Disregarding the Future of Employment

This article reflects the quality of our current leadership. Just as with climate change they refuse to acknowledge the obvious.  Evidence cited by the scientific community and even that which can be ready confirmed by simple observation is dismissed. Mr. Mnuchin, our Treasury Secretary claims that the effect of technology on employment is “50 to 100 years” away. It is not something to be reckoned with presently or in the immediate future.

Based on his statement, I must suppose that Mr. Mnuchin has never been to Home Depot or even the local supermarket. If he has how could he fail to see self-checkout “cashiers” acting under the auspice of one person rather than the six persons they have replaced? How can he not see an ATM as a machine replacing a bank teller? How can he not see the advent of self-driving vehicles replacing taxi drivers and trucker drivers? The list goes on and gets longer with every passing day.

Finally, if he really believes that automation of most all current jobs is “50 to 100 years” off, he has never heard of Moore’s Law and A.I.

It is truly unfortunate for us that we are governed by people with such little foresight and so much ignorance.

We must find leaders who will face the future and deal with it instead of just continually denying its ominous certainty. 

The original Moore's Law derives from a speech given by Gordon Moore, later a founder of Intel, in 1965, in which he observed that the number of microcomponents that could be placed in an integrated circuit (microchip) of the lowest manufacturing cost was doubling every year and that this trend would likely continue into the future. As this observation and prediction began to be frequently cited, it became known as Moore's Law. In later years, the Law was occasionally reformulated to mean that rate. The pace of change having slowed down a bit over the past few years, the definition has changed (with Gordon Moore's approval) to reflect that the doubling occurs only every 18 months.