I worked at Lockheed Aircraft years ago and it astounded me to watch all of the behind the scenes garbage the workers were doing to waste company time and to screw up operations so they could make more overtime.
The future will be automation for all the lower skill repetitious operations and later maybe even the higher skill activities (such as engineering, architecture, law, etc.).
The question is what we will do with the lower skilled/less intelligent among us when that happens.
It’s more basic to the liberal mind set. We often debate the differences between liberals and conservatives. One difference is very basic. Conservatives live in the world as it is and liberals live in the world they wish existed. IOW, in her world, you could increase the minimum wage without impacting employment. A conservative would see that wage increases inevitably decrease employment.
“”The question is what we will do with the lower skilled/less intelligent among us when that happens.””
They can get a job like Mika’s.......
This statement reminds me of a quote from Murphy's Law Book 1 - "The intelligence of the planet is a constant but the population is growing."
I am a Safety Manager for a national electrical contractor.
Yesterday we were having an estimator/Project Manager/Division Manager meeting and we were talking about increasing production and efficiency, all the while ensuring safety. These managers were talking about how much work we “should” get done in an 8-hour day - of course they were complaining that we were not getting that.
I finally explained that on most days, in construction, you get about 6-6.5 hours of “production” from your average employee. Younger workers typically produce LESS than 6 hours a day. Studies show this, observations show this, hell anyone who has worked in construction KNOWS this - they just refuse to actually see it as the truth. I explained that those who typically produce MORE than 6-6.5 hours per day, are the ones we have promoted to Field Managers and Superintendents. But your average worker will give you 6-6.5 hours of production each day.
I know, I know...there are exceptions. I have worked in the oil fields and I have worked in the military and several of those hands are 8-10-12 hour producers. But I am talking about your basic residential and commercial construction crews.
EVERY industry has it’s maximum production time - if you are going to be an upper-middle management guy, you should know your industry.
We'll probably just continue electing them to congress.