Book Review: The War on Normal People by?Andrew Yang?

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future by Andrew Yang 

The perceived current economic model brought on by the age of the computer is and has been, upon us and much of what we know about capitalism and free markets no longer applies. It is easy to blame Amazon which accounts for over 50% of eCommerce in the USA and about 24% in the UK. Globalisation and trade agreements, climate change, pandemics and other factors which have impacted the world's economies all factor but one evolving change will possibly have a greater impact than the others.

Computing has made artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, autonomous transport and then greatest efficiency drive the world has ever experienced. Change is happening faster and faster but we, as a society, have failed to prepare for the impact of this revolution or more accurate revolution’s.

I have read several books about the impact of technology and many mentions the need to prepare the already accelerating trend of a massive loss of jobs. The pundits, advisors and academics cover the history of automation which probably starts with the wheel? This reoccurring feature of our human development history includes looms as well as tractors the angst of Neo-Luddism is usually overcome in time.  People adjust although I am not certain the buggy whip industry made a seamless transformation? But the change, as of today has wiped out tens of millions of jobs and our Governments do not properly account for those who have given up or have to take several below subsistence/living wage providing jobs. Unemployment rates are meaningless, we need a new measurement which accounts for actual factors which include happiness, stress, savings and optimism?

Few books on the subject of disruption and our globally linked economy cover what is really happening to our economy and the citizens impacted by the dispersion and disruption that is occurring. I have posted my Goodreads review of his book and added some quotes but please read this book as its message, whether one agrees or not, is still important to understand.

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future by Andrew Yang 

Andrew Yang, a Democratic candidate for 2020 election campaign for President of the USA , explains with personal stories acquired in his travels and statistics what is going on and its impact on the American standard of living and our political landscape.  

Running for President is a good way to communicate your ideas and he has many to offer and realises much of his personal limits.  

Basically, it is not China or Mexico, not trade or unfair treaties but the computer. Automation, robotics and AI have replaced millions of jobs and the trend is accelerating. First are the simple tasks which impact the poorest and most vulnerable but we already see legal and medical fields being impacted.

So, unemployment is at record lows? Why then are 49% of the population suffering, do not have $500 in savings to cover even minor emergencies and struggle month by month with bills and basics?

94m Americans have opted to leave the workforce, 5m is not counted, salaries with security and healthcare are disappearing, Walmart workers are subsidised by $6b in US GOVT benefits and yet people point to the top 30 companies in another poor index called the DOW? The DOW is an all-star team and not the league, season or sport actually, just an exhibition so why do people follow it as a key indicator when it clearly only impacts very few at the top?

Some highlighted quotes from the book:

America is starting 100,000 fewer businesses per year than it was only 12 years ago, and is in the midst of shedding millions of jobs due primarily to technological advances.

Technology is about to reach a point where it won’t just be folks in the interior that are threatened, but many white-collar and educated workers as well.

CNN article that detailed how automation had eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2015, four times more than globalization.

Ninety-four per cent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 per cent; for Americans born in 1940, the same figure was 92 per cent.

U.S. companies outsourced and offshored 14 million jobs by 2013, many of which would have previously been filled by domestic workers at higher wages. This resulted in lower prices, higher efficiencies, and some new opportunities but also increased pressures on American

A Bankrate survey in 2017 found that 59 per cent of Americans don’t have the savings to pay an unexpected expense of $500 and would need to put it on a credit card, ask for help, or cut back for several months to manage it. A similar Federal Reserve report in 2015 said that 75 per cent of Americans could not pay a $400 emergency expense out of their checking or savings accounts.

the “Retail Apocalypse.” One hundred thousand department store workers were laid off between October 2016 and May 2017—more than all of the people employed in the coal industry combined. Said the New York Times in April 2017, “The job losses in retail could have unexpected social and political consequences, as huge numbers of low-wage retail employees become economically unhinged, just as manufacturing workers did in recent decades.”

