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Read this interesting essay written by DEREK THOMPSON
For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing ?
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown's steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a home ownership rate that were among the nation's highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area's mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
The future will tell us whether or not this pans out as he envisions. What does SN think will happen ?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @05:28AM
Its failing right now [commondreams.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 26 2015, @12:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:18PM
Yup.
About every 80 years, when the last survivors of the previous complete failure of Capitalism have all died, there is another complete failure of Capitalism.
Most recently, there has been massive gov't intervention (Read: give-away of taxpayer money to failed Capitalists--with NO STRINGS; the scummy failures gone right back to doing the same things that caused the giant implosion).
After the previous total failure of Capitalism (the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover Republican fiasco), there was also massive gov't intervention by Keynesian Democrats--but that was the gov't directly hiring The Working Class and putting them to work on the nation's infrastructure.
Every bit as important was the creation of regulations that prevented the dishonest, irresponsible behavior of bankers and other Capitalist businessmen.
That action pulled the economy out of the crapper and produced a historically strong country with a broad, prosperous Working Class which lasted for 5 decades.
...then came Reaganomics.
Those regulations which were so effective at maintaining a stable, prosperous nation have been dismantled by Neoliberals|Libertarians and we have 23 percent unemployment and increasingly a country of Haves and Have-Nots with the middle hollowed out more with each passing day.
The troll and I have been over this before [soylentnews.org] but, because his "debating" style is to NEVER concede a single point--even when he has been pounded into dust--it's useless to engage with him.
As an example, he insists the the longest, deepest financial disaster the USA has ever experienced (1873 -1896) was simply a couple of recessions.
He's also has no clue what a nova is. [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:22PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @11:56PM
Nope. My sources are much wider than the Lamestream Media propaganda and public school indoctrination you clearly have embraced.
I refuse to swallow all the Cold War bullshit you have.
Soviet Russia
I'll give you 1 point for not explicitly saying "Communist", but your subtext is still very clear.
If you go back to the 19teens, Lenin still held Marxist principles.
Very quickly, he shed those egalitarian principles and started imprisoning|murdering his opponents.
A Marxist economic system requires Democracy everywhere; USSR didn't have that anywhere--just the thinnest of veneers and a bunch of **false rhetoric** to try to hornswaggle the proletariat and gullible foreigners (like you).
Despite their called themselves "Communist", the Soviet Union was a Totalitarian government with a State Capitalist economy--very much a top-down, elites-controlled system of cronyism.
Marx's paradigm specified a bottom-up system where the workers decided EVERYTHING by majority vote.
USSR could only be called "socialist" by applying the most distorted definition of "socialism".
(The so-called "democratic socialism" of countries of northern Europe is another such distortion.)
USSR had a board of directors [google.com] just like other Capitalist operations.
That group of overlords was **NOT** selected by the workers.
Anyone who calls that "Communism" has absolutely no idea what Communism is (but, again, has swallowed a whole bunch of Cold War bullshit).
[in the end, the assets of the USSR were grabbed up] by the conservatives
Their Capitalist system changed hands from the cronies that were on the gov't payroll (where the profits bypassed the workers and went to the elites in gov't) to (private-profit-driven) cronies of the "new" regime--but elites were still in charge and the desires of the workers still didn't count at all.
...and when there is redistribution of assets in a shift to a -Socialist- meme, Wrong Wingers howl how unfair that is that the legacy of massive concentrations of aristocratic wealth is not being honored.
-- gewg_