technology

Robert Reich's "iEverything" — the Job-Killing iRobot

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From his blog: "It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it ... The ratio of producers to customers continues to plummet ... New technologies aren’t just labor-replacing, they’re also knowledge-replacing ... When more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, the profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owner-investors ...

Global Capitalism Has Written Off The Human Race

Economic theory teaches that free price and profit movements ensure that capitalism produces the greatest welfare for the greatest number.  Losses indicate economic activities where costs exceed the value of production, thus investment in these activities is curtailed.  Profits indicate economic activities where the value of output exceeds its cost, thus investment increases.  Prices indicate the relative scarcity and value of inputs and outputs, thus serving to organize production most efficiently.

Worker Wage Inequality Myth Exposed

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In America today there is a crisis.  That crisis is economic inequality.  The U.S. workforce has been blamed and dismissed for the growing gap between rich and poor.  Much effort has gone into blaming the victim.  Americans have been called fat, lazy and stupid along with the never ending drumbeat claim U.S. workers are uneducated and do not have enough technological skills.

Apple Not So Cool After All

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apple made in chinaThe New York Times has a lengthy article, How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work and implies, we, Americans, just can't compete and we should just lay down and die when it comes to advanced manufacturing. Good God, what a sad state of affairs.

In early 2011, President Obama asked what would it take to make the iPhone in the United States instead of China and late Steve Jobs replied:

Those jobs aren’t coming back.

On really? Isn't that the classic CEO speak to get off my case and haven't we heard that one before? Instead of cheap labor being the reason corporations move to China, we have growing, much more sinister, motivations.

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

We're Losing Our High Technology Advantage America

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Howz that globalization workin' out fer ya? A new National Science Board report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, finally shows some bleak statistics for American Scientists and Engineers. High-technology manufacturing has lost 28% of jobs since a 2000 employment high of 2.5 million. That's 687,000 jobs. Below is the NSB report graph of the drop in high-tech manufacturing employment for the last decade.

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U.S. employment in high-technology manufacturing reached a peak in 2000, with 2.5 million jobs. The recession of 2001 provided the first big hit causing “substantial and permanent” job losses, the report said. By the end of the decade, more than a quarter of the jobs were gone.

NSB committee chair Dr. José-Marie Griffiths:

We’re seeing the result in the very real, and substantial, loss of good jobs