Why automation will not lead to long term unemployment

[Cynical]

Automation will definitely displace certain workers but will open up jobs for others. Someone will have to design, test and repair it - engineers, technicians, etc. But I do agree with you that many low-skilled type jobs will continue to be the ones most affected, which is another reason we don't need ten of thousands of uneducated, impoverished migrants flooding over our borders.

 

[Allan]

In the recent years, there has been a growing discussion on automation, more specifically, on how it will start replacing jobs and put people out of work. What never really seems to be stated in these discussions is that the notion that technology will lead to mass long term unemployment dates back a long way. In fact, Emperor Vespasian once refused to allow a more efficient way of transporting goods on the basis that it would put people out of work.

If this wikipedia article is to be trusted, the fear of technology replacing jobs led to authorities limiting innovation during the Renaissance.
Technological unemployment - Wikipedia

When the industrial revolution was in full swing, there were definitely people who believed that machines would eventually replace people's jobs. In fact, there was a group of textile workers called the luddites who destroyed textile machinery. They did this because the machines could be operated by people with less skill and could produce faster than any skilled worker by hand.

By the end of the 19th century, the fear of technological unemployment dissipated as the public saw that though many jobs were taken by the machines, new jobs were created to replace the old ones.

Many advocates of UBI will dismiss the history of technology not leading to mass unemployment, saying that it's different this time. What they fail to see is why it didn't happen in the past.

The law of economic scarcity states two things:

1. resources are limited

2. desires are unlimited

As long as the second point remains true, there will always be work for a man to do.

For most of human history, the vast majority of jobs involved making or gathering what was needed to survive (hunting, gathering fishing, and agriculture). During the industrial revolution, this changed as new machines and methods allowed for greater crop yields with less manpower. The additional manpower went on to other areas such as manufacturing. Since the 1980s, manufacturing jobs have been in decline. Despite this, manufacturing output in the US is at an all time high. In other words, though some jobs were lost to outsourcing, most were lost to automation.
Phenomenal Gains in Manufacturing Productivity

Today, the US (alongside most developed nations) has a primarily service based economy. Very few Americans are employed in agriculture.
Employment in Agriculture - Our World in Data

Good points. I would add that to succeed in this new world requires leading the way in high tech innovation. America has been excellent at that and this is the reason unemployment is low in the US, wages are good and GDP is excellent. So when Trump complains about innovations such as wind energy I cringe. The US can't shy away from technology the world is adopting because of some BS about birds/cancer/house values. The US has to lead in this type of innovation or cede technology leadership to the Chinese and every other country that embraces it.

 

[charliebrown]

In the recent years, there has been a growing discussion on automation, more specifically, on how it will start replacing jobs and put people out of work. What never really seems to be stated in these discussions is that the notion that technology will lead to mass long term unemployment dates back a long way. In fact, Emperor Vespasian once refused to allow a more efficient way of transporting goods on the basis that it would put people out of work.

If this wikipedia article is to be trusted, the fear of technology replacing jobs led to authorities limiting innovation during the Renaissance.
Technological unemployment - Wikipedia

When the industrial revolution was in full swing, there were definitely people who believed that machines would eventually replace people's jobs. In fact, there was a group of textile workers called the luddites who destroyed textile machinery. They did this because the machines could be operated by people with less skill and could produce faster than any skilled worker by hand.

By the end of the 19th century, the fear of technological unemployment dissipated as the public saw that though many jobs were taken by the machines, new jobs were created to replace the old ones.

Many advocates of UBI will dismiss the history of technology not leading to mass unemployment, saying that it's different this time. What they fail to see is why it didn't happen in the past.

The law of economic scarcity states two things:

1. resources are limited

2. desires are unlimited

As long as the second point remains true, there will always be work for a man to do.

For most of human history, the vast majority of jobs involved making or gathering what was needed to survive (hunting, gathering fishing, and agriculture). During the industrial revolution, this changed as new machines and methods allowed for greater crop yields with less manpower. The additional manpower went on to other areas such as manufacturing. Since the 1980s, manufacturing jobs have been in decline. Despite this, manufacturing output in the US is at an all time high. In other words, though some jobs were lost to outsourcing, most were lost to automation.
Phenomenal Gains in Manufacturing Productivity

Today, the US (alongside most developed nations) has a primarily service based economy. Very few Americans are employed in agriculture.
Employment in Agriculture - Our World in Data

Points that definitely need to be raised.

