Tag: recession

NPR: Reinventing the Dwindling Middle Class May Take a Revolution

Reinventing The Dwindling Middle Class May Take A Revolution

As the U.S. recovers from the Great Recession, one fact that’s emerging is that while jobs are coming back, most of these jobs are either high- or low-paying jobs. Middle-class jobs are not coming back, and it’s evident in towns across the Midwest like Lincoln, Ill.

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Remind me not to visit Lincoln any time soon.  I haven’t seen this sort of decline in Lansing or Leavenworth.  The tiny town I grew up in out in the county though is probably a poster child for the situation described in NPR’s article above.  Sad and scary.

Refuting the Luddite Fallacy

BookContenderI read three long articles this week, authored by journalists from the Associated Press.  Normally, I scoff at FUD, especially as it pertains to technology, and specifically computers.  I’ve spent the lion’s share of my life in communion with bits and bytes.  I’m extremely comfortable with my digital BFF.

But these three articles, under the AP Impact brand, presented a disturbing picture.  If the facts as presented are to be believed, I don’t really need to worry about my job being outsourced.  Instead, it will simply vanish.

AP IMPACT: Recession, tech kill middle-class jobs via the Wichita Eagle

Practically human: Can smart machines do your job? also via the Wichita Eagle

Will smart machines create a world without work? again via the Wichita Eagle

According to these three articles, not even doctors, lawyers and IT  (the latter two of particular interest to my circumstances) will be immune from this trend.

In modern usage, “Luddite” is a term describing those opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation or new technologies in general.

If only I were a decade older.  Then I probably wouldn’t feel any stress concerning this developing situation.  I would be that much closer to retirement (and/or death).  Can I be nimble enough to survive?

The Luddite fallacy addresses the idea that technological advances can have adverse effects on structural unemployment. Most mainstream economists agree that the benefits technology provides to the economy as a whole (i.e. increased aggregate demand due to falling prices) outweigh the costs of the temporary displacement of particular workers, who can find other work as technology fuels economic growth.

“In Contemporary Thought” Wikipedia Luddite article

Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill?  Lord knows I have enough stress in my life to keep me up most nights already.  But I can’t help mulling it over.

If we eliminate jobs (is that a Republican’s wet dream?), what’s left to drive our consumer economy?  You can’t sell a house or a car to a robot or a computer.

On the other hand, I don’t want to protect or regulate jobs just to keep people employed.  The flip side (for the Democrats) being that most if not all people would be employed by the government.  How does this different from places like Communist China?

Neither extreme appeals to me.  Always before, technology has improved lives and provided replacement jobs in innovative initiatives.  It seems now that we’ve reached the zenith and the point of diminishing returns looms ahead (unless it’s already here).

I don’t even  have to blame SkyNet for our destruction.  We’ve done it to ourselves.

Sevens and Seventy-Sevens

I rarely turn the radio on in my car.  I will when I’m driving the van, because forty-five minutes is a long time to maintain a conversation.  But when I step out of the van and start up my car for the two mile drive home, there just doesn’t seem any point to turning on the radio.  The fall weather this week begged me to open all four windows, though, and crank the volume.  So I did.  I caught the tail end of a Scorpions song on 101 the Fox (don’t ask me which one … it was probably “Rock You Like a Hurricane” … but I’m not entirely sure).  The next song immediately grabbed my attention, as I hadn’t listened to it for years.

The Grand Illusion (Styx 1977)
The Grand Illusion (Styx 1977)

First, let’s take a giant leap backwards to the late 70s, specifically July, 7, 1977, the release date for the seventh album of a band I couldn’t get enough of in my early adolescence . . . Styx.  Back then, I barely knew what rock ‘n’ roll was.  Heck, I hadn’t even officially made it to the ‘teen’ years yet at that point.  But over the coming months, you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing “Come Sail Away” or “Angry Young Man” or “Miss America” or, as I heard last night “The Grand Illusion.”

I’ve played piano since I was five (more than forty years), so I naturally gravitated to Dennis DeYoung‘s compositions (my all-time favorite being “Castle Walls” from this album, but my favorite to perform is “Pieces of Eight” from the eighth album released the following year).  And, yes, I could play at least the opening to “Come Sail Away” from memory when I was in high school, along with the Entertainer, which was still popular thanks to that movie with Newman and Redford starring in it.

So even though I arrived home mid-way through the Grand Illusion, I sat in the garage, with the windows rolled down and the stereo blaring until I reached the bubble-bursting end-of-song stanza below:

America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are

Back in the late 70s, before the recession (and heat wave) of the early 80s, and the dot-com bubble pop that followed later (was it the 90s or the 00s?) and now the ‘Great Recession,’ I can really feel the pain of these words.  Does America still spell ‘C-O-M-P-E-T-I-T-I-O-N’? or have we outsourced it all?  Are we blind to ambition or just blind?  I have yet to purchase a ‘brand new motor car’ and probably never will.  I’ve been pondering for decades what spell we’ve deluded ourselves with because I still don’t think I’ve made the grade and I think Roxy has more of an idea who she is than America does right now.

So I’ll close with a quote from my aforementioned favorite song from the Grand Illusion album, something I previously  consider a mantra, but have long since moved on to something more positive, encouraging and inspiring (check out Phil. 4:8 for my ‘life verse’):

Life is never what it seems
And every man must meet his destiny