The jobs are not coming back, but we are not doomed.

I want to tell you a story about Laura. Laura went to work for telecommunications company x in 1978. Her job at tcx was to file paperwork to reflect record changes from hands who were working in the field. She and 5-10 others had this job at the office covering the area where she worked. As time passed her job was centralized to cover a larger area, then a state and as technology and computers advanced she covered more and more.

Laura no longer works at tcx though not for any blame to anyone. However the job she did still exists. Only now it is done in one office for the entire nation. There is no longer paperwork to be filed it is all handled by computers. The techs in the field do not rely on calling a person to reflect changes anymore rather this is handled by the tech working on his own computer which he carried with him. So a job which used to be handled by a few employees at the hundreds/thousands of offices around the nation is now handled at one office.

Is this because tcx is evil and wants to be rid of employees? No. It is because technology and computer advancements allow tcx to provide an ever expanding base of services to more and more people for less money. Which is what the consumers want.

Point?

I was listening to NPR today and there was a panel of guests who were trying to explain how this program or tax plan would create jobs or the removal of that program and rolling back of those taxes would create jobs, and it struck me that these people are wrong. All seemed to agree that the problem worldwide is chronically high unemployment, but their great ways to solve the problem are empty because they are based on assumptions which were true thirty years ago. There are some who complain that our problem is that we have shipped manufacturing overseas and have driven farmers out of business and have become a service economy which is not rebuilding its infrastructure etc etc. These are all true in my opinion. However even if we did all of these things unemployment would still be 10% and growing ever higher.

The reason why is that even if we were to reopen steel mills in Pennsylvania the unemployed would not be rehired. The work which used to be done by men operating cranes would now be done by computer programed cranes which would do the work more safely, more efficiently and cheaper. If foreign automaker 'Y' were to come here and buy and retool every plant which has been closed by Detroit's "Big Three", the retooling would make obsolete many of the jobs the unemployed autoworkers would be hoping to fill. The same is true of road construction, office jobs such as record keeping etc, large scale manufacturing of any sort on and on. We The People demand goods and services at such a cheap rate that they must be manufactured by cheap labor elsewhere to accomodate us. The net result of this is that the wage structure for American workers deteriorates year after year. At some point it will be low enough that manufacturing will return to our shores, but when it does the jobs will go to high tech engineers and not wrench tuners.

In other words even if the tax thing does this and the manufacturing thing does that and the government program does the other thing the jobs will still not come back because the middle class blue collar worker is obsolete. His job is done faster, cheaper and better by a machine, and the buying public will not tolerate him anymore. Consequently the long hoped for return of good paying jobs that will allow a man to feed his family are not coming. The hope is based on a vapor and a dream that died when I was still a child.

However hope is not lost. The answer lies not in large scale government/industry programs but in self reliance and local economy. A group of people who are determined to grow their own food and trade for goods and services with the people who are their neighbors have no need for the pie in the sky age to come when everything will revert to 1965. A family that makes it own clothes, grows its own food, tends keeps and sells its animals to its neighbors does not have to worry if the government shutdown is going to prevent the food stamp or social security check from coming. Of course this will mean a great rethink on the American Dream, but hopefully enough people will realize that the dream has died and a new one must take its place. I think it can, but not if we insist on long gone models which are failing everywhere in the Western World.

So yeah I had this happy thought today and wanted to share it with you. I really do think it can be a happy thought if we will just learn to change our way of thinking.

Have a nice day.