Job Loss to Technology

Today it is pretty much accepted that technological development at an ever increasing rate has displaced and will continue to displace workers. Automation is replacing workers on the factory floor and artificial intelligence is replacing clerical, engineering, finance and management personnel. More and more mining is done by machines, assembly by robots and soon driverless vehicles will be transporting people and goods. The optimistic view is that as in the past, the new technologies will create new jobs. I’m not so optimistic. The loss of these jobs on the surface looks like something that will only affect the working classes. However, in reality, it will affect everyone. The profits will initially increase as the productivity improves but ultimately, without money in the hands of the population as a whole to spend on widgets manufactured at ever greater efficiency, profits will drop. (A teacher asked one of my ten year old grandson’s class what would they do if they had all the money in the world. To this my grandson replied that he would not want to have all the money because then people would not have money to buy the stuff they need to make the things he would want to buy.) I attended a seminar about 30 years ago headed by Edward Deming, the person who introduced statistical quality control to Japan and who, through that effort, made a significant contribution to Japans growth in the seventies and eighties. In his presentation he pointed out that automation only makes sense if there is a labor shortage or it improves quality. Across the globe today we are far from a labor shortage. The Conservative’s claim that a tax cut for corporations and the wealthy will create jobs reminds me of the mantra back not too many years ago calling for more money in the hands of “job creators”(the wealthy), as a way to create jobs. In my mind the real job creators are the customers of Wall Mart and the like, since their demand is what creates jobs. In all my experience running a manufacturing company I never had a banker or a potential investor ask what we paid for taxes but how are we going to grow our customer base and how will we differentiate our product and service. I have proposed a couple of solutions in previous posts like all workers in an enterprise sharing in its profits so that as efficiency improves so does their buying power. There is nothing sacred about the forty hour work week so also reduce hours as efficiency improves. Henry Ford, the father of the production line, recognized that it didn’t do much good to make cheap cars if the masses couldn’t afford to buy them and increased salaries on the production floor to get enough money into the hands of his employees to buy the cars they mass produced. Another post suggested instituting a universal draft and making a key function of the military, not war, but to do all the work that no one wants to do that is needed to make people’s lives better and more interesting and thus greatly reducing the amount of labor in the market, increasing the demand and raising its value. There is no question in my mind that technology will displace workers in manufacturing but significantly those in administrative, engineering and management jobs. Currently our administration is focusing on red herrings instead of the real issue. They want to renegotiate trade agreements, ignore climate change and increase coal mining just to name a few. Instead they should be working tirelessly on strategies for increasing money in the hands of the masses during a time when technology is rapidly improving efficiency and the world population is continuing to grow. To do this effectively will require cooperation with all our neighbors and not nativism and isolation. If not, we will solve the problem through massive world wars thus improving the labor market by building more weapons, increasing the size of military and loosing soldiers on the battle fields and civilians in their homes.

