On the rebirth of socialism
This column by Matthew Continetti had such a promising title: “What to Do About the Rebirth of Socialism: Where it came from and how to stop it.”
Well, maybe that’s biting off too big a hunk to chew in such a small essay—but still, I was surprised that Continetti failed to discuss two of the very biggest elements in socialism’s resurgence: the inherent surface attractiveness of socialism, and the fact that the left has taken over education in this country.
Continetti sees the rise of socialism as fools rushing into the cultural gap made by the withdrawal of religion, and that’s certainly a significant part of the picture:
The bourgeois values of honesty, fidelity, diligence, reticence, delayed gratification, and self-control that once reigned supreme have been contested for many decades by an ethic of self-expression, self-indulgence, instant gratification, and demanding the impossible. Our politics is a competition for control over what Michael Novak called the “empty shrine” at the center of pluralist democracy.
As far as I can see, Continetti is also ignoring the fact that a great many religious denominations today have become dominated by leftist thought (some of the Protestant ones, the current Pope, and Reform Judaism, to name just a few).
I’ve written several posts on the attractions of socialism; it appeals to certain basic aspects of human nature that will always be with us: covetousness, anger, guilt, a desire to feel righteous, and the need for simple-sounding solutions. But there’s also the obvious fact that many many decades ago the left set its sights on taking over the educational system, and has done so successfully.
Lenin is alleged to have said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Well, “never” is a long time. But the basic principle of early indoctrination is there, and the leftists have been wildly successful in that particular arena.
There is no ‘rebirth of socialism’. There is faddish discussion of ‘socialism’. The disreputable Mr. Sailer has offered that the political struggle we’ve been facing bears scant resemblance to what animated political battles in Europe 60 years ago. Rather, it is the mobilization of ‘fringe Americans’ against ‘core Americans’, with the mobilizers being Alvin Gouldner’s ‘New Class’. Donkey-Chompers is a troublesome auxiliary inasmuch as she’s identified business-in-general as an adversary rather than businesses-not-run-by-PLU. Media and tech are kewel and therefore to be spared the abuse everyone else is getting.
Socialism’s ‘attractiveness’ is that of the juvenile. The nanny State appeals most to those who refuse to grow up; the permanently immature.
Every generation naturally produces a certain percentage of those congenitally incapable of maturity.
The Left has, in its March Through the Institutions facilitated a marked increase in that percentage.
The metastatization of that cancerous agent may be too widespread and deep for the patient to survive.
You’re absolutely correct, Neo. I agree with all of Continetti’s points. But without the successful long march through the institutions, there would be no significant resurgence of “socialism”. Or, as I think Art Deco is pretty much on point, a “faddish discussion” of socialism. It is the socialism of the faculty lounge, of the campus coffeehouse and of the bohemian chic popular with urban hipsters that is primarily on the rise. These are “radicals” who cheer for revolution, as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with Friday’s Malbec tasting at the new wine bar.
Superficial, foolish, trendy socialists/progressives are primarily the group that is proliferating. That doesn’t make the situation any less dangerous; for there are still plenty of knaves actively exploiting these fools and their pretensions.
Reversing (or even just halting) this trend will be a Herculean task. I think it starts with defunding much of what passes for higher education in the liberal arts and humanities. There are signs of hope in this regard. Conservative and libertarian leaning Americans seem to be understanding what a sham much of higher education (outside of STEM) really is. I hope this realization will spread to moderate Democrats (the few that still exist) and will result in a collective push for major reform (in the style of Heterodox Academy) or defunding. The pushback will be monumental: “You’re anti-intellectual!!” will be screamed a million times over from useless professors and diversocrats whose primary goal is to stifle intellectual inquiry with rote indoctrination. Yet if there is any hope in stemming the descent to faddish socialism, it has to start with the schools
Socialism relies on fear.
Fear of failure (hunger, homelessness, etc) or fear of work.
“Taken over education” seems a little off. The educational establishment has been dominated by socialists since my mother’s day. As she used to say, to her dying day she retained an excellent knowledge of Russian geography. My teachers were much the same, although more inclined to enthusiasm for Ho Chi Minh than Stalin.
That said, it didn’t work on my mother, or on me.
y81:
I mean exactly that: “taken over education.” I don’t know how old your mother is, but I’m pretty darn old, and I grew up in NY where there were certainly a lot of pro-left and even Communist teachers (a couple of the latter were relatives of mine). And yet what they taught was the basic curriculum of the time, which was not only not socialist or leftist, but was against those things. America was considered great, and liberty was a big deal. In college, there was nothing leftist that I can remember in the classroom, although I’m sure that socialists had a presence there.
If you look at statistics as to the proportions of Republicans and Democrats teaching college, you’ll see a big big change from back then till now. In the humanities, for example, it used to be FAR more evenly balanced. It’s not that there weren’t leftists—there were!—in academia, but they had not taken over. Now they are the vast, vast majority, not just of professors but of administrators as well. And it’s at the grade school level, too (thanks, Bill Ayers and company!)
We have socialism in America and it’s right in front of our eyes but it is never recognized for what is. Every big city slum in America is a wholey owned and operated division of the Democratic Party. Every one is a little socialist republic where everything is free. They have welfare, section 8 housing, WICK, SNAP, EBT cards, Obama phones, school breakfasts and lunches, and after school programs, plus a bunch of other stuff that I’ve probably missed.
Almost all of the jobs are government jobs including working in the welfare bureaucracy, welfare worker, social worker, school teacher, and drug counselor.
Of course the illegitimacy rate is huge, the children are badly educated, the boys are feral, and there is a lot of drugs and crime.
Everyone who wants to live under socialism run by the Democrats, please stand up.
Neo’s comments are dead on.
Bonderenka’s “Socialism relies on fear” is stunningly wrong.
The fat cats and kittens in our colleges and universities both public and private, and in secondary education that are avid socialists are hardly driven by fear.
They have nothing to fear.
We must fear and fight them.
To the death, because the anti-Enlightenment socialist monster has been around since the writings of Rousseau in the mid-1700s and keeps rising at sundown like Dracula. Always looking to the past as a wonderful period when all were equal. That yields Pol Pots. Monsters.
Lyndon Johnson is the author of most of what seems to be Socialism today. Johnson was a leftist follower of Roosevelt who was his first patron. Caro’s biography is worth reading the whole four volumes to learn what a malign influence Johnson has been. Indirectly he wrecked higher education as the leftist anti-war students stayed in school to avoid the draft and became the faculty members of the colleges in the 70s.
Roosevelt was an economic incompetent who prolonged the Depression but he was smart enough to keep Henry Wallace away from the White House. The Great Society began the decline of the family and then the culture.
