If technological advances don’t threaten employment, does that mean workers have nothing to fear from “smart machines”? Actually, no — and here’s where the Luddites had a point.
This was an interesting and as yet unheard by me take on two hotbutton issues. The polarization of the upper, middle, and lower class occupations and technologies affect on the marketplace. Not sure if it's an accurate portrayal since it was devoid of meaningful statistics but it's believable.
I'm skeptical of the stats anyhow. And I'm not sure I believe economists' assertions that the labor market shrinks and expands cyclically without any permanent loss of jobs. Here in the States, Appalachia has been an economic disaster for at least a century, the inner cities for generations, and the Rust Belt for decades, yet the official unemployment percentage usually stays somewhere in the single digits. How could the unemployment rate possibly be measuring unemployment?it was devoid of meaningful statistics but it's believable.
Some of the reason that unemployment hasn't dropped as much as it could have is that in certain parts of the job market could be done in half of the time, or by utilising half as many people. I think that this trend will expand, and the work force will gradually shift into a more relaxed, lower work effort required environment.
Anomalies in a distribution shouldn't be a suprise. National statistics will tell a different story than regional statistics and that is to be expected. You can't generalize to a region from stats at the national region anymore than you can generalize to a nation from a regional level. It's easily possible that the percentage stays in single digits and yet certain regions show a different story. There will always be outliers. Fixing the outlier's problem will require different approaches than the fixing national problems. Which is why voting for a president in the hopes that he'll fix employment in your city is an unreliable approach. Look locally to actually fix local problems. Look nationally to make an environment where it is possible to fix local issues.