It Depends

A couple weeks ago I was playing golf on a nine-hole cow pasture with a few guys from the Old Man’s League. After the round we sit around for a bit and chat. Somehow we got on a subject that prompted a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War to mention an interview he saw on TV of a guy who deposed a half dozen or so German Gestapo who participated in the horrific gassing of Jews during the Second World War. The interviewer commented that he must have been “looking into the face of evil” to which he replied “no I was looking into the faces of men”. This conversation prompted me to think about another comment I heard month ago made by a conservative congressman. The topic was torture and when torture was criticized, the Congressman not only approved of it, but proclaimed that the men doing the torturing on behalf of our country are heroes. The sixths of the Ten Commandments, given to Abraham by God which all three Abrahamic religions; Jews, Christians and Muslims, subscribe to, says “thou shalt not kill”. This seems rather straight forward and unambiguous. In Wikipedia the sixth commandment is listed as using the word “kill”. However, in some Biblical sites on the Net I looked at, ”kill” becomes “murder” which opens the door to killing under many circumstances where under law, it is not defined as murder. Though In some religious groups, “thou shalt not kill” is taken as a command from the Lord. The Christian Quakers and some Sufi Muslim sects take this commandment literally. There are also other sects, including the Non-Abrahamic Jane of India, that have a prohibition against killing under any circumstances and the Jane even takes it a step further prohibiting the killing of anything. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that the Lord really meant “murder” and killing of our fellow man under some circumstances is condoned. For instance, killing an enemy in war, wrongdoers as defined by a given society or to protect one’s family and property is acceptable in most cultures. In some cultures killing for honor, homosexuality and adultery is acceptable. Ending suffering through euthanasia is becoming more widely accepted in Western Countries. It gets more complicated because it is not the act and circumstance but who is doing the killing. A soldier on our side who kills hundreds of enemy soldiers is a hero while a soldier who kills hundreds of our soldiers is a demon. A murderer is a monster but the executioner taking the murderers life is only doing their public duty. About a month or so ago President Trump (not a fan) was being interviewed about Russia. When the interviewer brought out the fact that Putin kills, he responded something like “so do we” .The acts of our “special” units from the CIA, Special Forces or Navy Seals are heroic, whereas the same acts perpetrated by operatives from Soviet’s KGB or Germany’s Gestapo were heinous. We watched the killing of Osama Bin Laden on TV and cheered while others cried. We watched the beheadings by ISIS in horror while its followers celebrated. We rightly criticize the interference of the Russians in our politics but don’t blink an eye when Israel, through the American Israeli Political Action Committee becomes the strongest lobby in Washington with great influence on our policies as they relate to the Middle East. The Quran has an explicit prohibition against killing of innocent civilians but radical Muslim groups like ISIS somehow find within the same Book justification for doing just that. Leviticus 20:10 says “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”. There are other sections of the Old Testament that get into more detail of punishment depending on circumstances such as was the woman a slave and was she your slave. The one I like is the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus, when seeing a woman about to be stoned for adultery, says “let you who are without sin cast the first stone” The philosophical question of whether morality is absolute or relative leads to questions about the nature of evil. Immanuel Kant, a German 18th century philosopher, argued that there is a set of moral values that apply to everyone. The examples cited above indicate that our society as a whole, obviously does not subscribe to Kant, and even the Scriptures support the notion that everything is relative.

The Second Amendment

“Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Since the recent tragic shooting in Las Vegas and a new push from progressives to improve gun control, I am reviewing my understanding of the gun issue. One often hears comments from the Left about not needing automatic weapons, silencers or armor piercing bullets to shoot “Bambi”. The Right argues that the Constitution guarantees our right to own guns. In reality I think the pro and anti-gun control people are talking past each other and not understanding what actually is at issue. The progressives have a very naive view of gun ownership while conservatives have a more nuanced one. If one takes a careful look at the second amendment there is not even the slightest hint of hunting or even gun ownership per se. It talks about “bearing arms”. Hunters don’t “bear arms, they “carry guns”. Combatants “bear arms”. Basically the amendment says that the bearing of arms may be needed to ensure a free state and thus this right cannot be abridged. Michael Lerner, a progressive San Francisco Rabi wrote a book entitles “The Left Hand of God”. The basic premise is that there is a continuum we all stand on and at the right end of which there sits a vengeful, thunderbolt wielding God smiting sinners, while at the other end there sits a loving, gentle God, forgiving sinners and caring for the needy ( the “Sermon on the Mount” God). Our general view of the world and our politics depend on our position on this continuum which in part may be influenced by our physiology and definitely our culture. At the right end we tend to be pessimistic, thinking everyone is grabbing all they can get and if we don’t get in and stop them or grab our share we will have nothing. At this end, politically we are conservatives. At the other end we view our fellow man as, for the most part, good with a few bad apples here and there, and tend to be progressive. People on the right end of the continuum, worrying about their fellow man’s aggression, want to have a gun in the house to protect themselves. People at the left end, being optimists, tend not to feel the need for this protection and think guns are more of a danger than a protection. Let me get back to bearing arms. From the right hand side of the continuum, the country is always under threat; from the Commies in the fifties, the Godless hippies in the sixties, the Blacks always, the Hispanics at the end of the last century and since 9/11, the Muslims. The government is always in danger of being overtaken by one of these groups and even it does not fall to any of them, it may be weakened and unable to protect us from them. In this case we need to be able to arm ourselves and form militias to not only protect ourselves but our very freedom. In fact, even as we speak, there are militias arming, training and organizing for just such an event. Given this outlook, it is only rational that the “arms” need to be military grade and not hunting rifles. Armor piercing bullets, automatic weapons, silencers and more are necessary. Even the argument of restricting weapons based on government screening to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people is a threat. A corrupt government could wrongfully claim certain citizens are not mentally stable and deny them the right to guns. (The Soviet Union had mental hospitals full of dissidents put into institutions instead of jails so as not to put them on a stand and give them an opportunity to voice for their arguments) Another move to protect ourselves is to militarize our police forces, getting retired heavy military weaponry into local control. Back a couple of years ago I read about a sheriff somewhere down South creating a posse armed to the teeth to protect their community from the oncoming Muslim plight. In pictures of this posse I saw trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on their beds, all proudly flying our stars and stripes, demonstrating their patriotism. (My gut reaction at the time was to think “what kind of a patriot are you when you think your country is so weak as to not be able to protect us and you from a bunch of guys in robes riding camels and carrying automatic weapons”.) Indeed each side thinks it is patriotic. The Right displays its patriotism by wanting to protect our freedom with arms if necessary while the Left with its faith that our government and democracy is strong, resilient and, as it had in the past, able to withstand foreign assaults (War of 1812) and local insurrections (Civil War). So the real discussion should not be what guns and what regulations but how do we ensure our freedom through our institutions and ensure that our government works for us, all of us, and not only for a small portion of the population.

