I accept your point if you show me the evidence that supports your claim that we are eliminating jobs at a rate faster than before.
To give an example for you to think about, the machine gun eliminated more jobs for infantry than we have for cashiers. As veterans came home from WW II and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill to train them in skills other than soldering. This provided an economy that transitioned a standard army to one tenth its previous size.
On the social justice side I am totally in favor of, and have advocated for, using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who needs it to take a job that could use them. An example of how that has fallen down and needs our help was that the VA will not pay for veterans to learn to code[1]. That is a problem we can do something about.
What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill sets. My favorite example of that failing spectacularly was the railroad union concession of having people work on trains in jobs that were no longer necessary[2].
The share of U.S. economic output that's paid out in wages in at the lowest point since the government started keeping track of it. In 1964 AT&T was worth $267 billion in today's dollars and employed 758,611 people. Google is worth $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees -- less than a tenth the size of AT&T's workforce in its heyday.
We're going to get self-driving cars in our lifetimes and the number one job in most states is "truck driver". My job as a software developer is to eliminate jobs (or simply prevent new ones from being required). I'm personally responsible for the loss of more jobs that I have.
> As veterans came home from WW II and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill to train them in skills other than soldering. This provided an economy that transitioned a standard army to one tenth its previous size.
Of course, they transitioned into a world where all the other major countries had their manufacturing industries destroyed by war. Again, extrapolating from the past has it's issues; you cannot simply say "training" was the only, or even the most significant, factor. If you had a functional body, you could get a good job.
> using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who needs it to take a job that could use them.
I think right now we have an absolute glut of educated people; no time in history have you needed to be as educated as you are right now to get an entry level position. People are literally taking jobs that don't pay anything. The number of recent collage grads that are underemployed (employed in jobs that don't require their degree) is at the highest level in 20 years.
> What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill sets.
Absolutely; it's a terrible practice. And the thing is, you don't even have to artificially create it. We already have "bullshit jobs"[1] that fill this vacuum already.
> The share of U.S. economic output that's paid out in wages in at the lowest
> point since the government started keeping track of it. In 1964 AT&T was worth
> $267 billion in today's dollars and employed 758,611 people. Google is worth
> $370 billion but has only about 55,000 employees -- less than a tenth the size
> of AT&T's workforce in its heyday.
I think this might be an interesting statistic to look at but I can't find it. I can find Gross Domestic Income (GDI) and the GDP which the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov) seems to think GDI has been about ~50% of GDP for a long time. I'm also having a bit of a challenge evaluating your numbers, yes Google has a high market cap relative to its workforce, but its contribution to GDP is only about $90B/year (not the Market Cap, but the revenue) and its 55,000 employees accounted for about a third of that. So its pumping into the economy. AT&T had revenue of $164B, not quite double that, and higher employment costs as well. It certainly has been remarkable how much money Google, Apple, and a small number of companies have pulled out of the economy and into cash. Depending on how you measure it you can make an argument that is the entire source of unemployment in the current US economy. I expect at some point various governments will note this impact and construct the Tech equivalent of 'windfall profits tax' (maybe 'unproductive capital tax' or something) in order to liberate it into the economy.
> If you had a functional body, you could get a good job.
If you are saying that you only needed a functional body to get a good job, that has not been true for at least 50 years. The amount of education and training needed to be employable has gone up steadily as new job creation happened in industries that were growing.
> I think right now we have an absolute glut of educated people;
We need to be careful about terms, there are many people who have college degrees for which there is no career path other than perhaps teaching people who would like to get that same degree. They are 'educated' and essentially unemployable because the number of teaching positions is small relative to the available candidates. But working it backwards from the job to the employee does work, there are unfilled jobs available for people where there is also training available to teach people to do those jobs. Some are 'college' jobs and require STEM training, some are trades jobs and require skills training.
To give an example for you to think about, the machine gun eliminated more jobs for infantry than we have for cashiers. As veterans came home from WW II and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill to train them in skills other than soldering. This provided an economy that transitioned a standard army to one tenth its previous size.
On the social justice side I am totally in favor of, and have advocated for, using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who needs it to take a job that could use them. An example of how that has fallen down and needs our help was that the VA will not pay for veterans to learn to code[1]. That is a problem we can do something about.
What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill sets. My favorite example of that failing spectacularly was the railroad union concession of having people work on trains in jobs that were no longer necessary[2].
[1] https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-learn-...
[2] http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/08/great_moments_...