It's a real problem, and a serious one

[SaulR80683]

increasing automation and consequent productivity means that less than the full possible labor force should be capable of producing all the goods that a society needs.

This is silly. A society will never stop “needing” more, it’s inherent in the human psyche. The billionaire doesn’t “need” a yacht that 10 feet longer than his neighbor’s, but he will buy it anyway. You don’t “need” a new car when your five-year-old Chevy serves you well, but you “want” a new car anyway. If you have a 42" TV you want a 56". If you have a 56" you want a 65"… We will never stop “needing” more, just as we will never stop using more and more energy (until society collapses, of course.)

Hi Goofy Hoofy, I think this is referring to a completely different issue. I watched a video of the automated Tesla car manufacturing lines and saw a couple of huge robots do the work of 50 skilled potential workers that were replaced. They never needed to be hired. It’s not just at Tesla either. Manufacturing has fundamentally changed. A couple of humans and a bunch of machines can do the work of 50 or 100 humans previously in a factory or steel mill, or wherever. Society hasn’t come to grips with this and I’m not pretending to have a solution. Automation isn’t something that is going away. The problem is that the skilled jobs that are being replaced are the ones that paid workers $40 or $50 an hour and allowed them to move up into the middle class. When they are replaced by a machine, they aren’t people who are going to find a tech job programming somewhere. Those are a totally different kind of skills. More and more large categories of jobs that used to be done by humans are now done by a lot fewer humans with the help of a machine, or maybe just by the machine without much human help at all. (Think of welding in any manufacturing factory, just for a simple example among hundreds). So what is going to happen as more and more of the human workforce isn’t needed any more except for waiters and delivery boys? What will happen in the not-so-distant future, when because of automation, humans simply aren’t needed any more for most jobs? Think of all those companies making industrial robots. What will people do when there are only enough jobs for 20% of the working age population? How will society organize itself so that the vast majority of the population has enough income to live decent lives, and how will they live them? I don’t know. But almost no one is talking about it or addressing it and it’s a serious problem, one that’s building up like a huge snowball.

Saul

[tamhas]

Thank you Saul. I was going to leave Goofy’s comments go to avoid any more politics on this board, but you have summarized the issue nicely. Increasing automation displaces skilled labor. Growth in services has helped keep the total number of jobs up, but those are low skill, low wage jobs, not comparable ones. There is, of course, some growth in particular types of high skill jobs, but, not only are those also subject to automation, but the skills for those jobs are not necessarily ones possessed by or capable of those who are displaced. Its going to happen and we need a better answer than calling those out of work lazy.

[SaulR80683]

Thank you Saul. I was going to leave (those) comments go to avoid any more politics on this board,

Hi Tamhas, I tried to be careful to leave politics totally out of what I was saying, as I don’t think this board is a place for political discussions, which always get acrimonious.

Best,

Saul

[tamhas]

It is difficult these days for some people not to see politics in everything … comes, perhaps, from seeing polarization in everything. Me, one with the investment discussions … there is enough diversity of opinion there!

[rhpolk]

Saul is correct. I think about this too. Why? Because I’m living it. I employ 150 people. Some of the employees are into, or even well into 6 figures. Most are in the $30k to $80k annual.

But I also employ more than a few at or just above minimum wage. Why? Because these are minimal skill jobs. Anyone (who is dependable, shows up on time, and can follow simple procedures) can do these jobs. I attempt to make it up with great benefits (free healthcare, 401k contributions, free schooling (up to $4k per year), other generous benefits).

However, the margins (profit potential on the work) aren’t enough that I can give them much more (I would actually like to boost it a buck or two). But I have to live within the realities of the market that I compete in.

A big challenge for me is the overhead, particularly on the low paid positions. I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for workman’s comp and various other regulated insurance and government mandated overhead costs. Basically, to put a $1 in their pocket, I have to generate about $3 in profit to start.

Automating, unfortunately, will reduce the number of lower paid (entry level) positions, but it will create (fewer) higher paid jobs. I’ll need highly trained (and better compensated) machine operators and a part time technician to fix the machine when it breaks. It’s good to create these better paid positions, but some of the folks on the bottom
lose their jobs.

Automating CANNOT be avoided:
1- Increased quality (fewer human errors)
2- High capacity (more work can be done in smaller spaces)
3- Decreased costs through lower insurance and regulatory overhead (insurance and regulations are lower on machines than on humans)
3- Decreased labor costs (making you more competitive and more likely to stay in business.

