Most American workers are not needed and should stay home.

Prior to this blog I had some truisms.  These three seem to be converging:


1. Around 1990 I stated that there would be an ever increasing gap not only between the haves and the have nots but also between the knows and the know nots.


2. We're all on welfare, especially people with jobs.  For instance, retired people get paid to not work.  They don't want to consider that welfare but it is.


3. 90% of work in America is not necessary.


How can this be?  Technology.  We no longer need all adults to work for the country to be prosperous.  In fact, we're probably better off with them not working.  The percentage of adults needed for work will continue to decrease.


Recent articles have impacted these concepts.  Computer systems, including artificial intelligence for things like e-discovery in the practice of law, degrade the job possibilities for the knows, i.e., those who are educated.  There are computer systems that can generate newer computer systems.  Obviously, this undermines the mindless conventional wisdom most recently espoused by former Florida governor Jeb Bush at a joint appearance in Florida with President Obama.  Even if throwing money at the education disaster worked and properly educated most students, there may not be enough jobs to support all the educated in our model of middle class life, which is assumed to be necessary to support our capitalist economic system.


Most entire industries in the U.S. are not necessary: advertising, insurance, junk food, real estate sales, insurance, much of law, sales, banking, etc.  Necessary are:


- food production
- health care
- public safety: military, police, fire protection
- communication
- distribution
- infrastructure
- high level engineering, especially computer science
- physical labor, especially the big three that cannot be outsourced: electrician, plumber, carpenter.


Much of the rest is done in other countries anyway: clothing, manufacturing (especially electronic), toys. etc.


That's about it.  How many people do you who know are working in those necessary categories and, if they are, how many are doing jobs that require a human being?  What percentage of the U.S. work force is necessary?  I'm guessing ten percent.


So instead of fighting the obvious, why not deal with it.  Send people home and share the remaining work.  Or have everybody do something local like cleaning up public areas.  Stop trying to decrease unemployment.  That's a losing strategy.


Our Puritan American work ethic is still very valuable.  However, it is misplaced for most American workers who would rather work for a paycheck than accept welfare.  The problem is that most of their jobs are welfare because the jobs themselves are not needed.  What else would you call that?  They are performing the old 1930s depression era economic concept of being paid to dig a hole and then fill it up.


Just let most of them stay the heck home and take care of their kids.  That would be a greater contribution to the nation than jerking around at work, consuming energy both at the work place and in transportation to/from it.


At least 30 years ago it was thought that office workers could tele-commute, i.e. work from home.  That never happened, I think, because boring old corporate management did not trust its workers to work at home.  Better to have them goofing off at the office and tending to personal stuff on company time.


Even education, once kids are taught to read and write, may be done better by computers and those stay at home parents.  Today's teachers are clearly getting increasingly worse results.  Those clowns in Wisconsin should wake up and realize that most of them are not needed.


With the web people can educate themselves, even without using formal educational online programs.  Most colleges have online classes.  Many, maybe most, will not educate themselves.  Those are the same ones who are not learning now, except that they are consuming resources better allocated elsewhere.


Grammar schools have devolved into incredibly inefficient baby sitters for working mothers, still earning less than their male counterparts, who would be more valuable staying home and educating their kids themselves.  With my system, most dads could stay home, too, and do likewise.


Pay people to:
- educate their own kids
- perform local public service stuff
- spend.


That should have the economy humming along nicely.