We have all heard from business and their caretakers the politicians, that if we can create enough jobs then everything will be better.  By some degree this would seem to make sense.  Give Mom and Dad more money to raise the kids; kick start the youngsters coming out of college with an opportunity of an increased income to help pay off tremendous loans required to graduate, and just generally have wages raised because of all the new opportunities in the job market.  Yeah, right – No.  That is no longer possible if it ever was.

Ever since the cotton gin (we could go back further to the invention of the steam engine) the dye was cast to remove the most expensive cost to any business, and that being the high cost of labor.  It is no accident that there has been an erosion of jobs to extremely low wage overseas countries; it is no accident that unions have been decimated thus allowing business to pay just barely enough to make people come to work; it is no accident that most industries give few benefits to their employees.  Now, all the glamor talk from business and politics is “ROBOTS.”

A quote from the business section of the Seattle Times newspaper on Sunday, June 29, 2014:  (writing about the composite materials now being standard usage on airframes)

 “All the automation means advanced –composites work at Boeing likely won’t create the tens of thousands of traditional jobs that came from the traditional aluminum based plane manufacturing.  ‘Being brutally honest’ says Bredeson (Mary Kaye) state worker-trainer coordinator, ‘the promise of jobs in composites hasn’t yet materialized.’  Let’s stop kidding ourselves – labor intensive jobs requiring human energy are disappearing at an ever increasing rate.  As soon as it becomes financially feasible, any business will incorporate devices that don’t need vacation time, do not get sick and can work around the clock if necessary – and it won’t talk back.  Welcome to the Brave New World.