Focus of Connexions

The focus of this blog will be on hidden connections between items in the news. News stories, editorials, columns, and letters to the editor usually focus on single issues. But that is not how the world works. To really understand the world we live in we need to know how events and issues are linked. Below is my first example.

Jobs

In a recent column entitled “The robotic revolution in jobs” Froma Harrop helped us understand why investment in American enterprise does not automatically translate into more jobs. Her point: Much of the work that used to be performed by people is now done better and more cheaply by robots. We are bringing jobs back from overseas but the work is going to robots instead of employees. We must stop expecting that investment in business is going to improve the job picture in America.

One problem with this picture is that people without jobs have no money to buy the goods that the robots produce. Without customers there is no incentive for American businesses to invest their capital to expand production, and even if they did that might not create more jobs. In order for our economy to expand there needs to be some way to get money into the hands of potential customers.

One obvious way to accomplish this expansion of the customer base is to share the work that exists. The standard work week in America has been stuck at 40 hours for more than half a century. Cut it to 35 hours or even 30 hours and increase the standard vacation from two weeks to four. So simple! Many other industrialized nations have already done it.

Another obvious method is for our state and federal governments to hire more people. We need more teachers, more people maintaining our roads and bridges, more maintenance in our parks, better care for our wounded veterans. These are jobs that cannot currently be roboticized. And they even involve work that actually needs to be done! Next question: How do we pay for it? That's another blog.