Supply and Demand

Following the recent hurricanes there has been discussion on the radio about “price gouging”. In an unfettered free market, there is no such things, as the market is by definition driven by “supply and demand”. Ergo the term “free”, allowing market forces to dictate price (demand) based on availability (supply). One question raised on the talk shows was whether a gas station in an area about to be devastated with long lines of cars evacuating and where there is a severe shortage of gasoline, should charge more than 10 times the pre-catastrophe price. Most callers into the shows said it was somehow wrong and profiteering. One caller with a small tree service business in New Jersey said that following the devastating storm which hit the Charleston area a few years ago, he drove his truck down there and was selling his service for up to twice the normal price. He felt he was not doing anything wrong and many callers agreed. In both cases “supply and demand” was at play. The gas station owner sold the limited supply in his hands for as much as he could get. Though he did not create a monopoly, his business indeed was a monopoly, given that there was no supply of gas elsewhere in that market. The tree guy saw a strong demand for his service and traveled to provide it. However, the tree guy as did many others saw a demand for his service and traveled to where the demand was. Certainly he incurred additional expenses in travel costs, hotels, time lost during travel just to mention a few. There is also the non-monetary cost of being away from friends and family. This, if he just wanted to maintain his profit margin, would have required a much higher price to make the trip worthwhile in an economic sense. (I know, I know, economists would tell me cost doesn’t enter into the equation when it comes to a free market except to indicate a lowest price possible.) In both cases there was a benefit to people in the devastated areas. In the case of providers traveling to the areas there may even be a level of altruism prompting the action. In the case of the gas station owner there was nothing but greed driving the action. One might argue that one was a noble act whereas not the other.

