 Front cover | |
| Author | Jeremy Rifkin |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Socio-economics, technological unemployment |
| Publisher | Putnam Publishing Group |
Publication date | 1995 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 1-58542-313-0 |
| OCLC | 865211968 |
The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group. [1]
In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminated tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He predicted devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers would reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class would continue to shrink and the workplace become ever more stressful.
As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth of a third sector —voluntary and community-based service organizations—that would create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers. [1]
Some economists and sociologists have criticized Rifkin for being one of the major contributors to the "end of work" discourse and literature of the 1990s. Autonomist political philosopher George Caffentzis concluded that Rifkin's argument is flawed because it is based on a technological determinism that does not take into account the dynamics of employment and technological change in the capitalist era. [2] It is also argued[ by whom? ] that Rifkin's historical analysis of technological unemployment in the agriculture sector in the southern United States was not shared by Martin Luther King Jr., who believed the problem was the lack of labor rights. [3] More recent research suggests that the widespread adoption of computers between the late 1970s and the 1990s increased employment. [4]
A major theme of The End of Work is that productivity would lead to the destruction of jobs; however, the book appeared when productivity growth had been in a slowdown since the early 1970s as production costs soared, while the widespread use of computers in the 1980s and early 1990s neither reduced costs nor improved productivity, as was expected (this phenomenon would be referred to as the productivity paradox). Strong productivity growth finally appeared in the late 1990s as globalization opened up new markets, but then slowed down again by the second half of the 2000s as costs rose dramatically. The productivity slowdown is still being debated. [5]
Strong growth but without absorbing large numbers of unemployed people is called a jobless recovery. Historically, innovation that makes existing jobs and technologies obsolete has not created permanent unemployment, but has instead opened jobs in new industries and moved jobs from agriculture to industry and the service sector. This process is known as creative destruction.
Other books by Rifkin:
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically use combinations of all of these techniques. The benefit of automation includes labor savings, reducing waste, savings in electricity costs, savings in material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision.
Industrialisation is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Historically industrialization is associated with increase of polluting industries heavily dependent on fossil fuels. With the increasing focus on sustainable development and green industrial policy practices, industrialization increasingly includes technological leapfrogging, with direct investment in more advanced, cleaner technologies.
Jeremy Rifkin is an American economic and social theorist, writer, public speaker, political advisor, and activist. Rifkin is the author of 23 books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. His most recent books include The Age of Resilience (2022), The Green New Deal (2019), The Zero Marginal Cost Society (2014), The Third Industrial Revolution (2011), The Empathic Civilization (2010), and The European Dream (2004).
Structural unemployment is a form of involuntary unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers. Structural unemployment is often brought about by technological changes that make the job skills of many workers obsolete.
The productivity paradox, also referred to as the Solow paradox, could refer either to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s despite rapid development in the field of information technology (IT) over the same period, or to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States and developed countries from the 2000s to 2020s; sometimes the newer slowdown is referred to as the productivity slowdown, the productivity puzzle, or the productivity paradox 2.0. The 1970s to 1980s productivity paradox inspired many research efforts at explaining the slowdown, only for the paradox to disappear with renewed productivity growth in the developed countries in the 1990s. However, issues raised by those research efforts remain important in the study of productivity growth in general, and became important again when productivity growth slowed around the world again from the 2000s to the present day.
Baumol's cost disease, also known as the Baumol effect, is the rise of wages in jobs that have experienced little or no increase in labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced higher productivity growth. The phenomenon was described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s and is an example of cross elasticity of demand.
Emerging technologies are technologies whose development, practical applications, or both are still largely unrealized. These technologies are generally new but also include older technologies finding new applications. Emerging technologies are often perceived as capable of changing the status quo.
Economic stagnation is a prolonged period of slow economic growth, usually accompanied by high unemployment. Under some definitions, "slow" means significantly slower than potential growth as estimated by macroeconomists, even though the growth rate may be nominally higher than in other countries not experiencing economic stagnation.