The extension of adolescence into the 20s and 30s has a lot to do with Socialism. It replaces parents. I saw a cute tee shirt the other day. It said “Don’t grow up. It’s a trap !”
As for the “rebirth” of Socialism/Communism, I don’t think it ever died.
I think that a way of looking at things that has some merit is the view that, with the supposed “fall” of the old U.S.S.R., Socialism/Communism and many of it’s proponents and functionaries–having earned a very bad reputation–merely went underground for a little bit, to change their outfits, color schemes, banners, and pitch and, then, they reemerged, “reframed”, rebranded, and embodied in a whole new slew of various “isims”–Environmentalism, Feminism, etc. all of which–under the guise of saving us from this or that evil or catastrophic condition–are striving to achieve the exact same levels of wealth and influence, the absolute power and control over everyone’s lives that the old Socialism/Communism and it’s apparatchiks had tried to attain.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear.
What motivates someone to support a socialist agenda (who is not in the ruling class of socialism)?
Why do they trade their liberty for security?
Fear.
Fear of doing without.
I was hoping it would be clear that I was being a bit facetious with “fear of work”, although there is truth in that also.
Paul in Boston is on point. Socialism is well established, and has been for many decades. Many here are probably north of 65, you are automatically forced into medicare, like it or not. But curiously my secondary insurance ha
Oops… my secondary insurance handles everything, I never hear anything from medicare. Thankfully, we can afford secondary insurance.
Until very recently people may have believed in socialism, but it was not considered quite American and democratic. The word socialism was practically verboten. Democrats were very careful not to use it.
Now however, they are pleased as punch to make believe socialism is the new best thing since sliced bread.
My biggest rants against socialists is they have no understanding of the police state needed to control what they want controlled. Also, they have no understanding of economics. AOC is the definition of a socialist who knows nothing about economy.
See Soviet KGB defector, Anatoliyi Golitsyn, on the Soviet’s deliberate deception campaign to make those in the West believe in the supposed “death of Communism,” as the U.S.S.R. appeared to “fall.”
See https://thecontemplativeobserver.wordpress.com/category/anatoliy-golitsyn/
Doc d–Those who are out of the public eye, behind and running those Democrat politicians–who are in the public eye, and who are now openly espousing Socialism i.e. Communism in disguise–know quite well that, in the end, it will require a dictatorship and surveillance/police state to make and enforce the drastic, “revolutionary” changes in every aspect of our society, economy, and country that they are advocating as the panacea to cure all that they say ails us.
I’ve written several posts on the attractions of socialism; it appeals to certain basic aspects of human nature that will always be with us: covetousness, anger, guilt, a desire to feel righteous, and the need for simple-sounding solutions.
neo and others: Yes, but … lest we forget the profound dislocations caused by early bare-knuckle capitalism, industrialization and eventually the Great Depression. Those who thought the system wasn’t working and was grinding down ordinary people into the dirt had a point.
What Marx and his followers couldn’t or wouldn’t foresee was the flexibility of capitalism and the bedrock decency of the Judeo-Christian West to ameliorate capitalism’s harshness.
“It is the socialism of the faculty lounge, of the campus coffeehouse …” — Ackler
I may wrong on this, but weren’t Trotsky and Lenin’s success partly a product of their time in Parisian “café society?” I’ll bet Bill Ayers was hanging out in the campus coffee house before he began buying supplies for his bomber. Maybe today’s coffee house leftist is more of a snowflake than in the past, but the smart ones get others to do their dirty work.
Speaking of bombers, the Chicago Haymarket bombing by anarchists was in 1886 and another anarchist bombing happened on Wall St. in 1920. John Dewey began the gov. and socialist takeover of education early in the 20th century.
I think Neo is correct that there has been something of a sea change in the tenor of education in the last 40 years or so. But, to bore you with yet another recollection of mine:
I was rolling out of bed after sleeping off a bit of a hangover at about 8:30 AM Saturday in my dorm room and the phone rang. My roommate’s parents were calling from 1500 miles away and they were anxious about their son who had left the room while I was sleeping.
Eventually, I realized that they had seen on TV that the admin. building on my campus had been seized by student radicals. Where was their son?? Oh no I explained, their son couldn’t possibly be involved in anything like that.
Many hours later I learned the truth. That class in Marxism that my roommate had been taking was not just an academic exercise in philosophy. He was barricaded in the admin building that morning. I had taken a different philosophy course the year prior with the same prof. He looked exactly like a Rasputin character out of Hollywood’s central casting.
The year was 1974. It was a well known campus, but I’ll never tell.
_____
Anarchism, in particular never dies, but submerges and hides at times. We can thank Mr. Blanqui for that. One of the original saboteurs, he decided after many years in prison, that clandestine actions were the best.
I’ll bet Bill Ayers was hanging out in the campus coffee house before he began buying supplies for his bomber.
TommyJay: Nope. I don’t know precisely what Ayers was up to at the time, but Diana Oughton, his lover, and Terry Robbins — both in the Weather Underground high command — died when the bomb they were assembling accidentally detonated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village_townhouse_explosion
Bill Ayers took plenty of chances. He could have died in that explosion or another or gone to prison for a long time. One can rightly despise Ayers for many things, but he was brave, he was smart and he was committed.
I’m sure Ayers spent time in coffehouses, but he was a hardcore activist early on, working picket lines and running a free school. Underestimate him at your peril.
Francis Bacon pointed out four hundred years ago that one reason for sedition and mutiny in any polity was “breeding more scholars than preferment can take off”.
Today, we have millions of people who were led to believe that their (often very expensive) college degree programs would be the royal road to success and status. Now many of them are in jobs which they consider unworthy of them, while chained to years or decades of debt.
Many of these people will be attracted to socialism, especially when it is positioned in a way that makes it higher-status and more fashionable than the forms of populism which appeal to blue-collar workers.
The difference between today’s young socialists and the New Left of the 60s/70s is the New Left socialists came through the university system in the 50s/early 60s when it was much stricter and more conservative.
One didn’t sail through college then parroting leftist cant and get away with it. Those leftists were seriously booked, when it came to debate, then battle-hardened and bloodied by the struggles of the Civil Rights and antiwar movements.
They were serious people, however seriously mistaken, and in comparison AOC is a lightweight embarrassment.