Affirmative Action

Over the years I have heard a number or reasons from opponents as to why Affirmative Action should be eliminated. Among them; “I haven’t gained from slavery, why should I have to pay a price?” The “New World” first gained its prominence as an agricultural juggernaut. At that time about 20% of the population was of African origin and most of them slaves working on the plantations in the South and in the Caribbean. The land was lush and aching to be farmed but plantation owners could not hire enough laborers to work the fields. To remedy this, they bought slaves from Africa, not because this was “cheap labor” but because it was labor desperately needed. The cost of maintaining a slave was not much lower than the cost of paid labor, if they were only able to find enough people to hire. With the capital gained from agriculture, a firm foundation for a manufacturing economy was in place and we became the great country we are now and all benefit from our position in the global economy and democracy. So not only the descendants of the plantation owners, but all, whether their ancestors arrived in this country generations ago or just got off the boat, are benefiting from our early agriculture and the efforts of the African slaves for which they were never paid. Without their sweat and tears we would not be where we are today. So yes, we are all indebted to the slaves who were instrumental in making America great. Another argument; “Other immigrant groups have been discriminated against.” Yes, not only people of African origin but others; Native Americans, Japanese, the Irish, and Jews, just to mention a few have suffered at the hand of discrimination and more recently Muslims. Women were only allowed to vote about one hundred years ago and today many are still not paid the same wage for the same work as a man. Though various sexual preference groups are becoming more accepted, they are still shunned in many ways, particularly by religious groups. I agree that many groups have suffered from discrimination, but non as much as people of African origin. We cannot make up for all the pain and suffering caused by discrimination through affirmative action. Furthermore, individuals within each group have suffered different amounts and some, depending on their location and circumstances maybe even not have suffered at all. So what is the answer? I propose that we devise a system of retribution for wages not paid and suffering due to slavery. I believe currently, where affirmative action exists, is is based strictly on race. But if we examine the population whose origin is Africa, even during the earliest days not all were slaves. There were a number of “free men” and more recently there have been immigrants from Africa arriving as professionals (nurses have been recruited in Africa to make up for a shortage in some areas) while others like the Somalis as asylum seekers. These people, though suffering from discrimination, were not ancestors of slaves from whose labor we all benefited. In fact, they also benefited from the woes of the slaves. How do you identify and make payment to ancestors of slaves who have suffered not only the loss of benefits derived from paid labor, but the destruction of culture which could help them as they assimilated into the new society. Currently there are gambling casinos built on tribal Native American Land. I believe anyone able to show an eighth of a given tribe’s blood becomes a member of the tribe and shares in the profits of the casino. The same could be done with identifying offspring of slaves though this would be more complicated because it’s not strictly based on ethnicity. Certainly recent immigrants from Africa could easily be identified and excluded. The bigger problem would be identifying the “free men”. (I saw and ancestry program on TV a couple of years ago where the musician Quincy Jones had his ancestry analyzed and it was discovered that he was not a decendant of slaves but of “free men”. We could continue with the Affirmative Action Program as it exists but have it based on retribution to descendants of slaves. This, I believe would weaken most of the arguments against it. Certainly the two I brought up. Affirmative Action

Putting Healthcare Back into Consumer’s Hands

The Right pushes the idea that under a government controlled plan, bureaucrats control an individual’s health (“death panels”) in that they make decisions as to which doctor one can see, tests one can have and medications one can take whereas under an insurance plan purchased on the free market, you make these decisions. First let me say that people working for insurance companies in the private sector are as much bureaucrats as those working in government except that the organizations they serve are motivated by profits instead of public good. In reality however, insurance company staff also decides what doctors one can see, what tests one can have and what medications one can take. So the illusion that in a private healthcare insurance plan you can decide these things is just that, an illusion. Now of coarse one can pay out of their own pocket and in either case make these decisions themselves. What putting healthcare “back in the consumer’s hands” is really meant to do is put the responsibility for making cost/benefit decisions regarding their health into the hands of consumers, some of these decisions resulting in life or death. To make any cost/benefit analysis one does not only need to understand the implications of cost, which most consumers do, but also the other element in the decision, which they don’t. What the Right is asking an average person is to decide whether the results on their health of a procedure are worth their cost? To make this analysis properly one needs to also understand medicine and for most things a casual google search is totally inadequate. Even general practitioners, doctors themselves, rely on specialists. If a cost/benefit analyses are done improperly, the action taken will not only result in less benefit but also higher cost. The more affluent among us of coarse will avail themselves of the best health plan and not face the necessity of making this analysis while the middle and lower class will. And even if they do, cost will have a very low priority. (Hopefully the very poor will still be covered by some government subsidized plan and avoid making the analysis.) As a result, the “one percent” will not only be able to buy more stuff but be healthier while they do it. A healthy nation, like a well-educated nation, is necessary for a country to prosper and compete in this global economy. Better healthcare is not only good for the majority of those benefiting from it directly but is also good for the “one percent”. Healthy people can be more productive, increasing the bottom line of a company. Most of the increase in profit going to the wealthiest (Unfortunately the gain does not trickle down). Healthier people will have more income which they can spend to buy more widgets, also increasing the bottom line. Finally, if we are ever in a major war, a healthy army will outperform a sickly one. The answer is not to put decisions relative to healthcare in the hands of the consumer but to put in place a system that will ensure that the entire population is healthy and strong and able to contribute to our society.