I will agree with you that automation to date has primarily impacted the agriculture and manufacturing fields.

Think about AI and how it will effect the jobs that are present today? As computers climb the skill set tasks, it will displace more and more people from jobs. If the general population is in fact becoming more intelligent and outpacing computers in processing, logic, memory and analysis skills, then I would agree with you that there would be an increase in labor participation rate not a decrease in LPR. The fact is that machines will continue decimating the lower end jobs and continue climbing the skill set task to the point where we will be less people working than not working. Our tax system needs to be changed in many respects. We cannot continue to maintain roads with gas taxes if gas is no longer used as the fuel for transportation. We can not continue using income taxes as our major revenue generator if income becomes less common.

Sales tax on anything and everything will be the only way to sustain a healthy environment for both humans and machines.

 

[imagep]

Think of it this way. Despite an explosion in automation and technology there are many more jobs today than there were 100 years ago.

The average work week had declined by 30+ hours. If that scale of loss of need for human labor happens again, we will either be down to the 10 hour work week, or 75% unemployment. However, due to the weakening of the labor union movement, we no longer have shorter work week pressures, so more than likely, we will end up with the unemployment problem instead of the 10 hour work week.

At 75% unemployment, there will not be enough jobs for every family to have a source of income. That's where the issue is.

 

[Cynical]

Points that definitely need to be raised.

I will agree with you that automation to date has primarily impacted the agriculture and manufacturing fields.

Think about AI and how it will effect the jobs that are present today? As computers climb the skill set tasks, it will displace more and more people from jobs. If the general population is in fact becoming more intelligent and outpacing computers in processing, logic, memory and analysis skills, then I would agree with you that there would be an increase in labor participation rate not a decrease in LPR. The fact is that machines will continue decimating the lower end jobs and continue climbing the skill set task to the point where we will be less people working than not working. Our tax system needs to be changed in many respects. We cannot continue to maintain roads with gas taxes if gas is no longer used as the fuel for transportation. We can not continue using income taxes as our major revenue generator if income becomes less common.

Sales tax on anything and everything will be the only way to sustain a healthy environment for both humans and machines.

Which is the primary reason that we do not need massive immigration from 3rd World countries of people with little to education, and don't speak the language.

 

[imagep]

I've been designing robotic "brains" for cutting edge autonomy systems long before VCs started dumping piles of cash onto whomever was willing to make the most ridiculous promise. So I think I've got a pretty good idea as to what's possible and where we're going.


Labor is a market. It's bound by the laws of supply and demand. Robots have to compete in that market. You have to have a positive ROI. This is the key to understanding future automation.


Just because something can be automated doesn't mean that it will ever be cost effective to automate. We've been able to build large autonomous mowers for something like 15 years. Yet as far as I know, no golf courses use autonomous mowers. The reason is purely economic. When you add in the additional cost of sensors, drive by wire control, R&D, servicing by robotic techs, monitoring by robotic operator, and increased liability you'll find that autonomous mowers are vastly more expensive than a traditional mower and a greens-keeper.


Automation, labor, and demand all exist in an equilibrium. We no longer have a dozen people with a 2nd grade education digging ditches for pennies. Instead we use heavy equipment operated by a single highly skilled operator, because it's cheaper. Millions of jobs have disappeared over the last century, yet unemployment is at an all time low. Automation does not reduce the number of jobs, it replaces low skilled low wage jobs with high skilled high wage jobs subject to the laws of supply and demand.


They key is the education and skill of the workforce. If we do a good job with education and training then we'll have lots of good well paying jobs where workers augment their efforts with advanced autonomy. If we don't do a good job educating and training then we'll have lots of poorly paying jobs where workers do menial work. People will only train and educate themselves so long as it increases their salary. And further education will only allow them to increase their salary to the extent that current technology requires them. It's an equilibrium.


In short: Advanced automation gives workers additional opportunities to increase their salaries through additional education and training. In contrast, a lack of education and training promotes lower salaries which lower labor costs and inhibit the adoption of new technologies.

