Talk:Technological unemployment

See Talk:Automation#Split_off_section

Keynes

"In the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes incorrectly predicted that in a century there would be a 15-hour work week as the "economic problem" would be replaced by the problem of leisure."

as he only said it 80 years ago, is it correct to call it 'incorrectly?' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.198.108.201 (talk) 13:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Style?

All good stuff, but (to me) it reads more like a journalistic essay than an encyclopaedic entry. Anyone else have any views? InelegantSolution (talk) 09:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Disputed? Remove flag?

The "New Market Engineering" section is flagged "The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (July 2011)". However on this talk page I see no indication of a dispute. Can we remove the flag? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.237.129 (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Also I note the flag is dated after the split, so I guess it is not referring to a dispute in the old page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.170.237.129 (talk) 16:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be difficult for anyone but an ardent new-market supporter to avoid seeing this section as biased. The tone of this particular section seems to go further than the rest of the article - from opinion piece to blatant advocacy. The flags weren't mine but I agree with them, and would apply the essay style flag to the entire article.

InelegantSolution (talk) 12:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, I moved 'Essay-like' flag to top. BuffaloBill90 (talk) 16:19, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Direct relationship

The following is a paraphrasing of statements from "Mechanization in Industry" Jerome (1934):

Direct effect: Automation displaces workers, increasing unemployment

How much cost is lowered by automation depends on how much of the savings is passed on to the customer.

Whether or not lowered costs creates sufficient demand to maintain or increase growth depends on the elasticity of the product.

If: The industry that is being automated grows fast enough

Then: The industry will hire enough workers to keep employment stable or may even increase employment.

Otherwise: displaced workers have to find work in another industry and, depending on their job skills, may be "structurally unemployed" and require a long time to find work.

Definition of automation needed

Automation has had several meanings over the years. It has been applied to mechanization, where workers became operators of machines. But a more usual definition is that automation takes over some function.

The first glass bottle blowing machines of ca. 1890 were I assume what were called "manual" or worked by an operator. Around 1900 automatic glass bottle machines were developed.

In process control, it may mean an individual controller holding a set point, or a whole process that is operated by "remote control" from a central control room.

Computer control of processes is a means of replacing individual old style pneumatic, hydraulic or electronic (known as analog) controls with a computer or "digital" control. It was not so much an increase in automation as it was a consolidation of functions. Digital control is superior and allows keeping process data for analysis, but it was hardly as revolutionary as the original analog control.

Machine tools were make "self acting" in the 1840s b Nasmyth in response to a strike and other labor problems. The self acting machine replaced most of the workers.

Decline in hours worked

In 1900 the work week was about 50 hours. Today it averages about 34.

In 1900, fewer than 10% of the children graduated from high school. Most went to work in their early teens. College education was rare. Elderly people worked as long as they were able.

If we tried to put all those segments (secondary school students, elderly) back in the labor force, unemployment would be much higher. We simply do not need the labor because all work is now done by machines.

Contrary to popular belief, education did not necessarily create economic growth. It prevented unemployment. The Owens glass bottle machine was said to have done more to reduce child labor than the child labor laws. (Skilled glassblowers earned $6/day, among the highest pay of any skilled labor. Therefore they were supplied with young boys as assistants.)

Propose renaming to "technological unemployment"

The term that has been used to describe workers displaced by machines and automation is technological unemployment. I recommend renaming this page because the existing title is not one that most searchers would use.Phmoreno (talk) 00:39, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Should this article be merged with Luddite fallacy? Both articles seem to cover exactly the same topic? J.D. Hooijberg (talk) 05:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it should. I've added the merge templates. I've suggested Luddite fallacy be merged into this article, as this one has a more neutral name and covers the topic from a broader perspective and in more detail. Robofish (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The title of the article does not suggest Luddite fallacy; however much of the content does. I suggest renaming to Technological unemployment and including a section on the Luddite fallacy with link to the main article. The Luddite fallacy is not a total fallacy. The work week is half of what it was in the days of the Luddites. The End of Work (1995) argued for shortening the work week well in advance of the current depression.Phmoreno (talk) 15:11, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

• I feel it should be merged the other way; the merged article should be at Luddite fallacy, as "Relationship of automation to unemployment" is pretty unwieldy and it completely fails WP:COMMONNAME. bobrayner (talk) 15:46, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

That is a reasonable approach; however, a separate article on technological unemployment is also needed. Additionally, Luddites need to be given more credit, explained through Marginalization, citing The End of Work and in more economic terms, Turning Point.

Combined response to multiple comments above. Merging this article into Luddite Fallacy, under the title "Luddite Fallacy", would be a complete failure. If one reads the content of this article, and has any reading comprehension at all, one finds out that there is room in life to ask about the relationship of automation to unemployment without declaring that the POV that all fears of eventual underemployment are a logical fallacy is the POV that "won". The very name "fallacy" announces that a POV judgment has already been passed. As for the current title allegedly failing WP:COMMONNAME, that's ridiculous, because then so would all Wikipedia article titles on the pattern of "Relationship of X to Y" and "Relationship between X and Y". Do a search for them, and see how many there are. There's nothing wrong with them; they're simply the clearest way to title such an article. — ¾-10 00:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

3/4-10: One problem with using the term automation is that it is not not well defined. Would Nasmyth's automatic machine tools be considered automation? What about the semi-automatic glass bottle blowing machine? Another problem is that automation is too narrow a term, focusing on just one part of technological unemployment. How would you label Scientific management?Phmoreno (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