Who are your Other?

We all see ourselves as members of different groups, or tribes as I would like to call them, with a wide range of importance placed on the memberships. We can be a member of a family with family being only immediate family or our tribe can be an extended family. Our membership in a very local community can be a source of pride or in some cases a state (Texans take great pride in being from Texas) and of course a country (“Deutschland, Deutschland uber ales”, the Nazi’s slogan meaning Germany above all else or in our case, America First). We may be members of a religious group, be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or a subset of these, Haredi, Protestant, Sunni, Jane, Mahayana or even small such as Baptist, Wahhabi, or local like Temple Emanuel, Mother Emanuel Church, Westboro Baptist, Sudbury Mosque, etc. We can see ourselves as members of broad geographic area; European, North American, Middle Eastern, African, Asian, or more locally; Northern European, Arab, Southeast Asian or finer; Irish, Russian, Moroccan, Israeli, Vietnamese. Ethnically, we can think of ourselves as Basque, Sicilian, Kurds, Tutsi, Tatar, Yakut; go even more granular; Iraqi Curds or Turkish Curds, Lipka Tatars or Crimean Tatars. We can group ourselves by Race; White, Black, Asian, or by language; Hispanic, Slavic, English, Arabic (I’m starting to run out of steam but you get the picture). Then of course we can think of ourselves most broadly as Humans or even as a part of the Earth or Universe which is how many of the indigenous peoples think of themselves. Between these various groups there are some long standing animosities ranging in degree from disrespect to murder. There has been friction between religious groups throughout history. The State of Pakistan resulted from the Muslim/Hindu turmoil in India. Conflict can exist even within religious groups. There is the Protestant/Catholic issue which has abated somewhat in recent years and the Sunni/Shiite conflict has become more bloody with the growing unrest in the Middle East. Throughout history there have always been bloody wars between nation states and conflicts in ideology as those between Capitalism and Communism lasted for almost a century and resulted in, among others, the Vietnam and Korean Wars and revolutions in Russia, China, Spain and Cuba. Ethnic differences were at the bottom of the most horrific acts; the millions of Jews were murdered by the Germans, many Armenians lost lives at the hands of the Turks and 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu in Rwanda. On a smaller scale ethnic cleansing of Croats at the hands of Serbs in Croatia or Arabs at the Hands of Jews in Palestine caused many to lose their lives and even more to be displaced. There are even wars between families not to mention within them. In the latter part of the nineteenth century in the Ozark Mountains of West Virginia, two families, the Hatfield and McCoy, feuded for almost thirty years resulting in the death of about 15 individuals. So what is your tribe? The answer to that in part determines who you consider “the other” and your importance of the position in the tribe, the altruism or hatred toward your fellow man. Our Vice President Pence on numerous occasions describes himself as Christian, Republican and conservative and emphasized “in that order”. I found it interesting and disturbing (not being a Christian) that he didn’t mention American, given he is the VP of the United States of America or human being, given he is the de facto vice president of the World. Seeing that his prime tribe is Christians, then most likely his “other” might be non-Christians and governing according to the laws of the New Testament might be an imperative for him. I have been fortunate (or in some cases unfortunate) enough to have lived or visited more than 20 countries. I have had the opportunity not only to mix with people of different cultures, religions, races and ethnicities, but socio-economic positions from people who literally “didn’t have a pot to pee in” to people on the Forbes richest 800 list. All of this has led me to the conclusion that even with our many differences; we are much more alike than different. So what is my tribe? First by far, I think of myself as a human being (though as I am aging I am starting to think of myself as part of the earth and leaning even toward a part of the Universe), second an American and a very low third a Tatar. When asked on various forms to list my ethnicity or race, I don’t answer. I met a friend of a friend and after chatting for a while he said “oh, you’re a globalist” to which I confessed. The lives of my family members are important to as those of my countrymen but so are the lives of people in Rwanda and Nicaragua. So what are your tribes and what is the priority of your membership in them and how important are each? This will determine your “other”. Are you afraid or envious of them; or maybe just impartial to them. Do lives of those outside your tribe matter? How much? Though we are having a bit of a setback at the moment, hopefully our tribes continue to expand to include more and more people and our loyalties to tribes diminishes. Who are your Other?