Come on... I suppose you'd rather have the heavy industries
back, pumping their filth into the air around *your* home and
killing *your* kids.

Give me a break. Also, your assumption that automation
will eliminate jobs was debunked in the 50s. It's just not
true. Automation will eliminate *some* jobs, but others
are created. We need to be knowledge workers not laborers.

"Vito" wrote in message
...
Jonathan Ganz wrote:

Ultimately, the only way to improve the situation is for US
workers to be even more productive. ...

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

The bottom line is what an item costs to produce, which includes labor
but many other costs we'd rather ignore. For example, our draconian
environmental statutes add more to production costs than does labor for
many industrial operations such as chrome plating. These regulations are
a major reason heavy industry has fled the U.S. Moreover, increasing
per-worker productivity requires automation which costs money and itself
puts people out of work. That new robomachine that allows one operator
to do the work of ten not only costs big bucks, which must be added to
the items it produces, but puts nine workers on the street. It may be
more profitable to move to a 3rd world country than raise the capital to
buy the new machine, especially if buying it means downsizing anyway.

Now consider what happens when productivity becomes so high that
everything is made by machines, without labor. Without jobs, nobody can
buy anything and without sales there are no profits and ...