All good questions. In general I'm finding that I would be OK with a new title of "technological unemployment". I think you may be right that it's just as good a title, and in various ways better. (Warming up to it.) I also would be OK with merging "Luddite fallacy" to here—but not merging this article to there. That topic is a subset of this topic—not a superset and not an equivalence. No doubt that this article will duly acknowledge that much technological unemployment has been, and today still is, only temporary (some jobs go away and others arise, thus, local turbulence with cosmic balance). As for drawing the limits on the definition of automation, I see exactly what you mean, but I don't feel that it creates a problem for this article's coverage. This article really can cover any displacement of human labor by improved machines. Automation is really any technology that causes machines to do aspects of the work that otherwise would require human attention (I say "attention" because it's all person-hours of payroll, whether physical labor, mental labor (including management), or even just the tedium of keeping an eye on things). Now, that of course brings up the question of differentiating mechanization from automation. Mechanization definitely belongs in this discussion. It's not really completely differentiable from automation, though; they're really parts of the same spectrum. They're both essentially "improved machines doing more of the work". One could try to differentiate them based on power versus control (that is, motive power versus control/logic/actuation), but it seems not worth the attempt, because there's such a fluid spectrum, with one machine involving both. Jacquard's looms weren't electronic in the slightest, but they can truly be said to be automated to an important degree. Same with cam-op screw machines. (In both cases, no, they weren't gee-whiz-robotic and they didn't render humans completely obsolete, but they did involve automation.) So I agree that this article needs to cover both mechanization and automation. (I wonder, though, how much it is necessary to repeat both words, "mechanization and automation", many times throughout the article. One could just say automation and be less clunky but still accurate. This is just a musing at the moment, but probably will need returning to.) Scientific management is an interesting, and good, thing to point out at this juncture. What is it in essence but a technology that gets more work out of a given system of humans and machines, in part by putting as much on the machines as possible. (On the surface it might seem academic to call industrial engineering "technology", but I'd say that in essence it is in fact a field of technology; designing better human-machine processes and systems is a form of technology.) So yes, I think you've convinced me that "technological unemployment" has much going for it as a title. One worry that I have about it, though, is that it sounds perhaps too close to an assertion—the assertion that technological unemployment exists—and people hung up on the fallacy assertion maybe will be obsessed with arguing that the article shouldn't exist because technological unemployment itself does not exist (in their model of reality). What do we do about that? Not sure at this moment—maybe nothing. Maybe given that the article fully explains that not everyone believes technological unemployment "is a real thing" will be enough. After all, Wikipedia has an article titled "Trinity"—not titled "Trinity (if it exists)". And that's OK. The article handles the fact that not everyone believes it exists. Anyway, more than enough thinking aloud here to bore you for one night. I think "technological unemployment" is a good title. — ¾-10 02:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Three-quarter-ten: I'm glad you agree. I think with a little rearranging and some rewriting we can address most of the problems that have been mentioned, while keeping a balanced discussion of labor displacement and new employment opportunities. Putting it under the title of technological unemployment makes it much easier to cite the great body of economic literature on the subject.Phmoreno (talk) 03:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. That page currently redirects to here; I tagged to reverse the redirect vector via move-over-redirect (with Template:db-move). Should go through shortly. — ¾-10 00:37, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Bob's wholesale deletions leave Brain and Ford not even mentioned once in text

There's a difference between (1) cutting it back and (2) not even acknowledging the existence of someone like Marshall Brain or Martin Ford. I don't want this article to be a mere WP:FRINGE magnet either, but there's a balance being missed between the extremes (those being fringe cruft and censorship); Bob's redactions of entire sections today/yesterday show a censoring agenda. Basically, there are scores of thousands of people in the world who don't think that the mainstream theory is complete. Maybe not a dead-end fork of theory, but at least an incomplete partially correct trunk of theory. Wikipedia has scope to cover that fact simply because it exists and scores of thousands of people are involved; it's notable. Even if those people suffer from incorrect theory, Wikipedia isn't required to censor mention of them, or the outline of their hypotheses. When I get time, I'll be adding back at least one paragraph that mentions and inline-cites Brain and Ford. As for the RBE stuff, I myself think there's a lot of fringe baggage around it, but nevertheless encyclopedia coverage of this article's topic has to mention and link it, even if only in brief WP:Summary style, because it's related, no matter how little of it is subscribed to by a would-be censor. — ¾-10 01:36, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Re-Incorporated section on RBE

In the spirit of Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative Views. A summary of the previous section on RBE, including new references that mention RBE, Zeitgeist, Venus. IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 22:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks OK to me at a quick glance. Will find time to read soon. Agree that end result must show neutrality and brevity. The market subsection is where Brain and Ford will be added back in truncated mention. The recent deletion tantrum showed a lack of reading comprehension. The paragraph about the Machine Age was deleted with an edit summary asking why it was there if the fallacy notion had proven still true. But it's obvious why it was there—the heading above those timeline subsections identified them as a timeline of concerns about the topic. Thus the Machine Age subsection was equally appropriate to be present as the Luddite subsection: in summary, in period X, group of people Y had concern Z, but it turned out that the concern was still a fallacy. On to the next period of the timeline.

Those edits also posited that Ford's book can't be mentioned because it's self-published and shows, allegedly, "obvious reasoning fail". Neither of those stands up as a valid reason to censor at least a one-paragraph mention outlining a sketch of what he argues, with citations. This is true simply because the topic that Ford writes about is the topic of this article. Wikipedia has coverage of notable books whether any particular person agrees with them or not.

I think what put the bee in the bonnet is that there was expository writing in this article that fully explained Ford's ideas, and the redactor doesn't want an encyclopedia to include that much detail, for fear that Wikipedia presenting and explaining the argument is the same as Wikipedia supporting/favoring it. I don't agree that Wikipedia should avoid explication to avoid it being mistaken for favoring the ideas being explicated, but I'm a WP:NOTPAPER guy, and not everyone is. When I put a paragraph back in discussing Brain and Ford, I'll make it a short statement of their biggest points, rather than anything so expository. The claims about stuff being "made up" and citations not supporting the text in the article are just more of the poor reading comprehension problem, but I know there's no solution to be had on that, so I won't take the time to do blow-by-blow rebuttals. The exposition it would take to explain blow-by-blow why it's wrong would be lost on the very audience it was presented to (goto reading comprehension), so it's futile. Fortunately the whole endeavor will be moot anyway, because the article will be revised and abridged such that the contention will be removed. Anyway, out of time for now. — ¾-10 00:17, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Technological Unemployment / Luddite Fallacy

I noted in the talk page for Luddite Fallacy that I was under the impression that it is at least relatively well established that the "Luddite Fallacy" is a fallacy. The works cited which claim that there can be long-term technologically-induced unemployment demonstrate that there is a minority view, but do not seem to call into question that the majority view in the economics field is that there is generally no such thing as long-term technologically-induced unemployment.