Dozens and soon hundreds of malls are closing as their anchor stores—JCPenney, Sears (soon to be bankrupt), and Macy’s—close dozens of locations. Among the chains that have declared bankruptcy recently are Payless (4,496 stores), BCBG (175 stores), Aeropostale (800 stores), Bebe (180 stores), and the Limited (250 stores). As of 2017, those in danger of default include Claire’s (2,867 stores), Gymboree (1,200 stores), Nine West (800 stores), True Religion (900 stores), and other fixtures that may be bankrupt or defunct by the time you read this. Credit Suisse estimated that 8,640 major retail locations will close in 2017, the highest number in history, exceeding the 2008 peak during the financial crisis. Credit Suisse also estimated that as many as 147 million square feet of retail space will close in 2017, another all-time high. For reference, the Mall of America is the biggest mall in the country, at 2.8 million square feet. The equivalent

McDonald’s just announced an “Experience of the Future” initiative that will replace cashiers in 2,500 locations to start. The former CEO of McDonald’s suggested that large-scale automation is around the corner. “It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries,” he said while defending the current prevailing fast-food wage of $8.90. The robot arm is only going to get cheaper and more efficient, while the fast-food wage has no place to go but up. Approximately 4 million workers work in fast food.

2000 there were still 17.5 million manufacturing workers in the United States. Then, the numbers fell off a cliff, plummeting to fewer than 12 million before rebounding slightly starting in 2011. More than 5 million manufacturing workers lost their jobs after 2000. More than 80 per cent of the jobs lost—or 4 million jobs—were due to automation. Men make up 73 per cent of manufacturing workers, so this hit working-class men particularly hard. About one in six working-age men in America is now out of the workforce, one of the highest rates among developed countries. 

Julie Lythcott-Haims, a dean at Stanford, wrote a book in 2015 about the changing character of the students she was seeing, who had gone in one generation from independent young adults to “brittle” and “existentially impotent.” In 2014, an American College Health Association survey of close to 100,000 college students reported that 86 per cent felt overwhelmed by all they had to do, 54 per cent felt overwhelming anxiety, and 8 per cent seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months. Relationships have changed as well. Gender imbalances on many campuses—women now outnumber men 57 per cent to 43 per cent in college nationally.

Who cares if the coddled college kids are depressed?” One reason to care is that private company ownership is down more than 60 per cent among 18-to 30-year-olds since 1989. The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled “Endangered Species: Young U.S. Entrepreneurs,” and millennials are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation in modern history in terms of business formation. It turns out that depressed, indebted, risk-averse young people generally don’t start companies. This will have effects for decades to come.

One reason to care is that private company ownership is down more than 60 per cent among 18-to 30-year-olds since 1989. The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled “Endangered Species: Young U.S. Entrepreneurs,” and millennials are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation in modern history in terms of business formation. It turns out that depressed, indebted, risk-averse young people generally don’t start companies. This will have effects for decades to come.

One of the things that has struck me (Andrew Yang) about the age of the Internet is that having the world’s information at our disposal does not seem to have made us any smarter. If anything, it’s kind of the opposite. Most of us find ourselves struggling with scarcity of time, money, empathy, attention, or bandwidth in some combination. It is one of the great perversions of automation that just when advancing technology should be creating more of a feeling of abundance for us all, it is instead activating economic insecurity in most of the population. It’s quite plausible that as steady and predictable work and income become more and more rare, our culture is becoming dumber, more impulsive, and even more racist and misogynist due to an increased bandwidth tax as people jump from island to island trying to stay one step ahead of the economic tide. One could argue that it is essential for any democracy to do all it can to keep its population free of a mindset of scarcity in order to make better decisions. A culture of scarcity is a culture of negativity. People think about what can go wrong. They attack each other. Tribalism and divisiveness go way up. Reason starts to lose ground. Decision-making gets systematically worse. Acts of sustained optimism—getting married, starting a business, moving for a new job—all go down. If this seems familiar, this is exactly what we’re seeing by the numbers here in America. We are quickly transitioning from the land of plenty to the land of “you get yours, I get mine.” A mindset of abundance or scarcity is tied closely to what part of the country you live in. Different regions are now experiencing such different levels of economic dynamism that they often have utterly different notions of what the future holds. One’s way of life is largely a product of where you happen to live.

Business dynamism is now vastly unevenly distributed. Fifty-nine per cent of American counties saw more businesses close than open between 2010 and 2014. During the same period, only five metro areas—New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, and Dallas—accounted for as many new businesses as the rest of the nation combined. California, New York, and Massachusetts accounted for 75 per cent of venture capital in 2016, leaving 47 states to compete for the remaining 25 per cent. Historically, virtually all American cities had more businesses open than close in a given year, even during recessions. After 2008, that basic measurement of dynamism collapsed. A majority of cities had more businesses close than open, and this has continued to be the case for seven years after the financial crisis. 

