Using tax cuts in corporate America.

Well to be fair the Democrats aren’t saying much of anything that might address this real challenge to the American worker either.

^^ True.  On all sides.SaveSave

The Atlantic

Newsweek

What is the Democrats plan to move workers from what is described in the Atlantic story to what is described in the Newsweek story?  Are they even talking about this?  

The Atlantic:  “The Internet is enabling a new kind of poorly paid hell”

From the Atlantic story...

“This low-paid work arrives via sites like CrowdFlower, Clickworker, Toluna, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, to name a few. Largely unregulated, these sites allow businesses and individuals to post short tasks and pay workers—in cash or, sometimes, gift cards—to complete them. A recent Mechanical Turk listing, for example, offered workers 80 cents to read a restaurant review and then answer a survey about their impressions of it; the time limit was 45 minutes. Another, which asked workers to fill out a 15-minute psychological questionnaire about what motivates people to do certain tasks, offered $1, but allowed that the job could take three hours.”


Newsweek: “Need a job? Why artificial intelligence will help human workers, not hurt them”.

From the Newsweek story...

“As Orbital Insight’s business has grown, it has been hiring aggressively, looking for data scientists, marketing managers and talent recruiters. But that’s only the beginning. Orbital Insight and companies like it are ravenous for raw satellite data, so they are buying it from satellite companies, adding more fuel to the satellite boom. The relatively inexpensive, small satellites that observe conditions on Earth are the fastest-growing segment of the $260.5 billion global satellite industry, the Satellite Industries Association said in a report in July 2017. That’s helping create a cascade of jobs, from rocket scientists (of course) down to maintenance workers who sweep launch pads. In December, LinkedIn listed more than 11,084 satellite industry job openings in the U.S.

Orbital Insight is just one of a many new companies in an exploding field called alternative data. The market for alternative data was about $200 million in 2016 and is expected to shoot to more than twice that by 2020, according to research firm Tabb Group. Alternative data refers to data outside of mainstream information, such as government statistics, stock prices, company financial reports and consumer credit card transactions. Alternative data comes from sources such as cellphone signals, “internet of things” sensors on industrial equipment, online videos, tweets, searches, social media likes—and satellite images.”

I would say that the persistent and rampant institutional problems within the cities I cited would negate your argument.  

I digress.  There's enough blame to go around.  Let's move on to the next level of discussion, rather than continuing to wallow in the blame game.  SaveSave

I don’t think anyone should be the least bit surprised by this. Corporate America is beholden to their stockholders to provide the best returns they can, and have been sitting on billions of dollars for a while now. If they would have wanted to increase wages or hire more people or bring jobs back here, they could have done that already but they didn’t. There was no incentive to do so before and I believe even with the new tax laws there still isn’t.

I think what will be surprising is the sheer number of jobs yet to be automated that no one ever imagined. I will freely admit being a bit shocked recently to see the number of cashiers/order takers inside a McDonald’s reduced to one, with a shiny new collection of computer touch screens in the restaurant lobby taking their place. Welcome to the wave of the future, folks. It’s already here.

Ok.  Being a Democrat I asked what is the Democratic plan to move people highlighted in the Atlantic story to what is outlined in the Newsweek story.

Now I’m asking what is the Republican plan to do it.

Certainly not this.

trump...

“Tremendous investment by companies from all over the world being made in America. There has never been anything like it. Now Disney, J.P. Morgan Chase and many others. Massive Regulation Reduction and Tax Cuts are making us a powerhouse again. Long way to go! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”

As of the end of October there were 6M job openings.  The problem isn’t that there aren’t any jobs.  The problem is there aren’t the jobs where they need to be.  And in areas where there are jobs jobs jobs there isn’t the skilled workforce to do them.

Last year CBS Sunday Morning did a show about jobs.  The take away is that in the next 20 years 45% of the jobs that exist today will be gone and jobs that we can’t imagine today will have replace them.  But the new job will require certain skills.

These are the challenges that face the American Worker but yet the politicians don’t talk about them.  During the election the closest anyone came to talking about these challenges is Hillary.  Remember when she tried to talk about the future of coal miners?  That went so bad she never talked about the real issues facing the American Worker again until after the election.

And the reason is because the workers that are affected by the changes don’t want to hear the truth.  What they want is somehow magically these well paying jobs will appear and they won’t have to do a thing like learn new skills.

So politicians on both sides are silent or even worse make vague promises of something that won’t happen.

“Don’t forget, that much of the new push for automation has come in the wake of commands by low skill labor for $15 an hour”

What a misleading statement.

Automation is and has been making advancements long before anyone started asking for a $15 minimum wage. It’s called evolution.

I'm trying to remember, haven't we heard something about companies using the profits from tax cuts to benefit their shareholders instead of investing in their employees and the communities before? Oh wait! That's right, heads of many of the largest corporations said that's exactly what they would do. Economist reiterated that information. I just wish there was a way for Congress to have received this information before the vote. Oh wait...

My friend went to McDonalds and went up to the counter to order coffee. The girl behind the counter gave her a blank stare. She finally said you have to order over there at the kiosk. My friend turned around and said, Yeah I don’t work here. She had the girl ring her out.
It’s the same reason I don’t use the self service at the grocery store. 1) I want people the have jobs and 2) if I’m going to pay the insane prices I pay for food, someone is going to ring me out. It’s not like the price is going to go down if I do all the work myself.

I always stand in the lines and don't use the self service check out for just that reason!!  

Although 45 has escalated it, both sides are guilty of being too busy pointing fingers to concentrate what they are supposed to be doing.  Their job.  Such a mess.

Maybe what ought to be automated is Congress. Replace the lot of them with a bank of shiny new touch screen computers so we can all go up and order what we want. Think of all the money we would save by not having to pay out all those cushy lifetime benefits! Not only that, it would help achieve the reduction in government that so many people say they want—double bonus!