At present, the article conveys the sense that there is no majority view or that the majority view is that the "Luddite Fallacy" isn't a fallacy. Inasmuch as the majority view is that the Luddite Fallacy is a fallacy, the article should clearly reflect that it is relatively well established and accepted by the economics profession that there is (usually?) no long-term technologically-induced unemployment.

Also, on a separate note, the article uses too many "big" words (i.e. herein) and should be revised to better suit your "average" reader. --Nogburt (talk) 06:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're looking at it backwards. Exceptional claims need to be sourced per Verifiability policy; that the ludditte fallacy is seen as a mainstream economic principle is an assertion that needs to be proven with sources of excellent quality, and the current article doesn't do that in any meaningful way. If it's true that this is the mainstream economic view, it shouldn't be hard to do, and we could have an article that describes precisely the views of those reliable sources.

I've reverted your deletion of a whole subsection as it was referenced to reliable sources and seems relevant to the topic of technological unemployment. If you have specific concerns about its content please explain which are those, to improve the section contents. I agree that the overall article structure needs lots of work to have a well-balanced view. Diego (talk) 09:03, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The intro revisions seem good-enough.

The sources for the article don't seem to be of particularly high quality. There's a lot of cited op-eds and advocacy books.

If it is the accepted view that "technological unemployment" (which I'm using to mean long-term/permanent unemployment caused by technological advancement) does not exist or rarely exists, the article generally and the "Proposed Solutions" section in particular should not convey the sense that "technological unemployment" is something that is widely believed to exist by economists. A quick internet search shows that a great number of economists do not believe that technology causes long-term unemployment. However, I don't generally like to cite to sources which have an apparent slant or side and most of what comes up seems to be advocacy stuff or something that is taken from Wikipedia.

Also, generally with things that are not widely accepted to exist, the number of works discussing the thing as if it exists may not reflect the "established" view. For instance, if you Google something like "Loch Ness Monster," the majority of the results will talk about the Monster as if it exists and a majority of the works written about it will say that it exists or may exist.--Nogburt (talk) 20:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Please note that the 'Proposed Solutions' section used to have much more weight. The original version of this section had been removed/ deleted, after which time it has been re-posted in a much shorter, trimmed-down version. This has been followed by a second round of significant trimming-down/ shortening, leading to the current, considerably slimmed-down, version of the 'Solutions' section. Thus, in my view, the current version of the section does not have undue weight, and I would vote to remove the 'Undue Weight?' tag.

On another note, there have been several references above to the view of mainstream economists regarding the subject of technological unemployment (TU). I do not agree with what seems to be the view that TU should be the exclusive domain of mainstream economists. In my view, mainstream economists should not be given a de-facto monopoly on determining the main parameters of the national and global discourse on the issue of (any kind of) unemployment. (In fact many convincing arguments have surfaced and re-surfaced over many decades, and especially over the last 5 years, explaining why mainstream economists should not be given a de-facto monopoly on setting the parameters on any subject, period. I could go on at length about all the shortcomings of the economics "profession", but this is not the right forum for such a discussion, and my personal experiences, interpretations, or opinions do not belong here. But I just can't resist sharing this joke: "A mainstream economist is a person who today, and every day, will provide you with a brilliant analysis on why all the predictions/ analysis he made yesterday failed miserably.")

In other words: please note that the first half of the title of this page is 'Technological'. As such, it may be a good idea to give (at least some) recognition, on this page, to the TU solutions proposed by accomplished technologists such as Dr. James S. Albus and Jacque Fresco. I, for one, am going to continue to try to find additional verifiable, published sources from other engineers/ scientists/ technologists on various aspects of TU, and continue to bring these sources to the consideration of the editors of this page. Regards, IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 15:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the themes above from IjonTichyIjonTichy. I've accepted now that the earlier versions of this article had too much exposition of some things and not enough on others. So, as IjonTichyIjonTichy says, the article is now moving in the correct direction for an encyclopedia article, much more trimmed down. It still bugs me, though, that not all of the deletion and snarky tagging shows much knowledge. Just because the article needed to evolve doesn't mean that the people deleting whole sections and adding snarky tags are making sound edits. For example, adding the "lopsided" tag to the sentence that states that mechanization blends by degrees into automation (rather than always being a neatly divided topic) shows to me that the person who added the tag has never even clearly thought about, much less studied or worked with, industrial technologies. What the sentence states is a simple fact of the technologies, not an opinion, as anyone who knows anything about machine tools knows just like they know without needing an appeal to authority that the sky is blue. That one tagging example is not the biggest deal in the world, but it's just an example of my point that the people hacking and whacking at others' work in this article, rather than being smarter and "righter" than the others, are sometimes merely being more dick-ish and ill-informed. There have been multiple sentences removed in such edits that are simple exposition of a fact, but they were removed on the assertion that they were opinions and speculations. It doesn't say much for the knowledgeability of the deleters (in fact it shows, to anyone knowledgeable enough to see it, just the opposite). I am quite busy at work right now—dealing every day with the technologies that some slashers of this page demonstrate that they know next to nothing about—so I might not get much time anytime soon to work on my revised, trimmed mentions of Ford and Brain, but I just wanted to support the themes that IjonTichyIjonTichy mentioned and say that this article's life and development is going to be a years-long process, so no one please suffer the delusion that any of the uninformed snarky deletion is going to be the last word on any of this. Time will tell. To anyone willing to engage in fair collaboration (rather than only censorship, snark, cluelessness, or fighting mild POV with nothing but even stronger POV in the opposite direction) I welcome future cooperation. I enjoy constructive collaboration in Wikipedia content development, and only get annoyed when pestered by dicks, so I look forward to collegial development work with plenty of you in the future. — ¾-10 17:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

