Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1819-1821

The Great Displacement is a term I’ve given to the automation of jobs by technology. Between 2000 and 2015, the U.S. automated about four million manufacturing jobs, and we’re on the cusp of automating call-centre workers, fast-food workers, truck drivers, retail workers, and the like. We are eliminating the most common jobs in the U.S. economy. We’re entering the most dramatic economic shift in human history, and anybody who believes the labour market is self-healing is mistaken.
If that’s true, then why do we keep hearing that unemployment is historically low?
The headline unemployment rate is essentially government malpractice. It only measures people who are actively looking for work. So if someone were to stop looking for a job, then it helps the unemployment rate. The more important statistic is labour-force participation. That’s down to 62.7%, which is a multi-decade low, comparable to El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. It reflects the fact that 95 million working-age Americans have left the workforce, and 1 in 5 working-age men hasn’t worked in the last 12 months.
Dumb Questions for Smart People: Automation, Unemployment, and Universal Income
By Wil S. Hylton
Wealthsimple

Of the 13,000 firefighters battling blazes across the state, more than 2,500 are prisoners. While salaried firefighters earn an annual mean wage of $74,000 a year plus benefits, prisoners earn $1 per hour when fighting active fires. According to some estimates, California saves up to $100 million a year by using prison labor to fight its biggest environmental problem.
A New Form of Slavery? Meet Incarcerated Firefighters Battling California’s Wildfires for $1 an Hour
Democracy Now

Amazon’s Move Signals End of Line for Many Cashiers

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

The next jobs set to disappear may be ones that are a bigger part of people’s daily lives: retail workers and cashiers in stores and restaurants. NYT HEADLINE
June 17, 2017