"innovation" might create jobs in new geographical or skill areas while destroying existing jobs. The net effect can easily be negative within the US, causing structural unemployment.
of course, we should remember that innovation can be bad in other ways: the introduction of crack cocaine was an innovation, as were all of those silly "financial engineering" instruments that have magnified the US and world financial crisis. also, jobs should not be the sole concern. After all, a good old-fashioned war could cause full employment (as could the reintroduction of slavery). More important is the quality of jobs. Capitalist innovation usually destroys well-paying and skilled jobs (unless there's resistance) and creates poorly-paid and less-skilled jobs. It's true that new occupations involving new skills are often created, but the skills have decreasingly been worker-controlled "craft" skills and have increasingly been "skills" controlled by capital or its government and produced in mass quantities, so that individual groups of workers get little advantage from them vis-a-vis capital. On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > The NY Times has a business story, the opening of which I will paste below. > The argument isn't nearly complicated enough to correctly analyze this. I > certainly support innovation -- and job eliminating innovation -- but there > is more to it than is dreampt of in this philosophy. > Gene Coyle > > > ________________________________ > January 4, 2009 > UNBOXED > > Innovation Should Mean More Jobs, Not Less > > By JANET RAE-DUPREE > > CREATING new jobs is a good way to get America's economy moving again. > That's not the controversial part of President-elect Barack Obama's economic > stimulus plans. As usual, the devil is in the details. And innovation > advocates fear that if the devil runs amok, a short-sighted emphasis on jobs > over long-term productivity may bog down the economic recovery. > > The problem, as they see it, is a centuries-old misconception that > innovation is synonymous with automation, which in turn leads to the > elimination of jobs. > > "If you invest in a technology that makes something more efficient, the fear > is that people will be put out of work," says Kevin Efrusy, the venture > capitalist whose firm Accel Partners is the lead funder of several important > Silicon Valley start-ups, including Facebook. "But it's just the opposite. > When anything becomes cheaper, we consume a lot more of it. The overall > economic effect is, you create and expand entire new industries and > employment goes up." > > <snip> > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