Unemployment is not at an all time low.


Anyhow, you are making the assumption that demand will continue to increase at the same rate that technology has increased, and that worker protections, such as the standard work week being reduced by 30 hours in the twentieth century. It is highly likely that technology will increase at a faster rate, than demand increases. Since the end of the 1800's, technology has been increasing at a faster rate ever decade.


At the same time, demand is not likely to increase as fast due to declining marginal utility of "stuff". We aren't likely to continue to get fatter (eating more and more food), if the temperature we keep our homes and businesses makes us comfortable, we aren't likely to increase our hvac utilization. If two or three cars is enough per family, we aren't likely to start buying six or seven. I already have two televisions in my house for every family member, I'm not that likely to purchase more.


Just because something happened in the past, doesn't mean it's going to happen in the future. Dynamics change. Paradigms shift.

 

[imagep]

Automation will definitely displace certain workers but will open up jobs for others. Someone will have to design, test and repair it - engineers, technicians, etc. But I do agree with you that many low-skilled type jobs will continue to be the ones most affected, which is another reason we don't need ten of thousands of uneducated, impoverished migrants flooding over our borders.

Many high skilled jobs are going to be eliminated also. Technology is making it easier for dull people to perform tasks that used to take higher IQ folks. It's much easier to "read" digital output than to read a dial or a ruler or other analog measuring equipment. And as long as that information is digital, it can automatically be transferred to a computer that analyzes it or makes whatever adjustments that need to be made.

There are organizations working on automating medical care right now. Doctors are TERRIBLE at making diagnosis. Simple fact is they don't know what is wrong with you, they just make their best guess from their individual experience, and studies have proven that 75% of the time their first diagnosis is wrong.

My mother was recently diagnosed with dry skin, but she actually had an illness that could be deadly. My wife, who has no medical training recognized the symptoms, my mother went back to the same doc and asked if it could be what my wife said it was (Shingles), and the doctor agreed that it was shingles, not just dry skin. My mother was at a high risk for shingles because she had chicken pox as a young child and due to her current age and sex. A computerized system could have someones entire lifetime medical history, and make a diagnoses using past medical history as a factor - while this doctor apparently either wasn't smart enough or just didn't give a **** enough to bother to ask her if she had had chicken pox.

Computerized doctors don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than human doctors. Self operating/driving equipment doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than human operators.

 

[Mithros]

Unemployment is not at an all time low.


Anyhow, you are making the assumption that demand will continue to increase at the same rate that technology has increased, and that worker protections, such as the standard work week being reduced by 30 hours in the twentieth century. It is highly likely that technology will increase at a faster rate, than demand increases. Since the end of the 1800's, technology has been increasing at a faster rate ever decade.


At the same time, demand is not likely to increase as fast due to declining marginal utility of "stuff". We aren't likely to continue to get fatter (eating more and more food), if the temperature we keep our homes and businesses makes us comfortable, we aren't likely to increase our hvac utilization. If two or three cars is enough per family, we aren't likely to start buying six or seven. I already have two televisions in my house for every family member, I'm not that likely to purchase more.


Just because something happened in the past, doesn't mean it's going to happen in the future. Dynamics change. Paradigms shift.

You're absolutely right, things change, they always change, and they can change in unexpected ways.

But things have changed more and more quickly than they're changing now. Technological changes are slowing down, not speeding up. The first flight took place in 1902. Roughly 20 years later we circumnavigated the globe. Twenty years after that we had P51, Spitfire, and 109. Step forward another 20 years later we have the SR71 and Boeing 737. Today 50 years later we're still building 737's. The panama canal was built a little more than 100 years ago, largely by hand. It required 75,000 men. Modern construction doesn't employ anywhere near that many people. People were born in a world that had no manned flight and experienced man landing on the moon. What do we have to compare with that? The Big dig was a far more complex undertaking and only required 5,000 workers. We used to have armies of human calculators, typists, and draftsmen. They're essentially all gone. That's many millions of jobs that have been automated and eliminated. Take a look at any modern factory. Compare the factory floor of today with the factory floor of the past. There really aren't all that many people. We have withstood far more drastic effects from automation than we're facing now.