"The Triple Revolution" was an open memorandum sent to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and other government figures on March 22, 1964. Drafted under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, it was signed by an array of noted social activists, professors, and technologists who identified themselves as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution. The chief initiator of the proposal was W. H. "Ping" Ferry, at that time a vice-president of CSDI, basing it in large part on the ideas of the futurist Robert Theobald.
A technological revolution is a period in which one or more technologies is replaced by another novel technology in a short amount of time. It is an era of accelerated technological progress characterized by new innovations whose rapid application and diffusion typically cause an abrupt change in society.
The 1990s economic boom in the United States was an economic expansion that began after the end of the early 1990s recession in March 1991, and ended in March 2001 with the start of the early 2000s recession during the Dot-com bubble crash (2000–2002). It was the longest recorded economic expansion in the history of the United States until July 2019.
Manufacturing in the United States is a vital sector. The United States is the world's third largest manufacturer with a record high real output in Q1 2018 of $2.00 trillion well above the 2007 peak before the Great Recession of $1.95 trillion. The U.S. manufacturing industry employed 12.35 million people in December 2016 and 12.56 million in December 2017, an increase of 207,000 or 1.7%. Though still a large part of the US economy, in Q1 2018 manufacturing contributed less to GDP than the 'Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing' sector, the 'Government' sector, or 'Professional and business services' sector.
The United States entered recession in 1990, which lasted 8 months through March 1991. Although the recession was mild relative to other post-war recessions, it was characterized by a sluggish employment recovery, most commonly referred to as a jobless recovery. Unemployment continued to rise through June 1992, even though a positive economic growth rate had returned the previous year.
Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment.
Race Against the Machine is a non-fiction book from 2011 by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee about the interaction of digital technology, employment and organization. The full title of the book is: Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.
Transformation in economics refers to a long-term change in dominant economic activity in terms of prevailing relative engagement or employment of able individuals.
Job creation and unemployment are affected by factors such as aggregate demand, global competition, education, automation, and demographics. These factors can affect the number of workers, the duration of unemployment, and wage rates.
A robot tax is a legislative strategy to disincentivize the replacement of workers by machines and bolster the social safety net for those who are displaced. While the automation of manual labour has been contemplated since before the industrial revolution, the issue has received increased discussion in the 21st century due to newer developments such as machine learning.
Engels' pause is a term coined by economic historian Robert C. Allen to describe the period from 1790 to 1840, when British working-class wages stagnated and per-capita gross domestic product expanded rapidly during a technological upheaval. Allen named the period after German philosopher Friedrich Engels, who describes it in The Condition of the Working Class in England. Economists have analyzed its causes and effects since the nineteenth century, with some questioning its existence. Twenty-first-century technological upheaval and wage stagnation have led economists and academics to draw parallels between the two periods.
Wage growth is a rise of wage adjusted for inflations, often expressed in percentage. In macroeconomics, wage growth is one of the main indications to measure economic growth for a long-term since it reflects the consumer's purchasing power in the economy as well as the level of living standards. An increase in wage growth implies price inflation in the economy while a low wage growth indicates deflation that needs artificial interferences such as through fiscal policies by federal/state government. Minimum wage law is often introduced to increase wage growth by stimulating price inflations from corresponding purchasing powers in the economy. Wage growth can also be maximised through the development of industry factors by investing skilled workers in which decision made by businesses. More financial compensation for skilled workers not only lifts wage growth but stimulates higher market prices in the economy.
Negri and Rifkin are major participants in the "end of work" discourse of the 1990s [...] The formal logic of the argument appears impeccable, but are its empirical premises and theoretical presuppositions correct? I argue that they are not, for Rifkin's technological determinism does not take into account the dynamics of employment and technological change in the capitalist era. [...] The "end of work" literature of the 1990s, therefore, is not only theoretically and empirically disconfirmed.