Roosevelt was an economic incompetent who prolonged the Depression
Only in the sense that anything other than optimal policy made the economic recovery more elongated than it would have been otherwise. You don’t get an optimal policy mix when human beings are making the policy. Domestic product per capita in real terms grew by 7.6% a year on average over the period running from 1933 to 1941 and was by 1941 28% higher than it had been in 1929. The labor market remained injured in 1941, and the ratio of employed persons to persons over the age of 16 stood at 0.537 in 1941 with a great many working for alphabet soup agencies. (It stood at 0.559 in 1947 and has bounced around 0.60 for most of the last generation). The Democratic Party enacted a number of measures which reduced employment levels from what they otherwise would have been (e.g. the absurdly high minimum wage which was instituted in 1938), and they’d do that again.
One can rightly despise Ayers for many things, but he was brave, he was smart and he was committed.
You’re wrong about 2 out of 3. And the truly brave did their military service without complaint.
See Soviet KGB defector, Anatoliyi Golitsyn, on the Soviet’s deliberate deception campaign to make those in the West believe in the supposed “death of Communism,” as the U.S.S.R. appeared to “fall.”
See combox denizen trade in notions lunatic enough to make Robert Welch seem balanced and circumspect.
Huxley–Bill Ayers, of course, gave up bombing and took up education as a much surer way to bring about the Communist revolution he desired.
Ayers got several quicky degrees in Education, and pretty soon started to churn out the textbooks, model curriculums, and reading lists that have been very popular and are widely used in our schools of Education.
Ayers is a big gun in educational circles.
It is these texts–premised on the idea that the United States is and always has been a rapacious and evil country, a nation causing all sorts of bad things around the world–which told future “educators” that they had an obligation and duty to be “change agents,” indoctrinating their students as a way to carry out a revolution to fix this situation.
You’re wrong about 2 out of 3.
Art Deco: Thank you for sharing.
The extension of adolescence into the 20s and 30s has a lot to do with Socialism.
Higher education is hypertrophied, and that is delaying entry into the f/t year-round labor force by a couple of years on average. However, employment to population ratios are higher than they were 60 years ago. The age at 1st marriage has gradually crept upward, but so has life expectancy. What’s distressing is the quite novel decline in people’s propensity to marry; marriage rates have since 2000 declined to the point where one might expect about 30% will never marry. If this is a reaction to the explosion in divorce rates, it’s certainly lagged, as that happened from 1967 to 1979.
Ayers got several quicky degrees in Education,
He has a high tolerance for humbug.
Actual smart men put up with teacher training courses for a year because that’s what state law requires.
Art Deco–I don’t understand your comment about Golitsyn. Using plain English, what point are you trying to make?
Huxley–Bill Ayers, of course, gave up bombing and took up education as a much surer way to bring about the Communist revolution he desired.
Snow on Pine: Who’s laughing now? Like I said, Bill Ayers is a serious, hard-working fellow committed to his cause and damned effective at it. Give the devil his due.
Then, there’s the not-insignificant matter of Ayers’ shepherding Obama into Chicago politics and launching Obama’s political career from Ayers’ and Dohrn’s apartment. Give the devil his due.
If one believes Jack Cashill, and I’m more than halfway there, Bill Ayers ghost-wrote much of Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
From where I sit Bill Ayers is a mastermind.
Give the devil his due.
Lenin was pretty much wrong about everything. Including the ability to build the New Soviet Man via education.
The Soviets held Eastern Europe for forty years. At the end of which the Poles were no more Soviet than they had been in 1945.
In Europe Socialism is failing. Jeremy Corbyn is unusual now, but would have been mainstream only thirty years ago.
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If one believes Jack Cashill, and I’m more than halfway there, Bill Ayers ghost-wrote much of Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
Why would you? Obama has more than adequate verbal facility and more than adequate general intelligence. Unlike his chum Ayers, he never wasted any time on teacher-training humbug.
The trouble with Obama is that he is an intelligent and verbally fluid man who has no discernible interest in anything other than golf and college basketball. So, he publishes memoirs which call to mind Robert Hughes’ dictum that an unlived life is not worth examining, but he cannot bring himself to publish any scholarly literature in law (even though he collected a salary from the University of Chicago for 12 years).
Contrast with his predecessor, a man partisan Democrats and ‘dissident right’ trash dismiss as a dullard. George W. Bush will read scores of history volumes in a year.
Art Deco–I don’t understand your comment about Golitsyn.
Perfectly straightforward remark. Can’t help ya.
(even though he collected a salary from the University of Chicago for 12 years).
Did he ? I thought he was an adjunct who taught one class on race and law.
If this is a reaction to the explosion in divorce rates, it’s certainly lagged, as that happened from 1967 to 1979.
I think it is a combination of the Pill (why buy the cow if the milk is free?) and lots of stories of bad divorce results for men. Also video gaming and pornography online are factors. The war on men by the radical feminists doesn’t help.
Art Deco. An aquaintence of mine is a professional ghost writer. He once told me that he was offered a two book deal to write “Dreams from my Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” but turned it down because the money wasn’t enough. Yea, Bill Ayers wrote Dreams.
An aquaintence of mine is a professional ghost writer. He once told me that he was offered a two book deal to write “Dreams from my Father” and “The Audacity of Hope” but turned it down because the money wasn’t enough. Y
He’s pulling your leg. Eleven years intervened between the publication of those two books.
Did he ? I thought he was an adjunct who taught one class on race and law.
IIRC, he was a 40% time lecturer on renewable contracts, and taught boutique courses. Richard Epstein has said he did not participate in faculty governance.
Jeremy Corbyn is unusual now, but would have been mainstream only thirty years ago.
The Trotskyist wing of the Labour Party had its heyday between 1980 and 1988. Pretty sure he’d have been considered fringe before and after. Prior to being elected party leader, he’d never been trusted with any responsibility and had spent 30+ years on the back benches. (He comes from a professional-managerial class family and has a couple of accomplished brothers; his own academic and work history indicates he’s dopey). His abrupt and wholly unexpected emergence as party leader is an indicator of how wrecked is the Labour Party’s rank-and-file membership. It’s as if a national ballot of Democratic Party county committeemen had made Jerrold Nadler the Democratic presidential nominee (except there’s no indication Corbyn’s got the chops to get through law school).
Everybody wants a Free Lunch – one that is paid for with Other People’s Money. Even the rich are happy to accept free lunch invitations.
Neo, you’re absolutely correct that Mathew’s article fails to discuss the surface attraction of socialism. And secondly that it’s so very clear the socialists have taken over the schools, and have been the primary moral influence in schools for many decades.
Not parents, not churches, not even quite Hollywood & TV & Movies, but it schools and teachers who have been the primary moral influence.
