Understood. Some people prefer it to large blacks of text.
Not me lol. But you can do whatever you want, it wont change your argument.
Not really. One can be for techological advances and still understand that they have negative consequences on society, too.
Negative
social consequences, sure. When it comes to economics, technology will always have
positive consequences for everyone.
The fact that you don't see it proves nothing. When was the last time you talked to a telephone operator to make a long distance call?
My guess is you never have had to do that.
Never. Where is your data that all previous phone operators have become permanently unemployed?
My argument is they lose their jobs temporarily as the economy is restructured, but then find new work in industries where demand is allowed to increase.
The currently SPIKE in unemployment is, I agree, not much related to the problem of techology making workers reductant, I agee.
Egad! Agreement!
And apparently you keep forgetting that if that technology costs more to operate and maintain than having a purely human workforce in place, it would NOT be implemented.
Correct, but I am not forgetting that at all. Again you are assuming the labor will not be hired by
another industry. And if the machines still use some form of human labor, the company may simply expand production and keep the same amount of workers. In the past, when new technology was implemented, employment in those industries actually increased. Workers were not being replaced, machines were simply added to expand production. Of course that is not always the case, especially in bad economic times when the primary goal is cutting production costs to stay in business, not necessarily expanding production.
Do the math.
Industries make capital investments in techology and machines to replace workers or to insure that their prodcutivity will go up without having to hire new workers.
Either way those capital investments mean less humans are needed to produce goods and services
Less humans needed
in those specific industries. Other industries will hire the newly available workers, especially if those workers have experience. Cheaper production ultimately results in cheaper goods, meaning people have more money to spend in
other industries, which is another way of saying demand for all other goods has increased. Increased demand necessitates and increase in production and employment in all other industries. This is what you are forgetting. You are looking at the economy as an aggregate rather than a collection of millions of individual companies and businesses.
Yes, that is true...assuming that the people have jobs to buy these cheaper products.
Which they will. Even so, if products are cheap enough, it may once again be possible for the wife to stay at home unemployed (although the job of a mom is enough work in itself) and the man works, or vice versa depending on societal/individual preferences. Again, everyone doesn't have to be employed to enjoy a good standard of living. We all desire to work less and still live better. Technology allows this.
Really? How will the people with no viable employment improve their standards of living?
WELFARE?
It is possible for society to advance in technology so much that a single day's work could pay for a year's worth of life. So people could simply retire at a very early age, or work part time. Ultimately, less people will be needed to work. But that is a
good thing. The whole purpose of economic growth is so individuals in society work less but still get more. People worked much harder in the 18th century, but had meager standards of living.
Again, the purpose of an economy is not employment, it is production. Increased production makes employment of everyone at all times unnecessary.
Nothing is cheap if you have NO income.
I have already refuted that. If it takes less income to produce, the next logical conclusion is that it will take less work to get the same amount of
real wages.
Maybe....IF you have a job.
Is that your only argument? If a day of work can provide for a year, you would only have to work for a few months to support yourself for your entire life, or work one day every year. You are simply splitting the work.
It is a bad thing if you liove in a CAPITALIST society that doesn't need YOUR labor.
Not really a response to my quote. If you can work less and still earn the same or higher real wages, why on earth would it be a bad thing if everyone worked less? To me that seems great.
You keep telling us that, but offer no evidence to support your theory.
I am using logic right now, but you only need to look at history to see how technology has not resulted in net unemployment. Again, if that were the case, nearly everyone would be unemployed.
I can give you the names of six people I let go in the last ten years thanks to improving techology.
And they probably already have or soon will find
new jobs. They wont be unemployed forever. Your reduced cost of production will eventually allow for the expansion of other industries.
Such as the six people I let go due to improving techology in my business.
How on earth does the fact you let them go mean they are unemployable? They can just find another job.
This isn't a logical fallacy.
Care to explain why? Or are you just going to restate it? Unless your definition of standard of living=every man woman and child working full time. Children no longer have to work as they did in the 19th century. If you still included children in the workforce, yes unemployment would be hirer. But unemployment only includes people who actually want to be employed. When I say technology does not result in net unemployment, I mean that if people end up not in the long term it is because they do not need to. Those that do will find work in the industries that have the increased demand.
Here is a mathematical example. Say each individual in the economy has $100. They spend $30 on food, $30 on toys, and $40 on clothes. However, a new technology has made clothing production much more efficient and cheap. Because of it, people only spend $30 on clothes. They have an extra $10 to spend on food and toys. The workers no longer employed in making clothes will then be hired by food and toy companies. This is because individuals in the economy will have an extra $10 to demand other goods. More demand will encourage an expansion of production in industries that see the demand.
The fact that you're not seeing proves exactly nothing.
In otherwords, I was asking you to provide evidence.
I didn't say that
What I said, was that increasing technology is creating a class of laborers who are economic unviable.
That is not at ALL the same thing as saying:
"Increased production lowers the standard of living."
It is not the same, you are right. But in a way you seem to be arguing against production
made possible by technology.
The techological advances that are making some laborers economically unviable started long before the 21st century.
Once again...such as? You are avoiding the question.
I know you think you know what a luddite is. You clearly do not. Try reading the history of what the REAL Luddites were all about.
Luddites protested against mechanization using similar arguments that you use. That is all I am saying.
Well that is NOT what I am doing
If that is not what you are doing, then you agree that technology does not cause economic and unemployment problems. Which I highly doubt is the case.
NO wonder you object to my post. You clearly didn't read it.
I didn't read it yet I quoted every word you said in little sections? BTW, you didn't actually argue why what I said was wrong.
STop living in a FAITH BASED DREAM WORLD, and start looking at the stats, amigo.
Faith? When did I mention anything about faith? Do you mean reason? Because the two are not the same. If you want to criticize my logic approach, go ahead. All it takes is a look at historical data to see the actual results of technology, but remember statistics mean nothing without analysis and explanations.
My living is made because of techology, dude.
Your posting to someone who embraced techology probably before you were born.
Nevertheless, the advances in techology are a double edged sword.
They bring us postive effects in some areas, and they cause disruption of the social fabric in other ways.
Try thinking more subtly than a cheerleader.
Start looking at the WHOLE picture.
Pretty much all ad hominem there with no viable argument. Basically, you are saying "I embraced technology before you, and therefore I know more about the effects of technology than you and you are a cheerleader." Pathetic.
Here are some stats for you. In 1760, 7,900 were employed in the production of cotton textiles in England. The cotton spinning machinery was invented in 1760. By 1787, 27 years later, total employment in the industry was 320,000, an increase of 4,400 percent.
Eleanor Roosevelt held the same believe you do about labor saving machinery. In 1945, she wrote: "We have reached the point today where labor saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job."
She was saying that this time it was different, and machinery would create job loss, just as you are saying now. But her predictions were not correct then, for as labor saving machinery continued to advance, even more so with computing later in the 20th century, unemployment did not continually increase as she would have thought. There is no correlation. Both data and logic
do not support the idea that technology causes unemployment.
None of your arguments have anything to do with technology resulting in job loss.
