As U.S. industries become more efficient and productive, they accomplish their tasks with fewer workers. Many of the routine tasks get outsourced overseas which is wonderful for China, Mexico or Sri Lanka, not so good for us. We are told the future U.S. workforce will be highly skilled, highly educated, and very flexible.
I keep thinking that many of the young people with whom I attended high school lacked the mental acuity to be employable in that future workforce. If my classmates lacked the smarts, it is an odds on bet their children and grandchildren aren't very smart either, since the best unbiased predictor of IQ is parents' IQ.
Which raises the question of what we will do with those mostly unemployable-in-high-tech Americans? Perhaps the answer is emerging.
I keep seeing articles which report that the number of people now on disability or SSDI continues to go up. It's no surprise, as we've noted here earlier. This was a trend during the Great Depression when many unemployed World War I vets earnestly claimed a military disability after happily working during the twenties.
What our recent group of disabled amounts to is a permanent class of people on the dole that only grows larger. The "disabled" become accustomed to not working and figure out how to live on that disability check. Once disabled, people are unlikely to go back to work. If you scan this Reuters article, you'll see that fewer than 45% of Americans are in the work force, and the number will likely continue to decline.
