There another exercise in wishful thinking, this time from Jonathan Hasak at RealClearPolicy. Rather than a guaranteed job, why not guaranteed retraining, he asks:
Every administration since the Progressive Era has sought to create more jobs through the promise of tax breaks to businesses; subsidizing job opportunities; infrastructure, tax, and housing incentives; and leveraging resources from the private sector. But these incremental reforms have not fixed the broken talent marketplace that now exists in our country, nor have they corrected the mismatches in the labor market. While political constraints may prevent a large federal jobs guarantee program from becoming law anytime soon, it behooves both Democrats and Republicans — whether already in or aspiring to office — to create and champion local and state job-retraining initiatives that could be used as the foundation for a more comprehensive jobs program in the future.
He makes a significant number of weak assumptions with his proposal. First, the evidence that there is a widespread “skills mismatch” is weak. Second, how do the administrators of the proposed program decide what skills they’ll train? It will be decided politically, of course. Is there no role for aptitude or preference in his program?
But by far the greatest weakness is that as long as employers can import a workforce from abroad, they’ll do so. It gives them an edge. Workers whose jobs are dependent on not complaining, not asking for raises, and not moving away make for more docile employees. Those are the reasons that agricultural work has become increasingly dominated by Mexican and Central Americans, that meat-packing has transmogrified from a job that paid well and was mostly performed by native-born Americans to one that didn’t pay nearly so well and primarily employed immigrants, and information technology has so many South Asian, not some hypothetical “skills mismatch” or because they’re “jobs that Americans won’t do”.
Here’s my modest proposal: enforce existing labor laws, particularly those involving illegal immigrants or the use of H1-B and L-1 visas.
I recognize it’s anecdotal. And I can’t comment on IT and H1b visas, but……
1. We had a disaster at one of our companies, and one facility is currently completely destroyed and shut down. I’ve been spending considerable time there. We had to layoff all but a handful of the employees. The HR exec reports that he has received inquiries from 102 companies seeking to find and hire our former skilled operators, maintenance personnel and other trades. Obviously they are in short supply. Unskilled labor, not so much. That’s a skills mismatch.
2. As I have noted before, my brother in law is a plant manager in the FL Ag business. He can’t find any angry white men to do the work. But he sure can find Mexicans and Haitians. Angry white men don’t want to do those icky jobs.
As I said, it’s anecdotal. But I don’t know what book or study you consult to tell you wether it’s hypothetical or not. It seems like people doing the actual hiring would be a good start.
@Drew
If there were no Mexican or Haitian workers available, the Ag business would quickly realize that the Industrial Revolution was not a hoax created by angry white men.
If I understand your theory, the printing industry should replace those new fangled printing contraptions with good old fashioned scribes. I am sure that the Mexicans and Haitians would line-up to fill those jobs.
Henry Ford was able to make cheaper cars using machinery and automation. I know this must seem impossible, but it is true.
“…….with good old fashioned scribes.â€
Actually Reynolds was the resident Luddite. I’m sure they would automate what they could, if it made financial sense and in the absence of options, but the issue or assertion at hand was “Jobs Americans won’t do,†which appears to be a real issue. But thanks for the unique and sage automation insights. I’ve been dealing with these issues all my professional life but I guess I wasn’t “woke.â€
Oh, and Robbie the Robot isn’t the answer to everything. And your hair stylist is thankful.
If you cannot trust a fiction writer, who can you trust? But, I digress.
Creation and judgement require humans. Almost everything else can be automated to some degree, and yes, an automated hair stylist is quite possible.
You are selectively ‘woke’, and you have been chanting the mantra for so long that you accept the inconsistency between the ‘jobs Americans will not do’ and ‘new jobs will replace those lost to advancement’. They debate has been rigged by you and others.
You and others expect out-of-work Americans to subsidize companies that refuse to invest in their capital in improvements. Companies that would invest in machinery and automation are not able to compete with those those that rely on cheap illegal labor.
It is funny how capitalism and the free-market are only applicable in certain circumstances, and amazingly, those determining those circumstances are the same ones who are never subjected to the negative outcomes.
