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Jesse Jackson, Jr. Pins US Job Losses On iPad
theodp writes "Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. went on an anti-technology rant on Friday on the floor of Congress, blaming the iPad for eliminating thousands of American jobs. 'Why do you need to go to Borders anymore?' asked Jackson. 'Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad, download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine.' Jackson continued: 'What becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? And what becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs simply will not exist. Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He's created the iPad. Certainly, it has made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It is not produced here in the United States."
But are you for real?
Talk about a load of xenophobe/technophobe nonsense! The trouble is not the technology, but rather that the good old US of A loves importing deflation and writing bad checks. Much easier to have a dumb populace of consumers who spend money they don't have, and then import deflation to counter it and blame a random fad technology than get to the actual issue.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
You know what else, those horse and buggy salesmen suffered the same fate when the automobile came out. Be warned!!!
Where are you going to buy the e-books for your iPad? They don't come from thin air, and the iPad doesn't write articles itself. Just because we've moved from brick-and-mortar distribution to digital distribution doesn't mean ANY jobs were lost, they were just MOVED.
Seriously, this made me sick to read. Rep. Jackson needs to keep his mouth shut on subjects he knows nothing about.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've worked in the publishing industry. I have no sympathy for people who are holding on to the past with both hands, fiercely fighting for things to not change. Things change over time. Adapt. Evolve. Move forward. If you fail to do so, you'll be left behind and forgotten. Blaming the iPad or the internet or anything of the sort is foolish. Times change - find the new marketable product (hint: it's probably digital), make that, and profit.
Evolve or get out of the way for those who are willing to move into the future.
His rant can also be interpreted as against globalization instead of against technology. All the people who will become lose their jobs now that more and more brick-and-mortar stores are being obsoleted by websites, they're not getting jobs in electronics factories, since the electronic devices are almost all made in low-wage countries these days.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Isn't this what happens when we as a people learn?
I'm not putting apple in the spotlight, as i'm speaking about technology in general.
Sometimes systems need to re-adjust, business models change and/or are eliminated.
Times change, people change.
I still read actual books though, i reason parchments to be my favorite backup storage type.
Does he not realize technology marches on whether we want it or not?
And does he not consider how many R&D jobs, app developer jobs, sales jobs etc all created around these devices?
Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He's created the iPad. Certainly, it has made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It is not produced here in the United States."
I for one will refuse to make a rich man even richer. I even wonder what will ever make me queue up in the dark of the early mornings just to get my hands on an iDevice. Am I boring or what?
And on the subject matter, I happen to agree with the congressman to a large degree.
We should never have invented cars, it made all those other jobs obsolete, horse and buggy makers, livery stables, etc. Screw progress, lets all be Amish!
Why dont we bring horse carriage jobs by banning cars. or, by mandating 1 horse carriage be sold per car, or, 1 horse carriage worth of extra charges on cars, to be paid to horse carriage industry ?
Read radical news here
Even more strange. Just last month he wanted to amend the constitution and give an iPad or similar device to every kid in school in the country. Wonder what made him change his mind.
Does he know that Barnes and Noble has its own e-reader? Or that Amazon had one before the iPad?
If the odd case that anyone thinks Jesse Jackson Jr. has anything close to a valid point:
1) Though jobs for some brick and mortar retailers are lost, the loss is due to a structural change in the market induced by increasing digitization rather than through any one product. Horse buggy makers went out of business when automobiles came out, and much the same rhetoric was spewed to attack the manufacturers of cars.
2) China makes the iPads. True, but manufacturing is no longer a $40+benefits job with enough seniority. Gone for the foreseeable future are high paying manufacturing jobs that we as a nation want to focus on. The success of the IPad has spurred other technology companies to push their own tablets onto market. What does that mean? The tech companies hire more mechanical/electrical/computer/systems engineers, computer/materials scientists, programmers, designers, and production line developers. Those workers produce far more "value" to an economy than a factory worker in a mass production line. Ask a Foxxcomm worker (the guys who make iPads and iPods) if they'd rather be working in a Chinese factory or at the Apple headquarters, and guess what? They'd rather be an engineer.
3) Librarians aren't useful because the buildings they're in have information. They're highly useful because they can advise us where to find the relevant information. The librarians at my university aren't there to restock books or charge late fees. They're hired because they can help students track down critical papers, research vital bits of information, and educate them about how to find the right kind of sources. Brick and mortar stores are useful because they offer a tactile shopping experience that online systems can't seem to replicate yet. Same idea: physical locations and people offer have value added characteristics.
4) There are many things to blame for the job market pains in the United States. I don't think anyone is educated enough to really understand the "true" driving factors, but you know what? I sincerely doubt that stiffing innovation, creativity, and technological development is the way to go.
Actually sorry, I'm wrong. On behalf of the *IAA cabal and the Chinese Council for American Advisement, I suggest that we focus all of our governmental energy on stopping piracy of songs and movies instead of nurturing markets and funding basic science. If we can stop all illegal firesharing, we can save up to $13 trillion a year in damages!! That's several times more than the technology market makes in a year!
Signatures are the new names.
You trying to say you can't tell the difference between Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Johnny Cochrane? That's some racist shit there....
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
George W. who? Name recognition is half the battle in politics. For better or worse, Jesse Jackson Jr. has it. And also like George W, don't expect anything any smarter from him than you got from his old man.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Obsolescence is the result of progress. How many carriage manufacturers still exist? When automobiles were first introduced, they were direct competitors to carriages. However, since automobiles have proven themselves to be better than carriages, the carriages have become obsolete, and therefore are no longer produced, except as historical replicas. The carriage manufacturers all went out of business or converted to building automobiles. When a new technology replaces an old technology, businesses must adapt, or go out of business. Please not that a few companies still produce carriages. Physical media will always have a special place. Everyday reading may become increasingly digital, but digitizing ordinary books allows special books to have prominence on the physical bookshelf.
I think you got Jesse Jackson, Sr., confused with the subject of TFA, Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Probably more likely they'll just go out of business.
Unless you live in a huge area, you and your "serious reader" friends probably don't represent enough business to keep them afloat.
Must've been something going around last week: Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward said he told [Google CEO Eric] Schmidt that some day his tombstone will read, "I killed newspapers."
