U.S. Tech Boom Has A Downside: Too Few Jobs

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Riddick
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U.S. Tech Boom Has A Downside: Too Few Jobs

Post by Riddick » 10-13-2016 11:32 AM

Trump’s political rise stems partly from discontent due to the dashed employment promises of the late 1990s

The technology revolution has delivered Google searches, Facebook friends, iPhone apps, Twitter rants and shopping for almost anything on Amazon, all in the past decade and a half.

What it hasn’t delivered are many jobs. Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. had at the end of last year a total of 74,505 employees, about one-third fewer than Microsoft Corp. even though their combined stock-market value is twice as big. Photo-sharing service Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired for $1 billion by Facebook in 2012.

Hiring in the computer and chip sectors dove after companies shifted hardware production outside the U.S., and the newest tech giants needed relatively few workers. The number of technology startups fizzled. Growth in productivity and wages slowed, and income inequality rose as machines replaced routine, low- and middle-income, human-powered work.

This outcome is a far cry from what many political leaders, tech entrepreneurs and economists predicted about a generation ago. In 2000, President Bill Clinton said in his last State of the Union address: “America will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity and the far frontiers of science and technology.” His economic team trumpeted “the ferment of rapid technological change” as one of the U.S. economy’s “principal engines” of growth.

The gap between what the tech boom promised and then delivered is another source of the rumbling national discontent that powered the rise this year of political outsiders Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

In the 1990s, Micron Technology Inc. was a successful example of how far the tech industry reached beyond its nexus in Silicon Valley. These days, Micron is a case study in how technology companies have exported jobs to other countries. As of 2013, the most recently disclosed data, Micron had 11,300 workers in the U.S., down from 14,000 in 2000. The company’s non-U.S. workforce surged to 19,600, mainly in China and other Asian nations, from 4,800.

American tech workers are getting a smaller piece of the economic pie created from what they produce. As of 2014, employee compensation in computer and electronic-parts making was equal to 49% of the value of the industry’s output, down from 79% in 1999, according to the Commerce Department.

While other tech jobs have been created in sectors such as software publishing, that growth is smaller than the losses in tech manufacturing.

The boom has created more prosperity in Silicon Valley but exemplifies the economic polarization rippling through America. Economists call the phenomenon “skill-biased technical change.” The spoils of growth go to those few people with skills and luck and who are best positioned to take advantage of new technology.

The tech-powered disappointment is subtler than the anger caused by the crushing impact of China’s import invasion and the perceived failures of government institutions like the Federal Reserve in guiding the economy. Instead, it stems from the idea that Americans expected larger economic gains from these amazing new machines and the companies that created them, not a widening between the haves and have-nots.

“There is a growing sense of frustration that people haven’t seen the progress that their parents and grandparents did,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist whose work has chronicled how technology widens the income gap between rich and poor. “That frustration spills into the political arena.”

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Re: U.S. Tech Boom Has A Downside: Too Few Jobs

Post by kbot » 10-13-2016 11:47 AM

"Tech" and "the service economy"..........

What a joke.........
There you go man, keep as cool as you can. Face piles and piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free. (Moody Blues)

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It Takes A Harpy

Post by Riddick » 10-13-2016 12:49 PM

kbot wrote:"Tech" and "the service economy"..........

What a joke.........
And yet how funny is it, nobody's busting a gut laughing, aside the all-the-way-to-the-bank Elites... So what if America's left with nothing but go-nowhere, next to-no-pay-or-benefits jobs? Folks want something better, The Donald and Bernie surely tapped into that (each in their own way) -

But let's elect Hillary 'cause she's gonna work harder than any President ever to make sure American workers have the best standard of living in the world. Yeah. She'll just see to it world standards continue being "harmonized" downward.

Her answer to Make America Great Again? Make one big happy third-world global Village. Hey, don't complain. A still tongue makes for a happy life, donchaknow!
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Re: It Takes A Harpy

Post by kbot » 10-13-2016 06:09 PM

Riddick wrote: But let's elect Hillary 'cause she's gonna work harder than any President ever to make sure American workers have the best standard of living in the world. Yeah. She'll just see to it world standards continue being "harmonized" downward.

Absotively!!!!!! Hilary was for the TPP - until people started an uproar and she withdrew sup[port. More to come later, I'm sure.

Hillary has stated that she will continue Obama's policies (presumably including trade policies)

Hillary has said in private behind closed door meetings with Goldman Sacs and other Wall St bankers that "her dream" is to have open borders and less trade restrictions. Meaning, more job flight.
There you go man, keep as cool as you can. Face piles and piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free. (Moody Blues)

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Re: U.S. Tech Boom Has A Downside: Too Few Jobs

Post by Doka » 10-13-2016 07:11 PM

If we can get beyond our current "Insanity" in tact and we get ourselves off this planet, there will be jobs galore for any body that wants to work. Space travel and the riches it

will produce will serve more and more productivity, more stuff needed , robots can't and won't be doing it all. But, they will be doing the "heavy" lifting, the jobs humans don't

really want to do any more, anyway, the tedious and the dangerous. Think about the off world creation of millions of jobs, any thing from Space Medicine to Space Tourism

and things we haven't even thought about that are easier and cheaper produced in a zero gravity environment. Plus,we can feed our human desire to be among the stars.

Let those imaginations you all have bloom! With-in those imaginations are creations unlimited! :D
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Far Out Space Nuts

Post by Riddick » 10-14-2016 12:38 PM

Imagining's good. Never hurts to look to the future and envision better times, Doka - 'Course in the interim, as you say, the issue at hand is getting past the insanity intact - "If" we can do that and leave the planet that's the way to do it, space awaits!

OTOH, it appears Earth's insane leaders are a bit TOO enthused on the prospect, as in all too hasty to get the hell outta Dodge, they're determined to put the horse before the space cart.

Surprise! Instead of isolated to Terra Firma, insanity spreads: Imagine how the indigenous ETI populations will react as illegal alien immigrants move in - "Well, there goes the neighborhood!"
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Re: U.S. Tech Boom Has A Downside: Too Few Jobs

Post by Doka » 10-14-2016 07:32 PM

"Surprise! Instead of isolated to Terra Firma, insanity spreads: Imagine how the indigenous ETI populations will react as illegal alien immigrants move in - "Well, there goes the neighborhood!"



:peace:
KARMA RULES

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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