President Obama's warning about automation. [View all]

[JHan]

Underneath the nostalgia and hope in President Obama’s farewell address Tuesday night was a darker theme: the struggle to help the people on the losing end of technological change.

“The next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas,” Mr. Obama said. “It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good, middle-class jobs obsolete.”

Donald J. Trump has tended to blame trade, offshoring and immigration. Mr. Obama acknowledged those things have caused economic stress. But without mentioning Mr. Trump, he said they divert attention from the bigger culprit.

Economists agree that automation has played a far greater role in job loss, over the long run, than globalization. But few people want to stop technological progress. Indeed, the government wants to spur more of it. The question is how to help those that it hurts.

The inequality caused by automation is a main driver of cynicism and political polarization, Mr. Obama said. He connected it to the racial and geographic divides that have cleaved the country post-election.

*snip*

Education is the main solution the White House advocated. When the United States moved from an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy, it rapidly expanded high school education: By 1951, the average American had 6.2 more years of education than someone born 75 years earlier. The extra education enabled people to do new kinds of jobs, and explains 14 percent of the annual increases in labor productivity during that period, economists say.

Now the country faces a similar problem. Machines can do many low-skilled tasks, and American children, especially those from low-income and minority families, lag behind their peers in other countries educationally.

The White House proposed enrolling more 4-year-olds in preschool and making two years of community college free for students, as well as teaching more skills like computer science and critical thinking. For people who have already lost their jobs, it suggested expanding apprenticeships and retraining programs, on which the country spends half what it did 30 years ago.

Displaced workers also need extra government assistance, the report concluded. It suggested ideas like additional unemployment benefits for people who are in retraining programs or live in states hardest hit by job loss. It also suggested wage insurance for people who lose their jobs and have to take a new one that pays less. Someone who made $18.50 an hour working in manufacturing, for example, would take an $8 pay cut if he became a home health aide, one of the jobs that is growing most quickly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/upshot/in-obamas-farewell-a-warning-on-automations-perils.html?_r=0
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" they divert attention from the bigger culprit." - In other words, we have to prepare ourselves for a world where capitalist enterprise no longer needs low-skilled workers.

Capitalism has always depended on a ready stream of low skilled workers. Which isn't to say Capitalism doesn't uplift people out of poverty - it does- however it works best in tandem with some communist/socialist principles of collectivism i.e. investing in the commons and placing value on people or "human resources". This hybrid approach is a better guarantee of sustained wealth creation and economic opportunities for all. But, unfortunately, American capitalism prioritizes shareholder value and short term profit above all other considerations. The result of this rapacious and short sighted approach has been wage stagnation and entrenched poverty over the past couple decades.

With increasing automation, the need for low wage labor will be eliminated, and even mid to high skilled jobs may be threatened by mechanized and/or AI systems. Whatever can be made cheaper, even complex processes, will be made cheaper using technology.

Regressive Protectionist ideas won't fix the problem, just prolong the suffering by allowing capitalists to exploit the remnants of a system that is slowly dying. And this Trump government ,backed by Anarco capitalists, won't care - and they won't come up with real solutions to address poverty - like implementing Universal Basic Income, quality socialized healthcare and changing the current paradigm.

Democrats must lead on these issues. We can't say we weren't warned.