Any similarity to any other flim-flammers, demagogues or rabble-rousers, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If there is no need for wasting paper, why do we need to work? Is it a religion, does everyone have to work, consume, and waste? What's broken are the economists, who cannot adjust the economy to change with the technology. Humanity has evolved before, but it was never by resiting change, but thirsting for it. There is no need to work just to consume, consume, there is a need to study, research and invent. That is real work.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
It's not anti technology! The guy loves the iPad! He's just upset that the US is losing jobs to creative destruction and outsourcing and the GOP is worried about debt!!
He's bang freaking on.
The technologies that "replaced" blacksmiths has allowed them to take a time that blacksmiths used to spend making mundane things like hinges and nails, and spend that time making beautiful wrought iron fences, for example.
With your newfangled "printing press", you put all those scribes out of work! Damn you!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Am I boring or what?
No, just a dumbass.
Ah, a classic case of attacking the irrelevant symptoms and ignoring the relevant causes.
Has the supply of US jobs that aren't either burger flipping or financial services scamming been gutted like a landed fish? Oh fuck yeah. Is that the iPad's fault? How can you even seriously consider such a foolish idea?
With more respect than I can usually muster for Mr. Jackson, the numbers don't lie: American workers have been treading water or worse since the 70's. The economy as a whole has been doing OK, and productivity per worker has actually never been better; but fuck all of that has gone to the bottom 90-odd percent. The comparatively low-skill, low-capital populations that Jackson is probably most interested in appealing to have done particularly badly. The idea, though, that the destruction of a fairly modest number of low-skill, low-pay service sector jobs by technology is the root(or even a reasonably sized branch) of the problem would be hilarious were it not taken seriously. Low-skill, low-pay service sector jobs are the paltry rewards of the post-industrial economy, where people flip burgers for one another. If you are reduced to quibbling over those, you have already lost.
You would think that he would be opposed to Illegals as well as China's manipulation of economic situation. Instead, he wants to blame IPad. Tomorrow it will be Android. Of course, later, we will find paychecks from MS or Bill gates.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"What a maroon."
I think it's more likely that the bookstores will downsize or close. Retail shelf space has a cost, and they need a certain amount of turnover to pay that cost, going down the tail isn't going to help when you have a very limited amount of space. You need a lot of niche market spending to make up for the loss mass market volume, it's not impossible, but it is hard.
Yep, door close on nice paying manufacturing job and another one opens down the street at MC Donalds.... Real 'high' paying jobs (sarcasm).
But not money.
Table-ized A.I.
All this right after I read Wired Science's article on 7 science-education battlegrounds of 2011 If the US wants to be effective in technology they have to stop being stupid in education - otherwise we Canadians, along with the rest of the world, will beat the crap out of you.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
In other news, people with at least half of a functioning brain blame US Job Losses on Congress (including JJJr)
...playing Angry Birds on his ipad and laughing at how expertly he trolled slashdot!
We are agents of the free
If he was smart, he'd focus on just problems of lopsided trade, which have more legitimacy in my opinion. Instead, he liberally sprinkled in some old-fashioned ludditism. He's giving trade complaints a bad name by mixing them in.
I see it more as a symptom of regular folks getting nervous that the rich are getting richer while they are getting left behind. Regular folks cannot even afford an iPad. First manufacturing jobs were sent overseas, and now they are making products that most people cannot afford.
It's like a double slap: first your job goes away, then things are made overseas just for the rich, the same people who benefit the most from off-shoring of your job.
Table-ized A.I.
When the car industry replaced horses (in the U.S.), that created a wide range of American jobs for a broad range of people with a broad range of skill/education levels. Manufacturing jobs, engineering jobs, repair jobs (your neighbourhood mechanic, anyone?), construction jobs (all the roads needed for cars), etc.
Apple (or most modern technology companies) doesn't. They create engineering jobs (until those get moved to India). They create jobs flipping burgers (the only jobs left for unskilled workers in America) in their cafeteria for the engineers and marketeers. Jobs for FedEx airline pilots who fly planes full of iPads from China. Retail jobs in the Apple stores. But unlike most innovations of an earlier era (cars, airplanes, trains, whatever), iPads (or iPhones or iPods) create next to no blue-collar jobs in the country that invented it. No repair jobs (what repair? send it back to China for refurbishment) and no manufacturing/assembly jobs (all done overseas). And the suppliers' manufacturing jobs (along with many high-skilled engineering jobs, e.g. for the LCD panels) are all overseas too...
I had a BlackBerry a few years ago. It was made in Canada. If RIM can do some of their manufacturing in their home country (I believe they also outsource some production), so could Apple.
If you refuse to make rich man river, you can purchase very litle and limit your entertainment to grammar school plays.
Sadly, Jesse Jackson is right. The IPod is responsible for the job losses. And with those losses, comes deflation. The unemployment rises, and the dollar drops. I live in Canada, and the US DOLLAR IS NOW AT 0.93.4 Cents Canadian. Job loss and US debt and the fact that aside from a few model cars, there is little we buy from the USA. All the goods we used to buy, from clothing, shoes, electronic goods all come from Asian countries. Even the help desk functions that were once situated in the USA are now offshore. The USA has to start taxing goods it imports, so as to reestablish jobs for Americans. If not, there will definitely be a reverse migration, of American Citizens moving to China, and Asia to find jobs and re-establish themselves.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The US turned into a service economy, now even the service jobs are being taken away.
Another poster above complains about the saving of GM for the low skill jobs... but that is what the majority of people do. The majority is NOT working on the next generation chip technology or moon rocket (oh wait, that is China isn't it, my bad).
There are several key industries in which people work:
Food production, read farmers. This was once the mass employer but also a poor employer. Crops especially needed massive amounts of labour but only in certain times of the year. Seasonal labour is not all that great to have. But it still employed a great many AND also added some extra cash for people with tiny farms suitable only for feeding themselves. But now, food production is left to a handful and employment in the sector itself is very low.
Food preperation. Quick, when did you last buy bread (US people, read on, I ate what you think of as bread, go stand in the corner and be ashamed and remember this, bread does NOT bounce!) from a baker who had his hands involved in the process? Wanna bet most bread comes from a factory paying very low wages? Luckily enough people still out so some people still make their money from food preperation but the time every few thousand people had their own bakery, butcher and grocer is long gone.
