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Originally Posted by BOSTON
A story in today Boston Globe ranks model and patern makers #2
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No kidding? Would Rapid Prototyping and CAD/CAM that take the finesse and art out of making molds have anything to do with this? That maybe we no longer need "specialists" for many routine "bread and butter" jobs?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BOSTON
and Machine operator as #9 in the fastest decline for occupation.
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At my last job my lab partner was an Instrument Maker. He used to run a shop. He told me, "Gene, any time that a human hand touches parts you lose money".
With that in mind, why would a business want a machine operator when a robot could pick up the "tombstone" and do the job instead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BOSTON
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A while back, in a somewhat frustrating and unhappy time known as the "1990s", a very good friend of mine assured me that IT and computer jobs would "never slow down" and would "at worst be stagnant". His confidence was based upon years of experience in the field.
Neither one of us could ever imagine a "Dot Com" bubble, created mostly because Americans were treating the stock market as a bank account, as were some well to do Asians. Clinton's talk of a "New Economy" put the Presidential seal on stock market speculation.
What we were not told at the time was that Asian currencies were under attack by the US. Probably because of dollar inflation but also because of predatory capitalism practiced by US big business. Clinton did nothing to stop these practices.
Clinton, for all of the talk of him being a "liberal" was very pro Big Business. His Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, flew all over the world with heavy hitters and high rollers negotiating trade deals with various countries. Ron died with his boots on in a plane crash over the Balkans, riding with some heavy hitters to negotiate still more trade deals. He did indeed take some people with him.
Friends of Bubba made a killing overseas, including Arkansas Mineral Fields in Congo who displaced Belgian based Grand Miniere after the evil Mobutu was replaced by the equally evil (but acceptable to liberals) Laurent Kabila. Pay no attention to the rumors of US Special Forces involvement and US logistical support for Kabila.
So things were tough overseas for non US people. Asians with money were parking their money into the US stock market. It was a "safe haven" for them. Stock prices started to inflate. People tired of puny returns from CDs started to park their money in Mutual Funds. The Fed had driven down interest rates under Bush Sr. and it was murdering savings interest rates. So the Munis got money and parked it in the market.
More cash in an economy leads to price inflation. No kidding.
People bought stocks on the expectation of IPOs or leveraged buyouts. They bought stock with infinite P/Es, stock that had never paid a penny in dividends but one day might be bought up by Microsoft or another heavy hitter. Where I come from this is called "Speculation". This further raised prices.
We were told that the Stock Market was "responding to the demands of the New Economy". To "sustain" this "New Economy" people had to "come up to speed" on the Internet and computers. There was serious talk of a "software crisis", with some talking of hiring musicians and "other non-specialists" to write code to sustain the "New Economy". Many specialists from overseas came to the US under the H-1B visa program to write code and design systems. Today they're doing the same things at home for their own domestic markets.
Things were great. Maybe the 1980s was the "decade of greed' but the 1990s were a decade of opportunity for everyone. So said Bubba.
The bubble started to burst in the late 1990s. The Asians were pulling their money out, things were straightening out at home. The pirates had taken their profits, in some cases were expelled and everyone eventually adjusted to the new rules of international commerce. I'm still waiting for the chickens to come home to roost on that one, as they surely will.
Ordinary Americans continued to speculate in the market. At one clinic were I worked the Medical Director spent ten minute breaks every hour in the break room watching the Stocks. He "made more money in the market than he did being a Physician". The man was day trading!!
The good times came to an end as Bush was starting. Sorta. The end of the world was coming on January 1, 2000 when all of the world's computers would quit, erase all records and we'd all die freezing in the dark. The Y2k crisis. Lots of displaced IT folks continued to work elsewhere "fixing" the bugs.
Were it not for the Y2K "crisis" that pumped a ton of money into the economy, sparing Bubba's "legacy" and shifting the resulting recession for the Dot Com bubble burst onto Bush Jr. we would have had a recession during Clinton's term. I am convinced that the Y2K "Crisis" was a scam.
We would later learn, during the Bush Administration, that there was no "new economy". Manufacturing work had been leveraged by imports from overseas or because ordinary workers were taking lots of OT.
By then a lot of IT people and computer programmers were working as security guards or other low paying occupations. Lots of foreigners went home, taking their skills with them.
The "Point" being that a lot of people went into IT and computer technology expecting to ride the wave... some did well, others crashed and burned.
You cannot predict the future based on the past. If people need something someone must make it. How they will make it will determine who gets hired and what they will pay.
Might be that machine operators will be in demand again for other reasons, maybe not.
Gene
the fastest declining occupations
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