And besides, what's the most common job in America today? Retail work. There's far more pressure on jobs from Amazon and Netflix than from automation.

As you said, rates have forcing functions. Technology is no different. The further technology increases, the longer it takes to train and educate people capable of advancing the art and the more expensive developments become. Technological developments are not exponentially unbound.

And I'm not assuming that technology will increase with demand. I'm saying that that the implementation of technological developments is economically dependent on labor availability. Just because something is technologically feasible doesn't mean that it makes economic sense to do it. 3D printing was invented in 1984. Neural networks were invented in 1954.

 

[I'm Supposn]

… Many advocates of UBI will dismiss the history of technology not leading to mass unemployment, saying that it's different this time. ...

Masterhawk, (UBI, Universal Basic Income?). The concern of many who fear automation, is although peoples’ wants are unlimited, and due to amazing stride in automation and artificial intelligence, (unless we much greater improve our training and educational systems), great portions of our population could not obtain any meaningful employment.
In that case, even if UBI could be financially feasible and an economic solution, we’d still have a serious social problem. People that are treated as of lesser value, are more likely to behave in manners that are contrary to our society.

Inevitably, the minimum wage rate’s purchasing power will be substantially increased and automatically retain that value. Until then, UBI will not be a politically viable proposal. I’m not certain UBI would be an economic or a social improvement.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

First, you're just throwing out numbers and opinion. Very difficult to have a what if conversation when you do that.

People move on to different jobs.

Of course they move on to different jobs. In fact, we are experiencing record low unemployment and a booming stock market.
Now, about all those jobs and those people doing those jobs...

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Masterhawk, (UBI, Universal Basic Income?). The concern of many who fear automation, is although peoples’ wants are unlimited, and due to amazing stride in automation and artificial intelligence, (unless we much greater improve our training and educational systems), great portions of our population could not obtain any meaningful employment.
In that case, even if UBI could be financially feasible and an economic solution, we’d still have a serious social problem. People that are treated as of lesser value, are more likely to behave in manners that are contrary to our society.

Inevitably, the minimum wage rate’s purchasing power will be substantially increased and automatically retain that value. Until then, UBI will not be a politically viable proposal. I’m not certain UBI would be an economic or a social improvement.

Respectfully, Supposn

We either get ready to accept UBI, or a robot tax, or make a moon shot sized investment in MASSIVE higher education programs for everyone, starting at the high school level.

If we fail to do all three, in twenty years we will be faced with 35% or higher unemployment and this time around, figures like that will spawn violent bloody revolution around the globe.

So you better figure this out, figure out what we Americans need to invest in, take your pick.

 

[I'm Supposn]

Checkerboard Strangler, all members of congress opposed, and some who are not opposed to substantially increasing and sustaining our minimum wage rate’s purchasing power, would vote in opposition of Universal Basic Income.
Some, (possibly a majority) of those that would vote to substantially increase and sustain our minimum wage rate’s purchasing power, would also vote in support of Universal Basic Income; but many of them will first insist that we consider and reach for the “lower-hanging fruit”.

Passage of UBI is not politically feasible until we pass and experience a few years of a substantially improved minimum wage rate act. I'm certainly opposed to a "robot tax".

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Drawdown]

Many high skilled jobs are going to be eliminated also. Technology is making it easier for dull people to perform tasks that used to take higher IQ folks. It's much easier to "read" digital output than to read a dial or a ruler or other analog measuring equipment. And as long as that information is digital, it can automatically be transferred to a computer that analyzes it or makes whatever adjustments that need to be made.

There are organizations working on automating medical care right now. Doctors are TERRIBLE at making diagnosis. Simple fact is they don't know what is wrong with you, they just make their best guess from their individual experience, and studies have proven that 75% of the time their first diagnosis is wrong.

My mother was recently diagnosed with dry skin, but she actually had an illness that could be deadly. My wife, who has no medical training recognized the symptoms, my mother went back to the same doc and asked if it could be what my wife said it was (Shingles), and the doctor agreed that it was shingles, not just dry skin. My mother was at a high risk for shingles because she had chicken pox as a young child and due to her current age and sex. A computerized system could have someones entire lifetime medical history, and make a diagnoses using past medical history as a factor - while this doctor apparently either wasn't smart enough or just didn't give a **** enough to bother to ask her if she had had chicken pox.