Resource gathering. Often not really represented as a seperate group, I am talking about the miners and loggers here. Well, you can watch swamp loggers. A dozen men hauling of a dozen truck loads of wood in a day. Very impressive but not exactly going to put the masses to work is it? And very dependent on everyone else, if nobody is using wood to build houses, then no trees need to be cut down.
Production. Factory work, either heavily automated or shipped abroad. Try to find anything in your house that is not made in China. Can you? Was on a US bus recently, most used ropes to call for a stop (looped through a metal thingy labelled marked in China) but one used buttons, grey bulges of smooth plastic with a red button. Exactly the same as in use in many Dutch busses... wanna bet their origin? Yes, this is low skilled work most of the time and it doesn't pay much. But millions upon millions once employed funded the moon landings with their taxes. A termite mound stands tall on the back of countless tiny worker backs. With the industrial revolution, this was the backbone of the economy.
Service. This was the great new hope. What people who favored outsourcing thought would keep people employed when production went away. Sure, the iPad is not produced here but it must be sold here (how people are going pay for it if they don't have a job was never answered, or maybe it was seeing the recent crisis with debt). And now those jobs are indeed going away as well. Amazon does not employ the same number of people and certainly not at the same wage as the bookstores it is so busily replacing. Sure, it means cheaper books but also more people unable to find a decent job or indeed a job at all.
?????. What else is there? When farming went away as a mass employer, industry took over. When industry left, service took over. If service goes away... what is left? Government jobs? The army? Sex? No, these "industries" can only exist on the back of an employed society making enough money to afford them.
But slashdot is a very bad place to discuss this. Most here have higher level jobs which are not YET affected all that much. Except, who is going to pay you in the future? Game developer? Who can afford a new console and 60 bucks per game if they got to combine 2 jobs or more at below minimum wage to just make ends meet? Regular developer? Your jobs are already being outsourced. IT support? Cost cutting already outsourced those jobs as well.
But we still think we are safe. Somehow, magic new tech development is to employ around a billion people (the entire "west" is affected, not just the US) with no new line of work in sight.
IF the high street really gets replac
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Thanks for simplistic high school level economics lecture. You are conveniently omitting the factor of scale. One or two orders of magnitude of manufacturing jobs are lost for every "mechanical/electrical/computer/systems engineer" job created. Also, manufacturing jobs can be made attractive again if you slap punishing tariffs on chinese dumping and corporations that facilitate it.
I don't think anyone argues about complete halt of technological progress, but making it orderly and less harmful to society is certainly needed. Instead of blindly throwing people on the street by the million and giving them the moronic advice to "adapt", we should provide those people with a few years of social support and "useful" job training, paid for largely by the companies doing the firing. We are supposedly living in a human society and not in the jungle.
If you refuse to make rich man river...
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Give a man a river, he drowns. But Rich Man River, he don't say nothin', he just keeps rolling...
The Admin and the Engineer
Compared with his recent rant, this is the most erudite speech he has ever given!
Oh wait....
The game.
Another poster above complains about the saving of GM for the low skill jobs... but that is what the majority of people do. The majority is NOT working on the next generation chip technology or moon rocket (oh wait, that is China isn't it, my bad).
Actually the US has a space industry, for now, but look what the taxation and regulation of California are leading to:
"A big prerequisite for a risky new industry is product liability protection for manufacturers and an enforceable informed consent regime for operators – something New Mexico has addressed. Getting car insurance in California can be hard enough; imagine trying to cover a rocket ship. A space tourist does not demand the same level of protection as a kid boarding Space Mountain at Disneyland. Real spaceflight remains a risky endeavor and anyone who straps themselves into the first generation of vehicles is going to know to fully understand the dangers. All our serious competitors – New Mexico, Virginia and Florida – already have such protection and Texas just passed a similar bill.
In regards to taxes, New Mexico’s top rate of 7.6 percent is a bit lower than California’s flat 8.84 percent. The Land of Enchantment uses a progressive structure far more conducive to nurturing small business and startups and it has created several tax incentives for the space industry. These include tax credits for the wages paid on newly created high-tech jobs, venture capital investments and a sales tax exemption for operations. This is a low-risk subsidy model for an all-or-nothing industry. If the private space businesses take off, thousands of jobs will be created and the state will see a wealth of taxable income. If, however, this industry turns out to be a profitless pipe dream, there is very little to be lost.
If California chooses not to act, the business and tax revenues will surely head elsewhere in any case."
http://m.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/14/competitors-are-wooing-california-space-industry/
at least they didn't make it so that it could be read outside. imagine the economic destruction then.
Getting the full source is hard. A misleading headline and a blurb that's out of context is all we need to get sand in our vaginas!
He's using the iPad to highlight it, but the fact is that Americans were promised jobs in the new 'information economy' after all the manufacturing went away, and now we're seeing those jobs either aren't there or are going away. Expert systems are starting to replace knowledge workers. Factories are making millions of product with a few hundred workers (there's a sleeping bag company that cranks out 2 million bags/yr with 120 employees, and Sony just shut down a CD press factory that made 20/mil disc month with about the same). The white elephant in the room is, what are we going to do with all these people we just don't NEED?
Maybe this is a false dichotomy, but I see us either becoming a socialist nation that redistributes the wealth created by automation, or a third world hell hole were 1% of the population has everything and the other 99% fights among themselves for the scraps so they don't die in the streets.
Most people I pose that dichotomy too don't offer a third alternative, but they do say they'd rather everyone die in the streets than move to socialism ("Better Dead Than Red"). Of course, they've already convinced themselves through the lens of 'American Exceptionalism' that it'll never happen to them or theirs. Their much to smart/savvy/lucky/good looking/whatever for that. Plus nobody in this country can accept the idea that they might need civilization because they've convinced themselves if they do it means their a failure.
Hate to be a pessimist, but damn, America is a fark'd up place...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Obligatory Marshall Brain (founder of howstuffworks.com) essay on what will happen when (almost) everything's automated: Mass joblessness? Guaranteed income?
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robots-in-2015.htm
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Which means the low skill jobs will be coming back.
hth.
Deleted
The problem with the world today? It's literacy. Widespread literacy is putting all the scribes out of business. Once upon a time a slightly-educated man was guaranteed a job for life as a scribe, now by providing nearly universal literacy, schools have taken food from his table. What once required a specialist is now available to everyone.
