patrick.net

There are very few geographic areas in the world that have a Mediterranean climate like the Bay Area. It allows me to bike to work all year. I don't have a huge yard, but I can walk to about 5 different tot lots with my kids. That said, 2000 was the last year I could afford to buy into BA real estate (which I did) before I was "priced out forever"; will be interesting to see where we end up when the dust settles. Kevin, I appreciated your post; some good points which many folks tend to ignore.

My co-worker like Seattle too, he said the people there are really nice.
The weather in Bay Area is really nice, but I can't say the samething about people. Generally speaking people are very impatient here.

warblah says

My co-worker like Seattle too, he said the people there are really nice.
The weather in Bay Area is really nice, but I can’t say the samething about people. Generally speak people are very impatient here.

That's because "it's all about me" here. Depending on the 'me-mees' we are talking about. I find all kinds here actually, many very 'good people', but a good number of intolerable me-firsters. Usually very proud of themselves and sure they are on top ...

For the record I agree with Kevin's about the 'constant exchange of ideas'. I am also in technology and I have always thought the idea of 'remote work' in technology is over-blown. Face to face meetings and discussions are essential, if not every day then at least very regularly.

Seattle... Compare with BayArea, I like BA better.

yeah this is what i was thinking too. There are colleagues who tell me that they might move to Austin because there Dollar would go much further there, so there are some other pockets in country where you have lot of technology jobs and houses cost much lesser. So this recession would definitely cause some people to look elsewhere.

By all means, move to Austin.

While every American with even a little blood in their veins loves California, and Californians, there is no more reviled transplant in Austin than the nerd bird diaspora hailing from CA that have moved here over the last five years or so with their phony bubble wealth, paying 500K in cash for homes that weren't priced at half that in '01, thereby jacking up the costs of everything - which, by the way, will gradually have the effect of simply exporting the high costs of living you're trying to escape and relocating it to Central Texas.

By the way, if you're moving here from, say, Cupertino...uh...the terrain is a little different, and you aren't an hour from Carmel-by-the-Sea.

I moved out of California in 2007. I moved to Wisconsin- 1 hour West of Madison. Bought a 4 year old 1500 sq ft house on 2 acres right near the WI River, bike path that goes thru woods for 20 miles, and built a golf hole in my backyard. Paid $155K for the house! Prop taxes are $2900 year. Utilities run me $200 month.

Only thing lacking is ethnic diversity- just not enough gangs and no graffiti. darn. Summers are great, Spring and fall are awesome. Yes, winter is cold and snows, but 3 words- All Wheel Drive.

I love the midwest~! Why the hell did I wait so long.

Don
Gotham, WI

PS. Actually, there is one negative. People stop and have their picture taken by the Gotham sign when I'm trying to relax in my yard.

Madison is a nice town and the people are friendly. I spend a three days there in the 90's for business. To bad the women are not the same quality in the looks department as what I'm used to seeing here in California.

chrisborden says

I can tell by the lack of comments on my posts that I am mostly invisible here (and I understand that since I live way outside the boundaries of what is called a normal middle class lifestyle today and being over 50 and uninterested in tech), so I am checking out since I’m leaving my native Bay Area soon anyway.

Valuable insight about what is ahead for people who are bubbling with energy and are far from reality , blinded by Sunny California.

Chris,

Not to call you out, but didn't some of that California unreality result in a cool 100K in your jeans from when you sold before the housing bust?

Salem, OR is beautiful. And hell, it isn't the Bermuda Triangle. You can always visit or move back one day.

jeffr says

Madison is a nice town and the people are friendly. I spend a three days there in the 90’s for business. To bad the women are not the same quality in the looks department as what I’m used to seeing here in California.

I thought Women in texas and in general in south were much hotter and good looking...

Austinhousingbubble says

By the way, if you’re moving here from, say, Cupertino…uh…the terrain is a little different, and you aren’t an hour from Carmel-by-the-Sea.

True that, but you would be just down the street from the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn.

So the conclusion is people are not going to move AWAY from SFBA, they would stick around an d waiting so that things can better here.

chrisborden says

I can tell by the lack of comments on my posts that I am mostly invisible here (and I understand that since I live way outside the boundaries of what is called a normal middle class lifestyle today and being over 50 and uninterested in tech), so I am checking out since I’m leaving my native Bay Area soon anyway.

Hey now, I always enjoy your posts even if I don't always respond to them specifically...

For Californians in Austin and other places -

a beautiful California slideshow courtesy of pro photographer R.G. Ketchum:

http://www.robertglennketchum.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=15&a=0&at=0

Photos are of the California coast north of San Luis Obispo to Monterey county. Enjoy!

~Misstrial

Weather aside, other states simply suck in terms of job prospect.