Many, if not most, educators would agree with AOC about the moral authority of socialism, and “doing what is right”. The world is indeed unfair; socialism fails partly by falsely changing the unfairness into an injustice, and claiming to be against the injustice (SJWs). Unfair is not the same as unjust, tho it feels like it. Injustices are caused by people, unfairness (like beauty, or brains) is caused by reality / God.
In the article, I see that the Dems in America want to turn the USA into what the USSR has devolved into:
squabbling nationalities and kleptocracies
The tribal identity push is certainly full of squabbling. And the big money the Dems & Tech Giants are throwing around seem like good examples of neo-kleptocracies. Venezuela might seem terrible for most of the people, but there are leaders who have gotten fabulously wealthy.
What is to be done? Yes to Irving’s
voluntary and compulsory insurance schemes—old-age insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, medical insurance.
More, (1) a voluntary Job Guarantee, where the US gov’t offers everybody a job.
UBI (income for all) is terrible — but a job offer for everybody is not. At a rate starting at 80% of a US Army enlisted man’s pay. The gov’t can NOT, ever, give self-respect. Doing a job allows everybody to earn their own respect, as well as the respect of others.
(2) Vouchers for K-12 education. The Rep failure to get vouchers has almost destroyed the US, this should be one of the highest priorities.
(3) Ending tax-advantages and exemptions for colleges which have been discriminating against Reps. Whether by Quotas (20%? half the avg of the last four Pres. elections in pop. vote?), or other means, colleges need more Reps as professors and administrators.
(4) Define a “fair tax” goal. Mine is that the median income increases faster than the top 1%, those at the 99% level. The goal is to maximize the increase of income for the median worker, and that likely means more equal income vs capital gains taxes, and other changes. Reducing the gini co-efficient is not the best goal; we should be pushing this 99%/50% income ratio to be changing over time by the 50% amount getting larger.
(3a) For all schools with endowments large enough to pay 4 year scholarships for half of the students or more (like Harvard, Stanford, Ivies, etc), restrict their enrollments by income: no more than 1% of their students can be from parents in the top 1%; no more than 10% of the students can have parents in the top 10%; no more than 20% of the students can have parents in the top 20%.
In income, avg of the prior 4 years.
Let’s get more “egalitarian” at these elite tax-advantaged hedge funds (with associated colleges attached).
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Art Deco:
Why would anyone believe Cashill?
Have you read Cashill’s arguments on the subject? I don’t say he’s correct, so it would be a big stretch to say that I believe him, but he makes a fairly decent argument and I think he certainly may be correct. I’ve written a bit about Cashill here and here, and you can find Cashill’s articles on the subject here.
Yes, I’ve read them and forgot them. They simply weren’t compelling. Cashill has zero background in form criticism, which I don’t think is an endeavour in which one can be an autodidact.
Of all the things of which you might accuse Barack Obama, ineradicable writer’s block is about the least plausible. One thing he knows how to do is spew verbiage.
And Cashill is just this side of a serial conspiracy theorist, which should reduce to zero anyone’s inclination to take as stipulated any fact he offers. Same deal with Jerome Corsi, except that at least one of Corsi’s co-authors is not tainted in this way.
but a job offer for everybody is not. At a rate starting at 80% of a US Army enlisted man’s pay. The gov’t can NOT, ever, give self-respect. Doing a job allows everybody to earn their own respect, as well as the respect of others.
The CCC did that in the 1930s. One of Roosevelt’s good ideas along with the FDC. I don’t know if it would work with the millennials today. They are soft and nearsighted from smartphones. The US Army in 1942 benefitted from the CCC. The 1917 Army was shocking for the poor condition.
Suburban Republicans killed vouchers in California.
Art Deco:
Obviously, you’re free to come to that conclusion (although, by the way, the verbiage that Obama spews when on his own is nothing like the quality of what is seen in Dreams—because of course, as I’m sure you know, quantity is not the same as quality.) As for me, I am undecided on Cashill’s thesis.
But that’s not the point. The point is that you wrote to huxley “why would you?”—believe Cashill, that is. If one reads Cashill’s work on the subject, there are plenty of reasons a person could and would find his thesis extremely believable. And the facts on which his thesis about Obama and Ayers and the book are based are pretty straightforward, and have to do with timing and previous writings both of Obama and of Ayers.
One doesn’t have to agree with Cashill to understand that someone of intelligence could certainly agree with him. Even if that someone isn’t you.
I have tended believe that someone else wrote Obama’s books.Somebody in 2008 pulled a prank and put out an excerpt from “Dreams” and attributed it to Sarah Palin. The attacks the grammar and style were hilarious. Maybe it was the editor.
Correction: Earlier I meant to say:
If one believes Jack Cashill, and I’m more than halfway there, Bill Ayers ghost-wrote much of Obama’s book, “Dreams of My Father.”
Not “The Audacity of Hope.”
I would say a big reason for the rebirth of socialism is that computers and robots are reducing jobs in increasingly large swaths.
This isn’t going away. “Learning to code” is not really the answer for most people. Some new jobs will open because of these advances but I remain unpersuaded that we aren’t facing massive unemployment problems, whether people want to work or not.
I don’t have an answer for this. I haven’t read anyone who does. Unless we are willing to call large numbers of people “useless eaters” and let them starve, I don’t see how we have any choice but to subsidize the unemployed in ways that look a lot like socialism.
Obama’s books whether ghost-written or not deserve only to be shunned. The verbal Obama is a villain; why should we read “his” writings when we are appalled at his words and lies, folks?
“Folks” is an Obama pet word, BTW.
I remain unpersuaded that we aren’t facing massive unemployment problems, whether people want to work or not.
Why open borders is insane.
A couple of months ago I happened to run across a video which showed the capabilities of several different types of robots that some companies had developed.
One looked like a headless four-legged dog, and was able to open doors and walk through them.
One was humanoid in size and shape, and was able to climb stairs, to jump across a few foot gap, to do a back flip and land on it’s feet, to hang drywall, to open a door to the outside, and to successfully walk through a forest, over uneven and slippery, snow covered ground.
One was shaped like a snake, whose body motion allowed it to climb objects, and to wriggle into areas where humans are too big to fit.
Moreover, I had the suspicion that the test robots that were shown were not even their current, more advanced models.
I have also heard described and recently seen a short video about an almost exclusively robotic operation now being built—a large warehouse full of robots and a very few human supervisory personnel—that is being built to pick, count, package, and send packages of prescription drugs to Veterans.
I had no idea that the robots companies were developing were that far advanced, and that’s only the few that I happened to see or to become aware of.
Then, of course, there are the driverless cars that are starting to be tested.
