Purge is the word symbol of Athena – Athens
But there is no drive-through.
I park and walk inside. There are few twenty-somethings sitting around in offices, but no tellers. Just an automated ATM, who one of the twenty-somethings tells me can take my deposit. But a maintenance worker has the ATM door swung open, working on it. So, I don’t get to make a deposit.
I resolve to make the deposit the next day, instead.
Then, my roomie rings me and tells me to pick up a few things at the grocery. I’m no fan of Wally World, but it’s the most convenient stop. I park, run in, and grab a few groceries. I go to the check out, and it’s a lot like the bank I stopped at. It’s not tellerless—it’s checkerless. It’s all automated.
This doesn’t amuse me.
The more I think about it, the worse it gets. And, worse still, I do some research.
Talk about a bill of goods.
A decade or two back, “outsourcing” was all the rage. Our jobs were being sent overseas and we were livid. Now, blaming immigrants is in vogue.
But the numbers are funny and don’t really add up. And you don’t have to look real hard to figure it out. According to the internet machine, 4.5% of American jobs are outsourced each year. Also, according to the internet machine, immigrants make up 19% of the American workforce (one in five jobs).
Neither percentage is anything to dismiss—they just miss the point.
Our politicians and political pundits use figures like these to obscure the real issue … it’s all sleight of hand nonsense. And it’s a bummer, really, for so many of us, because we’re Pavlovian about terms like “outsourcing” and “immigrants”—as if we live for ill-informed finger-pointing. These economic bogeymen have been drummed into us for decades. Half of you are probably slobbering, now. But, please, dab your taco hole with your shirtsleeve and bear with me.
Outsourcing and immigrants really only infringe on an already diminished share of the scraps. According to the internet machine, automation has replaced 70% of Middle-Class jobs in the United States since 1980—and a related economic corollary is worse. Also, according to the internet machine, automation has driven down Middle-Class wages 70% since 1980. AND THESE AREN’T OBSCURE FACTS. They’re proffered front and center by a search engine’s AI shortcut!?
Put that in your mouse and scroll it.
It’s not just mouth-breathers that need to unite. It’s all of us. It’s anyone that may need a breather. It’s anyone that needs to breathe at all. Because what’s replacing most of us doesn’t.
President Dildo J. Trump’s claims about immigrants and bringing manufacturing jobs back to America are bald-faced lies, because most of those jobs were lost to robotics, computer processing, etc., and they’re never coming back. Immigrants and outsourcing are obviously easier targets than automation or AI, but still. This should scare you, reader. This should terrify you.
Immigrants and outsourcing are perfect red herrings, for sure, but neither—as proto-punk, rock-and-rolling band The Trashmen once sublimely put it—“bird is the word.”
“Purge” is the word.
Obsolescence is the word.
Human obsolescence.
And it’s coming to a universal wage station near you.
This is what technology hath wrought.
Vocationally speaking, human jobs have been being tossed in the trash for decades. It probably started innocently enough with something like gas station attendants. But don’t kid yourselves.
We are no longer surfing the web—the web is surfing us.
And the wave is about to break.