Getting married is an act of optimism, stability, and prosperity. It also can be expensive. If you don’t have a stable job all of the above becomes more difficult. Marriage has declined for all classes in the past 40 years, with the decline being most extreme among the non–college-educated. The proportion of working-class adults who get married has plummeted from 70 per cent in 1970 to only 45 per cent today. The decline really accelerated in 2000, around the same time as manufacturing jobs started to disappear. There are a host of reasons for the decline of marriage. Some cite increased labor force participation and more options for women, who are now less reliant on men. Others discuss it in light of shifting cultural norms. However, the reduction in opportunities for working-class men is doubtless contributing to fewer people getting married. The problems among men have been well documented. An Atlantic article in 2016 called “The Missing Men” noted that one in six men in America of prime-age (25–54) are either unemployed or out of the workforce—10 million men in total. What are these men missing from the workforce doing all day? They tend to play a lot of video games. Young men without college degrees have replaced 75 per cent of the time they used to spend working with time on the computer, mostly playing video games.

Almost 9 million working-age Americans receive disability benefits. That’s more than the entire population of New Jersey or Virginia. The percentage of working-age Americans who received disability benefits was 5.2 per cent in 2017, up from only 2.5 per cent in 1980. Disability applications started surging in 2000, the same year that manufacturing employment started to plummet. The average benefit size in June 2017 was $1,172 per month, at a total cost of about $143 billion per year. The age of the disabled has gone down—in 2014, 15 per cent of men and 16.2 per cent of women in their 30s or early 40s were on disability, up from 6.6 per cent and 6.4 per cent in the 1960s.

2013, 56.5 per cent of prime-age men 25–54 who were not in the workforce reported receiving disability payments. Though the numbers have stabilized as more people in this age group have moved into Social Security retirement, they are already way beyond what anyone intended. The fund for disability insurance recently ran out and was combined with the greater Social Security fund, which is itself scheduled to run out of money in 2034.

Evidence pointed to the latter. Their research indicated that improved technological entertainment options, primarily video games, are responsible for between 20 and 33 per cent of reduced work hours. The trends are different for women, who have not seen the same increase in gaming at the expense of work hours and are more likely to return to school when out of work. For many men, however, games have gotten so good that they have made dropping out of work a more appealing option. 

Evidence pointed to the latter. Their research indicated that improved technological entertainment options, primarily video games, are responsible for between 20 and 33 per cent of reduced work hours. The trends are different for women, who have not seen the same increase in gaming at the expense of work hours and are more likely to return to school when out of work. For many men, however, games have gotten so good that they have made dropping out of work a more appealing option.

They live with their parents. In 2000, just 35 per cent of lower-skilled young men lived with family. Now, more than 50 per cent of lower-skilled young men live with their parents, and as many as 67 per cent of those who are unemployed do so. More U.S. men aged 18–34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners, according to the Pew Research Center.

Recent studies found that households making between $25,000 and $35,000 a year spent 92 more minutes per week online than households making $100,000 plus a year. The image of legions of men in their parents’ basements playing video games for hours on end may seem pathetic or sad. But their satisfaction level is high. “Happiness has gone up for this group,” says Hurst, despite the high rate of unemployment.

The challenges are magnified because American society is not in great shape right now. There are a number of trends that are going to make managing the transition to a new economy all the more difficult: ? We are getting older. ? We don’t have adequate retirement savings. ? We are financially insecure. ? We use a lot of drugs. ? We are not starting new businesses. ? We’re depressed. ? We owe a lot of money, public and private. ? Our education system underperforms. ? Our economy is consolidating around a few mega-powerful firms in our most important industries. ? Our media is fragmented. ? Our social capital is lower. ? We don’t trust institutions anymore.

In the 1970s, US Congress voted for and President Nixon backed universal income, many economists also see the benefit, In light of the devastation that automation is having on job destruction, we need a solution and this has to be debated but may just be what saves America from self-destruction for the pure sake of greed over the common good and our fellow citizens?

There are controversial issues but we need to have a debate and find solutions 20 years ago!

Andrew brings all this to bear in a book that should count as a University credit! I consider this book important and fascinating. A survival manual and a must-read.

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future by Andrew Yang