PS: Not to be too long-winded, but I needed to share a follow-on thought that's very material in guiding the content development in this article. It's this: What IjonTichyIjonTichy said about today's economists not being competent by themselves, on their own, to correctly model the reality that they aspire to model is not only correct (and depressing) but also a key fact determining that their mainstream curriculum alone, without any multidisciplinary help from other fields, is just plain not good enough to address the topic of this article. For anyone who needs more help to understand what I just said or why it's important, I offer some analogies to put it in perspective. Imagine that it's 1901, and you're writing an encyclopedia article about aviation. Which experts are you going to cite who accurately understand what's going on currently, what ideas are "in the air" right now (pardon the pun), and what's about to happen, in fact, over the next 20, 30, and 40 years? Will it be *only* the distinguished Lord Kelvin? Certainly you're not going to include any coverage of a couple of frickin bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio. After all, you argue, they have "obvious reasoning fail", whereas Lord Kelvin is a licensed Expert™ with a capital E. For those of you who don't know, you can find out here how that particular episode of life turned out. For any of you who lack the multidisciplinary experience to know it (which will include some academics who read this), that's just as likely as not to be roughly where we're at, historically speaking, on the topic of this article at this point of history. For anyone with brain enough to digest the meaning and import of what I just explained, it is, as the saying goes, "nuff said". — ¾-10 17:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

As requested, here are some of my comments which I inadvertently posted to IjonTichyIjonTichy's talk page instead of here. Hope this is the right spot! It is evidently the case that technological unemployment is the Luddite fallacy and that the mainstream economic view is that it is not a realistic concern. Sure, there are technologists and political air guitarists who do feel that it is a realistic concern. They somehow conveniently negate the other mainstream economic views that the main causes of [[1]] are not mechanisation, automation or process improvement, but unemployment benefits and social welfare. I feel this article should serve the purpose of an encyclopaedia entry on the Luddite fallacy (or technological unemployment) as a concept in economics. Whether economists have the last word on the issue or not, or whether they are qualified to make historical observations is immaterial. Fact remains, it is a concept that originated within the field of economics and as an encyclopaedia entry, I feel this page should reflect that.

There seems to be bias towards getting credible references from people who call themselves engineers who support the idea of technological unemployment, while not getting credible economics sources that explains the bigger picture. Nobody is disputing that technological progress could and does cause temporary unemployment in specific sectors (as it did for the original Luddites in the weaving industry), but the long term effect is that new job opportunities are created (directly and indirectly) by the accompanying advances in technology. This is what was meant with the previous version of the article that stated 'on a macroeconomic level' unemployment does not result from advances in technology, but in a specific sector, jobs may be replaced due to technological advances. A brief description, in the great wiki format, along these lines is all that is required: [2].

It is not difficult to obtain mainstream economic sources on [[ http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html%7Ctechnological unemployment]]. The page could also reference Schumpeter directly, as he is responsible for coining the term technological unemployment. He was also of the view that short term job losses besides, in the long run, technological progress brings a higher standard of living, lower number of working hours and cannot lead to structural unemployment.

By the way, [Jacque Fresco] is not a qualified engineer and has lost his job due to engineering incompetence. I'm not sure of the legal situation over there, but where I am from Jacques Fresco can be sued for presenting himself as an engineer if he did not qualify as one. Thus, he should not be referenced as an engineer but rather as a member of the Venus Project and without any titles he does not legally hold, and it should be stated clearly what qualifies him to comment on the Luddite fallacy and what is his position on the observed phenomenon.

I do not dispute that there is a dispute regarding technological unemployment. What I dispute is that the lunatic fringe dissidents are presented as holding valid and widely accepted views on the subject. This is not the case and this article does not reflect that. This article reflects their views - very well referenced - and notes the mainstream, widely accepted views regarding technological unemployment as a footnote. This is akin to explaining evolution by means of creationism and saying besides that the mainstream view is the theory of evolution.

I believe the problems can be resolved by splitting the article into different ones, each one reflecting the view of its particular field. Thus, a technological unemployment or Luddite fallacy page merely describing the fallacy, its history and evidence that supports it as being a fallacy, with a criticism section linking to the lunatic fringe. That is all that is required. It is not required to expand on views that are not mainstream in the article that represents the mainstream view on the subject. These views may be explained in full in their own pages that are not related to the mainstream economics views. They have been removed, but could still be listed under a 'Criticism' section (as in the page on [Capitalism]).

ZombiePriest (talk) 12:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems like this article has been revised to make fringe views on technological unemployment seem even more mainstream than in previous versions. The article should be rewritten so as not to put such great weight on views that are not widely accepted. --Nogburt (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The idea that there is technological unemployment is a belief held by a number of economists. While it may be true that technological unemployment was once considered a fallacy, this view has evolved in light of the continued gains in productivity. Job losses to productivity, especially in information and high technology sectors, could be outpacing job growth in newly created sectors. See The Economist article entitled Technological unemployment: Race against the machine for more information. Also, see the 2011 book by the same title for an expanded look. In fact, a quick search for academic articles on the subject will turn up many scholarly papers that contend that not only is technological unemployment real, but it is one of the reasons for the prolonged recession. [IP anon] 23:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

You're right, which is why it's annoying to me that this page has been scoured down and worn away by a few people trying to erase any sign of the trend that you mentioned. An encyclopedia article on this topic needs to get across a sense of just how many people have begun to suspect within the past 5 years that just because classical Luddism was wrong, in its pre-IT time—which by the way, yes, it admittedly and demonstrably was—doesn't necessarily mean that job creation can't lag way behind job disruption in the IT era. Or suspect that IT is becoming such a quantitatively different kind of technological change (from pre-IT technical change) as to be qualitatively different in its disruptive effects (and their amelioration). But I feel like not enough people out there, so far, have cared about this topic, or this article on it, for a truly robust many-eyes-shallow-bugs crowdsourcing authorship to strike the right balance. The article essentially so far has been added to by 2 or 3 souls, quasi-censored by 2 or 3 others (who seem to mistakenly assume that their Econ-101 textbook from 1974 or 1992 still represents the current state of the discussion today), and ignored by most of the rest of humanity. If the thousands of people out there who are part of the aforementioned development don't want this article to be owned, and stunted, by a handful of self-appointed censors, they'll need to bother to speak up against it by building on the article continually. You Talk comment here today was one more piece added toward that kind of participation. I hope that others, too, continue to take more interest. — ¾-10 01:23, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The Zeitgeist Movement, the Venus Project, the Technocracy Movement and this article.