And don't get me started on the printing press. Sure, Gutenberg's doing fine, but what about all of the monks who made good livings penning bibles until he came along.
Grrr...kids today.
Unless you live completed disconnected from society at large, in some way you constantly make rich men richer. This has always been true, everywhere, and likely always will.
Most of the parts for iPad and iPhone are produced outside of China. Assembly happens in China. Only something like 5% of the money spent to make an iPad or iPhone actually ends up going to China. The parts come from a mix of the US, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
True, they'll probably go out of business in many locations. But will that open the door for the small bookseller to move back in? It's now time for big retailers to adapt or die like they used to love to tell the mom and pop shops to do.
I understand similar statements were made about the poor ice producers when refrigeration became commonplace. This is just another keyword-based politician trying to be somebody by namedropping the iPad.
bah.
Not only that, but anyone with the leisure to sit around posting leftist drivel on their very own 3000 MHz computer is very "rich," from the perspective of several billion people.
Someone who incites a class struggle in the US would have to be delusional to think that they'd actually come out ahead if such a thing came to pass. The GP may picture himself among the oppressed masses at the bottom of the pyramid of capitalism, but he's standing on the shoulders of a lot of little people, himself.
Technology that makes some jobs redundant has always, ALWAYS resulted in increases in total material wealth for a country because it frees up people to do other jobs. More automation means we can have more scientists and engineers (who can create the next generation of automation), and also to pay the teachers we will need to train them.
Now, the U.S. economy has a nasty problem : much of the increased prosperity is not equitably shared with the people who CREATE the prosperity. A corporate executive may perform a valuable service, but he is not worth thousands or millions of times the other managers and engineers and other people who make his decisions reality. If this problem were reduced, and it were straightforward for people to move to higher tech careers without artificial barriers making it so inefficient, then things would work a lot smoother.
thank you. I did need a good laugh. cheers, man.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I think his point is that in this case, one door closing isn't necessarily allowing another to open. At least not in soon enough time to be useful those those who saw the door close.
I know history says that Jesse is wrong. The past is littered with all those who have come before having made the same predictions only to be consistantly proven wrong by history while global living standards for all continue to rise.
However I still wonder if at some point in the future as machine intelligence improves the whole system won't come crashing down.
A world where unskilled labor has no hope of employment I would not be in favor of within the context of the current system.
Globalization is responsible for all kinds of imbalances and disruptions throughout the world. I'm not so sure people who take a stand against them or seek to mitigate these problems should simply be cast aside as holding back the future. It is possible to have your cake and eat it too. To make forward progress while minimizing the side effects of globalization.
The final industry you missed is financial, which includes stocks, banks and insurance. Unfortunately, it doesnt take 300M brokers and bankers and thats just too bad for a lot of people looking to do anything tangible.
The man is a fucking idiot....the end.
What gets me is the entire service economy mind set. Here is a little explored secrete which should have rang alarm bells a long time ago. In order for an economy to grow, you need to add wealth to it. When you revert to a service economy, all you do is move the wealth around from one place to another. It's not creating any wealth for the economy unless it brings money from outside to inside somehow. This generally means the only way to grow a service economy is with inflation so you end up with more of less being spread around.
So even high paying or low paying, without wealth coming in or being created, eventually you won't be paid enough to purchase the services you provide. All the sudden you are dependent on cheap outside labor which means even less jobs and less higher paying jobs.
Racism = bad. Nepotism = good. It's one "ism" crusading against another. Anybody else had enough of both?
I read a good piece on this a while back. Link. It might be paywalled, so Google the title to get the whole article.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations..." -Winston Churchill
Yes and you get to live in a cardboard box under a freeway overpass.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late: Andy Grove
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late: Andy Grove
By Andy Grove - Jul 1, 2010
Bloomberg Opinion
Andrew "Andy" Grove, co-founder and senior adviser to Intel Corp., listens during an interview in his office in Los Altos, California. Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg News
Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something didn’t add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late -- unless you are counting Asia, where American technology companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Mythical Moment
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
Scaling used to work well in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs came up with an invention. Investors gave them money to build their business. If the founders and their investors were lucky, the company grew and had an initial public offering, which brought in money that financed further growth.
Intel Startup
I am fortunate to have lived through one such example. In 1968, two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel Corp., making memory chips for the computer industry. From the beginning, we had to figure out how to make our chips in volume. We had to build factories; hire, train and retain employees; establish relationships with suppliers; and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later, it went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, which was 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S.
Not far from Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, other companies developed. Tandem Computers Inc. went through a similar process, then Sun Microsystems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Netscape Co
> I don't think people, overall, are that smart. the world seems to be run by 'the people of walmart'.
Some people are good at what they're trained for. A lot of people are "smart," or at least effective, in at least a few specific tasks. And don't make the mistake of assuming people working or shopping at walmart aren't intelligent, sometimes in their own way at their own tasks, sometimes like Dilbert's great garbage man.
The world is definitely *run* by smart people. They may not be as smart as engineers--it depends on the particular "runner" and the engineer--but they are much smarter than your average bear. The people on the Hill and in the White House were in the top 10% of their high schools. A lot of them are assholes. A lot of them are nice people. They all have learned certain skill sets. The elected ones have to develop skill sets that make them seem stupid to smart people. They also, mostly, have do mean things because empirically, mean things WORK. Lying to the public--spin--works. Going negative in campaigning works. If you don't do it, you're at a huge disadvantage. Without consensus not to do it, pretty much everyone does it.
Businesspeople vary in intelligence. The best are usually quite intelligence. Again, they can be good people or not. They tend to think differently than you or I.
"People, overall," don't run the world--they accept the world, or they rise up. Their needs have been catered to for millenia by those running things. The Romans for control of the senate--panem et circenses--the nations following the infantry revolution at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and the gunpowder revolution.
There are also thugs. A lot of thugs in power. Warlords, torturers, thieves and brigangs and thugs who somehow have nations behind them. Not so much in the West. But in Africa, in Chechneya, many places. And of course local crime lords.
Some of them are quite personable. Some are quite intelligent. Others are puppets of other people who are intelligent. They may not have formal schooling, or they may. And of course, sometimes they're just a bully. But it usually takes a bully with intelligence to get a nation behind him. Even a crappy nation.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Well banning technology is not going to help nor will protectionism.