Two $40k operators cost less than 20 low skill entry level employees. FYI: If possible, we try to identify the sharper (teachable) low skill ees and train them up as a higher compensated operator.

So in order to stay competitive, I AM deploying automation that WILL reduce the number of the low paying jobs.

The up side of a “High Tech, Global Economy” is that it slowly lifts the 3rd world (if we get past the geopolitical issues slowing it down) out of abject poverty AND we create higher paying jobs. The down side is: not everyone is prepared, will, or capable (in that order) to compete at these higher levels.

[tamhas]

The down side is: not everyone is prepared, will, or capable (in that order) to compete at these higher levels.

And, we create fewer of those jobs than we displace, even if people had the skills and capabilities.

[mauser96]

I suspect that automation has now reached, or will reach soon, lots of those high paying jobs too. The higher the human pay the more you save by using a machine.

All the data companies are collecting about each worker is simply awaiting the algorithms that will eventually show a machine how to do it.And do it better.
Some books I have read suggest that most jobs are really routine. For instance who would have thought sports writers could so easily be replaced by robots.
Mass unemployment is inevitable . Presidents and politicians can only exert mild influence over the process. And getting more education will help most workers only temporarily, machines are getting smarter faster than people.

[TracyK]

NPR’s Planet Money podcast has an excellent piece about this. Noted economists from both sides of the discussion, and both from MIT weigh in. It’s fascinating.

[telegraph]

Saul""A couple of humans and a bunch of machines can do the work of 50 or 100 humans previously in a factory or steel mill, or wherever. Society hasn’t come to grips with this and I’m not pretending to have a solution. Automation isn’t something that is going away. The problem is that the skilled jobs that are being replaced are the ones that paid workers $40 or $50 an hour and allowed them to move up into the middle class. When they are replaced by a machine, they aren’t people who are going to find a tech job programming somewhere. Those are a totally different kind of skills. More and more large categories of jobs that used to be done by humans are now done by a lot fewer humans with the help of a machine, or maybe just by the machine without much human help at all.

Nothing new here. The loom run by punch cards started to replace factory workers…by the dozens…now fabrics could be made with minimal hands.

Then we had the steam engine. One giant beast could turn shafts that now operated machines that allowed people to make mechanical devices 10 times faster. Instead of foot treadles running a wood lathe, steam power did it, and the human operator could make 10x or 20x as many widgets a day

Then came the printing press and put 10,000 monks out of business making bibles and other texts. No need for a year’s worth of labor to make one book. Set the type, and you could spin out 1000 copies of a book in a month.

Then we had the steam tractor that allowed a family farm to go from a few acres and a mule to 20 or 50 acres - farmed by machine. All those farm hands suddenly had no jobs. Meanial labor. What were they to do? They all found jobs.

Then we had the type writer and carbon paper. No need for someone to write things out, and write out extra copies.

Then we invented the personal car. Now, with a gallon of gas, you could haul more goods or move more people more miles than a Roman emperor with 30 well trained men. Just think of all the farmers, raising hay for the horses, and all the livery operators, taking care of horses and carriages, and all the carriage makers, who were put out of business.

Then we had the ‘word processor’…that first helped the ‘secretary’ do her work, then replaced her with the “PC” and ‘email’. A million secretaries and file clerks out on the street. Did they find work? Of course they did.

Oh, and did I mention the telephone? And operators? Before rotary dial phones, it was manual connect with operators hooking everything together. Then Strowger invented the step by step switch and rotary dial phones…and 100,000 operators were unemployed. Later, as direct dial calls came into being, another 10,000 operators for ‘long Distance’ hit the streets,looking for other work.

Assembly lines have been automated for years and years. All your electronics is made in factories with few people - other than smart phones - and most of that labor is still automated.

Folks invented the PC board - printed circuit board. Before that, every part was hand soldered, point to point in a radio or TV. Then machines put all the parts on a board, wave soldered them, and the board was automatically tested and tuned on an automated fixture. That started in the 1950s. TV sets in Japan and China get made with less than 10 minutes of human labor each. Most of that is taking care of the machines that make them.

Yes, cars have been made on assembly lines with lots of robots. Nothing new here. Robots do a better job at welding. And painting.

