BBO Discussion Forums: The Totally Useless, Non-Scientific BBO Opinion Poll for Current Events - BBO Discussion Forums

 PassedOut, on 2016-August-20, 16:47, said:

I think that most people are capable of learning some kind of skill; even those with minimal talent could learn to stock shelves or collect litter. These could be real options if they paid a living wage.

I also think that a general solution would be to pay people to take training courses, so that they could still support themselves while learning a marketable skill.

And of course apprenticeships are a good way to learn a valuable trade; these could perhaps be extended to cover more than the traditional areas.

As far as a significant number of Americans/immigrants moving into manufacturing, those days are past, long past.
Machines are not only taking over those jobs but many service jobs. The future is more and more people not working outside the home and now what are they/we going to do?

"They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow/
Through Eden took thir solitarie way."

John Milton

 Trinidad, on 2016-August-20, 08:34, said:

I did read but felt compelled to address only the item that was the most wrong and not a matter of argument or interpretation but simply untrue.

There is undoubtably a thrill and a little bit of celebrity involved with styling oneself as a thinking Trump supporter. Plus an intellectual challenge trying to think of reasons. Plus a bit of a frisson as you shock yourself by actually voting for Trump.

Add in the fear of immigration and I am beginning to experience deja vu.

"None of the above is acceptable."

 PassedOut, on 2016-August-20, 16:47, said:

It is a great hope of mine that this last part, "eventually we're going to have to solve the problem of providing a tolerable life for those with no marketable skills", has not arrived yet and does not arrive soon. The difference between "self-supporting" and "provided for" goes far beyond how well the person is provided for. I expect that you, and most, agree.

The tile in my bathroom needs replacing. I imagine I can do it. I would be very happy to pay someone else to do it. Especially someone who knows more than I do about the details. A normal person can make a living doing such things, I know several who do. I am not trying to minimize the dramatic changes in the employment possibilities that those with modest education face, but I do think we should not completely throw in the towel. Not everyone wants to work behind a desk and not everyone wants to be supported by the state. When I was young I moved furniture, I crated farm machinery, I did a lot of things with my hands and some of it was decently paid. I don't think this is entirely gone. I observe people working at jobs for which a college degree would be completely irrelevant. And I did hear on NPR that jobs such as I need done in the bathroom are going unfilled and driving up prices.

Living in the past is an error, granted, but so is writing it all off. And I do really hope that we do not have to tell large numbers of people that they are simply too stupid to be useful at anything in modern society. It will be awful for them and I don't think it will be so good for society as a whole either. What do we do, keep them as pets? Obviously this is an emotional issue with me.

 kenberg, on 2016-August-20, 20:22, said:

I don't think that's the kind of low skill job that they're talking about (I don't even consider a "handyman" to be a low-skilled person). It's the really menial, day-to-day "drudgery" jobs that you can train a robot to do. Like replacing supermarket cashiers with self-checkout lanes, or highway toll-takers with EZ-Pass readers.

Also, you can't off-shore on-site service work.

 blackshoe, on 2016-August-20, 18:24, said:

One should also get the representation for which one voted?

I have always been a "create jobs" sort of fellow/voter.

Now I think the future is not so much what job can we find/create as what will we do without a job with our lives.

In previous threads I have discussed the fellow who greeted folks at our local movie theater, he was beloved. It turned out at his death we found out his "job" before retirement had been as a very well respected engineer.
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At some point perhaps we move from a job to an avocation


Even robots are replacing bridge jobs.


btw2 I certainly do NOT consider our handy man a low skilled job,... high skilled, fast, efficient, YES

 Vampyr, on 2016-August-20, 16:59, said:

The problem is that the economic value of the job to the employer is less than the cost of paying a living wage.

 barmar, on 2016-August-20, 21:12, said:

This occurred to me as well, it was a brief item. But my general point is that there is a lot of worthwhile work that needs doing that does not require high IQ. It requires some basic level of intelligence but beyond that it comes down to paying attention to what you are doing. As mentioned, I delivered furniture and I crated farm machinery. I had to stay awake while doing it, I had to size up a situation, I had to plan a bit. I didn't need to be a genius.

