The Downfall Began with the Invention of the Wheel….

I can distinctly remember being terribly worried about robots taking all of our jobs and imports making the problem even worse. It was a horribly ignorant concern. But in my defense, it was in 1978 and I was in 3rd grade. Mr. Sullivan and his ilk are, presumably, adults, in 2010 no less.

Following Bartholomew Sullivan's logic, if we destroy the technologies that demand this guaranteed income we should see all our salaries rise. I await Mr Sullivan's movement back toward nature.

I know America has always bounced back from the mass layoffs that were caused by better manufacturing processes. But, you reach a point where it goes so far that permanent unemployment reaches levels that could cause unrest.

In aboriginal societies, there's full employment and they produce subsistence levels of food and the occasional loincloth or thatched hut. Today, approximately 2% of all Americans are involved in agriculture (producing far above a subsistence level of food).

By your logic we should have a 98% unemployment rate in America today.

Please explain when America reached high levels of unemployment due to better manufacturing processes. Was that 2006 and 2007 when unemployment in this nation was 4.6%? Are you arguing that the decline from 2007 to today's 10.2% was caused by "better manufacturing processes'?

Sluggish job growth after '92 and '01 are both attributed to higher productivity due to technological development (manufacturing processes is part of this, but of course computers in the service sector have the same effect).

I think both sides can be a little too overzealous on this "technological unemployment" question. In the long run, of course Don is right. We shouldn't repeat the Luddite mistake and shoot ourselves in the foot by threatening the source of economic prosperity. Nevertheless, there's nothing in that long run story that changes the fact that it can cause concentrated dislocation in the short run. We need to respond to that short-run dislocation, not derail long-term growth.

"Sluggish job growth after '92 and '01 are both attributed to higher productivity due to technological development"

Attributed by whom? The economists at your leftist think tank?

Of course, my question to which you responded was not about "sluggish job growth" but rather about the high levels of unemployment to which Arrowsmith referred. You know very well that unemployment levels during and after the 2001 recession were not high. You also know very well that, rather than "permanent" high levels of unemployment, the average unemplyment level for the 25 years prior to 2008 was significantly lower than 1970's levels and about the same as the post-World War II levels before that.

I think I know the source of part of your confusion. Let me clarify - just because I wrote a response to you doesn't mean I'm challenging you or disagreeing with your response to Arrowsmith. I don't think that high unemployment is usually attributable to technological change - I agree with you on that. I wasn't responding out of disagreement on that point. I was responding to you just to add that the point that a portion of unemployment is clearly attributable to technological change, and the "jobless recoveries" have been highlighted as an example of this.

Just because I respond to someone doesn't mean I'm challenging them - sometimes I'm just adding another thought. It's not always adversarial, johndewey. In this case I agree with you on your specific point about high unemployment (I'm a Keynesian after all - the current unemployment is an aggregate demand problem to me, not an aggregate supply issue, which is essentially what unemployment from technological change boils down to).

So I'm disagreeing with Arrowsmith, and adding that unemployment caused by technological change is still something that's out there in certain cases. Don't take every response as a challenge or a disagreement.

What a slippery little person you are. Respond directly to a question I raised and then try to claim you were not responding to it.

1. Jobless recoveries have been almost universally attributed to productivity growth. This isn't exactly headline news. I'm not sure why you think I work at a leftist organization, or why you think that conclusion is especially leftist.

2. Slow job growth matched with faster population growth equals unemployment.

I'm not saying, have never said, and never heard anyone else say that high unemployment is solely caused by technological development. It's a contributing factor. I never realized that was controversial.

"Jobless recoveries have been almost universally attributed to productivity growth."

There is a correlation between hiring and productivity growth after a recession. That's all. But I do not believe it's technological advancement which causes the hiring lag. Rather it's economic uncertainty. I've worked with executives at three different corporations when hiring decisions following recessions were made.

"I'm not saying, have never said, and never heard anyone else say that high unemployment is solely caused by technological development. It's a contributing factor."

I could not disagree more. It's pre-recession out-of-control hiring which enables firms to increase productivity following layoffs. Most large companies carry loads of deadweight when times are flush.

RE: "I could not disagree more. It's pre-recession out-of-control hiring which enables firms to increase productivity following layoffs. Most large companies carry loads of deadweight when times are flush."

How is that a disagreement if I agree with this entire statement?

Pointing this out doesn't refute the fact that technological development contributes to unemployment.

I don't think that "we" need to respond to short-run dislocation. I think that the people who are dislocated need to respond. I'm not saying that creative destruction is not infrequently a brutal process. I'm saying that the idea that "we" as a "society" have the will and the ability to eliminate the brutality is vastly overrated. What "we" need to do is to accept the necessity of the brutality of creative destruction. That is, to accept a personal responsibility to improvise, adapt, overcome.

