Interesting article from MIT describing how jobs are being destroyed by computerization and robots. The article describes a steady climb in productivity since 2000 but flat work force growth. We are apparently just at the beginning of a revolution that will make many workers unnecessary.

I mentioned previously that the NY Times printed a heads up in an article a month ago that suggested that tech corporations are one of the major driving forces behind the  immigration bill currently before Congress. If the bill is passed into law, corporations will have the ability to legally fire American workers without cause and replace them with skilled foreign workers on temporary visas. This will drive down wages and increase the trend towards elimination of benefits for American workers. The Times in a June 16, 2013 editorial stated the following [excerpted]:

“There is a durable belief that much of today’s unemployment is rooted in a skills gap, in which good jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants. This is mostly a corporate fiction, based in part on self-interest and a misreading of government data..  .  .

“If a business really needed workers, it would pay up. .  .  .  Employers may be posting openings, but they are not trying all that hard to fill them, say, by increasing job ads or offering better pay packages..  .  .

“Corporate executives have valuable perspectives on the economy, but they also have an interest in promoting the notion of a skills gap. They want schools and, by extension, the government to take on more of the costs of training workers .  .  . They also want more immigration, both low and high skilled, because immigrants may be willing to work for less than their American counterparts.”

The Times is to be commended for bringing up the fact that while politicians blather about  massive education programs for the unemployed and the urgent need for massive importation of technical workers, that they are obfuscating the real problem of progressive job scarcity.