Dock strike/Toilet paper shortage??

[WM75Guy]

Whats a fax machine..ll i think only you old people know what that is

We still have one and use it quite often. Some government agencies still require either fax or snail mail, no email allowed.

 

[WinterDeere]

When I was Cummins there were 2 others that were from farming backgrounds. One had a hard time walking and in his 60's. All the whining and complaining about the hours, having to work on a Saturday, the changing of start time because something broke came from everybody else.

There's also a difference between putting in some long/hard hours during a crisis, versus doing it week in and week out for years.

Having always worked in engineering and product design, there have been countless times when we pulled all-nighters and worked through weekends for a week or three, burning all sorts of hours to get a product out the door. Almost always due to bad management, folks whose ass isn't on the line making promises I need to fulfill, or vendors delivering our needed components late or out of spec... but once in a great while due to my own mistakes causing a delay or rework.

However, that's a lot different than a job requiring 70 hours per week for months or years on end, with no break. The former is a crisis management, the latter is a lifestyle!

 

[CH4Ohio]

Don't forget the facsimile or FAX machine which was viewed in awe...

Good catch! FAX! Between FAX and copiers we used to have to deal with "copies of copies" getting ever harder to read. Now pretty much everything is a first generation document. Another huge improvement.

 

[WinterDeere]

Until a few weeks ago, the primary standards document governing a lot of the work I do was a paper copy from 1953. Or I should say, a probably-100th generation copy of the document, using every conceivable technology that has existed since 1950. Half the critical dimensions were almost totally unreadable, only deduced by collective comparison to surrounding numbers.

“Is that a 5 or is it a 6?” Was a daily question.

 

[D&D]

Good catch! FAX! Between FAX and copiers we used to have to deal with "copies of copies" getting ever harder to read. Now pretty much everything is a first generation document. Another huge improvement.

How many people were actually displaced during any of these office revolutions?

 

[Oaktree]

How many of you took "Typing" in high school? When there were no computers or word processers? Who remembers the "magic" of the IBM Selectric "correcting" typewriter that would type "white-out" over your last letter typed? I had a Smith-Corona that could correct by swapping out the ink cartridge with a correction cartridge. This was state-of-the-art and pretty impressive at the time . . .

I took computer science in college. We used a card punch machine to record program language and then stacked that up into a card reader that executed one card at a time in a mainframe type computer. We had to wait in line behind other students in front of the actual device in order to insert our card deck. If there was an error, it would kick out the last card and the program would not execute. If the program ran, you got a printout on a dot-matrix printer. There was no disc drive storage or options for electronic output.

I took one semester of typing in my junior year of high school. Even back then (1966) it seemed a useful skill to have...little did we know just how useful it would become. It was also a good class to take to meet girls.

Much of my early career was in the computer industry, I worked with early word processing systems as far back as the early 70s. First place used cassettes for data storage, the second used drum memories...huge things the size of a washing machine with a whopping 8 meg (yes, meg!) of storage!! Wow! We'll never fill that up!

We started out with cellular bag-phones that were shared depending on who was on call. I probably had every variation of cell phone from the big bricks to the flip-phones to Blackberry and finally iPhones.

You forgot pagers, we used them when we rotated off-hour on-call. My only experience with bagphones was at a radio station where I was a p/t DJ...we'd use them for remote broadcasts from places we couldn't get a Marti shot.
I have stubbornly refused to get a smartphone, at my wife's insistence I do have a prepaid flip phone which sits in a desk drawer 99% of the time.

 

[CH4Ohio]

How many people were actually displaced during any of these office revolutions?

Some people were moved around. A lot of salary people had to shuffle positions and some of those jobs were eliminated. But hourly workers didn't experience any layoffs.

 

[ponytug]

What is the percentage of "old people" in Japan?

Might lead the world in that population.

Pretty much. Median age in Japan is 49.5 years, compared to 39.8 for China and 38.8 for the US.

Japan is #2, beaten only by Monaco, (total population 39,000) is said to be #1. Demographics of Japan - Wikipedia

Lots of Japanese villages are dying out as the elders die because of the low fertility rates and younger folks moving to cities. Prior to WWII, 2/3rds of the population did not have access to piped water, with the usual diarrheal diseases of cholera, dysentery, and typhoid being common. Post WWIII, the US required disinfection for water supplies. The Japanese life expectancy had a big boost after the end of WWII, due in part to modernization efforts, like clean water and sewage treatment. Like Italy, and several other European countries, there are programs to give away homes to younger people if they will move there and rehabilitate the homes.

All the best,

Peter

 

[WinterDeere]

Among all the talk of technology replacing jobs, look at our last 55 years, and consider all of the automation that has been deployed in that time:

Again, the decreased pricing afforded by automation only increases consumption, never curtails total jobs. Some will require re-training, but generally new opportunities out-pay the old.

 

[ericm979]

Productivity per employee has gone up quite a bit since the '70s but worker wages have remained basically flat. However CEO and executive pay has gone through the roof. In the '70s the typical big corp CEO made 25-30x what their average employee made. Now it's 300x-500x.

This has coincided with a fall in union membership. Yea unions are not perfect, but collective action is the only way for employees to get bargaining power. Bargaining as an individual isn't all that effective, even when you're a vital employee, which most people aren't. Old time American unions seem kind of hide bound. I like the German model where the union is on the board and in on major decisions, representing the employees. It's not as adversarial as old time American unions but very successful for both employees and companies. (it doesn't prevent companies like VW from making stupid decisions though).

It's funny how people complain about union bosses having nice houses but don't complain about the CEO buying his fifth house and the COO his fourth house. That money was pay the employees didn't get, even though they made it possible.