Computerized doctors don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than human doctors. Self operating/driving equipment doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than human operators.

So? The utility of technology isn't in what it does, but it how it adds to the profitability of a company. A 100% accurate Dr. Bot isn't going to have utility if nobody has money to go to the doctor. A completely safe self-driving fork lift isn't going to have utility if there is nobody buying products for it to transport. Economics is where the limits of technology lie.

 

[FinnFox]

Of course they move on to different jobs. In fact, we are experiencing record low unemployment and a booming stock market.
Now, about all those jobs and those people doing those jobs...

View attachment 67268236

So there is much more jobs than workers then. Americans are working like horses xD When you can have 3 jobs who need living wage? (I mean you should get enough money from 3 jobs, right?)

 

[I'm Supposn]

We either get ready to accept UBI, [i.e. universal basic income], or a robot tax, or make a moon shot sized investment in MASSIVE higher education programs for everyone, starting at the high school level. ...

Checkerboard Strangler, each of the 50 states have opportunities to devise their own improvements without intervening or harming their neighbors. Paraphrasing Mark twain, we all talk of education and states’ rights, but the states themselves have failed to step up to the extent of their responsibilities.

The federal “no child left behind’ program certainly was correct to begin with prekindergarten. Children unprepared to enter high-school were lost to us unless they later received some general education and training in the U.S. military.

Every parent or guardian should receive their children’s’ scores and explanations of standard annual federal tests. Those tests’ averages and median scores for each county, town, city and state should be published by the federal government. That would enable voters to hold legislators and administrators for the public schools within their jurisdictions. If those average and median scores of individual schools were published, individual school administrators could be held more responsible.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Integrityrespec]

It is unbelievably stupid to try to argue that the past can predict the future. Technology does not have to create as many jobs as it eliminates. You're taking individual inventions like a coal digging machine that replaced coal miners and saying all displaced workers in every sector can just move to another sector! The difference here is all sectors are being made more efficient and increasing automation. We continuously need less and less human workers to produce the same number of things. If every sector is increasing in efficiency there is no place for displaced workers to go.

If for instance in 5 years self-driving trucks are brought in the market and truck driver is the most populous job in America, where do the millions of truck drivers go? Who's is going to pay to retrain them and as what? Are you going to retrain 50 year old truck drivers to be electrical engineers? What branch has millions of job openings for these people to fill, especially when those branches also need less and less human workers for equal output?

Yes, this really is a tremendous problem and your hilariously simplified view of our economy isn't accurate and isn't applicable to a highly automated future. The only long term solution is a UBI, as we can not continue to couple someone's ability to live to their ability to find a job in a market that has many more people than jobs.

Past is exactly how we predict future. And as for truck drivers when we do to fully automated trucking, all the former drivers will go into emergency car and health care industries to help with the massive number of impending accidents.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

So there is much more jobs than workers then. Americans are working like horses xD When you can have 3 jobs who need living wage? (I mean you should get enough money from 3 jobs, right?)

More productive, working more, working harder, working longer hours, getting paid LESS AND LESS...while the cost of living continues to skyrocket.

That is "The Despair Quotient" in a nutshell.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Checkerboard Strangler, each of the 50 states have opportunities to devise their own improvements without intervening or harming their neighbors. Paraphrasing Mark twain, we all talk of education and states’ rights, but the states themselves have failed to step up to the extent of their responsibilities.

The federal “no child left behind’ program certainly was correct to begin with prekindergarten. Children unprepared to enter high-school were lost to us unless they later received some general education and training in the U.S. military.

Every parent or guardian should receive their children’s’ scores and explanations of standard annual federal tests. Those tests’ averages and median scores for each county, town, city and state should be published by the federal government. That would enable voters to hold legislators and administrators for the public schools within their jurisdictions. If those average and median scores of individual schools were published, individual school administrators could be held more responsible.

Respectfully, Supposn

We had two kids in the school system during the Bush NCLB era.
Did you have kids in school during that time?