Fact of the matter is in 1960 Americans did not even have access to storage rentals. They were for businesses. Americans overbought for decades paid for by cheap credit while employers looked for cheaper was to produce.
I think people will not buy products again for a long time until they pay off their debt. The GOP is right and the government needs to pay off it's own debt so the bankers can do things like give cheaper loans for small businesses to hire.
People do not need to keep consuming and need to produce instead
http://saveie6.com/
Hinges and nails are needed to make a home,beautiful wrought iron fence is a want. Needs keep employed, wants are the first to go and last to recover when times get tough
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
I find that when I'm reading (usually highly technical material, or else reference works), I'm flipping back and forth, bouncing around from page to page or chapter to chapter in what is anything but an organized fashion. I either mark pages ad-hoc or else simply remember page numbers with important information so that I can come back to it later. Electronic books impose much more structure on the process of reading that doesn't lend itself well to my style.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Outsourcing iPad manufacturing to low wage workers in China is hardly the problem. According to iSuppli, each iPad 2 costs $9 to assemble. This is only 3% of the overall manufacturing cost -- the rest is in parts that are made all over the world.
The US benefits at least as much as anyone else from the availability of cheap electronics -- both for consumers and for industry. Unless we are prepared to make all electronics dramatically more expensive, we have to let the market decide who makes the parts that go into our devices. If we're designing the device, and writing software for it, and building new companies and industries around it, that seems like a pretty good contribution to the US economy.
All comments deal only with economy. How about an environmental view? If wood based paper industry goes belly up maybe some forests can be saved. Maybe they should switch to hemp or bamboo pulp or whatever has the smallest impact on the environment. Will the next story be: "war with Brazil and Congo imminent (each have 10 acres of forests left) our supermarkets lack the medium to print their price du jour on..."?
On the economic side... If you are big the change is harder. Smaller companies can and will adopt faster to faster changing human needs. Maybe the dinosaurs will die out and mammals will take over the world?
I for one would rather read a book on an iPad/whatever reader in the forest than read a printed book in the desert.
Watch the video, you say! This is Slashdot. All we need to do is see "Jesse Jackson," "Illinois," "Congress," and "iPad" mixed together with a classically hyperbolic summary to start posting!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Just like the telephone killed the telegraph sex business.
Where was JJJr when wainwrights and pinsetters lost their jobs?
That is why I compared what we are facing to the previous employment revolutions. No way to stop it but if we are prepared for the hurt, it might hurt less. Denial of the incoming pain is not going to work.
So, I agree with you, we must change and we can't just pretend the world isn't changing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not to defend a politician that speaks out of both sides of his mouth but he does raise a point - vaguely. After a time you have to wonder what jobs we can keep here with the labor differences between countries being so vast. Awhile ago a person built a nice second home in the area and I learned what he did. He works for a large company and they opened a factory in Mexico in order to supply a new Ford plant there. The locals knew American factories were unionized and demanded 15 cents an hour. Part of his job is negotiating those contracts and he was proud to say they settled for less. Total package per employee , cost to company, was less than $1 an hour.
Now part of me thinks this is fine, the best way to drive down costs and raise profits. Who doesn't want to make lots of money. But the other part of me wonders where things stop as we're able to outsource so many goods and services that it's getting hard to figure out what'll be left. Heck even a local hospital has outsourced overseas the radiology techs that read MRIs, Xrays, CT scans, etc. Personally I don't think the Free Trade agreements were fair when other countries don't have the same labor laws and pollution controls. Wanting to be fair without looking like an isolationist can be tough. Although maybe I have a more skewed view since I'm in Michigan which has seen outsourcing kill a lot of the state.
You can't fight them.
Some decades ago the typesetters here in Denmark went on strike because their jobs were threatened by computers. Several other unions joined, demanding laws banning computers, robots and similar technological means to replace laborers. They lost of course but to me growing up at that time it showed just how reactionary people are to change - even change for the better.
Typesetters worked with lead and got poisoned (slowly) by it. Making it obsolete was actually a good thing. It was heavy work, always at night, and while it required some skill it was a pretty dull job. But the unions demanded that the times should stop changing instead of working with the management to find replacement work, maybe even work that was both safer and better paid. But no, change was evil and threatened the status quo.
You can't fight change. You can only adapt or be left behind. It doesn't matter of the change is for good or for bad. It's there and it's going to happen.
Sure, right now iPads can be manufactured cheaply in the far east, but all the business they're getting now will result in change there too, and the costs will go up there as well. Supply and demand. At some point there will be nowhere left on Earth where you can place a production and have people work for starvation wages and thus save a lot of money. Then costs are equal and it's back to skill as to who gets to build the next big thing.
But right now there's no need for iPad builders in the US. So people need to find something else to do. Either join the businesses already there or think of something new. Maybe it will be the next big thing?
Now, back in the day of the typesetters strike I actually did a report for school on "automatisering" (replacing manual labor with machines) and it turns out that while a dozen typesetters lost their job at a newspaper, it required twice as many people to install, maintain, repair and upgrade the electronic systems replacing the typesetters, not to mention develop the software for them. So the change resulted in more jobs, not less. Jobs elsewhere in other trades of course but still jobs. The newspapers didn't save money on this, but it gave them almost unlimited flexibility, a much later deadline and the possibility of a more direct workflow.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I live in a fruit belt area and our local farmers have trouble growing apples for the same price that comes in from China, Argentina, etc. Having constant new regulations is part of this problem. The latest fun is something like an ISO 9000 certification required for every aspect of each crop. You're the farmer and want to grab an apple off a tree and take a bite to see how it's going? If you're not in a designated food eating area and are seen, you're docked points for the certification.
In the IT world, When Amazon turk offers a huge list of 3 cent tasks you wonder how low things can go.
When the technological singularity is reached, no human will have a job. Everything will be done by machines. That's the price of technology. The Singularity will completely change our societies, to the point that socialism will be the only viable economic system.
Just remember that to most of the worlds population, you are the rich man.
Printing press cost the job of those monks who copied, illuminated and bound manuscripts. Fie on you, Gutenberg.
In economy there are two main philosophies. The Austrian , and the Keynesian economic way.
The Keynesian says that you need to create a demand, and the other says that demand is infinite.
Creating a demand is something government is supposed to do, or to stimulate. They take money from some(through taxes) , and spend it on others. Thus creating a demand for something. But often this demand is not what people need, so when the government money runs dry. So does the demand, and people which had jobs supplying that demand loose out.
