Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:36:26 -0500
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Re: AP IMPACT: Recession, tech kill middle-class jobs
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Ok, every so often, I keep trying to start a serious conversation on
what comes next.  Here's a AP article, and it's saying that what I've
been saying is under way. Now, what *happens* to all the rest of the
people: the ones who aren't a good fit with college, and don't really
have what are considered salable skills *now*... and it's not going to
get better.

What happens as the tech jobs go away, too? What do we *do* with our
lives, other than hope we've got enough money to retire - sit around and
watch TV? And if we don't, what, stand on street corners with "will
program for food" signs?

On 01/24/13 12:48, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> It's worse than that, Jim, he's dead!
>
> Excerpt:
> Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is
> terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in
> developed countries the world over.
>
> And the situation is even worse than it appears.
>
> Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish
> as well, say experts who study the labor market. What's more, these jobs
> aren't just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they
> aren't just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the
> service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.
>
> They're being obliterated by technology.
>
> Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other
> machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful and capable
> of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have always done. For decades,
> science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own
> obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds
> that the future has arrived.
> --- end excerpt ---
>
> <http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html>

--
Though I don't think (object-oriented programming) has much to offer
good programmers, except in certain specialized domains, it is
irresistible to large organizations. Object-oriented programming offers
a sustainable way to write spaghetti code.  - Paul Graham