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The issue of the disappearing middle is not new, but credible economists have added a more threatening twist to the argument: the possibility that a well-functioning, efficient modern market economy, driven by exponential growth in the rate of technological innovation, can simultaneously produce economic growth and eliminate millions of middle-class jobs.<\/p>\n
Michael Spence, a professor at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, and David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., have argued that this “hollowing out” process is a result of twin upheavals: globalization and the hyper-acceleration of technological progress.<\/p>\n
Just two weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, stressed this theme:<\/p>\n
If you look at the decade before the recession, the U.S. economy was not creating enough jobs, particularly not enough middle class jobs, and we were losing manufacturing jobs at an alarming rate even before the recession. And I would also put together, combined with those two problems, the polarization of the U.S. job market, the fact that we are getting more and more people at the very top and the very bottom and the middle has been shrinking.<\/p>\n
McAfee has graphically illustrated the key findings that worry him and Brynjolfsson. The red line in the figure below, the employment to population ratio, tracks the ratio of the number of people working to the total number of working-age men and women in the United States.<\/p>\n
On his blog, McAfee explains the graphic:<\/p>\n Since the Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009 G.D.P., equipment investment, and total corporate profits have rebounded, and are now at their all-time highs. The employment ratio, meanwhile, has only shrunk and is now at its lowest level since the early 1980s when women had not yet entered the workforce in significant numbers. So current labor force woes are not because the economy isn’t growing, and they’re not because companies aren’t making money or spending money on equipment. They’re because these trends have become increasingly decoupled from hiring – from needing more human workers. As computers race ahead, acquiring more and more skills in pattern matching, communication, perception, and so on, I expect that this decoupling will continue, and maybe even accelerate.<\/p>\n You can read the entire piece here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The greatest iPhone feature is iMaps.<\/strong><\/span>You don’t need a separate GPS. The iPhone works fine. This is the app Maps:<\/p>\n Touch the left bottom arrow and little blue arrow will appear in the center of the screen showing where you are. Touch the bottom right page-turning button and you will get his screen:<\/p>\n Touch the button that shows Show Traffic and your previous screen will show red and green lines on the streets (as they do above) showing the traffic. It’s magical.<\/p>\n Favorite recent New Yorker cartooons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/NYTUnemploymenChart.jpg\" "\\"NYTUnemploymenChart\\"")
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