Pen to Paper: We Will Be Replaced, Too

As previously noted, it’s getting harder to find and hold onto a decent job. And awfully few of the alleged job creators – the ones the Republicans say we can’t tax because they need that money to create jobs – are creating jobs.

I had held out hope that those of us who put one word after another to create meaning might be spared the ax. Oh, sure, newspapers have been shedding jobs for almost a decade; I’ve known that since I lost my newspaper job in 2003. Under the right circumstances, though, those jobs could come back.

Or not. Not when advances like this are being made in the field of artificial intelligence. Read it first, then continue here.

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OT: Labor Day

The official unemployment number came out Friday: 9.1 percent. That’s 14 million Americans without work. Not counted are the underemployed who can’t make ends meet or the people labeled as discouraged workers, more than 200,000 unemployed people who have tried so hard and for so long to find a job that they’ve given up, at least for now. The Congressional Budget Office does not expect the unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent for two more years and says we won’t see 5 percent unemployment until 2017. Further, mass layoffs – when 50 or more workers lose their livelihoods at once – rose 3 percent in August.

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