Sure - don't mistake me for minimizing the personal responsibility to improvise, adapt, and overcome. I'm just talking about making sure there are good education and training programs out there and maybe providing a little more cushion in unemployment insurance since it's going to be somewhat harder than usual to find a job if a town's major industry is shut down or downsized. I'm not talking about coddling or turning away from moving forward. Nobody said that "we" should "eliminate the brutality" - you raised that. Of course "we" aren't capable of that, I'd agree.

"I'm just talking about making sure there are good education and training programs out there and maybe providing a little more cushion in unemployment insurance..."

So, where does personal responsibility come in for you?

Is that a serious question?

Taking classes, sprucing up your resume, applying for other jobs, moving if you have to, seeing the writing on the wall and making all these moves BEFORE the plant closes, striking out in a new occupation to make a new start, etc. etc.

I just approve of the fact that the state of Virginia makes a public investment in some adult education classes at the local community college. Does that really invalidate my advocacy of taking personal responsibility during a tough job loss? My original post was 11 lines of text. You're putting a hell of a lot of emphasis on that last sentence.

Yes. That's a serious question.

I put emphasis only on the sentence I quoted from you. I found it odd that in the same sentence one could support personal responsibility and coerced safety nets that does not reinforce personal responsibility.

Invalidate? Maybe not. It establishes that you and I have different ideas of personal responsibility. I take it further. Have an emergency fund, continue developing marketable skills and making connections, have diverse marketable skill sets in the household, be ready to deliver pizzas if need be, be able to cover fixed expenses with one income from the diverse marketable skill set, keep debt low, don't spend money I don't have, don't count on government support. Reinforcing these values would be far more effective to Virginians than government provided adult education classes.

Well, you don't "take it further" you just take the time to write more down on Cafe Hayek. Cause I would agree with every single one of those preparations.

Besides, most of those sound like rephrasings of things that I mentioned.

Good. Maybe the only difference in our thinking is that I don't think government imposed safety nets are a good thing.

daniel: "providing a little more cushion in unemployment insurance since it's going to be somewhat harder than usual to find a job if a town's major industry is shut down or downsized"

Again, daniel, it's about personal responsibility. As long as your blessed public solution continues bailing out people, they will remain dependent on a public solution. The alternative to a public safety net is personal savings. Your generation as a whole may never understand what itt means to save for a rainy day. Why? Because my stupid generation, and the ones before mine, made it way too easy for all of us to escape personal responsibility. The problem with public safety nets is that they remove incentive for saving and living within ones means. Eventually such safety nets become unsustainable, as we are witnessing now with social security and medicare, and as the Soviet bloc demonstrated so vividly for us.

Hmmm... I pay payroll taxes into the unemployment insurance program every paycheck so that if the unexpected does happen there's a cushion. You may disagree, but I like the program. I'm not dependent on anyone - I choose to get together with fellow citizens to design a program to insure against job loss, and if I ever have to collected from it I'll be living off of my tax dollars, not someone else's dime.

RE: "Your generation as a whole may never understand what itt means to save for a rainy day"

What are you talking about? You can hold off on the lectures - I save and everyone I know (that's not living paycheck to paycheck) saves too.

Every generation thinks the following generation is somehow morally corrupt and heading down the tubes. Get over it. It's what your parents thought of you and it's probably what I'll think of my kids. And all of us are wrong. Don't worry about my generation - we're just fine.

(as for trends in savings, I think that has more to do with monetary policy and the dollar's status as a reserve currency than dependence on welfare... besides I bet the negative savings has more to do with your generation's housing market and credit activities than my generation's saving behavior).

Wouldn't you be better off if that contribution was into your own savings account?

How much does the administration of unemployment insurance cost you?

"I'm not dependent on anyone - I choose to get together with fellow citizens to design a program to insure against job loss, and if I ever have to collected from it I'll be living off of my tax dollars, not someone else's dime."

You didn't choose that. You decided to accept something that was forced on you. I didn't have that choice.

If job loss insurance is something people want to choose to participate in, great. Take it out of government and let State Farm sell it so we can truly choose it.

"Every generation thinks the following generation is somehow morally corrupt"

Did you read all my note, daniel? I said nothing about your generation being "morally corrupt". In fact, I explicitly blamed my generation for screwing up the incentives for saving.

"Don't worry about my generation - we're just fine."

BS. If you believe that, you are much less the economist than I had given you credit for. Your generation will face a far greater public debt load - and either direct or indirect tax burden - than mine ever faced.

"besides I bet the negative savings has more to do with your generation's housing market and credit activities than my generation's saving behavior"

It is not just my generation or your generation or the one ibn between which has not saved enough. It's all of us.

