Concerns about the future

For those of you who have been following the last few posts, it will be clear by now (I hope) that we're all debating and talking about one thing when it's really about something else. So what else is new? This happens a lot these days.

The response to the so-called, alleged skills shortage is not more education and training, there are more than enough unemployed, skilled, and capable potential employees out there, but if you, as a company, are not willing to pay them a livable wage to do the work, you shouldn't be surprised when they don't want to work for you. The response to still not finding "qualified employees" is not allowing extra-cheap labor in from foreign shores. That simply undercuts the home market and exacerbates the problem. The real problem is that there are simply not enough jobs to go around, any way you cut it. We have high unemployment primarily because there are not enough jobs to go around. If so many -- particularly transnational corporations (TNCs) -- are making record profits, the lack of skilled labor can't be the real issue anyway. Something else is going on.

There is an old adage in the IT community, namely if a computer can do it, eventually it will. If whatever it is you do -- bookkeeping, quality control, information dissemination ... it doesn't really matter -- can possibly be so organized and programmed that a machine (or computer/software) can do it, eventually, it will be. There are lots of things that computers are doing instead of people, be it taking orders on Amazon or any other online marketplace or calculating and preparing your tax return. The more the machines can do, the more we will let them do ... no, encourage, no, insist, they do. Why? Primarily because we trust machines more than people, and deep down, we have a very ambivalent attitude toward them (cf. my "Prometheus" series on Daily Kos).

The consequence of this thought is simple: we may have a declining absolute population, but we have a more rapidly declining number of employment slots to go around. This is the real problem. We're not ready for this at all. And, the main reason we're not is because we refuse to admit that this is really the problem.

This isn't just a young-people problem. For those of us who are coming into our so-called "golden years", most of us live under the delusion that we paid into the system, therefore we are simply cashing in on our investment. Unfortunately, that's not how the social-security systems in the Western world work. No, those who are working pay for those who are no longer in the pool. We paid for our parents, our children have to pay for us, our grandchildren for our children. With a declining population, however, it doesn't take a mathematical genius to recognize that at some point (and it's not all that far away) that those working can't possibly pay for those who have stopped.

It's not a matter of a bankrupt system, rather it is a simple matter of numbers and how the system functions. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that the chances that any of our children will ever see a penny of "retirement" are somewhere between slim and none. Oh yeah, we love our children, but we screwed them over anyway. There is a big downside to boomer selfishness, it would seem.