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#102 Mar 23 2016 at 10:45 AM Rating: Excellent
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The largest proportions of which are in the retail, transportation and "business services" sectors which are seeing their own depletion. Brick & mortar retail succumbing to online presences like Amazon (which are in turn increasingly automating their distribution networks), outsourcing of business administrative services, etc.

Health services sector (particularly elderly care) is still sizable though. Learn to take care of old people, I guess. At least until those Japanese elderly-care bots get going.
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#103 Mar 23 2016 at 10:45 AM Rating: Decent
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Amazing how you can do without the essentials of life, so long as you have the luxuries.
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#104 Mar 23 2016 at 10:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
The largest proportions of which are in the retail, transportation and "business services" sectors which are seeing their own depletion. Brick & mortar retail succumbing to online presences like Amazon (which are in turn increasingly automating their distribution networks), outsourcing of business administrative services, etc.

Health services sector (particularly elderly care) is still sizable though. Learn to take care of old people, I guess. At least until those Japanese elderly-care bots get going.
Yeah that. We really were needed for basic survival stuff anymore so we all got jobs selling luxury items to each other and advising people how best to do that. Then we aren't really needed for that anymore so we all go into helping each other die more slowly. Isn't this the utopia? Basically a whole society spending our free time just helping each other live longer and better and prettier lives while all our basic needs are covered?
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#105 Mar 23 2016 at 10:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Then we aren't really needed for that anymore so we all go into helping each other die more slowly.
Well, some of us. Smiley: um
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#106 Mar 23 2016 at 10:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Isn't this the utopia?

Looked better in the brochure.
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#107 Mar 23 2016 at 11:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Then we aren't really needed for that anymore so we all go into helping each other die more slowly.
Well, some of us. Smiley: um
I'm useless like a fox. Smiley: cool

Jophiel wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Isn't this the utopia?

Looked better in the brochure.
To be fair a lot of those 1950's brochures were pretty spiffy.
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#108 Mar 23 2016 at 11:07 AM Rating: Excellent
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How about the 1895 brochures? You're all going to have to decide if you're an Eloi or a Morlock!
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#109 Mar 23 2016 at 11:10 AM Rating: Excellent
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Long distance telephone is instantaneous!

What a world we live in.
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#110 Mar 23 2016 at 11:12 AM Rating: Excellent
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That's a swanky phone booth. I think those are all made by robots now.
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#111 Mar 23 2016 at 11:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Strangely, my Youtube feed is a couple days ahead of this thread. It'll be interesting when you start talking about the Storks movie, Brendan Frasier and cats that are ********.
#112 Mar 23 2016 at 11:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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Because punch cards...
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#113 Mar 23 2016 at 11:44 AM Rating: Good
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Relevant.
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#114 Mar 23 2016 at 12:45 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:

If we went back to punch cards, think of all the jobs we could create! Especially if we hand-punched them all.
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#115 Mar 23 2016 at 1:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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Move yourself in with 3 or 4 "friends" to split the bills-- but don't worry, there are still plenty of people out there who live like human fucking beings. You just don't know anyone like that and can't see them. You aren't poor until you live in a grass hut and suck on rocks for nutrients to survive. That's the goal anyway. Now grit your teeth and take your ******, degrading, dehumanizing job and maybe in 20 years or so you'll move on up the social ladder and make enough to maybe rent your own place with. Or you'll win the lottery-- both of which are about as likely to happen. Oh yeah, if you don't like it, you're either really lazy or a drug addict! Um...! LOL Oh 'Em Gee!
#116 Mar 23 2016 at 1:21 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:

If we went back to punch cards, think of all the jobs we could create! Especially if we hand-punched them all.
I have an extra 3 hole punch in my office. Competitive advantage is mine. Smiley: cool
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#117 Mar 23 2016 at 1:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I have an extra 3 hole punch in my office. Competitive advantage is mine. Smiley: cool

That's a couple hole-punching guys you just put out of a job, you monster.
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#118 Mar 23 2016 at 2:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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Jophiel wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
I have an extra 3 hole punch in my office. Competitive advantage is mine. Smiley: cool

That's a couple hole-punching guys you just put out of a job, you monster.
Hey man, if I didn't do it someone else would have. Blame Swingline, they're the ones selling the stuff.
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#119 Mar 23 2016 at 2:59 PM Rating: Good
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You guys sure know how to make a woman feel old.

Back when I did at year at Univ. of MD, College Park, I wrote code down on a piece of notebook paper, went to the computer lab in the basement of the computer science building and used the data machines to punch out the code onto the cards (FORTRAN), when had to take the cards to a window were a grad student would add them to a pile waiting to be loaded into the computer. About a half hour later I would get called up to another window, where they would hand me couple pages of computer paper and tell me my code failed to run.

After a year of not being able to write a single program that worked I went back to my dream of just being a starving artist. Years later Adobe would sell
programs that I can't afford, that do what I dreamt of doing in college.
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#120 Mar 23 2016 at 3:02 PM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
I have an extra 3 hole punch in my office. Competitive advantage is mine. Smiley: cool

That's a couple hole-punching guys you just put out of a job, you monster.
Hey man, if I didn't do it someone else would have. Blame Swingline, they're the ones selling the stuff.
Boston also sells them, but the Swingline ones don't bind up as much.
#121 Mar 23 2016 at 3:14 PM Rating: Good
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I'm already ahead of the game!

Screenshot
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#122 Mar 23 2016 at 4:12 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Look, gbaji; if you want to pretend that the purchasing power in America of the value of the dollar hasn't taken a severe beating over the years....well, I don't know what to say, actually.


Sigh. There's this thing called inflation.

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It's a fact. I know you hate actual facts and all...but it's a fact.