I am more than willing to be an equity locust to live it up anywhere along the west coast, but the job prospect is just so appalling, let alone Austin or Dallas, thanks but no thanks, I am not ready to take a pay cut and live with real boring people with lack of choice in all aspects of life. If you move to Seattle or Austin, there are about a handful employers that you can hop to. You will finish all your career choices in about 5 years, then what? VCs are shutting down all offices throughout the US except for two locations: Boston and Bay Area, that tells you where the jobs are. Boston ain't cheap either, for a good reason.

There are plenty of places with Trader Joe's and Wholefoods, but there are not so many places with such an abundance of ethnic foods and interesting people from all around the world. I am just not going to consider Chilis and Applebees eat-out experience.

A friend of mine moved to Texas and traded up from his 1500 sqft shack to a 5000-sqft mansion. But he regretted very much about the move and has been looking for every opportunity to come back, which he can't, because the area he desires in BA holds value much better than his location in TX. Yeah, you get a 5000 sqft mansion and that is pretty much where you are going to be spending ALL your time outside work, because you cannot possibly go out where the land is as flat as a pancake at 100+F throughout the summer. Let's not even get into his heating and air-conditioning bill, without which he cannot possibly survive.

Kevin, I also have a friend who moved up to Google's Seattle office, which according to him is a stupid career move because it is much harder to get promoted there given the size of the team. The choice of projects that he can work on is also seriously limited, let alone building relationship with some core people who are based in HQ. But he likes the city well enough to compensate for the career setback, and his wife is from the area.

I am just not going to consider Chilis and Applebees eat-out experience.

Nobody actually eats at these places. I have lived in both Seattle and Ausitn, and neither of these places were going concerns. Maybe Tacoma?

A friend of mine moved to Texas and traded up from his 1500 sqft shack to a 5000-sqft mansion. But he regretted very much about the move and has been looking for every opportunity to come back, which he can’t, because the area he desires in BA holds value much better than his location in TX

I don't understand people who move from California for the sake of upsizing in a different part of the country. Seems like such a person was pretty feint-hearted about California to begin with. Hell, move to Ohio and live like a King!

.

..real boring people with lack of choice in all aspects of life

There's boring people everywhere. As far as Seattle or Austin are concerned, I think both cities possess a vibrancy and a landscape that many other more manufactured cities seem to have gone out of their way to pave over, and both cities are full of people who really seem to *want* to be there - meaning, they're not just there because it's cheap or because it's sunny & funny all the time. It's easy to like and live in a city like that...maybe too easy.

That said, NOBODY in any city of any state is going to embrace you if you move there and try to recreate your own little atomized poor man's California. You will be reviled. California works great in California. Let's keep it in context.

...I am not ready to take a pay cut

Also, pay cuts are relative to region and situation.

...and by the way, is a place a shack because it's 1500 sq ft? Or was it a dump that also happened to be 1500 sq ft.

Who the f--- needs 5K sq ft?

OO says

Weather aside, other states simply suck in terms of job prospect.

Unless you're a software engineer, the job prospects in the bay area aren't exactly stellar. My wife can't find any job that pays well enough to cover the cost of child care here.

Some Guy says

"I’ll agree with that. I would love to move back to the Bay Area. I wish I had never left. I applied for a few jobs in a field that ought to pay decently. Got a call back from one firm to set up an interview. I asked what they were paying, and they said, “35 to 40 thousand a year”. I almost laughed. Where would you live, in a cardboard box? Maybe I could rent a room from that Russian guy who paid 500K for a house in the West Oakland ghetto."

imo, here in the BA, there is a war going on and its been going on since the '90's - between the real estate industry and business/employers.
imo, the tac strategy goes like this:

Employer to HR: "If we reduce the pay, eventually housing costs will come down, it's just a matter of when. If there's no one paying $1850/mo for a lousy studio built in 1962 in Mountain View on Middlefield, then *eventually* the property people will have to reduce their rental rate."

RE Industry and LL Associations: *Blinks to the above threat*.... and continues on with the rent/housing increases until a total crash occurs.

Here in the BA, the crash is occurring and rents are coming down, slowly, but they are being reduced.

Looked on CraigsList recently? 100's of pages of rentals for South Bay and the Peninsula.

I moved back not just because my assignment ended but I was glad to leave simply due to the fact that the RE Industry out-of-State is much much slower to catch on to the new realities in housing as opposed to here in Cali where one CANNOT AFFORD to carry on for more than a few months the same drill in the face of financial destruction.

In flyover country, my rent was going UP -even in 2007, 2008, and 2009, - as opposed to staying at least level. My LL (a total doofus and a real estate agent) raised my rent $100 per month for 3 years IN SPITE OF AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THIS COUNTRY THAT RIVALS THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

~Misstrial

Honestly, if you are doing a job that can be easily outsourced to people in Vietnam, India or China, you should not be living in California, or to be precise, you shouldn't be living in the US. But there are always the kind of core jobs that cannot be easily outsourced because people in the other parts of the world simply lack the skills.

