Zeihan 5:43 minutes on where the jobs will be and impact on universities and transformation of US work space. Main Points:
With the future implosion of China the US will need to massively expand its manufacturing/industrial base which will require many blue collar workers.
He predicts that corporations will bring in young people and train them for manufacturing jobs.
The number of university students will decline adversely affecting universities.
If you disagree; take it up with Zerhan not me. ;^)
Methinks a portion of the needed future manufacturing/industrial base for the US will be located/built in Mexico which might reduce the flow of illegal aliens into the USA. JCs are still in love with lower production costs due to lower cost labor.
The choice is not binary. The “JCs” will go where labor is cheapest. I saw a comparative table of autoworker wages in several countries. Pay rates in India make Mexicans look rich.
AI-Humanoid robots change the economics of where manufacturing “can” be located.
Right now, I see lots of worry about “pick n place” AMZN fullFillment centers and such, and bots doing those very low skill “jobs”.
IF(caps) AI humanoid robots are successful, then all kinds of current human-only jobs are vulnerable. Even in the high priced US n Germany, … Productivity (GDP) goes (WAY) up and costs go down. This, if I understand it correctly, is the idea behind the “age of abundance” claim.
Every human worker gonna be “on the UBI/dole”.
ralph
Sign sign everywhere a sign.
An the sign said Human flesh n blood people need not apply
About half of Indiana high school graduates head to college, a significant decline over the last 15 years. The falling enrollment rate is a worrying trend at a time when the state is attempting to increase the number of people with college degrees and post-secondary credentials.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education began a research project this year to look at why high school graduates are not going to college and what policy changes could help.
I disagree with Zeihan’s opinion, but admire his confidence.
The future of labor markets is complicated. Manufacturing, construction, law enforcement, agriculture, etc. will all see significant impacts of technology in the not-so-distant future. We could be on the cusp of serious change for all labor markets. Shifting the workforce from white collar to blue collar may help short-term (5-10 years), but it’s not a recipe for long-term (25-50 years) stability. How many people want to work blue collar jobs?
At the risk of sounding that a curmudgeon, younger generations aren’t as interested in working “traditional jobs” as older generations. A lot of them are disillusioned with the idea that it’s necessary to work 40 hours per week to earn a paycheck. You ask a lot of kids what they want to do - many want to be YouTubers, social media influencers, and alternative marketers.
It’s not just young people. By 1986 when I turned 30, I realized that Reagan was shafting the working man and shoveling money to the top of the economic pyramid. I detected a brighter furture in personal investment portfolio management rather than brown-nosing my way up the corporate ladder. As they say, the rest is history.
You’ve reached peak engineering efficiency once you can create a middle-class income by spending an hour or two at year end doing a little tax planning and rebalancing a portfolio of a few index funds. Who needs a 40 hour work week?
Yeah, not intending to begrudge anyone who can pull that off. Good on ya. For many, working 40 hours per week is necessary to make a living. Your standard of living requires that others work 40 hours per week.
Our economy needs workers doing productive things. We all need homes to live in, food to eat, water to drink, etc. Those needs require people to work.
I think that’s true, but I also believe that workers fuel the economy. Workers provide services and products we all need. If the majority of workers in the US suddenly stopped working because they figured it out, where would that leave us?
Come on, you know better. Unless there’s a processing facility that white-washes them, teaches them English, and changes there names…migrants don’t stand a chance of being accepted by the people putting up razor wire.
If you’re going to have a chance at pulling that off, the facility would have to be on the Mexican side of the border. Seems unrealistic.
Wages for workers would have to increase, along with the tax rate on the leisure class living off investment income and inherited wealth.
Our whole economy is based on keeping a large portion of the public racist, ignorant and innumerate. Thus, the draw of Dave Ramsey and other “prosperity gospel” preachers.
A guest worker program could be organized easily enough. There are plenty of such programs in other countries to use as references in designing the system. #43 proposed a guest worker program, but he included some unsavory aspects that made the guest workers little more than indentured servants.
Thinking might change if those razor wire installers find there is no produce in the store to buy, no-one to mow the grass in their gated subdivisions, and no-one to change the oil in their $100,000 SUV.
