Hell in A Handbasket

[a completely inoffensive name]

Meh. It complains first that machines aren't doing all of our menial labor intensive tasks in society - and then that industries where machines have replaced man people are unemployed. But if all those laborers can offer to society is their labor, then taking that away with machines will leave them without jobs. And since they have nothing to offer besides labor, why should they live off the fruits of the work of others? We still are a rather long ways off from where all our needs can be served by machines and we can live in luxury without working.

People never asked to become obsolete. When the market moves faster than people anticipate, we should not blame them for having to live off of others in order to support themselves. What we should do, is put in place structures to allow workers to obtain new skills, while they live off the dole so that they can become not obsolete anymore. Train them as electricians, plumbers, engineers, scientists, whatever. Instead, they must face the same scenario that young students do, where they must take on student debt and leave the work force in order to obtain new skills, while at the same time take care of a family, a mortgage, car payments, insurance. They have no mobility and I don't think we should punish entire families because they did not anticipate the future of the manufacturing sector.

Thirty years ago, what was the Dow Jones even at? According to Wolfram Alpha it was 1065.
What is it at today? 13,896
That's a factor of 13 within thirty years. Contrast that with the Dow Jones 60 years ago, at 287.4. A factor of 3.7 times within that period of 30 years.

We have seen growth probably never seen before in human history in terms of productivity and wealth. It's one thing to swap out your car every 5-10 years, or your phone every 2-5 years or your tv every 2-5 years. But a worker isn't a phone or a car or a tv. We can't just swap them out and throw them in the recycle bin when we are done with them. Well, we actually can. But my point is that you are implying that the workers who do not adapt are not victims, so why do they deserve anything? I would not call them victims either, but they are certainly economically slighted. How can anyone anticipate the rapid amount of change that is currently happening and where we may be in the future? For all we know, cashiers could disappear entirely in 10 years, by being replaced by self checkout computers (something which is in progress right now, with some hiccups). Are the cashiers of today deserving of their future hardship because they do not choose to leave work right now and go back to school?

Or perhaps we have raised successive generations of people who think that the opportunities should come to them, and not the other way around.

Back before the crash, could we really blame them? Unemployment in mid-2007 was 4.4%. Today it is "7.8%", I put quotes there because that number is higher than it really is, since those who are unemployed and not looking for work are not counted among other things.

I think it is just hard to switch from a bubble mentality to a depression mentality when everyone on tv and in the government is telling you how we are striving ever closer to the glory days of 2006, so we should continue buying more things and putting on more debt. Of course people are going to say right back, we need to be given jobs in order for us to do that.