https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60616.html

Although automation has historically led to more jobs and higher real wages, this is not to deny that it has sometimes led to periods of transition which were very painful for a lot of people. Here’s a very interesting book about the social effects of the Industrial Revolution, published in 1836:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/71371.html

No, that’s their argument – that he killed because this CEO was causing the death of many people by denial of care.

It’s a ludicrous argument, but one held by many of the cheerleaders.

That is a bit of the history of production that is frequently overlooked. I recently read a [1922] autobiography of Henry Ford. (See link below.)
One of the primary lessons of his theory of production was that every individual on his assembly line (or, before that, on the assembly floor) was a future consumer of his manufactured product. And that, as his machines spread throughout the country, it would create an opportunity (for those who would see and take it) for maintenance and repair of his product, for sales and distribution of his product, and for expansion of the universe for adaptation of his product, and for varying levels of models of his product to appeal to the individual tastes of his consumer “audience.” And that, ultimately, that we would see not just one automobile in any family and/or business, but multiple machines: one for each licensed driver, even, …perhaps. :- )

Every new product, every new process, develops its own “downstream” support system(s).

I am now in the middle of another book of that time, “My Forty Years With Ford,” written by Charles Sorensen, Ford’s right-hand man who (according to himself) made it all work. This book offers a slightly different perspective: Ford as the visionary, Sorensen as the doer. …highly recommend both!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1122054.My_Life_And_Work

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1122090.My_Forty_Years_with_Ford

It’s made the worse by the fact that finance easily can turn shady and parasitic, though it is not inherently so.

For example, a bank with an “investment services” division selling annuities. (I learned that the hard way that it’s an insurance product, the vast majority of which are unsuitable for anybody. Wish I had heard of index funds and other similar investments.)

I remember deadheading on a flight from SFO to DEN where I sat next to an executive who had just been in Japan and seen Toyota build a car body without it ever being touched by a human. He was asking how we were going to keep employing factory workers? I could understand his concern. That was fifty years ago.

He told me my job as an airline pilot was also endangered. Made me think. Yes, the autopilots were getting better, and the flight guidance systems were becoming more useful. So far though, the humans are still in charge in the cockpit. 🙂

Well, we know that we’re doing less manufacturing here, but it’s been a conscious choice. For the last fifty years or so, we’ve wanted to become an “information economy.” We’ve gotten rid of our basic industries – mining, logging, manufacturing, ship building, pharmaceuticals, etc. If Trump is successful, we’re going to reverse that. Many new, decent paying jobs will be created. And though machines will play a bigger role, it will still take humans to build and repair them.

There’s a shortage of houses. We will need to build a couple million a year for a few years to catch up. I see a role for modular and factory bult homes that can be built more cheaply so first-time buyers can get a foothold on the ladder of home ownership.

One thing I see here in WA is that basic labor has become more expensive since Covid. In 2020 I could hire someone to do some simple handyman work for $15 an hour. Today, they’re all asking for $50 and up. So, maybe wage patterns will shift.

Another thing that’s apparent is that we have too many college educated people with degrees in useless majors. Underemployed and with a load of student debt. That’s a societal issue I see looming.

It has never been easier to invest than it is today. And there are no longer buy and sell commissions. All kinds of investments from T-bills to penny stocks. ETFs, which I didn’t think would be very popular, are very popular. 🙂 Many, many choices. And IRAs. They were a gift from the Gipper and have made a lot of difference for investors.

All in all, I think growth and resuming basic industries can solve a lot of our problems. If the Democrats get back in power, all bets are off because they don’t want either.

Various UBI ideas don’t really provide that, as they are a simple substitute for “wages/salary”.
One idea is called capital homesteading, where I understand a newborn child is allocated a sum of $, added to until age 18 or 21; after which that portfolio adds to his adult income. Maybe the original capital is then returned to a common fund and recycled for the next child? Not sure of those kinds of details.

I saw a headline about Ramasamy’s ideas about a $10K program of some sort, but I never learned any of the details and it did not seem to catch on in the media.
And as Megan McArdle said some years ago, it does not matter what form of retirement income you plan for or institute (SS, pension, IRA, 401K, etc.), they all depend on a robust economy to generate the wealth being distributed in retirement. It appears most Dems and too many Republicans don’t understand this simple reality, as they continue failing to incentivize private sector advances as the most prolific source of such income.

No, as you say, the radical left never went away.

However, I was speaking of the cultural shift away from the radical left as fashionable in the 70s. The big demos stopped. People wanted to have fun. Hence disco. The left was very disappointed. Trudeau in Doonesbury called the 70s “a kidney stone of a decade.”

I think we are seeing something similar today as Woke fades as a scolding cultural imperative.

And so Europeans banned Jews from many professions and left the field of money-lending to them, and proceeded to hate them for it.

Wesley LePatner was a woman, a white woman. They are applauding her murder.

She was also Jewish, and so to them she becomes evil.