Bottom line, it seems pretty inevitable—and, it seems as well, sooner rather than later—that a lot of workers—all told tens of millions of workers—truckers and cab drivers, inventory takers and stockers in stores, fast food workers, delivery drivers of all sorts, pickers and processors in fulfillment centers, postal workers, etc., etc.—are soon to be made obsolete, replaced, as the low level, routine, and relatively simple jobs they do are taken over by robots.
Robots that ultimately cost less—because they can work 24/7, 365 days a year, never get sick or take days off, never go out on strike, require no health or other benefits, don’t need a break or lunch room, a coffee pot in the corner, and a nurse on duty, can’t get pregnant or require a day care center, likely require less supervision, can’t unionize, and can ask for neither promotions nor raises.
The question is, what steps are being taken now to raise public awareness about the radical change that is bearing down upon us, to prepare to retrain all of those tens of millions of soon to be out of work workers? Especially, since I presume, that a lot of them have neither the interest, nor the education, nor the aptitude to “learn to code.”
What happens to them, to their incomes, and their families?
I see the fast approach of the equivalent of the tremendous— but long forgotten—career, family, life, and society wrecking economic and social upheavals that were caused by the Industrial Revolution.
Despite what looks like a genuine crisis fast approaching, I see absolutely no attempts being made to raise public and official awareness of the nature, effects, and consequences of the tidal wave that is about to sweep though our economy and society, and no attempts to get ready to somehow ameliorate and deal with the situation.
No steps to establish a tremendous number of organizations focused on retraining workers and up-grading their skills, the formation of many new technical colleges and the expansion of existing ones, etc.
This revolutionary change cannot have gone unnoticed by those who follow business and technical trends.
Why, then, the willful blindness and lack of preparations?
Why, as well, the willingness of many of our Leftist political leaders to make determined efforts to facilitate the entrance of many millions of likely even less skilled workers, illegal aliens, to bum rush our border, and to make this situation orders of magnitude worse than it will already be?
The first, and only, Kurt Vonnegut novel I ever read was Player Piano, which depressed the heck out of the very young me, just setting out in life. This article provides a good summary, “Reeks, Wrecks and Robots”:
Snow on Pine…”I see the fast approach of the equivalent of the tremendous— but long forgotten—career, family, life, and society wrecking economic and social upheavals that were caused by the Industrial Revolution.”
There’s a very interesting 1836 book about the social impact of mechanization. The author (Peter Gaskell) viewed steam power as having wreaked devastation among the people employed in the textile trades, and feared that this was only the beginning. He quotes an eminent engineer: “The cottager looks upon the neat paling which fences his dwelling; it was sawed by steam. The spade with which he digs his garden, the rake, the hoe, the pickaxe…every implement of rural toil which ministers to his necessities, are produced by steam…Applied to architecture, we find the Briarean arms of the steam engine every where at work. Stone is cut by it, marble polished, cement ground…gratings and bolts forged…all owe to steam their most essential requisites.”
And this widespread application of steam has driven prices down, permitting ordinary people to buy things–especially items of apparel–once restricted to the richest few. But Gaskell questions what benefit the masses of people are actually getting out of this. “The advantage to the poor man, according to (another contemporary commentator) is, that his wife can purchase a printed calico gown for 2s, 6d. This is a fact that he repeatedly insists upon. It seems to us a very poor compensation for poverty, expatriation, or the workhouse.” (Quite similar to the point sometimes made about cheap imported goods at Wal-Mart in our own time.)
So, in Gaskell’s view, the reduced prices of so many items will not equal in their impact the reduction in employments and wages driven by the new technologies. There is no refuge from the process; commenting on a then-new improvement in spinning machinery, he says, “Spinning machines, when first introduced…at once destroyed domestic spinning: the Iron Man of Roberts will as surely destroy the factory spinner. It is utterly ridiculous to say that the extension of the trade will aborb the discharged hands–it is impossible.” And machines can even make machines (mirroring, again, some of the present-day concerns about artificial intelligence.) Automation will focus on the elimination of the highest-cost workers, so adult men, in particular, are in danger of becoming largely obsolete.
I reviewed the book at length here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56406.html
The rise in the attraction to socialism and the simultaneous (or nearly so) withdrawl from organized religion and faith fit pretty nicely together. Continetti’s article does make some valid points – and misses a couple as Neo says. But the essence of the issue can be found in Jeramiah 17:5-10 – the prophet clearly tells Israel that depending on men for strength instead of God leads to ruin. Depending on the socialist ideal is just one form of that – as is over the top defense of capitalism or any leader – all institutions of ‘persons’ are flawed because humans are flawed; total reliance on them is bound to be subject to disappointment or worse. That is why the Constitution is such an exceptional document – its system of divided powers and checks and balances were intended to mitigate the flaws inherent in human endeavors, and the Founders were clear that it depended upon people of high moral character to be entrusted as leaders and moral people to participate as citizens. Socialism is a siren’s song to those in our current culture who see that the only way is to ‘make someone do something’ to stop suffering and disparity. Convincing those attracted to it is a heavy task, because their emotions guard their intellect – and that is hard to work through. But it can be done.
As an ex-liberal I’d rather spend my time with a stereotypical conservatives than a stereotypical modern day liberal. Liberals today are filled with indignation, are condescending, arrogant and can be straight out a_sholes. I had one who simply stated everything that was “wrong” with Texas was everything that wasn’t secular and cosmopolitan.
Snow on Pine, David Foster. Wow! Great comments.
Often the Luddites are disparaged as short-sighted troglodytes, but as David Foster quotes Gaskell, “It is utterly ridiculous to say that the extension of the trade will absorb the discharged hands–it is impossible.”
That’s what happened to that generation of weavers. They lost their work and there was no happy ending for most of them. They did not become loom programmers. Later, the Industrial Revolution proved a boon, but not in the near-term for the workers displaced.
In the long run, optimist that I am, I believe it’s OK. Except it will require a fundamental rethinking of labor. The majority of people will not have jobs. Even the professions will be hit hard.
Redistributing wealth so people don’t starve will be the easy part. The hard part will be finding ways for people to find meaning in their lives without work.
I sometimes think the hippie era was advanced reconnaissance for that world.
Well the third world certainly isn’t fearing automation, nope, basic everyday survival is their issue. It seems to me that the problem of technological change and workplace dislocation is avoiding the socialist “answer.” That type of answer, socialism, has been shown to lead to mass murder and societal collapse wherever implemented.
Huxley–A month or so ago, I happened to run across one of Jordan Peterson’s Youtube videos, in which he was discussing the concepts of intelligence, of I.Q., and one of the things he said really struck me.**
He explained that our military—especially in Emergency situations in which our country might be under attack, and our military in desperate need of huge numbers of easily trained and competent military personnel—needed to have ways to sort out which people they were recruiting could be quickly and successfully trained to do many different tasks, to take orders, to become officers, etc., and that they had done a lot of I.Q. research.