This article contains a information on the concept of technological unemployment, that is does in fact not exist, and and a list of various arguments for its existence throughout history.

That TZM/TVP has proposed an imaginary solution for this non-existent problem is irrelevant. First of all that is not an argument for technological unemployment. They don't argue that it exists, they falsely assume it exists, and then propose to use the word "resource.based economy" as a magic solution to this non-existent problem. They never explain why it i a problem and then never explain what resource-based economy is and how it would work, and they never explain how it would solve technological unemployment. Hence, it does not belong in this article.

In addition to this, TZM/TVP are not reliable sources on economy. Claims that systematic technological unemployment is a real problem needs to come from published papers in reliable journals on economy (or in the case of historical claims, from reliable sources on history). Nobody associated with these movements have published any such papers, for the simple reason that nobody associated with these movements have even basic understandings of economics.

--OpenFuture (talk) 10:36, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. I think the article looks much better and does function as an encyclopaedia article, namely it gives me as a noob a broad introduction to what the Luddite fallacy or technological unemployment is.

ZombiePriest (talk) 06:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Bobrayner wrote in his edit summary: "Removing more coatrack. No doubt there are a few people who believe this Venus Project stuff, but mentioning it at length in multiple articles is undue weight."

Bob, could you please answer the following questions:

• wp:coatrack: What is the tangentially related biased subject?
• At length: Wasn't it only a brief sentence? (Supported by some media coverage, such as the RT TV interviews.)
• Undue weight: Didn't we hold, few weeks ago, a discussion here regarding the issue of undue weight, apparently resulting in a consensus that there was no undue weight?

Regards, IjonTichyIjonTichy (talk) 17:48, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I would appreciate a link to the relevance of both the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project in this context. Just because they propose non-market based economies, does not mean that they should enjoy attention. Are they credible sources on economics? A cursory glance at their misrepresentation of fractional reserve banking suggests that they are not. Furthermore, upon reading this article it appears that technological unemployment is a realistic concern. Therefore, it suggests two things: That Keynes was in fact right that we have a problem of leisure due to the large scale unemployment caused by technological advancements (contrary to what is claimed in the article) and that non-market based ideas are realistic solutions and critiques of this crisis. I don't think this is supported by the sources. Again, this should be an encyclopaedia article on the Luddite Fallacy and technological unemployment, not a review of an amateur student film.

I do not think anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics or engineering would take the Zeitgeist Movement or the Venus Project seriously. Rather, the Technocracy Movement was a legitimate movement, supported by many qualified people, that has some interesting ideas that were even tried and tested (mostly falsified, but at least it's a credible notion) - although I still don't think they are relevant to technological unemployment unless this is not a fallacy and they have either summarised the problem accurately or provided a workable solution, or both.

While it it is important to have a balanced article, it is also important to cite credible sources. Sadly, TZM and Venus Project are not credible sources, but an ideological peanut gallery with little or no relevance to the Luddite Fallacy. They would be more in place in an articles on debt and modern day armchair hipster activism, but nowhere on any article related to economics concepts.

Why not find some credible academic source that criticises the Luddite Fallacy? We are after all still in a time when Keynes was proved wrong and unemployment is not a result of technological advancements. Rather, it would appear that widespread unemployment occurs mostly in parts of the world that struggles to keep up with technological advancements.

ZombiePriest (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Basic economics and the Salter cycle

According to the Salter cycle, economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs (labour, capital, material, energy, etc.) for a given amount of product (output). Lowered cost increases demand for goods and services, which also results in capital investment to increase capacity. New capacity is more efficient because of new technology, improved methods and economies of scale. This leads to further price reductions, which further increases demand, until markets become saturated due to diminishing marginal utility.

This cycle worked well until about 1973 for developed countries. Since then real wages have stagnated, as has the introduction of technologies that could significantly lower costs. Almost all of the labor, in absolute terms, has been taken out of the production of most goods (but not so much for services). Removing the remaining labor does not significantly reduce costs but creates unemployment. Other productivity drivers, such as energy converted to work and energy used in the production of materials, are approaching thermodynamic limits.Phmoreno (talk) 14:41, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Don't be silly. Making existing production more efficient has freed up resources (including labour) to do do more new tasks which weren't previously done. Which fits the same old model. And where did this notion of a thermodynamic limit come from? And where do you suggest all the value is going to, if much more is produced but it doesn't end up in people's pockets? bobrayner (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course freeing up labor make it available for doing other work. However, the problems are: 1)unless real prices fall, or conversely, real wages increase, there is no additional buying power and 2) markets become saturated due to declining marginal utility. Around the time of WW II food took 30% of the average American's income. Today it's under 10%, but prices for food and energy are beginning to rise in real terms due to global demand, flattening crop yields and resource depletion. Phmoreno (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

As for thermodynamic limits, there is a relationship that shows the non-labor, non-capital or total factor productivity is highly correlated with the efficiency of conversion of energy to electricity. Whether you look at diesel ships and locomotives operating at 40-50% thermal efficiency replacing steam engines that operated at a fraction of that, or the increase in steam pressures made possible by the switch to welded steel boilers and steam turbines that could handle the high temperatures and pressures, you have annual energy conversion efficiencuies that cannot be repeated. Conversion of fuel energy to work in Newcomen's engine was less than 1%, with the steam turbine it is around 40% and the maximum theoretical is 62%. You cannot get another 50 to 60 fold increase in conversion efficiency. Steel, fertilizer, chemicals, plastics are all the same story. The processes are close to theoretical limits. See: Useful work growth theory Phmoreno (talk) 17:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