It's also a fact that the average yearly income isn't $800/year. Maybe you should factor that into your thinking.
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#123 Mar 23 2016 at 4:16 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji's awesome link wrote:
A household making $15,000/yr today is well below the poverty line, but yet, they are highly likely to have a refrigerator, indoor plumbing, electricity, tv, cell phone and maybe even heating and cooling. They are highly likely to have government help in making ends meet - food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid etc:.
I don't know how things work in San Diego, but, 15k a year as a single white (non-disabled) guy in South Dakota gets you exactly ZERO of those things.


Sigh...

Do you see where you went wrong?

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gbaji's awesome link wrote:
Their analogue in 1913, making $740/yr had none of these "luxuries". And that was the average income... Can you imagine what the poverty line looked like then?
Squalor.


So you agree that even the poor today live better than the average income earner did back then? So....?
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#124 Mar 23 2016 at 4:23 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Seriously? We're calling "indoor plumbing" a win now?


If you're making a comparison to the economic conditions in 1900, then yes, I think we can include indoor plumbing in our calculations. You get that if we built houses with no insulation, no heat or AC, no plumbing, and with the same building standards and codes that were in place in 1900, more people could afford them today, right? It's kinda relevant when assessing relative costs of things to actually look at what you are getting for your money.
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#125 Mar 23 2016 at 4:28 PM Rating: Excellent
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Medieval serfs lived better lives than cavemen in terms of housing and amenities. Absolutely meaningless but true.

In fact, I bet that's what the feudal merchant class used to tell themselves. "Oh, sure, Farmer John lost his arm to an errant scythe while trying to meet the baron's tax deadline for wheat and then caught fever for six weeks while shivering in his sod hut but at least he wasn't in a CAVE. I simply can't understand why he doesn't appreciate how grand his life really is. Did you know he owns three lead-crafted spoons? Cavemen didn't own spoons. Lazy entitled lie-about is the problem here, really..."

Edited, Mar 23rd 2016 5:29pm by Jophiel
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#126 Mar 23 2016 at 4:46 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
Back to my initial comment, we've gotten bogged down in manufacturing but once upon a time the idea was for technology in general to lighten our burden. For a white collar example, your office may have one person doing accounts receivable, one person doing payroll and another answering phones, each a 40hr task. Then you bring in a computer and AR and payroll now take 15 hours each. Under the old dream, the idea was that your payroll person would now work a 15 hour week, completing their task and being able to enjoy the other 25 hours while still receiving a full wage for their job.


No one, other than maybe some really nutty socialists in Sweden or something, thought that this would happen, much less that this is the "dream" we should strive for. What a ridiculous false assumption.

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Instead, of course, what happens is that the payroll person and the receptionist get fired and the Accounts Receivable person is told that they need to do AR, payroll and answer the phones while only receiving a nominal, if any, increase in pay. They are not being paid for their task but rather for the week and their week must be filled with productivity to warrant a check. Certainly there is an increase in productivity -- you now have one person doing the work of three for the wages of one -- but the remaining employees barely benefit if at all and the discarded employees of course are out of a job. Twenty years later and the company has outsourced its payroll and AR needs to a company in India for 50% of the wages of the remaining worker.


Except that's not what happens. What actually happens is that the company can now do more work with the same number of people, which increases profits, which allows the company to expand, thus not only retaining the employees they already had, but hiring new ones as well (since process improvements as new technology are adopted tend to cross multiple types of jobs). Your assumed course of action relies on companies making the oft-repeated claim by the left of "having enough", and stopping. That doesn't happen. They expand. They make more products and hire more people.

Yes, in the short term, there are layoffs. But those process improvements don't just occur in one place. They occur industry wide. So now, operating expenses for business have decreased because instead of having to hire 3 people just to handle the overhead of payroll, accounts, and phones, you can do this with one. Making new start ups cheaper and more plentiful. Which means that even those laid off find new jobs. And assuming they maintain their skills with the new technology, will be in demand.

Remember also, that these process improvements tend to be gradual. It's not like one day everyone gets replaced by a computer or a robot. It happens over time, and over that same time the market has an amazing tendency to adjust and find ways to utilize this new and more productive labor force. And these same improvements drive up the quantity and quality of goods, while driving down the prices, providing consumers with more options to buy, while maintaining sufficient earnings for them to afford it.

This is how economies work. If this process didn't work, then we should have like 90% unemployment right now. But we don't.


It's just interesting to me that there's this strange but recurring idea that if we just automate "enough" and improve processes "enough", we'll reach a point where profit margins on labor are so high that we can just utilize a tiny fraction of the population actually working at the few jobs that are needed, while everyone else is supported via taxation of those excess profits, and we'll all live in a utopian dream. But that's not how things actually work. What happens is that as process improvements occur, it actually increases the demand for the recently freed up labor, since the potential value of an hours work has now increased. This tends to "solve" the idle labor problem. And it does so far more than trying to just provide the excess population with free lives off the super efficient minority who still work (which, as a model is incredibly problematic).

I get that liberals want that "dream" to happen. And, in typical "cart before the horse" fashion, push for a social service infrastructure to make it happen. But that's all well in advance of actual need (and somewhat self creating). In the real world, increased profits drive increased growth, which drives increased employment. Companies aren't looking for ways to use process improvements to drive down labor costs, but looking for ways to utilize the higher efficiency worker. Getting caught up in the wash along the way will cause you to fail to see the bigger picture here. And that bigger picture is that this process makes our lives much much better over time. And those in the business side of this, actually want to hire people and gain profit from their labor. That the specific form of that labor changes over time isn't really an issue. Not many wagon wheel makers today. Also, not a whole lot of people manually bolting parts onto cars either. Yet, somehow, we manage to find jobs for those people to do.
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