featured in a Making Sen$e broadcast story in 2011.) He added:

"Many of our intuitions about what's coming next are going to fail us. All the disruptions we've been talking about today about the past 10 years, the past 20 years -- as important as they've been and as hard-hitting as they've been for so many people -- are just a small glimmer of the much bigger disruptions that we think are in store for us in the next 10 and 20 years, at least the ones that are related to technology."

Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who served in the 1990s as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, took a more measured view. He believes that both cyclical problems and disruptive technological change are at play, along with the changing face of the global economy:

"In terms of the number of jobs, it looks like an awful lot of the problem is cyclical. That's the first problem.

"The second problem is the lagging average wage. Until a few decades ago, India, China, and the former Soviet Union were isolated and not really participating in the world economy. But now they have roughly doubled the world's labor force, in a couple of decades.

"What did they bring to the table? Capital? No. They had almost none. But they had a lot of labor. So, if you double the amount of world labor and you don't change the amount of world capital much, then loosely speaking, the returns to labor are going to go down while the returns to capital go up. And this is about to end. And it's not mainly about technology.

"But then there is the third problem: what's behind the trend toward greater wage inequality? The non-economist in me wants to think about institutions and social norms. Some of the increase in inequality has to stem from changing attitudes in our society. I just don't believe that it's only technology."

The Promise and Perils of a Machine that Can Make Anything

The role of automation in the decline of manufacturing jobs has been front-and-center since the end of the recession. (Well, since the Luddites in the 19th century, but let's move on.) Cornell University's Hod Lipson is one of the country's most prominent experts on the interplay of robotics, IT and manufacturing. Lipson's next book is titled, ominously, "The Promise and Perils of a Machine that Can Make Anything." I found his presentation both powerful and unsettling:

"Machines are better at learning than humans in many different areas. So now the question is, what will they learn and what's the end game?
"Are we talking about the future of jobs in the next five years, 10 years, 50 years or 100 years?

"If you're talking 100 years, there's no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future -- some of our children will be alive in 100 years."

Trained years ago as an engineer myself, I get the enthusiasm for technological solutions to manufacturing problems. But given the persistent levels of unemployment, I asked Lipson if the engineering profession didn't have to take a broader view. His answer was blunt -- but also open to the possibility of change:

"In a way, we cannot help ourselves. We try to automate every difficult task that we see. It is rooted in the fact that the mantra of engineering has always been to try to alleviate drudgery and increase productivity -- that was the good thing to do. That's what we still train our students to do.

"But what I'm hearing here is that maybe we should redirect our efforts, and try to solve a new kind of problem. I'm not sure what that problem is. But I'm sure that if you can define what the problem is that we need to solve, then we can start thinking about how to solve it, using the same engineering tools."

Thomas Kochan, the co-director of MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Research, jumped in on that point. Decades ago, MIT was one of the first engineering schools in the country to focus on the public policy implications of engineering innovations. (Full disclosure: I'm an MIT grad). Here's what he had to say:

"Instead of focusing on how do we drive labor out and how do we eliminate variability by standardizing everything, we need the engineering profession to think about the world's big problems, and then to understand that it's the interaction between skills, the way in which we organize our work, and the technology that really drives productivity.

"The engineering profession needs to catch up with the understanding of how technology can be enhancing to society, without just thinking about how it drives out labor, through innovations. I think if we focus more on enhancing human skills, we'd get a lot more societal benefit out of the next generation of technology."

Lipson and the other tech experts took some pointed, albeit well-mannered, heat from people worried that more efficient production is nearly always equated with eliminating human workers. As one participant put it: "optimistically inventing stuff" with too little thought for the social consequences. [...]

There is a lot more, but I can't excerpt the whole article. I can't say what is going to happen, but there is plenty food for thought here.
     

My Brilliant Career, Part III: Medical Coding

Medical Records and Health Information Technicians

It's not exactly exciting; it sounds like the medical equivalent of tax preparation. It's mostly sitting in front of a computer all day. But the stats at the site above (Occupational Outlook Handbook, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) gives it a job increase outlook of 21%, up till 2020. And another reason to consider training for it now is this:

ICD-10 Medical Coding

[...] ICD-10 is an upgraded diagnostic and procedural medical coding system that, by law, must be implemented throughout the healthcare industry by October 1, 2014. This new coding system is radically different from the version currently in use, so it’s important to start preparing for and implementing the massive changes to the existing coding system.

This online program offers you comprehensive, robust training in diagnostic and procedural coding, using the ICD-10-CM (diagnostic) and ICD-10-PCS (procedural) coding manuals. This training includes detailed instructions for using the coding manuals, understanding the coding guidelines, and accurately applying the ICD-10 coding steps. There are more than 40 quizzes and exams for diagnoses and procedures by body system to test your knowledge and understanding.

In addition, you will find information on the impact of the coding changes on medical coders, healthcare staff, physicians, software systems, documentation, and information technology. [...]

Most of the current coders are trained on ICD-9. So people who train for ICD-10 now, will be poised to "catch the wave".