Note - I worked at a Ford Assembly plant in NJ for six weeks during their summer vacation period. Good pay but the job would make most people go nuts. Same thing 10 hours a day, day in and day out. I was putting the rubber gasket on left side doors. 3 variations and that was it. 2 door cars were better than 4 door cars. 52 cars and hour down the assembly line. Glad to get out of there but the money was great. Folks there were happy… didn’t mind the routine and only thought about what they would do in their ‘time off’. I’m sure much of that work is now done by robots.

Yep, we’re in the ‘info age’. Other than house cleaning, lawns, pools, painting, etc - trades and service jobs, sales jobs, fixing things from autos to airplanes, there will be fewer and fewer ‘factory jobs’ of insane repetition over and over again.

But that has been the trend for over 400 years now…from the printing press to today. From the punch card run loom to the automated factory of today.

The number of folks on the ‘farm’ has dropped from 25% of the population in 1900 to 2-3% today. So? Those folks didn’t become unemployed for ever. they changed jobs.

The computer industry created at least 10 million jobs, directly and indirectly.

I’d bet the ‘web’ has created another 10 million jobs.

“energy” in all forms always is adding people. Transitions happen…coal down, NG and oil up, solar up…

t

[mauser96]

Perhaps one difference . Most of those Machines were tools that helped the worker be more efficient. No doubt dating back to the first flint hand axes.

The new computerized Machines are both worker and tool. To use an example the horse was a tool, so was the car. Just a better tool. Taxi and truck drivers will finfd that automated driving replaces the driver too.
Something (actually lots of things) that helps explain stagnant to declining wages for those of the middle class that are still employed.
The first industrial revolution left lots of misery in it’s path though eventually it led to higher standard of living and more jobs as people got rich enough to be better consumers. Maybe this post industrial revolution will have the same eventual outcome. Maybe not… Either way it is going to cause lots of disruption on the way… Good for those who make control or work well with the Machines. Not so good for most other people.

I’m too old for this to be a problem for me. But I have steered my grandchildren into careers that seem least likely to be taken over by robots, and where credentialization is important. Even then I think it is likely they may have to retrain. One is in nursing school, which used to be populated almost entirely by 20 year olds. She tells me that half of her class is what she calls “old”, retraining having been displaced by computerization. Nursing school is tough to get into today.

Many people, including Mr Musk ,are deeply worried about this and even more about the rise of the General Purpose Machine Intelligence.

[Goofyhoofy]

Hi Goofy Hoofy, I think this is referring to a completely different issue. I watched a video of the automated Tesla car manufacturing lines and saw a couple of huge robots do the work of 50 skilled potential workers that were replaced. They never needed to be hired. It’s not just at Tesla either.

I’m not sure how this is different. At the beginning of the automobile age, cars were assembled part by part by teams of skilled mechanics, and it took a minimum of 12 hours, even with the parts pre-positioned. When Ford instituted the assembly line it eventually took just 90 minutes per car. That was a lot of “skilled mechanics” who were out of jobs (and jobs which later “never existed”), and unskilled laborers could be easily trained to do simple, repetitive tasks replacing those “skilled mechanics” entirely.

(Other jobs were created, of course: people to design the assembly line for even greater efficiency, more car dealers to sell more cars to more people, innovative financing which brought the cars within reach of more of the population, etc.) And along the way the price of a car dropped from $900 to $300. Any car manufacturer which didn’t follow suit was quickly out of business, and people predicted the end of the world.

As we understand now, it didn’t happen - and people kept buying “more stuff” and automobile companies kept updating their products and inducing people to buy new ones, and industry expanded and people bought even more stuff.

The problem is that the skilled jobs that are being replaced are the ones that paid workers $40 or $50 an hour and allowed them to move up into the middle class.

That is true, and it is a macroeconomic trend which cannot be denied. OTOH, the same thing happened, on a different scale, at the beginning of the industrial age when “skilled jobs” gave way to “unskilled jobs on the assembly line.” People don’t remember that the widening chasm of economic opportunity (skilled labor replaced by unskilled) and the monotonous and repetitive nature of the work (think: “Do you want fries with that?”) led to the formation of unions and the minimum wage and other “solutions” which created good paying blue collar jobs.

I am not predicting a resurgence of unions (or anything, actually; I don’t have the same crystal ball everyone doesn’t have); I am only saying that the ability of industry to create the same things with fewer inputs (including labor) does not presage any change from the trajectory we can examine for a century, and that the dichotomy of paycheck progress may (or may not) continue or may (or may not) be ameliorated by other forces, as yet unknown.