But I admit, you really have to be a world class player in almost any field to live a decent life in California. But this is not just California, this is the world that we are living in, middle class is disappearing, the kind of middle class we had since the end of the WWII was just an exception in human history. We are returning to norm.

"We are returning to norm."

Please, tell us more drivel. Tell us what "norm" is. I never liked him anyways.

Also, what are these "core jobs" are, and why we can't outsource them?

Outsourcing is a joke. Do japanese outsource there jobs. Do german outsource there jobs. NO!! but they build better cars than US. US outsourced jobs for the car industry and see where it lead us. The outsourcers are the idiots. They are the money grubbers. They only care about money. They are the financials types. We need to outsource the banking system to austria. The only people who think outsourcing is good are the arrogant jerks of our society.

[Quote] I had a wonderful time trying Hollywood (you have no idea how hard it is to become a paid actor, and I threw tens of thousands of dollars at the best training money could buy) and now HAVE to leave because it’s too expensive to stay.[End Quote]

chrisborden:

Thanks for sharing your experience. You should really have a website for those considering acting in L.A. in order to share your experiences and insights. Could really save some folks a lot of money, imo.

Amazing how many come out here in order to enter entertainment or modeling and wind up doing porn in the San Fernando Valley instead.

~Misstrial

If you look at what's "normal", maybe we should go back to serfdom and slavery. Maybe no electric lights or hot water? We have what we have because we're the most productive people on the planet PERIOD. Someone comes up with a tractor or an assembly line robot its going to put a lot of people out of work, that's a given. There's no way to keep the jobs here, not when we make 70x their salary.

If Chindia wants our 40 yr old machinery let them take it, because we invented the f**king thing and we already know how to do it better, but why bother when they'll take our green-colored toilet paper and make it for us?

chrisborden says

Dear Misstrial, I’d love to share my experiences. I went in with the idea that I could buy a dream, but it seems I had a few things against me, namely my age, an unattractive smile (due to poor parents who couldn’t afford dentistry, even in the 60s) lack of drive and ambition (rejection got boring after the first year), even higher cost of living down there (not that I didn’t know that either), and the biggie: Eventually I told myself that I really had little talent (and some of my auditions showed it). Bottom line: It was a hoot. At least I landed an agent and DID earn some money at it ($900). And I got to be on screen in an episode of “The West Wing” (Hubberts Peak, 11/17/2004). People actually called me that they saw me, as I never told anyone I was going to be on! I would not recommend a run at Hollywood for anyone over 25, especially if you are white and blonde.

chrisborden says

Dear Misstrial, also bottom line: I’m boring, just a straitlaced (spelled correctly) semiconservative middle of the road middle aged burned out white guy who lives a nondescript, orderly, sober, frugal life (and I know CA from stem to stern, too).

chrisborden: No worries, just that I think you have a compelling story, and if you're a journalist, well, you may be able to articulate your valuable experiences better than most :)

Thunderlips11:

May want to take note that the H-1Bs are leaving the SV due to layoffs that are affecting them too. Other H-1s are leaving because they perceive that their fortunes would be better met in Asia as opposed to here.

Went down DeAnza Blvd in Cupertino to Saratoga a few weeks ago and an entire strip mall that used to be filled with Asian businesses is now vacant.

The Asian businesses in particular that catered to solely Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese clientele are being really hard hit by this Depression simply because they made the mistake of wanting only a particular ethnic/racial group as customers. And now, in order to make it, they need caucasian customers, however, they have established themselves as an "Asian-only" business to their downfall.

In order to change, they'd have to redo their outdoor signage, their language capabilities in rder to communicate with customers, and their product lines and to do that, they need capital which is hard for most independent businesses to get these days. So their racial preferencing has really come back to bite them....

~Misstrial

Well, if you are one of a dozen people in the world who knows how to do a very well defined piece of critical task you can ask for 70x of Chindian pay. The rest of us will just have to deal with our converging standard of living with those in Shanghai or Mumbai. But don't worry, their standard of living is rising, so we don't need to sink that far.

The polarization of wealth and power is really a doing of lazy Americans who have been quite brain dead for the last couple of decades. You and me, whoever have the right to vote, allowed this to happen, and our ancestors allowed serfdom and slavery to happen. Laziness is the norm of human nature, and when we are collectively lazy, we sink into a bi-polar society because the very few that can still think start to take advantage of most of us who choose to let someone else do the thinking.

Just looking back at our history, we were stuck in rich-poor divide most of the times, with sparkles of more equal distribution of wealth, usually as an immediate reaction to extreme rich-poor divide, but they never lasted.

