Nine out of 10 workers today are in occupations many of which are now "computerisable,"all of which existed 100 years ago, while just 5% of the jobs generated between 1993 and 2013 came from "high tech" sectors like computing, software, and telecommunications. Our newest industries tend to be the most labor-efficient: they just don't require many people -- not nearly as many as are qualified and looking for work. It is for precisely this reason that the economic historian Robert Skidelsky, comparing the exponential growth in computing power with the less-than-exponential growth in job complexity, has said, "Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs."
"Today we need to pay people to keep the lights on, so to speak. But in a future of ever greater abundance and productivity, you wouldn't, and so we need to start thinking about ways to make it easier and better for those who are not employed," Skidelsky continued.
Professor Benjamin Hunnicutt said he thinks colleges must reemerge as cultural centers rather than job-prep institutions. The word school, he pointed out, comes from skhol", the Greek word for "leisure." "We used to teach people to be free," he said. "Now, and for not much longer, we teach virtually all of them to work."
Communal creativity: the return of artisans and their communities
Research has shown that it is harder to recover from a long bout of joblessness than from losing a loved one or suffering a life-altering injury. The very things that help many people recover from other emotional traumas -- a routine, an absorbing distraction, a daily purpose -- are not readily available to the unemployed.
The transition from labor force to leisure force would likely be particularly hard on Americans, the worker bees of the rich world: Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per worker fell significantly throughout Europe -- by about 40% in Germany and the Netherlands -- but by only 10% in the United States. Richer, college-educated Americans are now working more hours than they did 30 years ago, particularly when you count time working and answering e-mail at home.
Artisans
made up the original American middle class.
Before industrialization swept through the US economy, many people who
didn't work on farms were silversmiths, blacksmiths, or woodworkers. These artisans were ground up by the
machinery of mass production in the 20th century. But Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at
Harvard, sees the next wave of
automation returning us to an age of craftsmanship and artistry. In particular, he looks forward to the
ramifications of 3-D
printing, whereby machines construct complex objects from digital designs --
even houses. (Link)
The factories that arose more than a century ago "could make Model Ts and forks and knives and mugs and glasses in a standardized, cheap way, and that drove the artisans out of business," Katz says. "But what if the new 3-D-printing machines, can soon produce customized versions of all such things, including simple cars, that are significantly cheaper than the ordinary ones? It's possible that information technology and robots will eliminate millions of traditional jobs and thereby make possible a new artisanal economy " an economy geared around creative self-expression, where ever more people would do artistic things with their time."
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