America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

People like him have no understanding of how the modern technology market throws a giant wrench to their vague knowledge of classical economic theories. Do they even understand that a single ECU in a damn Corrola which takes up 1/2000th of the mass of the car has its manufacturing origins and raw materials origins in 10 different countries just so your average middle class consumer can afford such an object and even then most middle class families have to resort to financing. Ya, the ship has long past sailed on being 'anit-globalist'... whatever the **** that means.

 

I do see a possibility, if the technology advances fast enough, we will have a new space industry, including tourism, mining, exploration etc, that could literally take half the people on the planet away from earth. Another possibility is if man can be combined with AI to form some kind of cyborg, and education would be like in matrix, just download. I hope I have long retired by then. Good luck to the generations in the future, you will need it.

 

Reg AI: I swear there are more people at Lowes working the "Self-Check Out" line than there are working the normal check out lines.

However I love the conversation of AI being tackled in politics like Mark Cuban is really doing. We want our leaders to be well ahead of any AI trends to prepare for any mass workforce reductions. It concerns me that Minuchin laughed off an AI question a few weeks ago.

I think its serious but people shouldn't freak out just yet. I believe we just need smarter people in government having proactive measures for these trends in the near future so we know where to invest our workforce, and such.

I'm not saying out next President has to be Mark Cuban, but I do think we need folks from the Tech world having a much bigger influence on our government. Its not an issue for 2017, but 2024 I think it sure could be.

 

How do you move truck driver and store clerks into the tech related fields? Especially when they are over 40 or even 50?

 

You don't and can't.

Also "college" for employment purposes isn't the answer either. There are only so many white collar jobs available and that are needed.

There is going to be an institutional and severe change is what it means to be employed and what people do with their professional lives.

To those that say "well cars aren't driving on their own yet"..... consider computer technology from 2001 and compare it to technology in 2015.

Things change very, very quickly.

 

Well I'm certainly not implying that lets say a Truck Driver could be re-trained to be a software engineer.

Why I think it should be important for more leaders like the Mark Cubans, Bill Gates, or Zuckerbergs into the political conversation is to elevate this concern in our policies and plans for the future. Look we have a 70 year old Real Estate mogul in office who thinks the wave of the future is restoring Coal mines.

There is a phobia with older Americans that they are under Tech-Attack and the only way to move forward is to move back to the good old days. The world is changing whether they are comfortable with it or not, but I've found that the way you deal with hardships isn't to put on the blinders and ignore it, but to continue to have more and more discussions about it.

I find it baffling that a "Jobs Candidate" was not asked once in the presidential debates about 21'st century technology affecting job growth or decline and how he would deal with that. He was offered softballs to go back to his "Good Ole Days" comfort food statements about bringing back Manufacturing, and Coal Jobs, etc.

Back to the Truck drivers - I think the appropriate thing to do is to prepare those Truck drivers by letting them understand how the technology is progressing so they can pivot their careers, and work with logistics companies to ensure that they wont be able to just flip the switch overnight and if they implement driverless trucks, it can be done in slow waves in order to not dump 8 million workers in the span of 3 or 4 years.

 

I agree with you on most points. However, I think you are missing the magnitude of the oncoming tech wave, it is not just the truck drivers or the clerks. It will include many office professionals, such as lawyers, office support staff, back office staff, designers, there literally isn't any job I see that is 100% safe within 50 years of the AI development, what if AI become self aware? Unless we evolve(combing with AI for example), it would be game over for human race.

 

Hey, hopefully you will pay back to Canada all the cost of your education since you think you are such an excellent example of as totally self made person.

 

Is this snark or a reflection of your worldview? I can't tell.

Nobody is a totally self made person, don't be silly. I benefited from a stable family and about $8000 US in grant money. For the record, I went to a private for-profit school which doesn't benefit from tax dollars, but even if I had I would have no inclination to pay back the government. The US has a better system, so I came here to do the best I could to save up sufficient money for retirement as quickly as I can.

When it comes time to retire, I will look for the best economic and lifestyle choice and retire there.

Do you really view the world in terms of owing loyalty to a particular government? If you are a worker, they are farming you for your tax dollars. If you are a leech, then they are farming you for your vote. Neither of those should inspire your loyalty.

 

This sounds awesome, thanks for letting us know about it. I've always viewed the people who didn't make the leap to college for a variety of reasons as a large untapped resource. Our educational system is only well suited for a segment of society and does a very poor job training the other segments.

Frankly, the UK with their O levels and A levels makes a lot more sense to me. We need to reduce the number of people getting large amounts of educational debt and build other paths to success. Small business, budgeting, and vocational training along with lowering the myriad of rules governing small business would be a great start.

I'd like to teach a class in local high schools called Hustle 101. You could have guest speakers, computer simulation/games and competitions. Teach kids that even if they don't see white collar jobs and universities in their future they can be successful in society.

 

In Austin there are over 30K jobs needed in IT, healthcare, and construction trades. More and more people are carrying around smartphones with them. Baby boomers are retiring influx still and will continue creating even more of a job gap. IT isn't going anywhere. People are always sick and dying. Healthcare isn't going anywhere. With the boom of people moving to Austin, there's a shortage of skilled labor. So trades aren't going anywhere. College for employment is definitely one of the answers and considering the paltry amount of tax dollars it takes to fund it, it's more than worth investing in.

Computer technology in 2001 through 2015 hasn't changed that dramatically. CPUs are still a bunch of transistors like the early days. There's still no physical quantum computer although the math works in theory. All we've done in that time span is become more energy efficient and make smaller transistors to fit inside a CPU. At the same I do agree that technology is getting better and it's being used widely in even modern toasters and other embedded computers for everyday appliances. It's all the more reason to show that IT is not going anywhere anytime soon.

 

None of this really applies to the point I was making.

 

Are you saying we need to help the 1% or .1% more because they are obviously not getting their share?