The thrust of this thought (not the thread, in which someone posited a coming bear market, someday, ever) was that automation will produce “everything a society will need.” I’ll repeat: this is silly. There will never be enough. People in parts of Africa live on roots and berries, and if you moved them to the poorest part of Afghanistan they would think they had gone to heaven. Move those displaced Afghanis to China and feed them rice and chicken every day and they will think the same. Fly those rural Chinese to the US and they will wonder at the wealth and the restaurants on every corner. Do you see Americans saying “OK, we have enough now, everybody stop working.” ? No? The top is infinite. Everyone will want a Tesla, and when the next big thing comes along everyone will want that, too.

It’s human nature. It is infinite. There will never be “enough.” Societal and industrial structures may change, but there will always be, and by “always” I mean “always.” There will be temporary disruptions and progress will be uneven, as it has always been, but there will be progress - in fits and starts sometimes - but progress nonetheless.

[drillerjim101]

Great post Telegraph.

To fear what has been happening for 400 years is to ignore the reality of how technology has added jobs and made our lives better.

Don’t fear the robot or the computer industry.

Jim

[tamhas]

Telegraph, nothing wrong with your transmission, except for recognition of an upper bound to need. A movable upper bound, to be sure … goodness knows we think lots of things are “essential” now that would have been extreme luxuries not that long ago, but it isn’t as if one can stretch consumption to infinite levels, especially if one puts the brakes or slows down population growth. There is also an affordability element. As things are going right now, there is a certain segment of the population that needs extraordinary imagination to spend even a small part of their wealth. But, meanwhile, there are this increasing number of people eking by on service jobs at minimum wage and those people are not going to be buying all this fancy new stuff. Now, figure out how to flatten that income curve and you can certainly stave off the problem for a while, but you had still better have the problem in your sights.

[tamhas]

Everyone will want a Tesla, and when the next big thing comes along everyone will want that, too.

I am sure that there are a great many things that people want already … but that doesn’t mean that they can afford them. This current trend toward income inequality exacerbates the problem much faster than technology change.

[drillerjim101]

Tamhas,

There are other boards to discus political ideology.

Thanks,

Jim

[brittlerock]

Asked to keep an inherently political problem free from political discussion is no easy task.

First, I’d like to point out that there are a host of mid-skill jobs which can not be automated, which can not be off-shored and which are not going away. I’m an unusual home owner in that I do almost all my maintenance and upgrades myself. The style of my home is mid-century modern, meaning it was built around 1950 (1958 to be precise). I personally rewired and re-plumbed the house. Refinished the hardwood floors, finished the basement including all the sheet-rock, added and 8’ x 8’ extension to the master bath with a storage area beneath it on the lower level. This required excavation, concrete work, framing carpentry, electrical and plumbing (I paid for the installation of the standing seam steel roof). All the construction skills required to do this work are jobs which require human eyes, hands, muscles and brains. The wages for this kind of labor are pretty good. There are a lot of other jobs like the ones just mentioned.

Other jobs, not too dissimilar from these which used to pay pretty well largely due to unions have been stripped of pay and benefits because we allowed them to be. Butchers, for example, used to get good pay and benefits with pretty good and safe working conditions. A lot of American factory jobs were shipped overseas because we provided business with incentives to move the work due to trade agreements which did not benefit American workers. So I am dangerously close to making political commentary which is sort of my point. The reaction to automation is a political issue. There is no pre-ordained outcome.

So without taking sides, and hopefully not letting my own stripes show too much, let it be understood that this problem is a real problem and how society decides to organize, regulate, tax and distribute resources and assets must be part of the solution. Despite the current high degree of polarization, eventually the political adversaries will have to come to terms with this problem. Eventually, there will have to be honest debate of the issues as opposed to sloganeering and grand-standing. Eventually, representatives of body politic will need to base decisions on facts rather than opinions.

If employment is considered a social goal. If it is recognized that providing wages is preferable to providing welfare because people with jobs have more of a stake in the preservation and betterment of society, then even menial manual labor will have to earn a wage that provides the worker with self respect and self sufficiency. Someone wrote words to the effect of we simply can not continue to accuse the unemployed of sloth. We can not simply write it off to weak character and immorality.

