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Stefan Claudiu
The Zeitgeist Movement - Orientation Guide
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due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of
labor
outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for
labor
."19
While politicians, business leaders and
labor
leaders bicker over issues they claim are responsible for the growing unemployment in the world, such as foreign company outsourcing or immigrant
labor
, the real cause is going unaddressed in the public debate: Technological Unemployment In the words of Nobel Laureate Economist Wassily Leontief:
"The role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors."20
Since Market Capitalism is built upon the logic of reducing input costs (including the costs of
labor
) to increase profits, the inclination to replace human
labor
whenever possible by
machine
automation is a natural progression of industry. After all, a
machine
doesn't need to take breaks, it doesn't require health insurance or benefits, and it isn't a part of a demanding Labor Union. A simple glance at US historical
labor
statistics by sector shows the pattern of
machine
automation replacing human
labor
definitively. In the Agricultural sector, almost all traditional workflow is now done by
machine
. In 1949,
machine
s did 6% of the cotton picking in the South. By 1972, 100% of the cotton picking was done by
machine
s.21 When automation hit the US Manufacturing Sector in the 1950s, 1.6 million blue-collar jobs were lost in 9 years22. In 1860, 60% of America worked in Agriculture, while today it is less than 3%.23 In 1950, 33% of US workers worked in Manufacturing, while by 2002 there was only 10%.24 The US steel industry, from 1982 to 2002 increased production from 75m tons to 120m tons, while steel workers went from 289,000 to 74,000.25 In 2003, Alliance Capital did a study of the world's largest 20 economies at that time, ranging from the period of 1995 to 2002, finding that 31 million
manufacturing
jobs were lost, while production rose by 30%26. This pattern of Increasing Productivity and Profit, coupled with Decreasing Employment, is a new and powerful phenomenon, with no changes in sight. So... where have those jobs gone? - The Service Sector. While from 1950 to 2002, the percentage of
19 20
Keynes, John Maynard, The General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money, 1931 Loentief, Wassily, National Perspective: The Definition of Problems and Opportunities, June 30th 1983, p3 21 Peterson, Willis, The Cotton Harvester in Retrospect: Labor Displacement or Replacement? St Paul, 1991, pp 1-2 22 Kahn, Tom, Problems of the Negro Movement, Dissent, 1964, p 115 23 "Why job growth is Stalled", Fortune, 3/8/93 p.52 24 http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-12-12-manufacture_x.htm 25 Schwartz, Nelson D. Will `Made in the USA' fade away? Fortune Nov 24th 2003, p. 102 26 US Weekly Economic Update: Manufacturing Payrolls Declining Globally: The Untold Story, Alliance Bernstein Oct 2003 31
service-sector-computerized-32.html