These arguments see the economy as if it only consists of products that was created in 1800's. That's a very strange way to look at it. --OpenFuture (talk) 21:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Useful work growth theory? Thanks for pointing out yet another fringe-economics article with serious problems. Another article to add to my to-do list... :-( bobrayner (talk) 22:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Bobrayner : Don't mess with Useful work growth theory unless you read the references and understand all the material. You will be treading on the work of prominent researchers with excellent credentials. I've read all the references in their entirety and have a thorough understanding and I will be watching. Wikipedia policy does not say that you have to agree with everything you read.Phmoreno (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Regarding one specific thing above: Bob asks, "And where do you suggest all the value is going to, if much more is produced but it doesn't end up in people's pockets?" This question seems perfectly reasonable on the surface, to anyone who's never read Ford 2009, but there are several levels of reality beyond it that make it the wrong question to ask. It's wheels spinning in a vacuum, and the perfect logic of the spinning itself doesn't do any good for getting traction on the ground. Ford explains that productivity is wonderful, and will continue to be wonderful, but also that our current economic structure only works if people can trade, and they can only trade if they have jobs to earn income with. If you actually read and comprehend Ford's book, you catch his point that the problem with rapidly advancing automation, without any change to the current economic system, is simply that it will chuck too many people out of work too quickly with not enough new kinds of jobs developing fast enough to re-employ them, thus dampening the earn-income-then-spend-it cycle, thus inducing economic malaise. Not because the basic principle that the freed-up resources can be (have the potential to be) redirected isn't true (it is true, and will continue to be so), but only because the redirection won't happen properly in a world where economic malaise is going on. There is potential for ever greater value creation, but the economic engine that creates new value only runs if current value is being broadly recirculated throughout an economy—which lack of income interferes with, and in our current system, income can't avoid being hobbled by unemployment and underemployment. After a while it gets annoying hearing people argue about why thinkers such as Ford must logically be wrong, when they haven't even read his explanation of his argument. Go read what he has to say, and then provide specific rebuttals if you think he's wrong. Spouting the Econ 101 chestnut that freed-up resources can be redirected (which of course is true, and Ford does not dispute) is not a counterargument to people like Ford. It is only one piece of the mechanism. People who think it's an entire counterargument show that they've never read, or failed to comprehend, the book. To anyone, I would say, if you can read Ford and rebut him convincingly, your rebuttal would get a lot of attention, and it would have to be pretty smart (if it's convincing). But spouting the Econ 101 chestnut is not a rebuttal to the arguments—the only people who think it is are those who haven't read, or failed to understand, those arguments. — ¾-10 00:00, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I read Ford(2009), Rifkin(1995) and Ayres(1998) and they all give different versions of a similar theme. I distinctly remember Ayres arguments and prediction of the current crisis because I liked his presentation the best. Rifkin predicted the crisis too. Of course, no one listened we and tried to power through the stagnation with a credit boom.Phmoreno (talk) 02:05, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

And of course, another part of the economic storyline of recent decades has been the movement of blue-collar type jobs from higher-wage regions (such as the G7 countries) to lower-wage regions (such as BRIC, Indonesia, Central America, and many other places). This movement, which from the G7 side is labeled offshoring (to BRIC it's the opposite), has given those of us in the G7 regions an advance view of what it means for jobs to become (1) lower-paying and also then (2) scarcer. Automation hasn't really put us (the globe overall) in any wrenching vise grip yet in terms of job disappearance (although anecdotally for many workers the squeeze has felt like it's beginning), but it looks poised to do so (major wrenching) in coming decades, as it continually advances technologically. (Example: the FoxConn CEO said that if his Chinese assembly-line workers complain too much, no big deal, because he might just find himself buying a million robots in coming years anyway.) But meanwhile, we in the G7 regions have gotten a sneak preview of what it (job disappearance) could be like, because offshoring has been removing jobs from our regions quite strongly during the 1980s through present. So although offshoring driven merely by wage differential between regions (figuratively analogous to solution concentration gradient shifts, or electrical potential difference discharges) is not caused by automation (although IT can enhance it, as with antipodean CSRs or teleradiologists, as Ford points out), it has nevertheless provided a preview of what the economic landscape could be like as automation itself displaces humans from jobs. What happens when not even China and India have growing jobs numbers, because factories require few human workers and many trucks drive themselves? The abstract principle is summed up in a quote from a consumer products executive in The Wal-Mart Effect (Fishman 2005, p. 103): "People say, how can it be bad for [things to be inexpensive] […] How can it be bad to have a bargain […]? […] Sure, it's held inflation down, it's great to have bargains […] But you can't buy anything if you're not employed […]" The point that Ford makes as he talks about such concepts is that we "ain't seen nothin yet"—we might need to have such things as guaranteed minimum income for no other reason than simply to have trade occur at all—to have consumers buying consumer products at all. The thing I would emphasize is that this doesn't have to be a sky-is-falling calamity—we simply have to comprehend the concepts and talk reasonably about what we might do about them. There are people, like Ford or myself, who do not see any reason why private sector capitalism would have to perish—we just need to modify some parameter values to keep it from collapsing. With the right parameter values it could yet flourish. Unlike Venus/Zeitgeist fans, I myself have no ideological preference toward either corporations or government except for the guiding principle that you need some of both, and you can't let either one become too all-powerful. It's lopsided power that produces exploitation and injustices, regardless of who wields it, private or public. Checks and balances, with some amount of transparency (the more the better), are the only system calibrators in the long term. — ¾-10 15:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI: Explanations and discussions on the talk page aren't really that useful to improve the article. Wikipedia talk pages and wikipedia editors aren't wp:Reliable sources. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:19, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Back to the point. The basic failing of this article is that it doesn't explain, in economic terms, how the economy replaces jobs eliminated by technology. Just saying that because labor is freed up is not sufficient, nor is that in the past that workers have always been re-employed. Structural change in recent decades saw the percapita usage of steel and energy fall dramatically, along with the loss of an enormous number of manufacturing jobs. This coincided with the rise in the service sector, particularly healthcare and FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate). All of this deserves mention here, possibly along with some graphs.

The Salter cycle provides an explanation why new jobs are created (falling prices/ rising wages) and says that there are limits to demand (declining marginal utility). The other job creator, especially in recent decades, is new goods and services. However, economists point out that often new goods and services displace existing ones.

