Re: Science and Unemployment...
T. Joseph W. Lazio (lazio@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu)
27 Jun 1995 12:40:15 GMT
>>>>> "BS" == Bruce Salem <salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU> writes:
BS> In article <LAZIO.95Jun24121122@ism.spacenet.tn.cornell.edu>
BS> lazio@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu writes:
>>
>> Has increasing technology resulted in the disappearance of jobs?
>> Yes. Is this a bad thing? Depends. It certainly is a bad thing
>> for the worker whose job disappears because a robot can do it
>> faster, better, and cheaper than a human. But what about society
>> as a whole, i.e. what about all of us?
BS> In 1955 3% unemployment was regarded as optimal. Now the
BS> figure is about 6% nationwide. The way the Labor counted jobs,
BS> especially after the Regan years, is that a great many temp and
BS> part-time jobs are counted as full-employment. I should think that
BS> you would regard it as a serious matter that an increasing
BS> percentage of people are not employed to their potential or are
BS> dissatisfied with the quality of work they have to do. This
BS> includes hightly educated as well as under-educated people.
I agree that this is a serious problem. However, that wasn't the
issue being discussed.
The position of Madhudvisah dasa Swami (shelter@peg.apc.org) is that
technological progress is bad. I (and others) have been arguing that
even though technological progress has its costs, turning back the
clock to A.D. 1800, 1000, or 1000 B.C. has far higher costs.
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