I Really Wanted to Like This

I truly did. But I just can’t.

I started this book, The End of Work by John Tamny, thinking that it would give a positive take on the robot/AI takeover. The initial impression I had was that the robot takeover would lead people to having jobs that they were passionate about or “Why your passion can become your job”. It sounded positive which would be nice for a change, so I wanted to see if the author could convince me that the future really was bright. I’m looking for positive ideas.

Um, no.

The first two chapters were focused on athletes, specifically pro football and baseball players. Yes, their salaries are skyrocketing but how many people can play at the pro level? There were a few pages discussing how there was a trickle-down effect that as the pros’ salaries rise, everyone else’s salaries would go up – sort of a rising tide effect. But there is just not that many people in the sports business that the average person could partake in. At least it doesn’t appear so.

The third chapter was a discussion about colleges no longer being a good value as a lot of degreed students don’t work in the field of their major. While there have always been students not working in the field of their major, the point about college no longer providing a decent return on the investment is a good one. Since the Great Recession, a lot of students went into debt and can’t get started on a good career. So here I thought, “aha, now we’re getting somewhere.”

Unfortunately, you still need that degree in order to gain entrance to those good paying entry level jobs. There has been a degree inflation since 2008 where jobs that don’t really necessitate a college education are requiring a degree.

The third chapter had a lot of good points though.

The fourth chapter then discusses the music, acting and comedy fields where people are making lots of money. But those folks are what I call stars. We’ve always had stars, at least when I was growing up. They were the lucky few who found success and made a wild amount of money. I would hazard a guess that only some people are making that kind of money; I suspect most have to find a second or third job to make a living wage. Yep, you’ll be working really hard with no guarantee that you will end up with a decent living wage.

I’m not sure this is convincing. So far, I’m pretty disappointed with the book. There is nothing about robots and artificial intelligence, no efforts to display some statistics, no nothing. The examples are more of a winners take all examples – in other words, a few people make astounding amounts of money and the rest barely get by.

In the fifth chapter we start to get into the non-profits such as the arts and the orchestras and other charities. Here the author brings in the idea that non-profits and charities cannot survive without the generosity of the wealthy.

Sigh, okay, sounds like the author is a fervent free market lover and a tax-cutting fan. Oh, dear.

Yes, I do agree that the wealthy fund a lot of the culture and the charities but I also recall reading somewhere that the average person contributes a greater share of his earnings towards charities, so maybe it’s more accurate to say because the wealthy have so much more, their absolute share of the contribution to charities is greater but on a percent of wealth, it is less.

Anyway, it’s likely we would not have as much culture around without the beneficence of the wealthy.

But the slavish encomiums get worse.

Chapter six pronounces that the millennials will be the richest generation. I happen to agree that’s a possibility, once the boomer generation has all died, once the AI disruption has fully ravaged through the economy, and once climate change has knocked out a lot of people. Whoever is left will be wealthy but they are going to go through a lot of pain to get there. In this chapter, the author has some interesting perspectives on the millennials that’s worth reading (they are not moochers).

Chapter seven details the author’s life and I get a better sense of his ideological learnings. I suspect a libertarian or at least a free market loving conservative. He majored in government, got an MBA, and ended up writing economic policies for FreedomWorks conservative think tank funded by the wealthy. So now we know his leanings and bias.

He is terrible at math and numbers and did not major in economics but he is writing economic policies. Bear that in mind.

In discussing his life, he also extols hard work because if you are working hard at what is your passion, then it is not work. I’ve heard of that before and it’s believable that doing what you’re passionate about is not work at all, but here is how he puts it:

Um, how about workers are not taking vacations because they fear being away or looking like slackers?

I’m not convinced by his odes to the joys of hard work.

The next chapter is about the “venture buyers” and here, his concept of government spending is brought up: basically government spending is bad. His concept of venture buyers are the wealthy who have so much wealth that they can risk their money in investing in unproven goods. Governments, on the other hand, cannot risk on such investment because it is…well, too risky. That makes sense until I think about the Internet which began as a government project and not as a public commercial project. In the past, governments, and not public companies, were more likely to fund basic research because such research is expensive and risky and commercial companies can’t afford to risk their capital on such risky endeavors. Hmm, that argument just got turned around.

I think it’s more the case that sometimes government spending is good and sometimes it’s bad. It is going to depend on who the voters vote in. If you don’t vote well or don’t take voting seriously, you will end up with a badly run government. Same thing with companies. It is going to be the matter of who is running at the top.

But I get the feeling the author thinks all government spending is bad because it crowds out the wealthy’s spending through taxation. The less money they have, the less likely they will invest in unproven technologies or goods.

An interesting tidbit, though, about dog walkers:

Geez.

Okay, brace yourself. Here is where his ideology starts to really show. Some of the stuff the author says gets my instincts screaming “No!”

“Chapter 9: Why We Need People with Money to Burn” This chapter is a full-on paean to the wealthy. (Cough, cough, puke, puke) This chapter also discusses estate taxes and its supposed impact on investment.

(omg)

Remember, he’s not a trained economist.

Chapter ten is more of the same but here, he is trying to convince us that taxation reduces the money available for investment which kind of logically convincing up until you think about what happens after you reduce taxes. You would think as a converse corollary, tax cuts would lead to increased investments. But after the great tax cut of 2017, which was heralded as the start of massive investments that would lead to greater economic growth and jobs, the evidence points to… that is not so. The evidence is just not there.

Of course, the book was published during 2018, so it was probably written during 2017, before the evidence came in. But if he had been trained as an economist, he would probably know the history of tax cuts which says tax cuts do not lead to greater economic growth.

In all of these chapters, the author fails to address the subject of inequality, as if we have not been having that discussion in the US, so it is hard to be convinced about what he is trying to sell. He is not addressing the inequality when he heaps praises on the wealthy as the fount of all good things Americans have and will have in the future. He is not convincing me – he can’t convince me – that in the future, Americans will have wonderful jobs when he does not address the growing inequality in America. Also, he brings in no research or hard facts. It is just a hard sell – seemingly logical – without any research to back it up. The topic of inequality is backed up with research; the author presents none as a counterpoint.

I really wanted to be positive and think that the future will be bright but the author is not convincing me.

And then the last chapter:

OMG

He’s admitted that inequality – massive inequality (emphasis his, not mine) – is a feature of our type of capitalistic system and he glorifies in it.