I’ve mentioned before that I spend a lot of time in China. The Chinese government considers employment one of their highest priorities. Here’s a bit of irony, you’ve undoubtedly seen a worker (very likely a below minimum wage immigrant in the country illegally) with a leaf blower strapped to his back. Virtually all those blowers are made in China. But if you travel in China, you won’t see anyone with one of those things. Why? Because it probably takes seven people with brooms to do what one person with a blower can do. That’s seven jobs to one. I don’t know what the street sweepers get paid, but I know it’s enough to buy staples and use public transportation (which is subsidized by the government) afford housing and clothes and so forth. I could provides tons of examples from my travels is China of how people are given jobs and self respect because the government places a high priority on it. In the last 50 years (since Deng Xiao Ping’s economic reforms) China has lifted nearly half a billion people out of abject poverty. No where on earth at no time in history have so many people’s lives been improved so much in such a short period of time.

In my experience, I find that the Chinese admire America. But I do not see envy, I do see desire to adopt many aspects of western life. But there’s little motivation for adoption of the American systems of politics, police and justice. We often forget that what we see on TV is also seen around the world. The Chinese view the proliferation of guns in America as pretty much insane. They see events like what happened in Ferguson as a social illness of American society. Whether or not we agree, it is clearly seen as racism outside the US. The police in China are unarmed. The Chinese see how the American political system is grid-locked to the point of little getting done, for the most part, they view this as an undesirable effect of democracy. The Chinese have infrastructure that shames America. New roads with dead-flat, perfect pavement not a single pothole. Beautifully designed bridges, airports and other complex structures with impeccable construction. High-speed rail (average speed of 125 mph) which has grown at the average pace of 1,100 miles of dedicated track a year since its introduction in 2007 with new mag-lev lines planned. China currently has more HSR track than the rest of the world combined. The Chinese recognize infrastructure investments as fundamental to economic growth.

Since the revolution ended in 1949 the Chinese population has gone from less than 5% literacy to about 93% who possess at least basic reading skills. The Chinese also recognize that a literate society is fundamental to economic growth. Teachers in China are reasonably well paid and it is highly respected and valued profession.

The Chinese government is dedicated to evolve the economy from an export base to a consumer base. They are acutely aware that a consumer economy requires jobs with wages sufficient to support a consumer society. Somehow this most obvious economic fact seems to have gotten lost in the American drive to win political office rather than execute the responsibilities of those offices.

I am not saying for a moment that the Chinese have done everything right. I would not suggest that China is without enormous problems. China has roughly 4 times our population in roughly the same land mass, with far less arable land. There are myriad large-scale problems in China. And I would not advocate that America adopt the Chinese political system (which, BTW has nothing to do with communism in any way other than by name). But I would suggest that there are lessons that could be learned. There are solutions within the domain of American institutions. But we Americans have a tendency for arrogance and seem to pretty much believe in the notion of American exceptionalism which leaves little room for learning from others who, by definition, are inferior.

The efficiency gains from automation are not the primary threat to society, our collective response is what constitutes the greatest threat. One of the posters here related his dilemma in dealing with minimum wage jobs within his own business. He stated that it takes about $3 in profit to pay $1 in wages. It is my impression the he perceives the government imposed overhead as the greatest burden. I’ll grant that he knows what he’s talking about. But we might pause to ask why this is so. It is supposed to be our government. Why do we inflict pain on a business for providing jobs instead of rewards for the social benefits of offering wage positions? Why do we tolerate a minimum wage that does not support the needs of basic living without additional support from government programs which is then resented by a significant segment of the population?

Automation is not the culprit, it is our response. I would venture that readers of this board are highly educated and of above average intelligence. I would wager that no one who regularly reads this board worked a minimum wage job with the possible exception of summer employment while in school. But ponder for a moment that by definition fully half the population is of below average intelligence. I think it safe to say that on average people of below average intelligence are the people most likely to hold minimum wage jobs or to be unemployed. So, by setting a minimum wage that literally does not support life, we as a society are saying we’re OK with condemning half our population to sub-standard living conditions simply because they were not born smart - cursed by bad genetics. And to exacerbate the problem we then fault these folks for being lazy and generally immoral.

We could do better. We could provide more jobs. We could provide better wages. We chose not to.

