Make dime while the sun shines, for tomorrow you may not have two nickels to rub together. The unprecedented growth of technology is delivering a knockout punch to the working middle class and jobs cuts are like green corn through the new maid. The alarming unemployment rate around the world which is estimated at 800 million should be enough to make you lose few winks.
Things are no better in US than in the rest of the world where the corporate houses are dropping employees like autumn leaves, and as per Fortune magazine as many as 2 million jobs shrink annually. To draw a further scary picture is a study conducted at Oxford University which predicts that in next two decades almost 45% of American businesses will be automated.
Technology does increase productivity with minimal resources. The challenges put up by low cost and high productive technologies to the human workforce mimic David and Goliath, and unfortunately Goliaths are the millions of people who will take the fall. Though it is no win-win situation for businesses as well, for the consumption of products depends upon the dollars people have in their pockets. If they are jobless it is unlikely they will have the potency for purchases.
If it gives you any solace, technology unemployment has been around since the 19th century, when the Luddites, the textile workers of England objected to the industrial revolution of the era which threatened to take away their jobs. Back in the 1850s where 60% of the workers were involved in farming today there as the percentage is less than 2.7% now as the agricultural revolution with advanced technology has successfully wiped away the majority workforce. With innovative genetic engineering development productive will shoot up further which will lead to shrinking of farmlands, urbanization, and lesser farmhands. Lawrence Summers a professor in economics at Harvard claims that the technology revolution across industries is on a track where middle aged people will find themselves jobless in the coming future.
Now, Japanese makes over 12 million cars with a workforce of 600,000 workers while Americans make the same amount but require over 2.5 million workers. Furthermore, the Japanese car manufacturing companies have upped the ante and are on the way to assemble one car in less than 8 hours by the end of this decade, this would mean lesser workforce required. That is the kind of inspiration the US car manufacturers were looking for, and they have started their spade work as well. Now when American car manufactures will adopt further advanced technologies job losses will be in millions.
President Obama and policy makers need to take some concrete efforts in nationalizing means of production whose paradigm brings social justice and equal opportunities for economic gains to all. The gap between the rich and poor is deepening, which once was reason enough to trigger unrest and revolution in countries around the globe. With history having the nasty habit of repeating itself keep your fingers crossed that this time it is not America instead of Russia or China.