There limits to how much prices can fall. For example, automation can only eliminate 100% of labor (robots can almost entirely make circuit boards) and there are practical limits to other inputs as well, with steel, chemicals, nitrogen fertilizers and electrical generation as examples of little remaining theoretical potential.

I haven't heard much discussion on potential limits to new goods and services. Perhaps someone can supply some.

Surely there are other good economic explanations and arguments I haven't mentioned.Phmoreno (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

There are no limits to demand. There is limits to demand for a specific product, due to falling marginal utility, as you point out, but there is no limit to demand as a whole.

Anyway, to the point: If you can find a short and good explanation in a reliable source, I don't think anybody would mind that you add it. --OpenFuture (talk) 17:45, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Phmoreno mentioned, "The basic failing of this article is that it doesn't explain, in economic terms, how the economy replaces jobs eliminated by technology." That coverage would have to be multi-pronged, because one part of it (how such replacement has been happening so far) stands in contrast to how some people think those pathways might be in trouble, and how such replacement might happen in the future, if not by the exact same pathways. In fact, various prior versions of this article have included some such economic explanations and arguments, but they were removed. In contrast to that (total removal), I agree that short distillations of such things would be appropriate in this article. Striking the balance takes some strong abridgment simply because an encyclopedia article is not a textbook. A comprehensively expository work such as a textbook can devote scores of pages to such explanations, whereas an encyclopedia article can only mention a thumbnail overview (as I grudgingly came around to accepting in this article). But total absence of such content is not the right balance either, as Phmoreno's statement aptly captures. Need to evolve toward encyclopedic coverage, neither redacted (extreme 1) nor bloated (extreme 2). — ¾-10 23:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

IMO, what the "luddites" tend to forget is that there are infinite amounts of new products and services that will arise when the old ones get cheap. But I don't think I'll be able to find a good reliable source for that statement. --OpenFuture (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Even if there are an infinite number of new products, many times new ones replace existing ones. Cars displaced horses, cell phones displaced land lines, and the internet displaced time spent watching television and reading newspapers.Phmoreno (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Infinity minus X is still infinity. --OpenFuture (talk) 04:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I've been waiting for medical coverage to get cheap, but my insurance premium has tripled in 5 years. I could say the same about gasoline.Phmoreno (talk) 03:14, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

If you think that is even remotely relevant to this article, I give up. --OpenFuture (talk) 04:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

(outdent)

Like I said, this article needs to be stated in economic terms. A term associated with economics, and sometimes used in the definition is "the allocation of scarce resources", and I have never heard mention of an infinite supply of new goods and services, especially because it takes labor and capital (scarce resources) to produce these. You said:

"There are no limits to demand. There is limits to demand for a specific product, due to falling marginal utility, as you point out, but there is no limit to demand as a whole. "

The obvious limit to demand is purchasing power. The other limit is marginal propensity to consume. Again, I'm looking for economic arguments, not opinions.Phmoreno (talk) 13:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The "marginal propensity to consume" is with regards to increased income, not with regards to new products. If it was, nobody would ever consume anything but food. So that's not relevant here.

Demand is indeed limited by prices, so you could call that "purchasing power" if you want. The point being that there is no limit to demand itself. It can grow infinitely, if just the purchasing power grows with it. Since purchasing power goes up when productivity goes up, higher productivity leads to higher purchasing power and hence higher demand. And that's why there is no technological unemployment: The increased productivity leads to more purchasing power which leads to higher demand, which is filled by new products, which creates new jobs.

The Luddite fallacy is to ignore any part of this process.

And this is not opinion, this is economic fact.

If you want me to continue to explain this to you, we should find a better place. It could be email, it could be an online forum, or whatever. This is not the place. --OpenFuture (talk) 14:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

If you have references from reliable sources describing this economic model, by all means bring them here as this is certainly the place to report them. If there are no reliable sources then you're right that what you describe is not relevant to technological unemployment article nor is valid for explaining the luddite falacy in economic terms. Diego (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Origin of term

What is the origin of the term technological unemployment? If it is attributed to Schumpeter, do we have the reference?

I addressed the fact that the term was being used in the 1930s according to Jerome (1934), a good source for this article, but someone deleted all of this information.Phmoreno (talk) 14:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

In a New York Times review of Race Against the Machine (Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2011), Steve Lohr says, "Technology has always displaced some work and jobs. Over the years, many experts have warned — mistakenly — that machines were gaining the upper hand. In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes warned of a “new disease” that he termed “technological unemployment,” the inability of the economy to create new jobs faster than jobs were lost to automation." This Wikipedia article already mentions John Maynard Keynes's prediction that a century later the "problem of leisure" would exist, but I guess (if Lohr is right) that he also predicted that first, long before that, we would have to experience and learn to circumvent technological unemployment. I haven't read Keynes so far in my life, so I can't independently confirm these things being attributed to him. But I think it's interesting that, if both of these attributions are true, then Keynes's ideas about the broad arcs of the future—first experience and learn to circumvent technological unemployment, then reap the rewards of a highly automated economy later—echo those of Brain and Ford, but came at least 80 years prematurely. The difference that I would point out is that digital IT, such as robotics and powerful hardware and software, as we know them today, did not yet exist in the 1930s, so it's no wonder that Keynes's predictions were way too premature. However, I don't think another 80 years are going to pass before humanity has to work through these transitions. Maybe 10 or 20. By the way, regarding first attestations of terms, Google Ngram Viewer is always interesting to check out, albeit not lexicographically definitive by itself. Here's my search for this term. — ¾-10 23:17, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I located the Keynes quote with the definition and included it in the lede.Phmoreno (talk) 02:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Accurate summarization of the opposing POVs in the lead

There has been some difference of opinion of the best way to describe the opposing POVs in the lead.

In this edit, the following statement was removed: "The warning is that technology is no longer creating domestic jobs at the rate that it is making others obsolete. "

My attempt was to summarize the warning that the article described from Jeremy Rifkin and Martin Ford. The article states:

Mr Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase—one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. “In the years ahead,” he wrote, “more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world.”

