Jonathan Ganz wrote:

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.

Good news: I have no kids at home. Bad news: I've had to quit riding
motorcycles because of all the trucks spraying imported wet garbage up
and down the roads hereabouths. A nice chrome plating shop dumping a few
poisons would be more welcome but the mob isn't interested in chrome
shops. But that's beside the point, which is that if we want local
employers to be able to compete with foreign companies that don't have
to abide by our expensive laws then we'll have to tax imports to level
the playing field.

Give me a break.

OK, arm or leg? (c:

.... Also, your assumption that automation will eliminate jobs was debunked in the 50s.

Yup, by propagandists fighting communism. Yasee capitalism is a great
system but it will inevitably be killed by the same advancing technology
that gave it birth and then what. Some prefer Naziism, others Communism
and still others to stick their heads in the sand in denial. Me? I'm too
old to care.


It's just not true. Automation will eliminate *some* jobs, but others
are created. We need to be knowledge workers not laborers.

The flaw in your theory is that the jobs automation creates require ever
more intellegence and education than an ever growing part of the
population can provide. Not everyone can be a rocket scientist or MD
even if they wanted to. When I graduated from High School half the class
went to work at the Ford plant and the other half at the aircraft plant,
all earning enough to buy homes and raise families. Less than 1 in 10
went to college and most of them flunked out. Those factory jobs are now
done better and cheaper by machines. Ditto ever more "professional"
jobs. There was a big demand for EEs til large scale integration came
along. Then they became computer programmers, until high level languages
came along. Then they became unemployed. I guess they should have got
honest jobs as lawyers or ministers, right?

Of course there are still plenty of jobs for kids getting out of high
school today - at McDonalds and Wendys and Buggerking - but unless you
are in the top half of the population and motivated and financed enough
to get at least a BS don't expect to earn a living. Tomarrow ....

If you had an *average* 15 year old kid what would you encourage him/her
to do today?