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The technology revolution has delivered Google searches, Facebook friends, iPhone apps, Twitter rants and shopping for almost anything on Amazon, all in the past decade and a half.
What it hasn't delivered are many jobs. Google's Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. had at the end of last year a total of 74,505 employees, about one-third fewer than Microsoft Corp. even though their combined stock-market value is twice as big. Photo-sharing service Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired for $1 billion by Facebook in 2012.
Hiring in the computer and chip sectors dove after companies shifted hardware production outside the U.S., and the newest tech giants needed relatively few workers. The number of technology startups fizzled. Growth in productivity and wages slowed, and income inequality rose as machines replaced routine, low- and middle-income, human-powered work.
This outcome is a far cry from what many political leaders, tech entrepreneurs and economists predicted about a generation ago. In 2000, President Bill Clinton said in his last State of the Union address: "America will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity and the far frontiers of science and technology." His economic team trumpeted "the ferment of rapid technological change" as one of the U.S. economy's "principal engines" of growth.
The gap between what the tech boom promised and then delivered is another source of the rumbling national discontent that powered the rise this year of political outsiders Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
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Eventually there'll be only decent jobs for maybe 20% of the population: What economic system is needed for that??
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday October 17 2016, @06:55PM
and the best way to interact with them is back away slowly and don't run.
FTFY. As I noted earlier, running tells the bear you are prey. This very scenario [nytimes.com] played out a few years ago in Yellowstone National Park.
When Brian Matayoshi and his wife, Marylyn, spotted the female bear and her two cubs on the trail 100 yards away, they began running away and yelling for help, likely prompting the bear to chase them, according to the report conducted by a seven-member investigative team that included federal and state officials from the Park Service, Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
The Park Service encourages people who are approached by grizzly bears to slowly walk away, and if the bear charges, to lie motionless and face down. Indeed, the couple passed signs on the trail warning of bear activity in the area, including one sign recommending that "if a bear charges stand still, do not run," according to the interagency report.
"What possibly began as an attempt by the bear to assess the Matayoshis' activities became a sustained pursuit of them as they fled running and yelling on the trail," the panel found.
The report adds, "In addition to the unfortunate circumstance of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, a possible contributing factor to the chase that ensued was that the victims ran from the bear while screaming and yelling."
Marylyn Matayoshi likely saved her life, the report states, by huddling face down behind the fallen tree. "After mauling Mr. Matayoshi, the bear walked over to her, lifted her by her daypack, and then left the area," according to the report. "Mrs. Matayoshi received no injuries."
Maybe Mrs. Matayoshi was the faster runner of the pair, but that's not what saved her life.