Luddite Modern: A person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology."a small-minded Luddite resisting progress*
A serious problem for our age is how many jobs should we maintain that are not needed any more?
Coal is gradually being replaced by natural gas in production of energy, and the price of coal is dropping putting many coal miners out of work. In fact, Coal-mining employment increased rapidly in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and peaked in 1923 at 798,000. Since then, the number of miners has fallen considerably due to mechanization.** See in the figure below, the sharp fall-off in total mining employment even since 2014. President-elect Trump of the United States may have won the election, in part, by promising to reopen coal mines in West Virginia that are not needed. Is this wise?
An article in Forbes Magazine says it ain't a goin' ta happen.**** We're not going to use as much coal in the future and the coal that we will use isn't going to come from the Appalachian mines. Trump simply isn't going to bring back all those mining jobs. They're gone, gone forever. Just like those assembly line jobs in electronics. And pining for the lost blue collar jobs isn't going to help in the slightest. The thing to do now is to work out what other task that same labor can do.****
Another case is steel production. Should we increase production of steel and dump it on the market to maintain jobs?:
The high point came in 1973, when the United States produced 137 million metric tons of raw steel. By 2013, the most recent year available, that had fallen to 87 million metric tons -- a decline of more than one-third from 1973.***
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Other current economic trends have also had an impact. For instance, the ongoing decline in oil and gas drilling due to low prices is driving companies to cut back on tubing orders, contributing to a slowdown in steel production, said Jeff Manuel, an associate professor of historical studies at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. ***
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In addition, much steel formerly used to build automobiles has been replaced by aluminum and plastics.
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Data from the American Iron and Steel Institute pegged the all-time employment high at 650,000 employees in 1953. More recent data from the institute, for 2015, shows that the steel industry directly employs about 142,000 people in the United States. **
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According to the American Iron and Steel Institute, "labor productivity has seen a fivefold increase since the early 1980s, going from an average of 10.1 man-hours per finished ton to an average of 1.9 man-hours per finished ton of steel in 2014."***
American steel production has increasingly shifted away from the extraction of ore for raw material and towards the recycling of scrap metal, which typically requires fewer workers. "Now, more than 50 percent of all steel produced in the United States is from a process that recycles scrap metal," Giarratani said.***
But President-elect Trump himself has departed from using US. steel and aluminum in his own buildings: The report by investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald found that Trump used Chinese-made steel for the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas that was purchased through a holding company registered in the British Virgin Islands and that he bought Chinese aluminum for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.****
Vaudeville Isn't Coming Back There is a drift away from manufacturing things no longer used and jobs that require handwork towards more cerebral jobs Many cannot make this transition. Maintaining jobs not needed is the same as the old ploy of having one group of workers dig a hole during the day and another group filling in the holes at night.
Think of the industries that no longer exist. For example, U.S. Leather was the second largest industry after U.S. Steel at the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th Century. Should we still be maintaining it? What would we do with all the leather? Though U.S. Steel is still in business, it no longer has the power it used to have, even after WW-II for 20 yrs or more.
Think of all the jobs that either no longer exist or are greatly reduced in number: gas station attendants washing wind shields and pumping gas, telephone operators, clerk typists, These jobs have essentially been turned over to the consumer: you pump your own gas and wash your own windshield, you let your fingers do the numbers in trying to telephone a business or government office, and you type your own stuff. I've also noticed robots delivering medications in hospitals and some restaurants have computerized ordering. We are told that the higher the minimum wage, the more restaurants will be automated (but I presume upscale restaurants will always have a wait staff). This is true in spite of a minimum wage creating a level playing field that businesses say they want.
And a BIG disruption is coming in the automated vehicle (currently being tested in New Zealand) that will greatly reduce or eliminate taxi and truck drivers plus the part-time drivers like Uber (that is testing "nearly' self-driving cars in Pittsburgh) and Lyft. Should we delay vehicle automation to maintain these jobs, even though many lives will be saved and serious injuries prevented in their coming. Just think, fewer accidents will occur where alcohol is involved and the elderly will become more mobile.
* https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=luddites%20definition
** http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/us-has-lost-191000-mining-jobs-september-2014
*** http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/05/barack-obama/barack-obama-wrong-about-size-us-steel-production-/
**** http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/05/05/like-manufacturing-jobs-to-china-whatever-trump-says-mining-jobs-are-not-returning-to-w-virginia/#5eb5c0bf6f48
http://www.nwitimes.com/business/steel/usw-furious-after-report-trump-bought-chinese-steel/article_8dd3f432-34e7-5feb-bf0f-15d33d4e72b5.html
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