Regarding Martin Ford's POV:

Another implication is that technology is no longer creating new jobs at a rate that replaces old ones made obsolete elsewhere in the economy. All told, Mr Ford has identified over 50m jobs in America—nearly 40% of all employment—which, to a greater or lesser extent, could be performed by a piece of software running on a computer. Within a decade, many of them are likely to vanish.

OpenFuture stated in the edit that "That part is most definitely not in the source". I am confused about how that can be the case. It states very clearly the concern that "Technology is not creating jobs at the rate that it replaces old ones.

The clarification template was added to this sentence which OpenFuture earlier claimed was also not supported by the article: "However, some[who?] technologists[clarification needed] claim that the last two decades that modern capabilities of pattern recognition, machine learning and global networking are steadily eliminating the skilled work of large swaths of the middle income workforce." It seems to me that the lead is already long, and that a full enumeration of the technologists listed later in the article is unnecessary. The sentence shall now instead read: "However, some technologists such as David F. Noble, Jeremy Rifkin, Martin Ford, Marshall Brain, and James S. Albus claim that modern capabilities of pattern...."

Personally, I prefer it as "some technologists". If anyone sees a better way of summarizing without making it unduly unclear, then perhaps further improvements can be made. J JMesserly (talk) 17:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

There is no "warning" in the article whatsoever. The statement starting with "The warning is" can therefore not be supported. If you change it to "The implication is" which is what the article quote says, then this needs to be qualified with who says it, since the article as a whole does not support the claim. In fact, the article just takes up some people claiming that there is technological unemployment, but it also argues against it. The article as such can therefore *not* be used to support general statements supporting technological unemployment. --OpenFuture (talk) 18:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Caution: An editor involved with this article is known for making absurd statements and relentlessly harassing other editors. One of his tactics is making false, misleading or derogatory claims about sources. If you know you are correct, stick to your position and do not get involved in arguments with him.Phmoreno (talk) 18:04, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I will from now deal with your personal attacks through the incident system, I'm not tolerating them any longer. --OpenFuture (talk) 18:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Intro to technological unemployment entry should be balanced

The introduction to this entry should reflect the current debate, but it should also reflect the general belief that technological unemployment does not cause systemic or structural unemployment. The following last line in the intro is questionable to misleading: "Dispersal of labor by lowering working hours and technological advancement leading to a lower cost of living has been the general direction since the industrial revolution." Additionally, the cited source material does not address the claim made and it should be revised. The cited material is a graphic of the changes in working hours per week and GDP per capita (PPP) over time. Note that the PPP does not reflect wage inequality (Gini coefficient). The cost of living as measured by the CPI has steadily risen, while real wages (CPI adjusted) have, more or less, stagnated since the mid-1970s. The claim that the cost of living has fallen since the Industrial Revolution is somewhat misleading because it is cherry picking a time period for comparison. This measure should be looked at in a context that reflects the current market realities. The point of this article is not to debate the merits of capitalism. The point is to accurately reflect the meaning and impact of technological unemployment. Technological unemployment is and has been an economic reality for some time. Economists do not debate over whether labor is displaced by productivity. The debate is over whether or not it causes systemic or structural unemployment. As this is the point of contention, the article should show both sides of the argument. Please consider a wholesale revision of this article in a way that allows both sides to "make their case." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.162.197 (talk) 17:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee do not belong in the lede

If Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee are worthy of mentioning at all it should be elsewhere than in the lede. Their work The Race Against the Machine was more of an opinion piece than a serious study and offered no proof of any "acceleration" of technology.Phmoreno (talk) 18:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, but the lede should also show that there is a debate over the impact of technological unemployment. The current lede (and article for that matter) is sub-par which is probably due to the large volume of edits reflecting each author's bias on the underlying debate. Citations from credible sources for all the views given are still needed. Technological unemployment is not a "fallacy." The proximity of the terms could lead to confusion. Also, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Race Against the Machine were specifically talking about ICT. Although you say they offered "no proof" they cite Moore's law, among other indicators, as evidence for the growth of technology-driven productivity. Also, if you are looking for specific findings, look at their individual scholarly work. For instance, Brynjolfsson and Hitt's (2003) paper Computing Productivity: Firm-level Evidence concludes: "This paper presents direct evidence that computerization contributes to productivity and output growth as conventionally measured in a broad cross-section of large firms. Furthermore, the pattern of rising growth contributions over longer time periods suggests that computers are part of a larger system of technological and organizational change that increases firm-level productivity over time." This article could be linked to provide further evidence if need be.Dialecticalmonism (talk) 19:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

There is no dispute that ITC improves productivity. The problem with The Race Against the Machine is that it makes unfounded claims about technological acceleration when ICT is subject to diminishing returns. Also, they try to use examples from economic history that actually disprove some of their claims. Lastly, they minimize other causes of stagnation like globalization and resources depletion and completely ignore the Georgist concept of high land prices having a negative effect on economic growth. There are several other books that present better informed views.Phmoreno (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Rearrangement

I will be doing a little rearranging in the next few days to see if this can be better presented.Phmoreno (talk) 01:19, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

What else needs fixing and when do we remove tags?

Need new how to improve comments comments?

Also, what needs to be done before we remove?:

I think we're pretty close to taking off the disputed. The article still needs cleanup.--Nogburt (talk) 01:55, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

1950s to present

Should it not be mentioned in this section that the labor participation of the entire population has decreased markedly since the 1950s in the developed world? Most people used to start working fulltime at the age of 14-18, now few people start before 18 and half go on to several years of higher education, not entering the full time workforce until they are in their 20s, the number of retired people as a percentage of the population has also risen as has the share of part time work. Many developed countries have also shortened the workweek since 1950 or did so not too long before 1950 (especially if you don't count the war years because those had artificial full employment). I am not an economist but I would think such considerations are essential in a debate about whether or not automation increases unemployment. Also, shortening the workweek/reducing labor participation (longer education and/or lower retirement age) would be possible solutions to technological unemployment and therefore it is important people interested in the subject are aware of these options.89.99.122.33 (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)