Peterson said that the military had taken a very careful look at the statistical data they had accumulated from 100 years of basic I.Q. tests they gave to incoming recruits, and the subsequent results of these people’s performance in the military.
According to Peterson, the result was that the military determined that it was simply impossible to train anyone with an I.Q. of 83 or less to perform any task.
Thus, they just never recruit people with I.Q’s of 83 or below.
Peterson then said that, according to the data, one in every ten people i.e. 10% of the population, have an I.Q. of 83 or lower.
Thus, the problem is, what to do with them?
How to deal with the large proportion of the population who are simply “untrainable,” who cannot be successfully trained for any job?
One of the implications being, I think, that such a large percentage of the population—if dissatisfied and angry enough—could cause major social and economic disruptions.
**See the key excerpt here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Ur71ZnNVk
I don’t have an answer for this. I haven’t read anyone who does. Unless we are willing to call large numbers of people “useless eaters” and let them starve, I don’t see how we have any choice but to subsidize the unemployed in ways that look a lot like socialism.
Again, employment-to-population ratios are right near the median of the last generation and are fairly similar from one occidental country to another.
I think the ‘robots will take all the jobs’ meme is questionable. The productivity statistics certainly don’t show any sharp upward break.
A lot of the people writing about these issues don’t seem to have a good understanding of how much automation has already taken place, indeed much of it more than 50 years ago. For example, here are two automation innovations–one in manufacturing and one in transportation–that are 97 years old and 65 years old, respectively. I’m confident that if I issued press releases on these, with some slight changes in the language, I’d get a lot of gee-whiz media coverage.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/54252.html
There is an interesting history of public and expert concerns about “inventing ourselves out of jobs”, which I discuss at the series of posts starting at the above link. Job loss in the music industry, as a result of phonographs, radio broadcasting, and talking pictures, is a largely-forgotten example.
Art Deco: “Again, employment-to-population ratios are right near the median of the last generation and are fairly similar from one occidental country to another.”
Between the two generations, there has been a lot of change in the composition of the workforce, and that has some implications that aren’t completely clear. For example, there are many more mothers with young children in the workforce than in the past, and recent stats seem to show far fewer men 25- 35 are employed. The numbers may add up to the same, but the results can be different in terms of societal impact.
David Foster: I’m up for good news. I’ll work my way through your Chicago Boyz essays.
In the meantime — these days what are the middle-aged guys doing who lost their jobs when the XYZ plant closed? Was the music industry ever so large that it was much in comparison?
My impression, perhaps mistaken, is a lot of those guy maybe ended up at Walmart or McDonald’s or maybe never worked again — like the Ned Ludd’s friends.
Snow on Pine: I saw that Jordan Peterson video and was impressed by it–especially Peterson’s near-despair that so far there is no way to increase IQ.
This is tragic as our society requires more intelligence for one’s viability. I’ve seen enough people in my family and from my schooling who have painful lives on account of society’s complexity.
Huxley—Duh.
(I know that I don’t much like change–which for me means instability, unpredictability, disorientation–the ground shifting–far too quickly–under my feet; turning around and finding things I took as solid and fixed, comforting, and orienting–customs, and buildings, and neighborhoods among them–good things all–changed and/or swept away. )
Despite complaining about how all sorts of new technologies and “things” that have come on the scene since I was born in the mid 1940s–TVs, computers, cell phones–have increased both the complexity and the tempo of our current day society, changed the focus and priorities of a great many people’s attention, plus increasing the speed and magnitude of often bewildering and upsetting changes across the board, I’ve never stopped to consider how that increase in complexity and tempo–the sheer magnitude of change–might be leaving more and more people behind, as they are unable to successfully deal, keep up with those changes.
P.S.–Some people simply refuse to adapt, and–if they are in a position where they can still function–stick with things as they were, and the things they are familiar with.
For example, when computers started to replace typewriters in the research organization I was a part of, at least one of our analysts just refused to give up writing his reports on the typewriter he was used to, and flat out refused to learn how to use computers.
Someone with enough seniority and clout could get away with this, but that meant that they sometimes had to ask others–who did adapt–to do their computer searches for them.
TommyJay on February 16, 2019 at 10:28 pm at 10:28 pm said:
…
The year was 1974. It was a well known campus, but I’ll never tell.
* * *
In 1972, I cast my first vote in a presidential election — for George McGovern, because, Nixon. Watergate seemed to vindicate that choice.
In 1975, in graduate school, after a year studying government & political science, I knew a couple of the other TAs who were leftists*. Some brouhaha got their backs up, and I was invited to attend a meeting to plot some kind of building take-over.
By the time the discussion ended, they had convinced me that the entire bunch of them were half-witted ninnies with no grasp of either politics or tactics, and not very nice people either.
It’s probably too much to say that I moved to the Right side of the line rimmediately, but it certainly started me on the journey.
*(at the time, they were almost equally balanced by rightists; the only thing both sides agreed on was that the one blatant Communist grad student in the department was a complete idiot, and disliked equally by all)
The Middle East post linked a piece in a Jewish website, and turned up this article, which is relevant to the rise of socialism in America.
https://tsionizm.com/opinion/2019/01/23/4434/
David Foster–I don’t think that “robots will take all the jobs,” but I do think that, as robots move into the workplace, and become more capable, they will start to replace workers in the lowest skilled, more routine, repetitive jobs.
Then, it is likely that companies will find it makes economic sense to have robots–if they can–work their way up from the bottom of the skill ladder, to replace as many human workers as they can who are doing increasingly more skilled jobs.
Obviously, there are going to be a lot of jobs that require a human, with human mentality, intuition, talent, and outside the box thinking capabilities to successfully carry them out.
But, that still leaves a large percentage-perhaps quite a large percentage–of more repetitive, routine jobs in which robots could probably replace human workers.
Some people simply refuse to adapt, and–if they are in a position where they can still function–stick with things as they were, and the things they are familiar with.
Snow on Pine: It’s not just the technology. It’s also the maddening labyrinth of bureaucracy and regulations and awareness of how society works.
My younger sister, not that bright but not retarded, would probably be dead or in serious trouble if her older sister and myself didn’t pinch hit for her when it came to dealing with medicine, the law, employers, problem people and government agencies.
There are a whole lot of people who don’t have smarter people to intervene for them when the going gets complicated.
