On April 25, 2019, William Horobin writes on Bloomberg:
Automation, robots and globalization are rapidly changing the workplace and governments must act fast and decisively to counter the effects or face a worsening of social and economic tensions, the OECD warned.
Almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation, the Paris-based group said in a report on Tuesday. According to OECD Labor Director Stefano Scarpetta, the pace of change will be “startling.”
Safety nets and training systems built up over decades to protect workers are struggling to keep up with the “megatrends” changing the nature of work, the OECD said. While some workers will benefit as technology opens new markets and increases productivity, young, low-skilled, part-time and gig-economy workers are vulnerable.
Judgment Day
Automation may be most important issue for labor markets in the near future
“Deep and rapid structural changes are on the horizon, bringing with them major new opportunities but also greater uncertainty among those who are not well equipped to grasp them,” Scarpetta said.
The employment report is the latest OECD warning about risks to governments in advanced economies, which have already manifested themselves in a surge of support for populist political leaders. The organization has highlighted a squeeze on the middle classes, future jobs losses from technology and a widespread dissatisfaction in rich countries.
Changes in employment will hit some workers more than others — particularly young people with lower levels of education and women who are more likely to be under-employed and working in low paid jobs, the OECD said.
Skewed Skills
Workers who need it the most participate the least in training
It recommends more training and urges governments to extend protections to workers in the “grey zone,” where a blurring of employment and self-employment often means a lack of rights. The report also warns of “negative ramifications” for social cohesion.
Gary Reber Comments:
The OECD or Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development see that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production will eliminate the necessity for masses of human labor, and human labor will be replaced in non-human “things” do the producing.
Of course, if individuals are unable to produce and earn an income they will not be able to consume what they produce or exchange their earnings for what others produce. The economy then falters.
Unfortunately the OECD recommends more training and education as if this is the solution for the masses displaced by automation. It is not. The impact of future automation, AI, robots, and sophisticated apps used in the operations of production will not require the masses as workers doing the work of producing goods, products and services.
This is another “analysis” that continues to ignore who OWNS the non-human means of production. In order to consume one must produce, and if the non-human factor of production continues to not necessitate human input, we better start planning ways in which financial mechanisms can be used to empower EVERY child, woman and man to become OWNERS of the future non-human wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets formed. This will mean that our citizens will not always be dependent on jobs to produce and earn income. In place of wages or as a supplement, incomes will be earned from the production done by the non-human means we own, as individuals. We should be talking about how to ensure universal productive property ownership by EVERY citizen, as an individual.
A coalition of key stakeholders in education, labor, and government should be forging and demanding the effective right of EVERY citizen to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of capital.
We need to reform the monetary and financial system to free economic growth from artificial barriers that are restricting us from breaking free of anemic growth to create responsible, environmentally protective and enhanced growth and empower our building a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen, not limited by the 1 percent who own today’s America.
The solution is to empower EVERY citizen to be productive and earn to consume. So, if everybody who consumes, produces, and everybody who produces, consumes, things would work a lot better in the world. When people cannot produce, something must be done to meet their consumption needs, or what was a simple economic problem (how people can consume) turns into a major political problem (how to keep order in society when people are deprived and starving). Thus, what should be the major, if not sole focus of government — how to assist people in becoming and remaining productive is ignored. Instead, government implements policies seeking to guarantee that most if not all people have sufficient effective demand to enable them to consume when they do not or cannot produce. This in turn requires ever-increasing levels of government interference not only in the economy, but in every aspect of life.
Thus, logically, if productive capital is increasingly the source of economic growth, it should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all Americans. If both labor and non-human capital are independent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to EVERY American citizen — all children, women, and men. Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive and couch all policy directions in the name of job creation, job retention, and minimum wage increases. Americans ignore the necessity to broaden personal ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy.
Tectonic shifts in the technologies of production have, are and will continue to eliminate the necessity for masses of labor workers as workers are replaced by “machines” of all description. Significantly though, no matter how much labor is necessary or unnecessary, it is imperative that the issue of concentrated capital ownership is addressed, and policies are enacted to simultaneously create new capital owners of the corporations growing the economy, both established and viable start-ups.
How to accomplish this goal and create a plan should be our national focus. The solution entails monetary reform of the Federal Reserve and banking system, and the creation of financial mechanisms that do not require past savings to finance future growth. That means empowering EVERY child, woman, and man to acquire productive capital with the self-financing earnings of capital, and without the requirement of past savings (or reductions in consumption).
Given financially feasible investments, i.e., investments that pay for themselves out of future profits and thereafter provide consumption income for the investor, there should never be a question of whether there’s enough savings accumulated in the economy to finance all the necessary new growth of building a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen. Using “future savings,” there can always be enough money in the economy — and past savings can effectively be spent on consumption, which is their purpose, as they represent unconsumed production from the past.
Thus, the most important economic right Americans need and should demand is the effective right to acquire capital with the self-financing earnings of capital. “Capital Homesteading” provides such a means.
Support the enactment of the proposed Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act and Economic Empowerment Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/. And The Capital Homestead Act brochure, pdf print version at http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C-CHAflyer_1018101.pdf and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/capital-homestead-accounts-chas/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
Support the Agenda of The JUST Third WAY Movement (also known as “Economic Personalism”) at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/ and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
For an overview of this new paradigm, see “Economic Democracy And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy” at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=11
