Advice for President Obama on Future Jobs!

Dear President Obama,

Max grew up as the son of a man who knew 'ALL' the answers to the problems of the world. Max's father said so! Many times, his father let everyone know that anyone who didn't know that he had the answers was a turkey or a knucklehead.

The famous Ma Bell, the second most powerful force in the world (next to God of course), thought so much of Max's father's opinions, that she made him 'Supervisor of Troubles'. This is true!

The advice Max promised you, President Obama.

Max has held jobs in a dozen professions since he entered the work force forty four years ago. He has also had variations occur to the jobs he held so that he had to retrain just to stay in the job and be able to function reasonably well.

Mr. President, the children of our time are facing a far harsher work environment than Max did. The jobs of the future are going to be changing even as the children are being trained. In fact, many people start technical colleges only to find that the electronics that they need to understand were put into the mix while they were in school.

The timeline of change was at one time centuries, then it was decades, then it became years and now in many industries change takes place every year or two. Phone technology is one of the areas where this is very clearly visible. There is a race between different vendors of hardware and between service delivery businesses that is driving change at a pace that is incredible.

To some extent the hardware makers have dealt with this by just making their prior models obsolete. One doesn't need employees to repair throwaway phones.

On the other hand, this race is at the edge of industries that have had a period of stability and are reasonably people-intensive. If the vendors for these industries make certain advances, the very nature of some of these industries may go from people-intensive to automation-intensive.

Green technology is a potential driver for doing this. From the business owner's standpoint, the move to green power with its lower energy cost may enable them to translate this change into a more automated work environment which in turn can reduce the need for workers.

Max has seen personally how businesses reduce labor when they have the chance. His ability to program computers often resulted in situations where jobs that took a dozen people were turned into jobs requiring a single person. Not all jobs were at risk and many of the people could take over other positions.

Now people have developed whole warehouses that can be run by a single technician. And that technician is only needed to turn on the lights and make sure the computers are running correctly.

Some early attempts to do this kind of automation failed back in the 1960s. But the nature of people's acceptance of automation has changed. Now most warehouses, stores, offices and other businesses are heavily dependent on automated computer systems.

The government and business needs to identify those jobs and activities that people can perform as the automation takes this step. To fail to prepare for the changes that will come will be dangerous to the social stability of the nation.

Max wishes you well in discovering how to manage the future issues.

Max writes about greenways, rare diseases, timely topics, places to eat, travel and other issues of interest. He encourages you to add your comments.

Link one is a site on Thomas Malthus who predicted dire changes.

Link two is about Gandhi, who used salt and clothing to effect change in India.

Link three is a paper on the Luddites who fought change by destroying machines.