[SaulR80683]

You know, there are no good guys or bad guys. It’s nobody’s fault. This has nothing to do with politics. It’s more like science fiction. Automation, and the Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence, and smart machines, are all part of the same thing: There are fewer and fewer things that we humans can do better than machines. Put it another way, there are fewer and fewer things that machines need us for. Think: Mainline auto companies are already working on driverless cars and trucks. Driverless cars and trucks mean no truck drivers. In fifteen years we may think no more about getting into a driverless car than we do now when we get in an elevator without an elevator operator. Airliners can already fly themselves unless the pilot puts them on manual mode. Twenty-five years ago there was no internet. Now we can’t imagine life without it. I wouldn’t be communicating with all of you without it, except by snail mail. That’s how fast technology is moving. For all I know, computers, not humans, are already doing most programming of the latest updates of my computer’s operating system. I can envisage a time 50 or 100 years from now when we humans simply won’t be needed for most jobs. The machines won’t need us. It won’t be in my lifetime. Maybe not in yours unless you are in your twenties or younger, but it’s coming. It will cause a lot of social upheaval and resistance (I can imagine truck drivers and taxi drivers sabotaging driverless trucks and cabs and the like). Let me assure you that I don’t have a solution! I just see what’s happening. It’s still a long ways off, but I wonder what will happen to us humans? I’m simply philosophizing and I’m sorry if it’s a bit of a downer. Just rambling on a long weekend.

And please don’t give politically tinged responses. That’s not what this post is about.

Best

Saul

[WuLong]

Virtually all those blowers are made in China. But if you travel in China, you won’t see anyone with one of those things. Why? Because it probably takes seven people with brooms to do what one person with a blower can do. That’s seven jobs to one.
About 10 years ago, I traveled to Dalian in the winter. A snow storm had hit the night before, but there were no snowplows in sight. Instead I saw hundreds of people in the street. But rather than shovels, they were using cardboard.
The lesson I took away was that China had more people than money, so that is the resource they used.

We could do better. We could provide more jobs.
As you say, this treads very close to a political argument. I will suggest that this is more difficult than you have presented. Have you read Katharine Graham’s autobiography? I would suggest it, particularly the part about the strike. The unions that worked the presses had created a pretty sweet deal which included a great deal of make-work. They damaged the machinery when they walked out. The AFL-CIO wouldn’t support them.
My point is a political one - employment is not a right and there is a moral hazard when people feel a sense of entitlement.

Someone wrote words to the effect of we simply can not continue to accuse the unemployed of sloth. We can not simply write it off to weak character and immorality
Indeed, but people are people. Very few do things because they are right or good. They do what is easiest and most advantageous to them. The goal of economics is to create proper incentives so that most people, most of the time, will do what is right and good because it is easiest and most advantageous for them.
And the result of that is regulation, which imposes costs on businesses which then seek to avoid those costs by not engaging in activities that require them. The overhead cost is a second-order effect, and is not generally considered when the regulations are written. And then you hear the time-worn phrase “…but we meant well”.
The response then is call for laissez faire - while imperfect, it’s easy. But eventually the imperfections become painful and the pendulum swings back.

[tamhas]

For all I know, computers, not humans, are already doing most programming of the latest updates of my computer’s operating system.

There is a technology for development called Model-Based Development in which the human creates a model of the needed application and the operational code is created my automated translation from that model. This approach leads to some reduction in development costs for the initial system, reduced testing and QA, and a much higher confidence that the original software will actually do what was needed because the user has had the opportunity to interact with the model at a symbolic level. Most dramatically, as requirements change, the model can be revised and a new system generated at the touch of a button with cost and time reductions on the order of 95%.

The irony is, outside of a few vertical markets, no one is buying. Whether this is disbelief that it is possible … which shouldn’t be the case because of the empirical demonstrations … or because people are trying to protect their own jobs (the average programmer is unlikely to make a good modeller), I don’t know.

Thomas
Lone crusader for MBD

[haywool]

Hey Wu !

I think you got it right with My point is a political one - employment is not a right and there is a moral hazard when people feel a sense of entitlement. (Bolding is mine)

I in this country, U.S.A., the “right” is a freedom to pursue an occupation. If one can’t find a job to fit their own description, they have the freedom to plant a garden to feed their family and the livestock they raise for food. Any excess they happen to have can be traded with a neighbor for any excess that they might have that you need - money being the accepted medium of exchange if necessary. It’s the way is was done for centuries. But you live in a highrise in an urban area … where to plant and raise? Well, that’s because you chose to have a job that could pay for necessities and luxuries. Your job failed you.

This is what I have done for many, many years and still do yet today. Although I do have education with a degree in my chosen field, I cannot get work in that field. But I still eat and work and survive. And I have finally gained enough extras to afford some of today’s luxuries like this ancient computer that I write with to you today.

One doesn’t need a “job” to survive.

Rich (haywool)