FiveThirtyEight: US Manufacturing is alive and well. The real issue is manufacturing employment, which is dropping like a stone. And the reason for the drop is an increase in productivity.
—via buffleheadcabin: montycantsin: ekstasis: ericmortensen: anythingyoucandoicandometa
…The 80/20 rule of social (and not only social) life: 80 percent of land is owned by 20 percent of the people, 80 percent of profts are produced by 20 percent of the employees, 80 percent of decisions are made during 20 percent of meeting time, 80 percent of the links on the Web point to less than 20 percent of Webpages, 80 percent of peas come from 20 percent of the peapods. As some social analysts and economists have suggested, the contemporary explosion of economic productivity confronts us with the ultimate case of this rule: the coming global economy will tend towards a state in which only 20 percent of the labor force are able to do all the necessary work, so that 80 percent of people will be basically irrelevant and of no use, thus potentially unemployed.
As this logic reaches its extreme, would it not be reas onable to bring it to its self-negation: is not a system which renders 80 percent of people irrelevant and useless itself irrelevant and of no use?”
— Slavoj Žižek, “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce”