A recent experience, I am sure it is a very common one.
Our house is far from new, it needed new shutters on the front. The from door had always been a bit of a pain so we decided to replace that also. Now there is also a vent cover on the front that matches the shutters. In writing up the contract neither I nor the salesman thought about the vent cover. Of course I wanted that replaced as well, it didn't occur to me. OK, my bad. There was another issue. The door is a solid door with a screen door in front of it, and the closing mechanism didn't work right. So two things to do. The idea was that the vent would be replaced, and then the inspector (when work was done the company had an inspector give a final check) would see about the door. Organizing this was simply beyond the capacity of their office. I'll skip the boring details but: We got it done, but I told one of the several honchos that I talked to that they really needed to get the communication problems in their office straightened out. It was very frustrating.

This was not an IQ problem. It was a get your act together problem.

If we really are talking only about jobs of digging ditches with a shovel then yes, those jobs are on their way out. But really, most people can learn to do more than dig ditches with a shovel. For example, suppose, God help us, Trump is elected and he really plans to build the wall. I imagine this will be done partly by machinery. A very large number of people could learn to operate those machines. It might take training, I doubt I could just go out there and do it, but a person who can pay attention and follow instructions can learn to do it.

In short: It is a long trail from ditch digging with a shovel to a job that requires a college degree.

I think it is a matter of scale.

Sure there will always be jobs for which a high IQ is not required.

However, if there is only 1 <120IQ job for every 3 >120IQ jobs, then we have a problem.

In fact, we have a bigger problem in this situation than when we have no <120IQ jobs at all, because we now have lots of <120IQ people with jobs arguing that those without jobs are somehow personally at fault when it is actually just a matter of numbers.

I don't think the era of fully robotic plumbing is coming even in my lifetime. However, I think we will see semi-autonomous, remotely directed plumbing machines, which means we'll only need 1 plumber for every 3 or 4 we have today. Do this for every trade, and we have a problem.

 akwoo, on 2016-August-21, 07:11, said:

So what to do? Bring back manufacturing and impose tariffs to make it worthwhile to buy domestic?

 StevenG, on 2016-August-21, 03:30, said:

One could subside those jobs and/or supplement with tax credit. Pay people a living wage for cleaning beaches. Not ideal, but possibly better than paying people for doing nothing.

 akwoo, on 2016-August-21, 07:11, said:

Yes, it is indeed a matter of scale and I confess to not having a good grasp of the numbers. I see a lot of people doing useful work.

Here is another facet of this.

Pin setting in a bowling alley is,afaik, done by machines. True. But it is also true that when I did it I was 14. I don't remember exactly, but I seriously doubt that any of us were over 16. I used the money to bowl a few lines, buy cigarettes from the machine, and if there was money left over I might buy a magazine or a paperback at the drugstore. I am not knocking this job, I think working as a teenager is an important part of growing up and I have always been proud of buying my first car with money that I made myself. But the pin setting robots are not taking jobs from family breadwinners.

Such details are important when looking at numbers. A job disappears, but this affects whom?

This same sort of "whom does it affect" applies to the minimum wage, and this time I think the news is quite bad. I am sure I have said this before so I apologize. But the problem with the minimum wage, as I see it, is not just that it is too low but also that there are 40-year olds who are being paid at this minimum rate, or roughly that rate. This is very different from when I was young.

There are lots of problems. As always, care has to be taken when reading the numbers. But scale is important, numbers are important. And while I think that "arguing that those without jobs are somehow personally at fault" can be overdone, I don't regard social expectations as completely irrelevant or off-base. It is not always easy, and often none of my business, to see just why someone is in dire straits. But even casual observation shows that at times some really bad decisions were made.

It is best if government programs are wise and if the people that the programs are intended to help make good use of them . We can probably agree that it doesn't always work out that way.

 helene_t, on 2016-August-21, 08:08, said:

Actually the USA is one of the few Western countries that has these kind of jobs. Think of flaggers, grocery baggers and greeters at supermarkets... I think these jobs are disappearing, but in Western Europe these jobs simply don't exist.

Rik

 helene_t, on 2016-August-21, 08:08, said:

Would not a tax break for manufacturing jobs be a more effective subsidy? I think you end up cutting out the middleman.

 Winstonm, on 2016-August-19, 09:26, said:

My husband would like to move to one of the few European countries I can't easily get a work visa for (I'm an EU citizen). I actually wouldn't mind the country so much, and right now I feel ready for early retirement, but I'm pretty sure that after a few months I'll get restless.

 Elianna, on 2016-August-21, 13:21, said:

Europe is a small place. Get a job in Freiburg, or Mulhouse, one of you will have to commute a bit.

 Winstonm, on 2016-August-19, 09:26, said:

Morocco is looking pretty good...

 hrothgar, on 2016-August-21, 16:19, said:

Of all the gin joints in all the cities in all the world, he had to walk into mine...