I loved this book. Well thought out and an enjoyable read; the first half. My beef lies with the author's solutions. Their solutions seem to digress into a conservative republican, business-man sort of double-speak. First, the authors talk about increased entrepreneurship. Huh? So the masses of business majors are all going to start a website or write an app that performs some new inane butt-scratching task? How many folks are going to succeed at that? How many folks are going to be employed from said butt-scratching apps? The authors also talk about reducing mortgage subsidies? Again, huh? Hasn't land ownership been a fundamental of free republican/democratic societies since the Greeks? Give a man a place to call his own, a place to raise a family, no matter how tenuous that ownership is, makes a man feel like a man. The authors talk about overhauling the education system; although I won't go into depth, their solutions all sound straight out of business-school. Students are resources. Memorization and rote learning is out. Critical thinking is in. But I ask, please explain to me how one programs the robots if one doesn't know calculus and other mathematical concepts, all of which rely upon repetition and rote. In the DC area I regularly attend a meetup group devoted to entrepreneurship, it is almost sad to see the number of folks that see technology as essentially being easy and nothing more than throwing up a new butt-scratching website or app. But it is not, *real* technology is dang hard.
The author's then suggest increasing the H1B program. Now that's a solution - not. How about teaching America's youths math and science rather than teaching egoism and the belief that they can get a handle on technology or life in general without building a foundation. Again, it just isn't realistic. I understand why y'all (business guys) needed the H1B program. Without it, you'd be paying me way more than I'm already making and you still wouldn't have enough programmers. But what's the solution to that? Perhaps educate more United States citizens? Maybe teach a little less businessy soft skills and more solid skills like math and science? Although I am not against immigration, it seems to me that all you are going to do with increased H1B is going to do is make it cheaper for the 1% to get the labor they need.
So let's call a spade a spade. The authors are the intellectual arm of the 1%. Their solutions will drive down the wages for the small group of middle-class that remains, such as myself. The small group of United States citizens that still wish to pursue math and science will have their wages fall too, because the money will flow to the 1% instead of me and my ilk.
And as for the business-entrepreneurs. Two-words: Starbucks Management. How many entrepreneurs actually succeed? The founders of Google are not products of "manager school;" they are products of a technical education grounded in math and science. The solutions posed by these authors will do nothing more than increase the number of disgruntled, unemployed business school graduates who are desperately trying to create their own job in an economy that no longer needs them. Sure some will succeed, but most will not.
Now, I'm no PhD in Economics, much less a PhD in Economics at MIT, but seems to me the problem is simple. Technology has allowed us to capture/save energy expenditure at a phenomenal rate. Suddenly, wealth at an unprecedented scale is being generated while at the same time the need for labor is decreasing. Hmm....sounds like some republic that lapsed into tyranny awhile back. You know, the one we all read about in college back when we actually took courses in liberal arts, history, and classical civilization. The problem is how do we free up that tremendous wealth being generated so that American society as a whole can prosper. How about Al Gore's suggestions on increasing research, public works, and government sector employment? The 1% is amassing incredible wealth, the masses are getting poorer and poorer, yet living in a consumer economy. Now, when they finally decide enough is enough, who's getting burned at the stake, only the 1%? I'd suggest that MIT Economists and overpaid neck-beards like myself are going to be on the menu too. Maybe not us, but then what about our kids? Common sense tells us we need to do something now just to preserve our hides much less our liberty.
This YouTube video showing an argument between Dr. Michio Kaku and some Harvard business school guy best illustrates the problem the USA has with technology. Just watch the body language and the disdain the business guy holds for the neck-beard. I'm not anti-management, I need a manager, they serve an important job; but they can't all be entrepreneurs and we need to stop this manager/technical divide. The only folks who are going to win by this divide are China, India, and the 1% in the USA. Business folks hold technical folks with disdain, and that is very unfortunate. I challenge you to go to the middle of this video and not recognize the disdain and disrespect shown to Dr. Kaku....
[...]
So sure, if we continue in the path that we have "the managerial intellectual capital" that directs the technical capital (who increasingly are foreign born and require a lower wage), then we will continue to prosper, only the "we" becomes smaller and smaller. Those of us who still cling to a middle-class lifestyle start to feel the hurt in the future, but to a lesser extent than the vast majority of America. Now, the accountants, junior lawyers and paralegals, and other knowledge workers....forget about it, increasingly they will join the ranks of the so-called welfare cheats.