TB
Once again we are largely in agreement but talking past each other. Businesses will of course invest if it makes sense. It’s been a central point I have made here for years. No businessmen have suddenly lost their mojo.
I figured someone (perhaps you) would go the creative argument route. But let’s take tomato packing. Far harder to automate than you might think. Easy to do gross characteristics like size and shape. But every customer has unique requirements for color, luster, subtle blemishes, size distribution per pack etc. could it be automated? Perhaps. But costs would be extremely high. Easier to use the human eye and train. Is “cheap†labor used? Yes. Who puts out a sign saying “expensive labor only need apply.†But it’s still nasty work. They don’t discriminate against Americans. Americans just don’t apply. If that’s somehow a rigged debate I’d like to know how.
@Drew
Many agriculture manual tasks were once believed to be beyond automation, but they have been automated. Cotton picking was task for manual labor, until there were no manual laborers. Some products have been modified through breeding to make automation easier.
There are automated grading and quality control systems. They use high speed cameras and computers to compare the image to a template. I spend a lot of time on the Science Channel, and I am astounded at what has been automated.
Cheap labor is only cheap for the business owner(s) or stockholders. Everybody else must subsidize the cheapness of that labor. Without open borders and the trade deficit, there would be little cheap labor, and the only jobs available would be those ‘Americans are willing to do’.
I doubt that the machinery and training for Henry Ford’s plants was cheap, but that did not stop him. His problem was that there was not enough cheap manual labor to handcraft cars. Rather than the assembly line, today’s solution would be to import more cheap labor.
What I find amazing is that a business would want to employ more humans. An assembly line never gets tired, calls in sick, wants a vacation, or demands a raise, and I doubt that the most reliable humans are the ones that will work the cheapest.
But, the only way to keep this cheap labor cheap is to prohibit them from being legalized and assimilating. When the Mexicans and Haitians are provided with the legally required benefits and protections, I suspect that we will hear about the ‘jobs Mexicans and Haitians will not do’.
Where we talk past one another is that you are still trying to reconcile two diametrically opposed ideas. Either technological advances will allow machinery and automation to increase an individual worker’s productivity, or additional workers are required to increase productivity.
Since at least Gutenberg’s Press, the evolution has been towards eliminating one type of cheap labor for cheap mechanically assisted labor, and as importantly, the machinery has been becoming cheaper. What our friend the @FamousFictionWriter fails to understand is the last part.
Imagination is his and many others’ problem. The greatest thing about the additive manufacturing process is that it will become cheap, and with widespread availability, it is impossible to imagine the products that will be created.
Who knows? At some point, agriculture may be done in a laboratory using test tubes.
TB
The issue isn’t whether technology and automation may be more productive. The history of business is that it generally is over time. Not to be a prick, but that’s not insightful. The question is “what regulates its adoption.†Far more complex.
It’s simply not true that businesses don’t want to employ people. We are currently going through pitched battles in one of our businesses concerning a facility location vs the ability to attract talent. People make it happen, except for the absolute low of the low. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find those people.
@Drew
If you cannot find the people you need at your location, maybe you picked in the wrong location.
I do not doubt that you want to hire people. I am questioning why.
At one time, I was chanting the dogma, but at some point, it became apparent that something was amiss. Free-trade was supposed to increase domestic production of better goods, and this were supposed to produce better jobs.
The exact opposite has happened, and ‘to add insult to injury’, Americans that do not want the scraps left over are disparaged. Either the Industrial Revolution has ended, or something has gone awry.
I harp on the monetary and financial systems because the Industrial Revolution was created with sound money, and with it, there is no way to run a perpetual trade deficit. At some point, the money supply would be depleted. Instead of having money in stocks and bonds, you would own bushels of corn and barrels of oil.
What should have happened was little or no trade deficit and better replacement jobs. If it had, we would not be having this discussion. I will concede that many young people have been indoctrinated to believe that any job not at a desk is beneath them, but offering slave wages is not a very good way to change their minds.
(And yes, I realize that the government has contributed a lot to the present situation.)