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joe_mambatoday at 9:41 AM1 replyview on HN

Yeah but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times, not the responsibility of the private sector to hold back progress and inefficiency just so more people can stay in employment even if they're not needed anymore.

The governments however have been and continue to be ill prepared to the rising increases of globalisation labor offshoring and automation.

There was a news article yesterday in my EU country about a 50 year old laid off CEO of a small company that continues to be unemployed after a year because nobody will hire him anymore so he lives off welfare and oddjobs and the government unemployment office has no solution.

What happens in the future when AI and offshoring culls more white collar jobs and there will be thousands or tens of thousands of unemployable 50 year old managers with outdated skills that nobody will want to hire or re-train due to various reasons, but they still need to keep working somehow till their 70s to qualify for retirement? Sure you then go to re-train yourself to become a licensed plumber or electrician, but who will want to hire you to gain experience when they can hire the 20-something fresher rather than the 50 year old with bad knees?

Governments are not prepared for this.


Replies

Gormotoday at 1:05 PM

> but it's the job of the elected governments to build and maintain housing, education, social and welfare systems for their population that keep up with the challenges of the times

I'd say those things are the job of the population itself, via a wide range of pluralistic institutions. The job of governments, which are just specific organizations within a much larger society, is primarily to maintain public order.

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