Nothing to Hyde...

Brian and Dan, good points on the last post.  It's been a big topic for me over the years, and you may have noticed that I was pretty much just providing opinions to subjects that may not be problems when the world finally unites and works together, but they clearly are now.  My concern is that jobs are disappearing now that there are no replacements for.  There will always be a need for jobs for high school and college kids, and slower or less educated adults.  Should most retail stores ever go fully automated, should all fast food chains ever fully automate, where are these people going to turn?  They don't have the luxury of just going somewhere else.  There are some jobs that are ideally suited to the young and less educated.  They CANNOT be given to machines.  Simple fact, automation takes jobs off the market.  Jobs that don't NEED to go away.  The economy is fragile enough without losing the potential influx of spending from these people.  They have always contributed to the economy and if they lose their paychecks, it affects the rest of us.  What's more important, big businesses cutting costs to enhance profits for the gluttonous corporate greedheads, or allowing jobs to remain for those that need them?

I don't know if anyone reading this has played Sim City, a video game that does a really good job of showing you how delicate the balance is between population, commercial areas, and housing are, much less trying to keep utilities going, hospitals, police, etc.  It's a really good game just for fun but it's also educational.  I know that if my population went too high, everything had to change to accommodate it.  Luckily I could just expand certain areas with a couple clicks and speed up time to see the results.  I could tell what was working and what wasn't pretty quickly.  I recommend anyone who thinks that there either isn't a problem out there today or that the problem is easy to fix find the latest version of Sim City and play it.

Let's consider our friend Hyde up there.  Drugs... imagine if drugs were legalized.  Forget about having this guy in various forms just about everywhere, the dealers would suddenly find themselves in need of legitemate income.  Do you really think there would be jobs for them?  All of them?  I don't.  Not even the smart ones.  My observations come from over 40 years of time spent looking at the changes.  I remember how the streets looked in the 60's, how the markets looked, I  remember the mall by where I lived.  I remember that the mall wasn't elbow to elbow with people walking every direction.  It was so much more calm and civilized.  I remember the changes into the 70's, then on through the 80's, 90's, 00's.  That's five decades of observations.  I can't even stand how malls are these days.  So claustrophobic, stuck in a sea of people.  It's like a zombie movie without the horrible smell and threat of being devoured.  Oh wait, no... come to think of it, it's exactly like a zombie movie.  When I look at the big picture of how things have changed, I think it's easy to see a pattern.  For me it's not so much a numbers thing but a feeling, and a downright powerful feeling at that.