If you say that demand is infinite you must also see that this does not apply to every thing. There are only x amount of stuff y people want, and can buy. But people always want stuff z. So the trick is to go and do research for what stuff z is. Stuff z always something that bring true value to the table. Like the iPad. Its like this picture frame with eternal content, delivered in a butter smooth interface. And people, I think, has longed for technology that just works, and is butter smooth.
Okay..
As SmallFurryCreature (593017)
said in the Indeed (Score:5, Interesting) post , there are only so many types of work to be done.
Since the USA has a private bank that can create new notes, which people accept as money. Something which is used to store , and move value about with. People of the USA has not needed to work. Or they could work in the businesses , which did not make stuff. Since other people in the world where willing to accept the notes created by the private bank of USA.
The private bank of the USA makes the "gold" which the rest of the world has accepted for the last 60 years. The problem of making the notes, other than it transfers the jobs overseas since other people are willing to work for the notes the private bank has been making, in contrast to trading for stuff, is that it makes the people using the notes poorer.
Say you had worked up a saving of 1000 notes. And 1000 notes was equal to 40 years of savings. If I could make a 1000 notes in my room, then I would be super rich, because this would equal 40 years of savings. And I spent 5 minutes doing it. If I constantly did this. Making 1000 new notes when I had run dry, I would increase the amount of money in the local marked. So then people in the local marked have more money, and they can then bid higher prices for the stuff they want. With the result that your 1000 notes which equalled 40 years of saving, now starts to equal 30 years. And they continue to decline since I'm making more notes in my room and spending them, thus giving people more money to spend, which drives the prices up. So for each time I make new money. Your savings are worth less working years. Until I have made so many notes that your savings which you spent 40 years getting, can now be earned in an hour. or less..
Money is all about ratio. How much is the ratio to something else.
If you had your savings in 1000 ounce of gold, then the ratio to other stuff would be more stable. Since the amount of gold is finite. There is only so much gold on the planet Earth. But you can make infinite amount of notes. Since notes is not linked to anything physical. Its just a number in a machine.
To sum up.
The government make more money to stimulate the demand. By stimulating, and creating a artificial demand they make people spent energy learning a non sustainable trade. Also they diminish the value of peoples savings, making it harder for the people wanting to invest in servicing the real demand.
In effect, it is the philosophy of the Keynesian which drives away the jobs in USA. By wanting to artificially stimulate the economy with newly created notes by the FED which is given to the Government though the sales of bonds. This philosophy also makes people poorer since the ratio of their savings, to other stuff gets larger; they need more of them to pay for stuff.
Since there is less savings, it gets harder to invest, making less jobs, which gets people anxious, where people demand a solu
I had been holding out hope that Jackson Jr. was less of a whack job than his father. Oh well, so much for that.
They all go to the same place as blacksmiths, horse and buggy manufacturers, oil lamp manufacturers, smoke signal and telegraph operators, pony express riders, court jesters, vaudevillians, hieroglyphics artists, papyrus salesmen, and a multitude of other defunct professions you ignorant buffoon.
Times, they are a changin'! For every traditional (lame) job lost like Borders sales agent, a new, higher paying job is created, like Apple customer support agent, or Amazon web developer, for example.
People who yell the loudest that technology "took rrrr jobs!" also yell loudly about imaginary Mexicans who also took rrrrrrr jobs. Keep up, America.
Newspapers killed a few million trees and the ecosystems they were supporting, so I'd say that's a change for the better.
Energy is getting expensive.
Datacenters are getting expensive.
Information processing is getting expensive.
Businesses which rely on datacenters are getting expensive (see Google's energy projects).
etc.
Today, right now, we are at the peak. As the oil goes, we start to slide down the other side.
And on the other hand, people are getting cheaper.
Deleted
And what becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper?
The same thing that happened to blacksmiths and all of the jobs associated with the horse based transportation industry, they lose the mass market because people decide to move towards a newer and in many ways better replacement... They will be relegated to niche markets, of people who won't embrace change or enjoy the nostalgia of using an older technology.
The idea of artificially sustaining an obsolete technology and stifling its modern replacement is stupid, they tried the same thing with cars at one point too.
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Except he completely misunderstands why companies overseas are sucking up the business. It's not just (or for long) cheap labor. It's a less expensive tax/regulatory environment.We aren't just losing manufacturing in the US, we're actively, aggressively driving it out of the US. Want less debt? Have a giant new pile of corporate and personal income tax by reducing the rates. The US is in the top 3 spots in the world when it comes to taxing a company for operating on our soil. And we act surprised that basic market economics finds more welcoming spots elsewhere, with open arms? Gee, it's such a mystery.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Jesse Jackson Jr has missed the point. It's doesn't matter where the iPad is made. The iPad is a success because Americans have the ability to purchase an IPad. If we didn't, China would have a glut of iPads. He's obviously playing to his home crowd and getting ready for a re-election bid.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
If the US standard workweek were 4 days instead of 5, there would be at least 20% more work to do in the 4 days. That would keep labor demand ahead of supply for a while.
--
make install -not war
It must be nice to have a job on the basis of your famous father instead of your own competence. From which you can attack the people who have more productive jobs they created or just earned, which are keeping the US at the forefront of the economy instead of a derelict museum of your father's generation.
--
make install -not war
he told [Google CEO Eric] Schmidt that some day his tombstone will read, "I killed newspapers."
That assumes that when Schmidt dies, people still know and care what the newspaper was. Of course, if they really care, then it will probably mean that the newspaper isn't dead.
The entire concept of technology is to eliminate human labor. And if viewed that way technology is a success. We no longer need fifty men swinging scythes to cut our lawns. One guy with a cheap lawn mower can easily replace those fifty laborers.
Almost no one is giving thought to the end results of this trend. As less and less tasks require human input we must find a way to pay people not to work. We are now at a tipping point in which the displacement of labor as well as the end of economies as we know and understand them will exist.
As for deflation we really had best not go there. Deflation is a death spiral and if it starts there is no bottom to it. Imagine an entire bushel of prime apples for one penny and no one has a penny.