David Foster–I don’t think that “robots will take all the jobs,” but I do think that, as robots move into the workplace, and become more capable, they will start to replace workers in the lowest skilled, more routine, repetitive jobs. –Snow on Pine
David Foster: This is what I see, though I also see computers slicing deep into jobs susceptible to expert system analysis. That includes paralegal, legal and even medical work.
I understand the conventional argument that job doors close and job windows open and it works out in the medium or long term (though tough luck for the older workers who don’t have the time or resilience to switch careers).
However, I’m embarrassed, having lived through the dotcom bust, to say, “It’s different this time.” But I say it’s different this time.
For instance, while I have my doubts about automated trucks in the near-future, it is coming. Trucking is the largest single employment category. What happens when several million truckers are phased out?
Yeah, I get it that when big bands died, several thousand musicians learned to play rock or teach piano or get a job at the plant. But what if entry level jobs are drying up or a different decent job takes four years of college or more?
I’m saying computers and robots may be eating jobs faster than we can adjust.
Speaking of sixties radicals, it turns out Jussy Smollett’s mother was buds with Angela Davis and other sixties figures.
_______________________________________
Smollett’s mother Janet Smollett is an activist. She grew up during the civil rights era and marched alongside prominent figures, including members of the Black Panther Party and Angela Davis.
In fact, his mom and Davis are good friends, and Smollett has spent a lot of time with the influencer throughout his life.
https://www.ajc.com/news/world/things-know-about-jussie-smollett/5JRipU3t5jiMrcRI3JduiK/
________________________________________
Again, these radicals were serious people. Their convictions were not at the mood ring/pet rock level. They lived those convictions and they passed them on.
Angela Davis. Sweet Black Angel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2TmoHpzk9Q
Doc d said:
“My biggest rants against socialists is they have no understanding of the police state needed to control what they want controlled.”
I think they completely understand; therefore, the push to limit, or repeal, the 2nd Amendment.
and recent stats seem to show far fewer men 25- 35 are employed. The numbers may add up to the same, but the results can be different in terms of societal impact.
No, there have in the last 10 years been lower employment rates for men-in-general (and for women-in-general). The phenomenon is not local to that age range.
As we speak, about 80% of the population between their 25th and 55th birthdays is employed. That proportion varies little by age between those termini. For women, around 73% are employed at any one time and for men around 86%.
There was a secular decline in the general employment-to-population ratio among men over the years running from 1948 to 1982. However, there was very little change in that ratio during the period running from 1982 to 2009; the ratio bounced around 0.71. It was coincident with the financial crisis that it declined to 0.65. There was a parallel (if smaller) decline in the ratio for women (from 0.563 to 0.537) after the crisis. BTW, secular increases in employment-to-population ratios among women came to a halt around about 1995.
These ratios refer to the whole population over the age of 16, not to the 25-55 age range. In 1996, 20.7% of the population of the U.S. was over 55. In 2014, the figure was 24%. It’s not surprising you have lower levels of labor mobilization during the latter period among men and women.
According to some authorities, the earliest saying in the English language, predating Shakespeare by several centuries, is some form of the phrase, “needs must when the Devil drives,” i.e. when necessity forces you to do something, no matter how distasteful, you will do it.
But, you have to have the capability—the aptitude and the tools—to do it, to adapt.
There are reasons—of aptitude, attitude, education, and circumstance, reasons social, financial, and familial—for why someone is a long-haul trucker, why some people are cops and not grade school teachers, why some people are loggers, plumbers, or flipping hamburgers, and not working in HR, in a TV studio, nuclear power plant, or as a research scientist.
Somehow I don’t think that a lot of superannuated low skill workers are going to want to, or to be able to put in the several years of college necessary to retrain themselves for much higher skilled jobs.
Shorter duration Technical and Trade school courses seem much more likely and beneficial.
Thus my distress above, about the apparent situation in which no one who is in a position to do something to prepare, seems to be much aware of, interested in, or calling public attention to the technological change—equivalent in disruptive power to the old “Industrial Revolution”—quickly advancing toward us, much less preparing for it by creating programs to expand existing and to create a whole slew of new Technical and Trade schools to retrain those thrown out of their former jobs by this advancing technology, robots in particular.
As Huxley mentioned above, older—set in they ways—people, are likely going to have a particularly hard time finding alternative employment, because it is many of those alternative, lower skilled jobs that are the jobs that are also candidates for being done by robots.
I am generally not a fan of government programs—which usually do far more harm than good, and tend to grow and lurch on, zombie like, forever after—but this particular problem seems to be one of such large scope and ramification that only a large, national level response might be able to offer some real help and amelioration.
One additional point: automation does not always result in higher skill requirements, sometimes just the opposite. A loom-tender in a steam-powered mill needed less skill than a hand weaver working at home. A cashier using a POS system in a grocery store requires less skill than a cashier who has to enter item prices and make change manually. A manager in a chain store where inventory control is managed centrally needs less skill than a traditional store manager who has to make inventory decisions himself.
In general, higher automation probably bifurcates skill levels: a small number of higher-skilled people, and a considerably larger number of deskilled jobs.
David Foster–It seems to me that–given the choice between what may be troublesome, fractious human employees and a robot, an employer might tend to choose the robot.
In general, higher automation probably bifurcates skill levels: a small number of higher-skilled people, and a considerably larger number of deskilled jobs.
One advantage humans have over robots is the ability to adapt and change as the jobs shift. Automation is ideal in mass production, Fords or iPhones. The inventory control issue is an example of why Sears is gone. I worked for Sears back in the 60s. They had six old ladies keeping the inventory records for the largest Sears store in the country. Like so many Sears employees with profit sharing stock, they had been there for years and had long vacations. When one was on vacation, nobody took over her work. The warehouse inventory was years out of date. We had no idea what was in there.
They were late adopting computer inventory control. That was a failure of management. Sears could have been Amazon.com. They closed the catalog business the year Amazon began. Automation will not do the thinking.
There are three classes of people for whom socialism is attractive:
1. Academics and intellectuals. They are convinced that they are smarter and more deserving of running the affairs of their less fortunate compatriots.
2. Lazy people who want free stuff, and are not smart or educated enough to see that dependence on the state is a trap and a route to slavery.
3. Unscrupulous bastards who understand precisely, that as more power is concentrated in the state, the more opportunities there are for people such as themselves to accumulate power and wealth through corruption.
Certainly, there are subsets within the three categories above, but I think these are the primary ones.
Snow on Pine…”It seems to me that–given the choice between what may be troublesome, fractious human employees and a robot, an employer might tend to choose the robot.”
