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Automation – For People?

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“Machines should work, people should think.”
The “IBM Polyanna Principle”

This slogan seems to come from an IBM ad from the 1960s, but it may be much older. It’s based on a vision of the future where robots do the heavy lifting and humans have time to dream up new ideas. In many ways, it describes the world we live in today. In other ways, it’s as much of a cartoon as “The Jetsons”.

The problem with automation is that it doesn’t stop just at physical work. Today’s machines do the thinking for us – or at least make it easier for a small cadre of professionals to view the “big picture”. Are humans becoming redundant? Is there a place for people and work in a world already heavily tilted towards capital and the machines it can buy?

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Break Big Banks?

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Too Big to Fail. It’s not just a description, it’s a political mantra – we have banks which have grown to the point where government cannot manage a potential collapse and the whole system goes down. Why not just bust them up?

There are actually a lot of good reasons why something much more subtle has to be done, as well as something more comprehensive. That doesn’t sell as well on the campaign trail, where the evil banks are a handy villain for all of our economic ills. Yet it’s vitally important because it’s entirely possible that in a rush to regulate we might do something which is not only dangerous but misses the real problem entirely.

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Reinventing the Labor Market

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If I were to tell you we’re at full employment, save one very nasty problem, you’d probably laugh. It sounds ridiculous on the face of it – aren’t people still struggling out there looking for work? Aren’t wages still stagnant?

The answer, not the punchline, lies in the problem – a terrible “skills gap”, or lack of the right skills for the jobs which are out there.

I’ve been slow to come around to the idea of a skills gap, figuring that it was far from our worst problem. There is a free market, after all, and workers who want a job will find a way to beef up their resumes to show that they have the skills which pay the bills. Eventually it should all even out. But what happens if the job market utterly fails?  That appears to be the situation.

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Job Growth Crashes?

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The April employment report was simply lousy. A gain of 160k jobs is better than a loss, but everything has been counting on gains on the order of 200k or better. The stock market largely shrugged it off, rising slightly. But is this really bad news? Is it real? Can we expect a big slowdown in job growth in 2016?

The answers are maybe, yes, and no. But we have to watch that last one to make sure because a lot may be riding on it – especially in an election year.

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“Angry”

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Trump is the Republican nominee apparent. We can reasonably expect many more stories on how “voters are angry”. According to a Rassmussen poll 67% of voters are “angry”, including 38% who are “very angry”.

But angry about what? Angry at who? How was the question asked? It’s not that simple, especially since this very high reading is down from 75% in 2010. None of it justifies the orange tinted reality show host without looking deeper into it.

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