In particular the right wing needs to confront reality. I see all kinds of rants about the elimination of Social Security. They all claim that current retirees benefits will not be touched as they only want to get rid of Social Security for the younger generations. But birth rates are not what they used to be. Even if that twenty year old worker is never to receive benefits he will carry a big load for those now retired just as those now retired carried a big load for the generation before them. So we would have young workers suffer loss of a big chunk of their pay checks with no hope of getting benefits when they are old. Worse yet jobs for younger workers are vanishing as technology displaces human labor. Still, we see not one political leader even mention these issues much less propose any sort of cure.
The catch is this. The fix for these problems will very much seem to be socialistic even though it has nothing at all to do with socialism. For a president or congressman to talk about real solutions for this issue would be political suicide due to a very uneducated public having knee jerk reactions. The choice is cure or chaos. The field seems to be tilted towards chaos.
... and this brings us to the issue: Whither sealing wax manufacturing jobs?
I'd rather we have all the smart people over here figuring out how to build an iPad 3, and what features to add to it
Then companies headquartered in China look at Apple's inspiration, design a me-too device, make it, and sell it. The ease of reusing ideas makes it easier for someone other than the first mover to enter the market, unless you propose some model for Apple to lock people in. Look at the iPhone, which led to Android. And other Slashdot users posting comments to articles about copyright, patent, and jailbreak lawsuits say the traditional "intellectual property" model isn't always a desirable model, especially taking into account the perversions in modern copyright law and patent law.
the sound of his own voice. In this case he seems to be supporting the luddites because many people don't accept or desire that technology brings change. Read about the introduction of steam power for parallels. There are many good comments here already. Being proactive in handling job displacement would be a major plus for all of us, as best as I can see.
Be Obscure Clearly
There are visual errors in time as well as in space.
I find the same things seem to be going on in Asia where I live to. There's people shuffling about peddling their own businesses but they're increasingly being sold out, as inflation is rampant here.
Some goods and services, such as a web tablet or business software development, are more-or-less tradable among countries. Others, such as prepared food, real estate, and in-person services such as hairdressing, long-term medical care, and installation of carpet, are far less tradable. As a nation industrializes, the proportion of its economy which produces tradable goods and services will likely increase, and the Penn effect predicts that as an economy's income from tradable goods increases, wages will also increase, which pushes up the price of nontradable goods. Hence the inflation you observe: the country is transitioning from a nontrade economy to a trade economy.
If original works of authorship become the primary output of the western world, watch copyright disputes among nations lead to shooting wars.
By this IDIOTS same logic, when Henry Ford developed the mass produced automobile, we should have STOPPED it as it would have put people who raise horses, buggy manufacturing companies, blacksmiths out of business. This idiot is as stupid and short sighted as his (in)famous father.
Kipling believed this, not because he saw Hindus, Moslems and Buddhists as inferior, but because he saw them as equals who had lacked opportunity. (This comes out very strongly in his book for adolescents, Kim, which as intended in part to excite schoolboys with the prospects of a career in India.) You may think this was paternalistic, but from the perspective of the time, he was pretty enlightened, and extremely pro-Indian. (G K Chesterton thought that Kipling should be buried, not in Westminster Abbey, but in a Hindu temple.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
That's what corporation regulation and personal income taxes are for. Of course, in the spirit of "compromise" we've thrown those under the bridge. So really, we're living in the worst of all possible worlds. Those rich old white guys get to keep their profits and squeeze the rest of us, with us all the while believing that the Democrats are our "only defense against these horrible monsters."
Gerrymandering - one way or another - should be illegal. It's total crap. Congressional seats should be based on real communities. ...nice to dream, isn't it? ...no, not really. Just depressing.
Spekkio Master of War
You know how many horseshoers are out of jobs now that people don't have to ride everywhere on horses? Or all the telegraph operators that have nowhere to work now that this dang telmemaphones are all over.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
While he is perhaps wrong to have pinned the blame on the iPad (after all it wasn't the first... it was merely the most recently successful) it is true that sacrificing trees in order to disseminate information will probably eventually become more and more obscure.
Now that we've settled that, I'd like to take up a few other important issues that we've all forgotten. The invention of the steam engine put many canvas makers out of business in the ship yards and the invention of the automobile wiped out many other professions responsible for saddling and harnessing beast of burden for our transportation needs. And then there's that dastardly Mr. Edison -- if not for figuring out a way to harness electricity for light and string wire from building to building and pole to pole, we could still be employing thousands of people in the hunting and slaughtering of wales so we could get lamp oil to light the streets -- not to mention the lamp-lighters we'd be employing.
I am confident that as soon as Mr. Jackson (who feels strongly about such injustices) is reminded of these facts that he will only travel internationally by sailing ship and will ride from town to town on horse, oxen, or mule while reading news on sacrificed trees under the light of lamps run on the oil of wales hunted to extinction.... you know... so as to not appear to be a hypocrite.
In reality, there are jobs that robots will not be doing any time soon. Creation of media is a major category and perhaps the only one that I am absolutely certain will not be taken over by computers any time soon, but there are others. Writing software, perhaps as a broader category of "training" these automation systems will definitely continue to be important.
In other words, the copyright industry (RIAA, MPAA, BSA) is the only "industry" in the country that is sure to survive mechanization.
Thank you sir.
China taxes imports -- heavily, in some cases. But we can't seem to do that in the USA.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
“A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having
purchased an automotive carriage and said that I happened to
believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device,
which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of
American jobs.
Now the Farrier is closing stores because, why do you need to
go to the farrier anymore? Why do you need to go to feed stock shop?
Buy an auto, drive to church, drive to work, drive to vacation.
Chicago State University, in my congressional district, in freshman
class, they are not riding horses any longer. They are all buying autos
as they enter school.
Well, what becomes of blacksmiths, stable keeps and horse handlers?
Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs simply will not exist.
Henry Ford is doing pretty well. He’s created the assembly line auto.
-AI
"I'll be running for office for the 1908 election."
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Yo, fucking stupid mods, saying something you don't like is not trolling.
Ugh, they don't know those stuff. Pick younger people!
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I for one will refuse to make a rich man even richer. I even wonder what will ever make me queue up in the dark of the early mornings just to get my hands on an iDevice. Am I boring or what?
And on the subject matter, I happen to agree with the congressman to a large degree.
Actually Steve Jobs doesn't own Apple stock and he's annual salary is $1. No matter how many iPads you buy, you won't make him richer. Unless you buy Disney content from iTunes that is!
