Summary Of Race Against The Machines

Consequently, Keynes brought clarity to the subject of the Great Depression and unemployment, his argument suggested that unemployment may not be a temporary condition that the system could naturally recover. Keynes believed that unemployment could in fact reach equilibrium. In this article the Depression was seen as a condition of unemployment brought about a

The United States is not only one of the largest economies in the world, but it is also one of the strongest economies compared to industrialized countries, and this has been proven in the last few years. Despite of what many people believe or see, U.S economy is booming and it will continue to boom during the year 2015. In the article “When the U.S Economy is the Envy of the World,” published by the MSNBC on December 8, 2014, its author Steve Benen argues about the U.S economic recovery in order to persuade U.S citizens and show them the numbers that prove that our economy has recovered. Benen (2014) also encourage U.S citizens not “to compare the current economic recovery to other recoveries that followed modern downturns,” but “to compare our economic recovery against other countries who dealt with similar circumstances” because according to President Obama, the U.S “has put more people back to work” than any advanced economy in the world (qtd. in Benen, 2014). There are strong evidences that prove that the U.S economy is in its best year compared to three years ago. The growth of jobs, the slight increase of wages, and the low price of oil have truly helped the U.S economy recover.

Nearly each advancement we made contributed to the continuous rising of our economy. The extreme increase among jobs contributed to America’s wealth and money, there was a significant drop in homelessness, and families were allowed to live comfortably. “The image in document three shows that factories will begin showing up in small towns and villages” (Document 3). Now that there are more facilities to work, there are more jobs available for the common man. Previously there was only farming, but companies began moving into villages, meaning there are more jobs. “The image in document four tells people that there are more positions to fill. With the brand new assembly line, companies need five people to complete the task, as opposed to one” (Document 4). The automobile conceived a whole new job route with the assembly line. People now only needed to know how to piece together one thing and that opened up five or more times more jobs as there were in the past. “Railroad travel was fast. Going to San Francisco from New York City took only six days” (Document 5). To move this fast a train would need a team to operate it. The new engines required many workers; this showed that there would be work opportunities on the rail road too.

Beginning with unemployment in the 2007-2009 recession, U.S. unemployment rates peaked at 10% as well as held 41 consecutive months at rates higher than eight percent (Lazear 1). The U.S. economy plummeted during this time; many attributed the shift to a large decrease in the number of employed workers. To be able to better understand the unemployment issue, we must first examine the form of unemployment faced by the U.S. economy. Many believe that the changes faced by the U.S. labor market

The Depression was a gruesome time where people had worked relentlessly to survive. Unemployment today is as severe as it was in the 1930s, the unemployment rate of today is nowhere near the unemployment of the Great Depression. A pair of economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas created report called “A Historical Look at the Labor Market During Recessions”. The report is a graph of the WWII Recession, showing that the unemployment rate of a few years ago has past the unemployment rate of the WWII Recession. In 2008 the authors wrote the Unemployment Rate, it’s a report that describes the recessions of the past to the years of 2006 to 2011. The most of the recessions are above or near the average, but the highest recession is the Great Depression.

“Making it in America”, by Adam Davidson, illustrates how technology and machinery are interchanging humans in the workforce. Machines are taking over factories and leaving more employees out of work. Davidson also points out that the wage-gap is considerably increasing between un-educated and educated laborers. Corporations and companies all over the world, including the Americans, Europeans, and Chinese, are purchasing machines over hiring workers to save money.

According to Hernaes (2017), technology in the United States has been growing. With the growth of technology, more “blue-collar” jobs are being replaced. Inequality is increasing because the jobs being replaced are lower wage jobs. The reason for inequality is that those in the lower class, and even the middle class are losing their jobs. Those in the upper class mostly retain their jobs because their labor requires more skilled labor. The income gap increases because the wealthy can allocate their spendings on other resources, or cheaper resources that will replace labor. The loss of these jobs would cause the poor to become poorer, and the rich become richer. The supply of labor demanded would decrease, resulting in fewer workers. The growth of technology began as a “slow train since the 1980s.” Technology has been growing “exponential[ly]” ever since (Jones, 1998).