Here's a couple quotes from the book:
Decouple benefits from jobs to increase flexibility and dynamism.
Preserve the relative flexibility of American labor markets by resisting efforts to regulate firing and hiring.
and one of the pernicious quotes:
Eliminate or reduce the massive home mortgage subsidy...While home ownership has many laudable benefits, it likely reduces labor mobility and economic flexibility, which conflicts with the economy's increased need for flexibility.
----
But isn't there an alternative? It sounds liberal, but it'll save our butt. It'll save the 1% too! We need to find a way to free up the wealth being generated.
Problem 1: Those darn intellectuals
We increase research in the liberal arts. We make it so a PhD in Underwater Classical Roman Archaeology in the Black Sea from 100BC to 200BC can actually find a job generating yet more knowledge on that brief period. We have the money - computers are making it so. We are in a period of unprecedented abundance. We can afford providing public funds for research in the liberal arts. So now the educated elite are busy studying things like Chinese Vases in the first century BCE, or the effects of climate change on cave men, or whether Neanderthals interbreed with humans, and other non-GDP raising activities. Think about it, now they are too busy to write the next "Common Sense" or "Das Kapital." Net benefit for society as a whole! No pesky feminist rabble- rousers stirring up trouble! They are too busy studying French Sexism in 20th century literature because they can find a job doing that! Society and knowledge continues to move forward. And the managerial jobs required to regulate and manage all this research will increase, albeit at a slower rate than without computers.
Problem 2: The Neck-Beards and Education
We increase funding for math and science. We fight the tendency of Google to lure students into thinking smarter than they really are. We don't let students use calculators, Wolfram-Alpha, and other tools until they build their foundation through good ole fashion pencil and paper. We focus on creating scientists not entrepreneurs. We increase public funding of research institutes. Research institutes will lead to new breakthroughs, benefiting the 1% and society as a whole. Biology, Physics, and other sciences - both theoretical and applied - lead us to new heights in our society. But, we allow kids to pursue the arts if that is their leaning. Remember, now that we've freed up some of the wealth being generated by the machines, and we have all this new wealth from math and science, we have even more money to focus on the arts, so now little suzy can get a job as an art historian.
Problem 3: The Majority of College Educated
Most just go to college to get a job. There is nothing wrong with this. There is no higher calling than raising a family and being a productive citizen, particularly a citizen in a republic like the United States. Well, there should be more jobs for these folks too. If the wealth tied up by the 1% is being redistributed, and research, public works, and other activities increase - those folks need more stuff. So good old USA consumption should increase. So jobs should increase for the rest of the population, albeit at a slower rate due to computers. Also, the artists and neck-beards will be too busy doing what it is they do to want to manage the day to day paperwork. Sure computers will still be doing most of it, but there will be some jobs needed for those tasks. And increased demand for middle management might have to force Starbucks to pay more for lower managerial positions, where he/she might actually be able to afford a family.
Problem 4: The Masses
This is a sticky one. Public works? Creating jobs that benefit society as a whole? We must figure something out, and fast. History shows us over and over again what happens when the masses have too much time on their hands, and it ain't pretty. All it takes is one demagogue and we can kiss our upper middle-class butt goodbye. And that goes for MIT college professors and the 1% too. When the cork blows, it hurts us all.
Conclusion
There is one problem: the wealth being generated from technology is increasingly being tied up by the 1%. The solution is equally simple: free that wealth up to invest in society so that we all productively enjoy the benefits this technology is producing.
The book, though well written, left me frustrated in the end. Rather than tackling the problems rationally, using data, like the first half of the book, the authors take refuge in the conservative party line and take the easy way out through restating popular beliefs repeated in business-school as a mantra rather than sound research on the problems facing us. The simple reality is that there is less and less need for the 40 hour a week employee. The manager, semi-educated employee, and even the educated knowledge worker, are increasingly finding no place for themselves in this world. So we have a choice: leave em unemployed and let the 1% keep their savings and get richer, or free-up that 1% and reinvent work and society as a whole.
IMHO this book didn't attempt to address the real issue and instead skirted it and lapsed into a "fox-news" style solution. Maybe my ideas in this diatribe are equally unrealistic, but gosh darn it, at least try addressing the issues head on. I'm willing to change my beliefs as a result of a good book's analysis. As Ross Perot once said, "I'm all ears." We are on the verge of a either a new golden-age or a new dark-age in the United States, what path will we choose?
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