Current Events Presentation
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Third Saturday Seminar 2012-2013
Return of the Elders, Unleash your Wisdom
Session 08
“THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WORKFORCE”
THE FUTURE PURPOSE OF PEOPLE
Curt Gibby
Saturday, 18 May 2013
9:30AM til 12:00 noon
Room B-102, (the usual place), Lone Star College – Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive – Conroe, TX – 77384 – 936.273.7000
The Stock Market continues to climb and we hear about job growth, but to quote from the work of Bernard Condon and Paul Wiseman of the AP (in the article that follows):
“There’s no sector of the economy that’s going to get a pass,” says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote “The Lights in the Tunnel,” a book predicting widespread job losses. “It’s everywhere.”
The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession were in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are in midpay industries.
The Great Recession may have initiated the catastrophic job loss, but the reason mid-level jobs are not coming back is technology. In spite of fewer employees, production and profits have soared, and corporations have found they can do more with less.
Parts of society have frequently had their economic existence challenged by technology, but in the past, the new technology benefited society as a whole benefit and the economy grew. Technology in the past replaced brawn, but now it is taking on tasks for which we relied on our brains.
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Although we are told we are in recovery, American Participation in the workforce has fallen from over 66 percent to 63.3 percent over the last 10 years, as of May 14, 2013
Here is the reading assignment. It is a series of three (actually four articles) by Condon, Wisemen and their associates.
I am only giving you the header paragraphs, the links will take you to the published articles.
My thanks to Gene Bruce who brought these articles to my attention. (Bernard Condon is his nephew)
The Great Reset: Disappearing Jobs
WED, JAN 23, by Bernard Condon and Paul Wiseman, The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.
And the situation is even worse than it appears.
Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What’s more, these jobs aren’t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren’t just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.
They’re being obliterated by technology.
Practically human: Can smart machines do your job?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Art Liscano knows he’s an endangered species in the job market: He’s a meter reader in Fresno, Calif. For 26 years, he’s driven from house to house, checking how much electricity Pacific Gas & Electric customers have used.
But PG&E doesn’t need many people like Liscano making rounds anymore. Every day, the utility replaces 1,200 old-fashioned meters with digital versions that can collect information without human help, generate more accurate power bills, even send an alert if the power goes out.
“I can see why technology is taking over,” says Liscano, 66, who earns $67,000 a year. “We can see the writing on the wall.” His department employed 50 full-time meter readers just six years ago. Now, it has six.
Vanishing Jobs: an AP Interactive
Condon shows you the progression of job loss and recovery for 5 American recessions. You can clearly see the differences.
Will smart machines create a world without work?
By PAUL WISEMAN and BERNARD CONDON | Associated Press – Fri, Jan 25, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — They seem right out of a Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have appeared in movies like “I, Robot” and the television show “Knight Rider.”
Now, three years after Google invented one, automated cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S., California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and trucks — jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught of technology?
“All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years,” predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. “Driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy.”
If automation can unseat bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even cabbies, is any job safe?
Vardi poses an equally scary question: “Are we prepared for an economy in which 50 percent of people aren’t working?”
Inventor’s rewards: angry mobs, exile
January 25, 2013 | BERNARD CONDON, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — For every clever man who invents a labor-saving machine, it seems a crowd of angry men rises up to destroy it.
The most famous of the machine haters were the Luddites, the skilled weavers of England who, in 1811, began smashing power looms that were threatening to take their jobs. Their name became a byword for technophobes ever after, but they were neither the first nor the most violent.
For further reading:
Our Economic Pickle
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: January 12, 2013
Wages have fallen to a record low as a share of America’s gross domestic product. Until 1975, wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s G.D.P., but last year wages fell to a record low of 43.5 percent. Since 2001, when the wage share was 49 percent, there has been a steep slide.
Are the American people obsolete?
By Michael Lind, Tuesday, Jul 27, 2010 08:01 AM CDT
The richest few don’t need the rest of us as markets, soldiers or police anymore. Maybe we should all emigrate
And as usual we will start with 45 minutes of Current events:
We saw Moises Naim’s power of “NO” demonstrated first hand when the Lone Star College Bond Issue failed to win the approval of a majority of Voters.
Gilbert and Sullivan couldn’t have created a more farcical scene than is playing in our nation’s capitol as each faction tries to out the other.
Obama Administration Under Siege From 3 Huge Scandals: Here’s Why It Could All Come Crashing Down
IRS does indeed target and intimidate conservative groups.
Justice Department collected phone data
A comment from last time
Too Much of a Good Thing, Peter Orzag
In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” That may read today like an overstatement, but it is certainly true that our democracy finds itself facing a deep challenge
What about Syria?
Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!
Academy for Lifelong Learning: LSC-Montgomery
Registration
You can fill out a registration form (at the end of the schedule PDF link above)
and submit it to us at
LSC-Montgomery
Continuing Education/ALL Office Building E (Room 205)
3200 College Park Dr.
Conroe, TX 77384
or get in touch directly
- Phone: 936.273.7446
- Fax: 936.273.7262
- Sorry, no on-line registrations this semester
See you Saturday – Thanks for your support!
DON’T (be) PANIC(ked)
Curt Gibby
Director, Third Saturday Seminar
P. O Box 73207
Houston, Tx 77273
P.S. As usual if anything in this notice doesn’t make sense, please let me know. (You won’t be the first, I will appreciate it and say, “Thank you,” Curt)
General Election 2014 Are you ready? There is ONLY 1 Year, 6 Months and 18 Days (535 days) until the next General Election, Do you know who you want to vote for?