Better to say that SOME people are always needed. A case in point, and related to the article, regards new textile mills and jobs returning to the US. Of course, the reason they can afford to return is because the mills are now highly automated.
One new mill currently employs 150 people. Years ago, it needed 2,000 people to produce the same amount of cloth, for a net 92% reduction in jobs.
The jobs needed to produce the looms, maintain them, etc., are a wash, as older looms had to be produced and maintained as well. (Actually, the newer looms are probably produced using robots as well.)
The same plant, back in the day, probably also had tons of middle management, secretaries, and other positions also eliminated or no longer needed, again due to technological advances.
The call centers mentioned above are also a nice bit of misdirection. Yep. Lots of people work in call centers. But technology also lets those centers be located where labor is cheapest, and technology also lets one call center support dozens upon dozens of individual companies, eliminating in-house positions from each.
And even assuming the increase in numbers across new fields (phone operator to telemarketers) directly corresponds, once you factor in population growth (1940s?), I highly suspect that any major gains are largely illusionary.
Technology is reducing the job count relative to population, and further, is driving salaries down at the same time.
Given the response from across the web, I bet tons of people were using Googleís back-end systems as a way to manage and synchronize their RSS news feeds, and then feeding that information into dedicated desktop clients and apps like Reeder, NetNewsWire, and Feedly.
As such, itís not that Google Reader had no users. Itís that Google got stuck running a warehouse full of servers that delivered information and not web pages. Since they werenít web pages, there were no eyeballs looking at them, and as such Google had no way to serve up ads and monetize the service.
Or, more likely, the supply and demand for apples is pretty much in equilibrium, in which case the more likely scenario is that with a 10% increase in per-worker productivity, the owner of the orchard fires 1 worker out of every 10.
"There's an implicit assumption there that there's a one-to-one replacement, and that the robots don't lead to new jobs."
It stands to reason, does it not? After all, a company is not going to buy a robot that's less efficient than the worker it replaces.
And yes, a worker might be needed to make the robot. But that's, say, ten man-days work for a set of workers to make a set of robots, and then five-ten man-YEARS of those robots replacing a given set of workers.
The end result is that there's less work for people to do, and there's definitely less work available for the unskilled workers the robots replaced.
"When the same number of workers can produce more goods there's more money, not less, to pay them."
Brilliant analysis, but missing a rather crucial point. Yes, there's more money with which to pay them, but are they actually doing so?
WalMart runs a highly efficient operation but is also notorious for paying extremely low wages. As a result, they're banking the money which could have gone to higher wages.
Apple is producing iPhones and iPads in China, under the most "efficient" conditions possible, but again, the money is not going to the workers. Instead, Apple is heading towards having $200 billion dollars in the bank, in cash.
So to restate your sentence correctly: Automation and producing goods where there is a comparative advantage to producing those goods are both increases in efficency which MAY lead to higher wages.
The fine for dumping trash near where I live is $1,000. That's a thousand dollars for throwing a trash bag out of you car. Is that egregious? Am I punishing the person I caught overly severely?
Or is the fine deliberately structured to make dumping trash not worth the risk? In all likelihood, you're not going to get caught. But is littering worth the possibility of paying $1,000?
If you go into a store and shoplift a CD and get caught, you can go to jail. Severe? Yes. Disproportionate? Perhaps. But it makes getting caught at shoplifting not worth the risk for most people.
Now, the "harm" caused to the store is, what, $10? So should the fine for shoplifting a CD equate to the actual harm? In which case, why wouldn't everyone try to shoplift everything? Best case, you get the CD for free, and worst case is that you pay what you would have paid in the first place.
So what's the answer? 2X? 3X? 10X 100X? At what point does the deterrence factor kick in?
You mean that $400 you took away in taxes in the first place and gave to someone at the studio, who spends part it on a hotel room that actually has costs and has to be provisioned? And then pockets the rest.
You do know what the term "profit" means, don't you?
If your sole incentive is to provide a stimulus, take the $400 and hand it directly to the hotel, cutting out the middleman. Better yet, let the taxpayers keep the $400 in the first place and THEY can spend it at local stores and restaurants.
This relates to the ban most hospitals have against recording visits and surgeries. Part of it is related to HIPA and patient privacy issues, but mostly it's about ensuring that there are no recordings of any mistakes a doctor might make being used against them in a lawsuit.
Of course, the flip side to this is a good recording could also save them from a malpractice lawsuit, but they don't see it that way.
Which tends to bring one to the viewpoint that most malpractice lawsuits are justified...
"And of course, the numbers are much bigger for younger people, meaning that those overall percentages are only likely to increase over time."
Or not. Younger people become older people, and older people tend to have more disposable income and less time, which means that you start paying for convenience (e.g. not scouring the internet looking for a good copy of a movie).