Trump's 'jobs' plan faces uncertainty - [opinion]

[ffr]

The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump's appointment of Andrew Puzder as his secretary of labour. Even though it's clear that neither man understands the message.

Mr Puzder bears a large part of the responsibility for fulfilling Mr Trump's election promise to "bring back" America's lost industrial jobs: seven million in the past 35 years. That's what created the Rust Belt and the popular anger that put Mr Trump in power. But Mr Puzder is a fast-food magnate who got rich by shrinking his costs, and he has never met a computer he didn't like.

"They're (computers are) always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age-, sex-, or race-discrimination case," he rhapsodised. They also never take lunch or toilet breaks, they'll work 24 hours a day, and they don't have to be paid. So out with the workers and in with the robots.

It was not evil foreigners who "stole" most of those seven million American jobs, and will probably eliminate up to 50 million more in the next 20 years. It's the "intelligent machines" that did most of the damage, starting with simple assembly-line robots and ATMs. ("Every automated teller machine contains the ghosts of three bank tellers.&quot
<snip>

This is change on the scale of the (first) industrial revolution, and you can't fight it. But then, you really don't need to. American industry has shed seven million jobs since 1979, but the value of US factory production has more than doubled (in constant dollars). It is only jobs that are being destroyed, not wealth.

It is not a disaster for a rich society to reach a point where the same goods are being produced and the same services are being provided, but most people no longer have to work 40 or 50 hours a week (in jobs that most of them hate). Or rather, it's not a disaster unless having no work means having no money or self-respect. - Bangkok Post

And this is where education, specifically on American History becomes paramount. Rust belt voters need for stories like this to sink in, i.e. it wasn't HRC's fault for not addressing your concerns nor will putting blind faith in tRump bring back those jobs!!

Thanks a lot a$$holes!

[delisen]

1. Bold proposal might be the guaranteed basic income/new career of Consumer.

The historical antecedent is the farm programs which paid farmers to not produce.

Much of our economy depends upon consumer spending. If "consumer" would be recognized as a valid career, paid for through the guaranteed basic income (money raised by tax on big business) it could serve as a method of improving both production and consumption.