Sometimes the right choice, but OTOH, see “Automation is Fragile, People are Antifragile” at the Don Peppers link from my post Automation, Aviation, and Business:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57060.html
From a tribute to the just deceased pollster Pat Caddell,:
“Pat was still gazing over the horizon when I last saw him, and there was something out there that scared him.”
See https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/pat-caddell-could-see-over-the-horizon/
Then, this,
A couple wearing MAGA hats and peacefully minding their own business, shopping at a Sam’s Club in Bowling Green, Kentucky came so close to being gunned down for their political beliefs.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/02/man-arrested-in-kentucky-after-pulling-gun-on-a-couple-over-their-maga-hats/
As Pat Caddell foresaw, something really bad, to quote the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “something wicked this way comes.”
It may not be tomorrow, it may not be next week, but it’s coming.
The increase in automation and the decline of the necessity for low-skilled workers was addressed in a short story by Cyril Kornbluth in 1951, called “The Marching Morons.” Kornbluth’s protagonist’s solution to the problem of more automation and low birthrate among the elites was to have factories built which employed some of the “Marching Morons,” which produced goods which were shipped to other factories employing more “Morons,” who scrapped them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Kornbluth was close, but not exactly right. What we have done in response to those issues is create the “Great Paper Wheel” in which millions of people circulate paper (soon to be replaced by electronic) documents to others, around and around in a great circle. Tax returns, application forms, permits, reports, authorizations, denials, audits, litigation, appeals, ad infinitum. Not to worry folks, the Great Paper Wheel has room for everybody. (See “Parkinson’s Laws,” by C. Northcote Parkinson. Required reading for today’s world.)
We should attack socialism’s resurfacing with humor. The former Soviet Union supplied many jokes: “Under capitalism, man exploits man, Under communism, it’s exactly the opposite.” Or “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” I’m sure Artfl can supply us with many more.
Art Deco: “No, there have in the last 10 years been lower employment rates for men-in-general (and for women-in-general). The phenomenon is not local to that age range.” Can you cite your source?
See https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm The table clearly shows that men 25 to 34 have dropped from 93.2% in 1996 to 88.8% in 2016 and men 20 to 24 have dropped from 82.5% in 1996 to 73.0 in 2016 (79.6 in 2006). Women 25 to 34 have held dropped from 74.4 in 2006 to 74.5 in 2016.
What we have done in response to those issues is create the “Great Paper Wheel” in which millions of people circulate paper (soon to be replaced by electronic) documents to others, around and around in a great circle.
The “Electronic Health Record” is an example of this idea run amok. I used to be an enthusiast for medical informatics. There were a number off success stories 30 years ago when I was active in the American Medical Informatics Association but the lunatics have taken over. The Obamacare implementation showed all the signs of low bidder and it was all about billing and not clinical care.
I also used to review medical records in med-mal cases. The EHR and risk managers have made them almost useless.
The table clearly shows
This pdf document gives you a snapshot of the employment situation in 1999, when the employment-to-population ratio was at its postwar peak.
https://www.bls.gov/cps/aa1999/CPSAAT3.PDF
You will note that at that time, employed persons accounted for 89% of the non-institutional male population between the ages of 25.0 and 55.0 and 74% of the non-institutional female population. You will notice that the most granular statistics are for sets of 5 age cohorts (25-29, 30-34, &c). You will notice for the women that all 5-year sets have employment levels between 72% and 76% and that for the men all the sets have employment levels between 84% and 91%. In both cases, the age range with the lowest level of employment are those between 50.0 and 55.0.
Here is the data for 2018:
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea08a.htm
You will note that the employment to population ratio for men between 25.0 and 55.0 has the last several months been fluctuating slightly around 86.1%. That for women has been fluctuating around 73.3%. The more granular date is in 10-cohort sets. There is no discernible age-related variations in employment levels for women. In all three sets (25-34, 35-44, 45-54), employment levels are just north of 73%. You will notice some slight variation for the men, with the 35-44 cohorts having employment levels around 88%, the 45-54 cohorts having employment levels just shy of 85%, and the 25 to 34 cohorts having employment levels just shy of 86%.
What these data show is that about 3% of the male population are hors de combat for some reason. The loss in employment is manifest in all age sets. It’s higher for the 25 to 34 set (four % points shaved off) than it is for the 35 to 44 set (two % points shaved off) or the 45 to 54 set (two % points shaved off). Whatever the cause of it, it is rather florid to refer to a reduction in employment levels from 90% to 86% with the phrase “and recent stats seem to show far fewer men 25- 35 are employed. “
The increase in automation and the decline of the necessity for low-skilled workers was addressed in a short story by Cyril Kornbluth in 1951, called “The Marching Morons.”
In one of Edward Banfield’s works, he provides a list of quotations from
‘public intellectuals’ on the future of the labor force (e.g., courtesy Paul Goodman, “for the uneducated, there will be no jobs at all”). Banfield’s dissection of this, and his presentation of regnant models of the labor market, begins with, “You may notice that none of the forgoing is an economist…”. So, we get the wisdom of sci fi aficionadoes.
About 15% of the working population consists of ‘office and administrative support’ personnel (some private sector, some public). In re Parkinson’s law, public sector workers account in toto for about 14% of the whole working population. No clue how many you think have been stashed in those jobs by civil service managers and private-sector supervisors in some sort of philanthropic exercise.
Roy Nathanson on February 18, 2019 at 11:06 am at 11:06 am said:
…
2. Lazy people who want free stuff, and are not smart or educated enough to see that dependence on the state is a trap and a route to slavery.
* * *
Reminded me of this classic essay by Taxi Hack, who used to comment at Old Hot Air before Facebook took all the fun out of it. If you can stand the depressive milieu, he has a lot of old posts about real people in real world traps.
This excerpt occurs pretty far down in the post; re-reading it reminded me that we’ve been talking about the subversion of America (by socialists and others) for a pretty long time, and things aren’t getting any better.
https://taxicabdepressions.com/?p=1193
The Pig Trap
Posted: 14th April 2014 by Taxi Hack
I saw this quoted by a commenter at Hoyt’s blog last week, in a non-copyable format.
A search turned up several postings but no original author, so here it is.
“Archipelago Gulag” must be a required book at every school on par with Anne Frank diary. This is a travesty that it is not. Average American knows nothing about cruelty of the Stalin’s Communist rule.
Don’t know if anyone is still following this thread, but I have a new post on the emergence of automated sewing technology and the US and internation consequences:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59010.html
Hussein’s verbiage does not mean he is bored enough to dictate or write anything. Different subject fields. A speaker isn’t necessarily a good writer, especially when his hypnotic speech patterns are based on teleprompters.