But... it could still be too boring, sitting at a computer all day. In comparison, I think Pharmacy Technician actually looks better.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook had a lot of interesting information on Health Care jobs. Take this one for instance:


Home Health and Personal Care Aides

What Home Health and Personal Care Aides Do
Home health and personal care aides help people who are disabled, chronically ill, or cognitively impaired. They also help older adults who may need assistance. They help with activities such as bathing and dressing, and they provide services such as light housekeeping. In some states, home health aides may be able to give a client medication or check the client’s vital signs under the direction of a nurse or other healthcare practitioner.

Duties

Home health and personal care aides typically do the following:

• Help clients in their daily personal tasks, such as bathing or dressing
• Do light housekeeping, such as laundry, washing dishes, and vacuuming in a client’s home
• Organize a client’s schedule and plan appointments
• Arrange transportation to doctors’ offices or for other kinds of outings
• Shop for groceries and prepare meals
• Provide companionship

Aides often keep track of when a client’s prescriptions need to be filled or when the client has his or her next doctor’s appointment. Aides may prepare leisure activities, including exercise, to keep their clients active and healthy. They may go for walks with their clients or play games with them. In some states, home health aides may be able to provide some medical services. Aides may be expected to complete unpleasant tasks such as emptying a client’s bedpan or changing soiled bed linens.

Some aides are hired directly by the client or the client's family. In these situations, the client or the client's family supervises the aide and gives the aide tasks to do.

Home health aides, unlike personal care aides, typically work for certified home health or hospice agencies that receive government funding and therefore must comply with regulations. They work under the direct supervision of a medical professional, usually a nurse. These aides keep records of services performed and of the client's condition and progress. They report changes in the client's condition to the supervisor or case manager. Aides also work with therapists and other medical staff.

Home health aides may provide some basic health-related services, such as checking clients' pulse, temperature, and respiration rate. They also may help with simple prescribed exercises and with giving medications. Occasionally, they change simple dressings, give massages, care for skin, or help with braces and artificial limbs. With special training, experienced home health aides also may help with medical equipment such as ventilators, which help clients breathe.

Personal care aides—also called homemakers, caregivers, companions, and personal attendants—provide clients with companionship and help with daily tasks in a client’s home. They are often hired in addition to other medical health workers, such as hospice workers, who may visit a client’s home. Personal care aides do not provide any type of medical service.

Direct support professionals work with people who have developmental or intellectual disabilities. They may help create a behavior plan, provide employment support, and teach self-care skills, such as doing laundry or cooking meals. They may also provide other personal assistance services.

[...]

Job Outlook
Employment of home health aides is expected to grow by 69 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Employment of personal care aides is expected to grow by 70 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations.

As the baby-boom population ages and the elderly population grows, the demand for home health and personal care aides to provide assistance and companionship will continue to increase. Older clients often have health problems and need some help with daily activities.

Elderly and disabled clients increasingly rely on home care as a less expensive alternative to nursing homes or hospitals. Clients who need help with everyday tasks and household chores, rather than medical care, can reduce their medical expenses by returning to their homes.

Another reason for home care is that most clients prefer to be cared for in their homes, where they are most comfortable. Studies have found that home treatment is often more effective than care in a nursing home or hospital.

Job Prospects
Job prospects for both home health aides and personal care aides are excellent. These occupations are large and expected to grow very quickly, thus adding many jobs. In addition, the low pay and high emotional demands cause many workers to leave these occupations, and they will have to be replaced.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook has a lot of data on many different  Healthcare Occupations, so you can compare them. I've compared some that I was interested in:

Occupation:        Outlook (thru  2020):          Median Pay:

CNA                    20%                                     $24,010.
LVN                     22%                                    $40,380.
RN                       26%                                    $64,690.
Phrm Tchn           32%                                    $28,400.
Med. Coding        21%                                    $32,350.
Hme Hlth Aide      70%                                    $20,560.

Many of the higher paying jobs require two or more years of college. Pharmacy Technician still looks the best to me, considering the education requirements, job outlook, and pay rate. I didn't include the education requirements in my list here, but you can find them on the Handbook site, and much more too. It's a great resource.
 

My Brilliant Career. Partime. Maybe.

Well anyway, I'm thinking about it:



I took an online aptitude test, and scored 100%. It seemed mostly to be testing if I was actually paying attention. Not too hard to do.
     

Austerity, Spending, and Economic Growth

Alex Castellanos says Europe hasn't really embraced austerity yet:

Could austerity be the right cure for Europe's hangover?

(CNN) -- I never imagined we would find a no-win question to displace the genre's champ, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Now, there is contender: "Does austerity work?"

Fareed Zakaria tells us it doesn't, faulting it for Europe's constriction. The problem is not a borderless European financial system, unable to quarantine nations sick with public and private debt. Oh, no, Zakaria writes, "The larger failure, shared across Europe, has been too much austerity."

