(edit) Yes, if we take financing into the equation, it will take some years. Yes, *postal* jobs have been permanently lost. But other jobs will replace those. It´s not that now post has become obsolete, the jobless rate will jump x% permanently, or GDP will fall x% permanently. I still don´t really see your point, but maybe I am dumb. ps. let´s say stamps cost 100 million a year, and now have become obsolete, and 5,000 people lost their jobs because of that. Now this 100 million can be spent on something else, giving jobs to those 5,000 layed off people, payed by the same 100 million.
Ok...so by that reasoning it is impossible for GDP to drop. I mean there is no way it can drop here or anywhere in the world, because if people stop spending money on one thing, they will spend it on another. (I think you just painted yourself into a corner) =D But now im starting to think you are not talking about permanent job loss, but you are talking about personal job loss. That being the case, then yes...if a man loses his job, he will eventually get another job, so there is no personal permanent job loss, but the i still hold that GDP and wages will drop with people losing their jobs. So now to fire my final missle at even that....one that there is no way to patch a hole in it... An asteroid hits the earth and wipes out all the human race. Now thats "Permanent job loss"! Patch that! =P
Officialy I hereby concede, you won! Your last argument is impossible to counter LOL! "Ok...so by that reasoning it is impossible for GDP to drop. I mean there is no way it can drop here or anywhere in the world, because if people stop spending money on one thing, they will spend it on another. (I think you just painted yourself into a corner) =D " You keep thinking I painted myself in a corner. Again I did not. Yes, for closed economies it is impossible for GDP per capita to permanently drop, except if people start working less (we agree they will not), or work less efficiently (why would there be reverse technological innovation?) (also can be due to natural resources becoming harder to extract or scarcer, this is a legitimate concern in my opinion). Now the US is not a closed economy, but it´s far more closed than many people think. To make things simple and clearer to see: Imagine a typical pre-industrial economy, where nearly everybody (except a handful of administrators, merchants and warriors) work in agriculture. Now the artificial fertilizer gets invented, and everything grows twice as fast. So people can either, work half as much, or half of the population can just stop working while the other half works just as much as they did before. the working people would only be reasonably willing to share half of the crop with the unemployed people, if the unemployed people do something in return. For example provide entertainment after work. So now the economy doubled the GDP, because one half of the population still produce the equal amount of crops, and the other half, still eating (and thus earning) just as much as before, but now working equal amount of time on providing entertainment (which is just as well a consumption good).
I don´t think so.. when the horse-carriage industry failed in the early 1900´s, the new jobs in the car plants payed more i am sure of that. Or the new jobs at Yahoo in respect to job losses at the Post.
What's happens if someone discovers a prophylactic cure for diabetes and cancer that only has to be administered once, at birth? How does artificial fertilizer get invented without first inventing the non-agribusiness industries to produce it?
Don´t understand what you mean by the first comment. Second comment is nit-picking, making it black and white here, so it´s easier to understand. just imagine hypothetically ;-)
That's probably because engineering/science related jobs don't pay shit when you factor in the amount of time and effort involved in pursuing the education requirements. Plus American schools (public and private, but mostly public) don't teach math correctly. Kids should be taught algebra in 1st or 2nd grade. Not middle school. Engineers and even doctors haven't gotten an increase in pay in terms of real wages since the early 1990s. I have an accounting degree and make 20% more than my friend who is a civil engineer. All I need to know is basic math.
The biggest myth is that when productivity increases due to technical advances that the displaced workers retrain and get equivalent or better jobs... productivity has been rising fast all over the globe and all over the globe the manufacturing sector has been employing less workers per corporate earned monies. America's manufacturing sector has been shrinking but the number of workers in that shrinking sector has been falling much faster even. We think that there is a boom and bust cycle wherein manufacturing capacity becomes underutilized and they prop up the economy not by raising wages but by offering credit, and that may be going on all the time but this thing where productivity rises, corporate profits rise and the workers fall further and further behind is new, and over time it spells doom for all the non-wealthy...