OK, I thought my point about generational failures applied equally well to "your generation and my generation" failed prior generations as it did to "my generation failed your generation". My point is this generational myopia - whether you consider your generation and my generation together, or whether you juxtapose them - is fairly pointless.

My apologies for taking liberties with "morally corrupt". I take that phrasing back.

"don't mistake me for minimizing the personal responsibility ... I'm just talking about making sure there are good education and training programs out there"

Daniel, this is where you are so different from most of us who comment at Cafe Hayek. Though you recognize that personal responsibility is required, you immediately jump into a collective, planned solution. America collectively does not need to "make sure" education and training programs are "out there".

Despite heavy competition from taxpayer-funded public training, private enterprise has been training workers for new jobs for decades. Nationwide schools, such as ITT Technical Institutes and Universal Technical Institute, as well as thousands of local private vocational schools train potential workers in exactly the skills they will need on the job.

Well, I respond to people who inexplicably insist that there is no collective role to play. But yes, that is my difference.

What's strange is that whenever I just say "well, there are a few things 'we' could do", you lead off by trumping that up to me thinking the government can "eliminate the brutality of dislocation", which I don't think at all. And then when I make it clear I don't think that you raise the example of private institutions and training programs as if that's somehow counter to what I'm saying. It's not! ITT Tech is part and parccel of what I'm talking about. It's not a refutation! :) I don't know why people on here have this instinct that if someone supports public role in anything they believe that the private response to problems like dislocation is inadequate or bad.

"I don't know why people on here have this instinct that if someone supports public role in anything they believe that the private response to problems like dislocation is inadequate or bad."

I wouldn't call it instinct so much as experience. I'm experienced with people who use the word "we", either without thought, or as an attempt to include me in something I have no wish to be included in. By way of example, your statement that "there are things that we could do" is just fine if you leave me out of it. Is that your intended meaning? Is your "we" just the group of people who want to do the things you have in mind? Or do you intend to include me in those things against my will? My experience leads me to assume the latter.

It's only inexplicable because of your deeply entrenched collectivist bias.

To a non-collectivist, the first thing the government (the "we" you refer to) should do is get (and stay) the hell out of the way. As in do nothing.

Governments at all levels should be un-doing, not doing. A good place to start is removing obstacles to freedom such as restrictions that make it more difficult to start businesses and laws on issues that are not properly the concern of the jurisdiction in question. After several million pages of statutes and regulations have been eliminated "we" could then assess the situation to get serious about real reductions in government excess.

That's all well and good - I recognize THAT difference between us. What's weird is that you always trump up my position to the idea that the government can solve everything and there is no role for private action.

The problem is that the justification for your collective solution is applicable to ANY solution.

There's no such thing as government with the power to do only what YOU think it should do. Once that power exists, it will do so much more.

The difference is stark at times, but I've never held the belief that you see no role for private action. Unlike you, I'm convinced that government attempts to improve things will almost always end up making things worse in the long term (and often in the short term as well) because of the nature of the beast and the incentives involved.

I'll be guilty of redundancy.

From the O'Grady on Haiti thread below, hard evidence that Don has it right.

"Of course the topic has also been discussed here many times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LaPGIIAyk4

My school teacher sister in College Station sent this to me with the comment that she had been watching 60 Minutes when they made the comments about this topic, but they just made it and slid right on by it. So she did some searching and found the video linked above."

I was disappointed to hear the "rich getting richer & poor getting poorer" theme at an MLK ceremony last weekend.
Many of those in attendance marched and protested in the civil rights movement. They are rightly proud of their participation. To take a position with many hand-in-hand, where there are clear rights & wrongs, to pick the right side, and to make a difference, is a very powerful feeling.
Since they were so successful, many of the problems that remain aren't so clear and easily discerned. And, I think that's where this wrong-headedness wedges it's way in.
If you can view the world as haves vs. have-nots, where vast swaths of people are kept down by the "system", then you can still feel that power of righteousness. A complete lack of evidence won't stop many people from holding that belief.

That being said, if we could replace the convoluted welfare state, minimum wages, and a lot of other bureaucracy with a minimum income & a flat income tax, the facts about the condition of the poor would be a lot more clear, and it might be possible for dialog to proceed based on facts instead of perverse biases.

Some people see other people with more "stuff" and wonder what that other person did to "deserve" it.
The word "earn" is not in their vocabulary.
The only time these people use their brain is to reverse engineer a train of logic to justify their emotional reactions to what they perceive as injustice.

There are probably 10s of 1000s of unfilled engineering positions in America. Nobody has held down the poverty-classes from getting engineering educations and filling those positions. Excuse me, there has been a group holding them down - guilty white liberals.