Stop blaming technology for high unemployment!

[PSPS]

Stop blaming technology for high unemployment!

If our government invested more in education and raised the minimum wage, we wouldn't be having this inane debate

By Robert Reich

Jobs are returning with depressing slowness, and most of the new jobs pay less than the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession.

Economic determinists — fatalists, really — assume that globalization and technological change must now condemn a large portion of the American workforce to under-unemployment and stagnant wages, while rewarding those with the best eductions and connections with ever higher wages and wealth. And therefore that the only way to get good jobs back and avoid widening inequality is to withdraw from the global economy and become neo-Luddites, destroying the new labor-saving technologies.

That’s dead wrong. Economic isolationism and neo-Ludditism would reduce everyone’s living standards. Most importantly, there are many ways to create good jobs and reduce inequality.

More at: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/stop_blaming_technology_for_high_unemployment_partner/

[msongs]

1. one might ask, where's the jobs bill? nt

[RainDog]

2. yes. n/t

[cprise]

3. There's only so much extra, unnecessary stuff and services

...that people will consume before the following happens:

1. the environment is gutted

2. employment insecurity causes people to cut back on spending

3. the people working the extra fluff jobs get demoted to an underclass with no political power

4. or all of the above (in case you were getting deja-vu X3)

[duffyduff]

4. Technology has nothing to do with this situation

The blame rests squarely on our politicians in Washington who peddled neoliberal/globalist trade policies and other policies that have all but destroyed this country.