The accountability issue wasn't the problem.
The problem was that it changed the way teachers instruct and train students.
The No Child Left Behind program created the largest Potemkin Village I'd ever seen, scores of kids trained to pass a single test, but taught nothing.
And that was IN CONSERVATIVE TEXAS, so don't tell me it was about liberal teachers.

 

[FinnFox]

More productive, working more, working harder, working longer hours, getting paid LESS AND LESS...while the cost of living continues to skyrocket.

That is "The Despair Quotient" in a nutshell.

Seems like there was flaw in my reasoning^^ I hope it's not all about full blown greed ad infinitum - because it's not helping.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Seems like there was flaw in my reasoning^^ I hope it's not all about full blown greed ad infinitum - because it's not helping.

Of course it's all about greed ad nauseum.
That's all it's ever been about.

And, the thing is, it is not like I am some bleeding heart ultra libby whiner.

Yeah, I know about greed. Hey, sometimes I keep three slices of bacon and only give my wife TWO.
I'm greedy.
Sometimes I won't let her have the ice cream back because I'm shoveling it into my mouth and she's tickling me and pinching me trying to get me to let it go.
I'm greedy.

And then you hear on the news about the couple who damn near STARVED their children to DEATH as they ate in front of them.
That is also a case of greed, but as one can see, it is a matter of degree.

I don't expect greed to cease to exist in our capitalist economy but at some point reasonable people agree that they are witnessing WEAPONS GRADE LEVELS of it and it is damaging the civil fabric of society and it needs to be dialed back a bit.

 

[I'm Supposn]

We had two kids in the school system during the Bush NCLB era.
Did you have kids in school during that time?

The accountability issue wasn't the problem.
The problem was that it changed the way teachers instruct and train students.
The No Child Left Behind program created the largest Potemkin Village I'd ever seen, scores of kids trained to pass a single test, but taught nothing.
And that was IN CONSERVATIVE TEXAS, so don't tell me it was about liberal teachers.

Checkerboard Strangler, I had and continue to have grandchildren in public schools.

You write “accountability issue wasn't the problem”. If the test did not demonstrate competence, then the tests do not serve their purpose and government should be held accountable for that. (I personally find fault with my grand-children’s schools introductions of arithmetic to kindergarten and early school grades).

The reading tests should not be oral exams. They should require the children to comprehend what they’ve read. Similarly, social studies and science tests should not test recall of names, dates, and facts, but again comprehending what was read and reaching logical conclusions based upon the information provided within the test questions.
If the children in your school district were able to pass federal tests but were taught nothing of value, Then the government of that district should be held responsible. Was the entire state failing their children, or just a few backward school districts?

I had not seen the question of subjects other than math, and I don’t know if the tests were uniform throughout our entire nation. If they are not nationally uniform, the U.S. congress is failing our nation's children.

Respectfully, Supposn

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Checkerboard Strangler, I had and continue to have grandchildren in public schools.

You write “accountability issue wasn't the problem”. If the test did not demonstrate competence, then the tests do not serve their purpose and government should be held accountable for that. (I personally find fault with my grand-children’s schools introductions of arithmetic to kindergarten and early school grades).

The reading tests should not be oral exams. They should require the children to comprehend what they’ve read. Similarly, social studies and science tests should not test recall of names, dates, and facts, but again comprehending what was read and reaching logical conclusions based upon the information provided within the test questions.
If the children in your school district were able to pass federal tests but were taught nothing of value, Then the government of that district should be held responsible. Was the entire state failing their children, or just a few backward school districts?

I had not seen the question of subjects other than math, and I don’t know if the tests were uniform throughout our entire nation. If they are not nationally uniform, the U.S. congress is failing our nation's children.

Respectfully, Supposn

From what I could gather, and that was from sitting in on a few classes, and poring through their study materials, I got the impression that the schools were "teaching to the test", a phenom so widely noticed that it became a recurring theme in the overall discussions on the subject back then.
Karen and I wound up filling in a ton of blanks. The kids knew something happened in history, for example, but they had no understanding of the factors and circumstances that led to that event or occurrence.

They did indeed lack the cohesive and holistic knowledge of the subject, they just knew the correct answers to a stupid test.
I'm not against testing and I am not against wide adoption of national minimum standards.
I just think that the way it was applied through NCLB was incredibly incompetent.