In the Washington Post, Ezra Klein notes unemployment is "skyrocketing" across Europe and he contends the fault lies in shrinking budget deficits brought by spending cuts and tax increases. Klein tells us this is what austerity looks like "and it can be expected to reduce economic growth."

As the UK slides into a double-dip recession, economist Paul Krugman blames David Cameron's austerity. Borrowing from John Maynard Keynes, he tells us, "The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity."

Never mind that spending in Britain is virtually unchanged and other nations in Europe are spending more. Neal Reynolds writes that "austerity," as practiced in Euro27 countries, has actually increased government spending from 46% to 51% of Europe's GDP from 2006 to 2010.

Greece, where rioters protest "austeros," increased its public sector expenditures from 45.2 % of GDP to 50.1% tin he same period. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted, in 2011, 23 of the EU's 27 nations jacked up their spending levels. This year 24 will. Apparently, it is not austerity itself that constricts economies. The mere thought of austerity is enough to choke the eurozone to death.

Austerity seems to be working just fine for the masters of the practice, the Germans: We are counting on them to bail out the entire eurozone.

[...]

On June 17, the world will come to an end, as it often does. Ripples from Europe's unraveling will begin traveling to America. Greece will have an election. Greeks will vote to make Germans work until they are 67 so they can retire at 50. They will vote to make someone else pay their bills, fund their holidays and support their benefits.

They will be lectured about this by an American president who asks his own nation to make China pay its bills, fund its holidays and support its benefits. We can only hope he does it from the Hellenic state of California, which has also attempted to outsmart austerity. Remarkably, it hasn't grown jobs, just debt. [...]

Those who complain the most about austerity, are the ones who won't practice it. And they are the ones who are in shit-street financially, wanting someone else to bail them out. The rest of the article explains perfectly why they won't get gain, can't get gain, without some austerity pain first, because they spent (and continue to spend) money they didn't (and still don't) have. Castellanos says that asking whether austerity works is like asking a drinker if sobriety works. Those who are on a binge, (be it spending or drinking) aren't likely to agree.


Austerity alone isn't the answer though, to get things moving again. Jeffery Miron, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, offers this:

How to get economy growing fast

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In a recent discussion of what his administration might accomplish, Mitt Romney claimed that "by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," over a period of four years.

Is this goal attainable?

It is. Indeed, it is not that tough a task. If the United States avoids new growth-retarding policies, such as the tax hikes scheduled for January 1, the economy's natural adjustments will lower unemployment substantially. These include downward adjustments in wages, reallocation of job-seekers from slower to faster growing sectors and regions, reduced in-migration plus increased out-migration, and withdrawals from the labor force.

These adjustments do not always work quickly or for everyone (not every former construction worker can become a computer technician). But history suggests the adjustments do occur, as they have since the recession began. Over the next four years, they will continue to lower the unemployment rate, if not to 6%, at least near that territory.

The more important task for either presidential candidate is restoring the economy to its prerecession growth path. Real GDP has historically grown about 3% per year, and major downturns have been followed by strong recoveries. Within two to three years, therefore, output is typically "back where it would have been."

In this recession, the rapid recovery phase has so far been absent; real GDP is still well below where one would have predicted pre-2008, and with average growth under 3% since the recession ended, the gap grows larger every quarter.

So can Romney, or anyone, get us back to a higher growth rate? Yes. Here is a program that will restore U.S. economic performance: [...]

Miron goes on to list eight reforms that are needed, that make good sense. I suspect some Republicans may have a problem with #4, but the world is changing, including American demographics, and we're going to have to adapt to what IS.
     

Who are the majority of today's Entrepreneurs?

Would you believe, it's mostly the older folks?

Buying a business after 50

[...] Americans 55 to 64 have launched more businesses than any other age group during the past decade, closely followed by those 45 to 54, reports the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to entrepreneurship.

For some, the change has been forced upon them by the tough job market. Others are taking the leap to escape boredom, become their own boss, pursue a passion -- or simply in hopes of hitting it rich.

Whatever the motivation, entrepreneurs face a tough road. Half of businesses fail within the first five years, the U.S. Small Business Administration reports. Some research shows that boomerpreneurs have more staying power than younger folks, but the stakes are also higher: You have little time to recover from failure, you have higher living expenses to cover, you may have a family depending on your income, and though you've likely amassed more wealth, you're closer to the time when you need to tap those assets.

So how can you beat the odds if you want to join the boomerpreneur boom? MONEY put that question to small-business experts and dozens of fiftysomething entrepreneurs for their best advice.

This is the first of three articles on how to become a boomerpreneur. This one will help you to see if you've got what it takes to own your own business and how to put time on your side. You can also get tips for changing your lifestyle, knowing the real costs of starting up a business and financing with caution. [...]

Well it makes sense to me. Older folks have gained more experience managing finances, interacting with many different kinds of people, and generally understanding how the world works. Plus, they may have saved up some cash and other resources to live on, while they are growing their business. All that would give them an edge.

Read the full article, for embedded links and more.