Mister Jackson's speech so moved me that I topped up my wig powder, dipped my quill in the inkwell and scribed an angry missive to be delivered to the town crier forthwith. Huzzah!
The problem is that there won't be useful work for a large number of people. Education can help, but there is still 50% of the population that is below average in smarts.
Now you can reduce this fraction somewhat by using different kinds of smarts. At present there is no good way to outsource or automate certain classes of jobs. It will be a while before we automate truck driving to the point where there is no driver in the cab. Outsourcing plumbing repair or furnace installation is a ways away.
Stuff is getting cheaper. Thanks to automated factories, outsourced factories, machine intelligence. For the same reasons stuff is getting better quality, although there is still junk out there.
So where does it end? Historically when we have made big gains in productivity, the work week got shorter. But the intellectual jobs, the ones with high salaries, are ones with long hours. Ask any sysadmin, and find out how many of them are working 32 hour weeks.
At the low end, here in Canada, many brick and mortar stores have 90% part time workers -- typically working 15 to 20 hours a week. If they are part time, they don't have to pay benefits. So people end up juggling 3 part time jobs to make ends meet.
If you want to see where it is going, take a tour on most Indian reservations. See the joy and the bliss of communities that have 70% unemployment, where the entire community economy is dependent directly or indirectly on government handouts.
Education is a partial answer. But here in Canada we're finding that a university degree doesn't necessarily get you a job. Indeed, do we need 75% of the population with a university degree? Some fields do. One of my former students recently finished his civil engineering degree, and was snapped up at 70,000/year. But for each guy like him there are a dozen who move back home after University. But not everyone has the savvy to be an engineer.
Our local tech school advertises, "Now that you have your degree, come and learn a trade so you can make some money and pay off those loans" And people are doing that in droves. Go back, and take training to become an electrician, welder, surveyor. A computer geek working for Best Buy can get $13/hour, and probably works 15 hours a week with no benefits. A high school kid with a grade 10 education can get a job rebuilding drill bits for $18/hour, plus $2/hour shift differential, plus 10-20 hours of overtime, plus 30-40% bonuses every 3 months. A welder can expect 27-32/hour.
Energy has to get a lot more expensive before it becomes more economical to do things locally again. Off hand, I'd guess 2 orders of magnitude more expensive. Right now it is cheaper to move apples from New Zeeland to Canada than it is to store apples in Canada. At the same time, my uncle, who grows apples in Washington state, ships containers of apples to India. A few thousand dollars takes a container anywhere in the world. The cost of the contents has to be small compared to that cost before the economics favour local production again. Apples wholesale around $10/box. A box is what, 2 cubic feet. A container is 8x8x40 feet -- 10,000 cubic feet. So the apples are worth 50,000. Shipping is 3-6000. Remember that rising energy costs will increase both prices.
H. G. Wells commented that 'progress is a race between education and catastrophy' It's not clear to me that education is winning, or if, indeed it can win.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
About 30 years ago the polyvinyl record industry underwent a massive shift after the introduction of the CD. Record production jobs were lost, plants in the North East U.S. were shut down but a whole new industry sprung up on the West coast associated with the production of the CD's. Also at that time the cry went up that all the devices that play the CD's are being manufactured off-shore and something should be done to stem the flow. Well that flow is like a tsunami, you aren't going to legislate it away. The ability to survive is in innovation and leadership. One day the innovation leader is Blackberry and the next it's Apple. I could also site many more leadership transitions, ...these are the facts. The delusion is that a politician can say and do something of consequence in these matters.
However, Unions are becoming a rising force within China. As the workers get a taste of what the rest of the world is about, they will demand better wages, safer conditions, five day work weeks.. Basically, China will transform just like the rest of the first world countries have. Cheap labor will only last so long, if the government will not help its workers, the workers will do it themselves. When that happens expect to see companies like Apple start to look for other countries to put their factories in. Eventually they may just lead right on back to the USA as the loopholes of cheap labor will have all been used up. It is the cycle of the markets.
if you read the headline, it doesn't match the quote at all - what he's saying is that while the technology is great and makes life more convienent, the product doesn't help create jobs in the American Job sector. I think this is a valid point. i don't think he's being xenophobic or technophobic, but pointing out the fact that our country doesn't produce much of anything anymore. Whoever came up with the headline, shame on you for the title, but THANKS for including the quote for clarification.
like a man without arms, you can't hang......
There are no more elevator operators required to get up and down the hotels. Lots of jobs lost, which has happened in the past and will keep happening in the future. Humanity's advancement and progress as a whole does not mean there are no individual or groups of individuals outside the winner's circle.
This is what happens when stupid people get elected to Congress. Elections do have consequences. I mean really, did Mr. Jackson just wake up in 2011, after sleeping since 1994? Even then, print media was already being in a large part replaced by visual media, starting with television in the 1950s, and what was left is increasingly in competition with the internet and other digital media sources. Apple's only been doing this for a year... how about the Kindle? The nook? Plain old PCs?
There is no divine right to any market. There was once a vibrant market for horse-drawn buggies in this country. Some of that still exists in Lancaster, PA in support of the Amish, and perhaps a few other places supporting a few other Luddite cultures, but some things need to die. Companies that don't innovate should fail; supporting a dead business model via politics just blocks the way for new tech happening here. It's going to happen anyway, whether digital books or stem cell research. All political interference does is ensure the new industries start up in another country.
That's not a problem for companies who figure out the business they're actually in. If you know you're a Newspaper company, and are determined to ride that sinking ship to its bitter end, you deserve that end. People are moving to other media the same reason they move to other new technology: they find it a better solution. I never drove a horse and buggy. My kids may never use a film camera. I never subscribed to dead-tree newspapers - I just didn't find enough value in all that waste. And yet, I read and watch news media quite a bit, on satellite and online. If the NY Times or Philly Inquirer were pushed to my Android tablet (Notion Ink Adam) every time, I'm at least a potential reader, and the electronic deliver is an advantage over random website visits -- that part of the newspaper/magazine model is a good one, I think. I get more of my professional magazines electronically, and probably won't renew a paper subscription ever again.
That takes these guys realizing that they're actually a media content companies, not newspaper companies. If newprint is just of many forms of a company's media, its inevitable decline if not outright extinction isn't necessarily the end of the company.
-Dave Haynie