When I said "accountability was not the problem", I meant that we heard a lot about accountability all the time, it was clearly important to the school administrators, but the meat and substance in the teaching methods was out of whack.
Sorry but I think that the Right has a very cynical view of public education just like they have a cynical view of pretty much every public institution overall, and this No Child Left Behind felt very cynical.

And remember, this was our experience in Texas.
I can only speak for how it was in Texas.

 

[FinnFox]

The reading tests should not be oral exams. They should require the children to comprehend what they’ve read. Similarly, social studies and science tests should not test recall of names, dates, and facts, but again comprehending what was read and reaching logical conclusions based upon the information provided within the test questions.
If the children in your school district were able to pass federal tests but were taught nothing of value, Then the government of that district should be held responsible. Was the entire state failing their children, or just a few backward school districts?

Parroting something without knowing what it is about is not learning. Learning is truly fun experience as you get new useful ideas, ways to solve problems and explanations how things works (physics, math, chemistry, economy study, etc). Maybe people need to make more questions, like: "what makes you think that you know something?" and find out how to avoid fallacies in logic, also people should go a bit deeper and think what we call as knowledge, how you justify your knowledge (so it's not just yelling), heck people need tools to separate science from pseudo science - and you're not getting those tools without decent education.

My point is to develop thinking itself and increase awareness of things around us (also what's psychology, some basic knowledge is good, for example how to spot narcissist, etc (= what's not mental healthy).

Sometimes pure ignorance combined with "I don't care" attitude is what you face, but it's not helping anyone. Education is complex environment that need special attention all the time, so it's not going off the rails by taking wrong steps. I'm not sure how common thing this is, but I talked with one child on bus this week about laptops at school - they get laptop from school and it's free. If your reaction to this is "wow great" (and nothing else), well, think again. Laptop can be nice tool, it's not superior (as method) how you teach things, relying on tech + children combo is faux pas. I'm not aware of all things in our education system now, but as I pointed out earlier we're not at top anymore (PISA ranking #8). There's lot of factors why we're lacking in education now, all I know so far is from teachers and it's not much. Some new ideas are not working as they hoped and education need some fixing/tuning, even if we like to be at #7 someday. Here teachers plan all things in our education system.

 

[Masterhawk]

The Big dig was a far more complex undertaking and only required 5,000 workers. We used to have armies of human calculators, typists, and draftsmen. They're essentially all gone. That's many millions of jobs that have been automated and eliminated. Take a look at any modern factory. Compare the factory floor of today with the factory floor of the past. There really aren't all that many people. We have withstood far more drastic effects from automation than we're facing now.

And people who otherwise would have been calculists are off doing different jobs.

 

[Masterhawk]

Many high skilled jobs are going to be eliminated also. Technology is making it easier for dull people to perform tasks that used to take higher IQ folks. It's much easier to "read" digital output than to read a dial or a ruler or other analog measuring equipment. And as long as that information is digital, it can automatically be transferred to a computer that analyzes it or makes whatever adjustments that need to be made.

There are organizations working on automating medical care right now. Doctors are TERRIBLE at making diagnosis. Simple fact is they don't know what is wrong with you, they just make their best guess from their individual experience, and studies have proven that 75% of the time their first diagnosis is wrong.

My mother was recently diagnosed with dry skin, but she actually had an illness that could be deadly. My wife, who has no medical training recognized the symptoms, my mother went back to the same doc and asked if it could be what my wife said it was (Shingles), and the doctor agreed that it was shingles, not just dry skin. My mother was at a high risk for shingles because she had chicken pox as a young child and due to her current age and sex. A computerized system could have someones entire lifetime medical history, and make a diagnoses using past medical history as a factor - while this doctor apparently either wasn't smart enough or just didn't give a **** enough to bother to ask her if she had had chicken pox.

Computerized doctors don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than human doctors. Self operating/driving equipment doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than human operators.

What you're talking about actually happened in the past. Making stuff used to require a lot of skill, but when the industrial revolution came along, many of those stuff could be done with much less skill. This was the reason why the luddites destroyed textile machinery was because they saw that these machines would replace high skill jobs with low skill ones.