In this article, Jim Tankersley interviews Larry Summers, a Democratic economist and former Treasury Secretary, about the implications that technological advances, such as the use of robots in factories, have on income inequality and on middle-class jobs and wages. Because these new machines and robots can do the same work of low-skilled workers for lower costs, there has been a vast decrease in the amounts of jobs available for the middle-class. While some believe that the solution to this would be to obtain more education and learn skills that cannot be replaced by machines, Summers believes that this will not solve the problem because the income inequality caused by technology is due to the increase of wealth distribution to the top one

Ronald Bailey explains that technological progress has been affecting the employment level since mid-1950s and he defines it as a battle between human kind and the machine. This is more notably considering that unskilled workers are limited in the labor market either because those individuals do not possess the required set of skills or due to their education level. Moreover, Bailey also suggests different alternatives in order to overcome this problem. Methods such as taxation and the creation of new economic sectors can boost the economy and at the same time, provide aid to the unskilled laborer. Nevertheless, machines and technology are part of human’s life, so “instead of racing the machines, we should race with

Many current politicians such as President Trump have stated that they are going to revive the middle class by bringing jobs back into our economy that have been shipped off overseas. However, the problem with jobs has not been from shipping them overseas. Paul Wiseman, writer for The Associated Press, shows proof of this by stating, “A study at Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research last year found that trade accounted for just 13 percent of America’s lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs — 88 percent — were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories’ need for human labor” (“Automation” 21). Many companies such as Amazon are prime examples of the automation of factory jobs. Amazon has many factory jobs that require long and hard work in some questionable working conditions. The New York Times reports, “that white-collar workers at Amazon are also subjected to a grueling culture consisting of 24-hour mandated performance, ritual abuse by bosses, and the annual arbitrary culling of employees, referred to as ‘purposeful Darwinism’ in company dialect” (qtd. in Means 21). Amazon did fix the worker problem; but, not by changing job conditions or managers. Instead, they fire the workers and simply replace them with Kiva robots that would do the job complaint free (Means 21).

Deindustrialization, global outsourcing, and automation has significantly contributed to the rise of the underclass in the US in that it has taken jobs from individuals through replacement of tasks that were initially handled by humans with machines, outsourcing of productions lines in other countries where there are cheap labor or dysfunctional labor laws, leading to rise in underclass populations (Dau-Schmidt, 2016). Through deindustrialization, firms have been forced to transfer their production plants from the United States to other countries such as China, leading to massive reduction in the demand for manual labor and consequently contributing to the rise of underclass in the United States

Many American workers are at risk of losing their jobs to man-made machinery. One author, Adam Davidson,wrote “Making It in America,” and he argues that American workers are more beneficial and cost efficient than machinery. He uses his interview with Standard Motor Products employee, Maddie Parlier, to build his argument. Maddie is a low educated worker who was forced to take the job at SMP when she became pregnant her senior year of high school. Though she was quick and effective working the laser-welding machine, the unskilled job increased her chance of being replaced by a machine. Many manufacturing companies have found machines more efficient, but don’t realize the effect on American workers. Davidson builds his credibility with logical facts and statistics, and displaying emotional appeals to influence the audience; however, by the end of his article, his ability to influence his readers with his supporting facts strengthens his argument.

Overall activity in our nation’s manufacturing sector has declined and in recent years to the lowest level in more than two decades. Thus, the declines resulted in increased unemployment rates among the manufacturing industry in the U.S. One cause of the joblessness increase is because companies employ worker’s that are so productive that fewer employees are required to produce more goods. Ultimately, the U.S. economy is no longer manufacturing-based; rather, nearly 85 percent of U.S. jobs now come from the service sector.

Are computers going to replace the human thought? How many times do you see yourself going to www.google.com or some other search engine to find even the simplest information? In the educational system more and more courses use and require some form of computer activity. One of the main concerns is that education used to be about research, problem solving, critical thinking, and human analysis. Now with the implication of computers, education is not about the research, it focus is how fast can you find the answer. The lazy point and click approach may have the answers, but has no real meaning to it. Computers are taking away not only basic skills, but the need to develop them at all.

The United States is currently experiencing a slow recovery from the recession of 2008-09. The current unemployment rate is 7.7%, which is the lowest level since December of 2008 (BLS, 2012). However, this rate is believed to higher than the rate that would occur if the economy was operating at peak efficiency, and it is also believed that there are structural issues still underpinning this performance. For example, the number of Americans who have exited the work force as the result of prolonged unemployment is believed to be higher than usual. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2012) notes that long-term unemployment of greater than 26 weeks is at a much higher rate than normal, which will have adverse long-run effects on the economy, since workers with long-term unemployment often find their career paths derailed.