OO says

Well, if you are one of a dozen people in the world who knows how to do a very well defined piece of critical task you can ask for 70x of Chindian pay. The rest of us will just have to deal with our converging standard of living with those in Shanghai or Mumbai. But don’t worry, their standard of living is rising, so we don’t need to sink that far.
The polarization of wealth and power is really a doing of lazy Americans who have been quite brain dead for the last couple of decades. You and me, whoever have the right to vote, allowed this to happen, and our ancestors allowed serfdom and slavery to happen. Laziness is the norm of human nature, and when we are collectively lazy, we sink into a bi-polar society because the very few that can still think start to take advantage of most of us who choose to let someone else do the thinking.
Just looking back at our history, we were stuck in rich-poor divide most of the times, with sparkles of more equal distribution of wealth, usually as an immediate reaction to extreme rich-poor divide, but they never lasted.

What are you talking about?

Haven't you heard of Steve Jobs? Steve Wozniak? Meg Whitman (eBay)? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet?
John McAfee? Pete Sampras? Magic Johnson? Kobe Bryant? Andy Roddick? Carly Fiorina? Donald Trump?
John Mayer? Tom Cruise? Julia Roberts? George Clooney?

Are you out of your mind???

I wouldn't go any where so far as to call all or even most Americans "lazy" or "braindead."

My guess is that you are an H1-B yourself or a trader who profits off of "emerging markets" due to happy uptalk regarding industries there.

Just so that you know, China is simply trailing the USA and will be facing a credit crisis/financial meltdown there within 2 years. 100,000 (one hundred thousand) factories have closed in China over the past year due to the collapse of the consumer economy here.

Your diatribe is the narrative of those who are globalists and who want to assuage their complicity in exporting American jobs to drive the whole country down to the level of China (forced abortion and dictatorship) and India where women are still burned at the stake if they fail to bear male children or if the mother-in-law doesn't like them. Same with Japan where the suicide rate of married women and brides who have to live with a hateful mother-in-law is common.

In India, unwanted newborns are thrown alive into the Ganges river to be eaten by crocodiles due to that country's philosophical views.

And you call Americans "lazy"? Oh honey, aren't you a piece of work.

~Misstrial

Lazy, Did you ever see a UPS guy working. It's not laziness that hurts america. It's rewarding the lazy minority via socialism. Most people want to work at a job. It's a minority of people in this country dragging us down. On the other end of the spectrum, some employers want you to work for 80,000 7 days a week. It's not about laziness, it's about the outsourcing and socialism. Then comes the fed and the money system. Talk about a bunch of fat cats. Please back up your allegation of laziness with case studies please.

Some Guy says

knewbetter says

We have what we have because we’re the most productive people on the planet PERIOD.

Not any more, my friend - not any more. Pushing numbers around on a computer screen is not productivity. And that’s why our economy is in the crapper.

Yes.

Bring back:

Logging in the Pacific Northwest (the Spotted Owl endangerment was a hoax)

Fishing in coastal waters off California (Point Loma in San Diego and San Pedro used to be fishing centers)

Mining in the California High Desert, Utah, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada

Oil drilling off the California coast (now supported by 57 percent of Santa Barbarans but opposed by Democrat Assemblypersons from South Central L.A.

Farming in the western Central Valley (Federal Judge ordered shutting off of water to farmlands and southern California in order to save a NON-NATIVE minnow in the Sacramento Delta).

Tort reform which would put an end to predatory lawsuits

Return of "Shop" (woodworking, metal shop, auto repair shop, drafting - CAD, etc) classes in high schools - Blue collar labor should return to its valued and central place in American life.

End all tax credits for corporations who maintain offshore manufacturing and call center facilities

~Misstrial (Who is certain there's even more things that can be done. It's not complicated people!)

Misstrial,

you are talking about the LAST generation, and most of the people you mentioned come from a rather rich family. When Bill Gates was born, his parents had a $6M trust fund set up for him, that was not a typical rags to riches story. Where you can climb to in this country is very much determined by your birth, and of course our media sprinkles some get-rich stories here and there, but if you do not see the social fabric as clearly as I do, sorry, you just read too much of these "mainstream" "feel good" stories and I watch a lot of these rich guys up close and personal, knowing where exactly their fortune comes from. If you do not go to the right school, right company, get the right job, your chance of making it in this country is extremely slim.

You can believe whatever you want, and indulge yourself in your little imagination that people get rich because of hard work in this country. Tons of people work their butt off, few of them can even afford a house. You can probably secure a living by working hard, but to become rich, you need to be lucky, and being born into the right family seals the deal. To become filthy rich, you need all that, plus a sheer lack of morality.

Btw, I am an American citizen, and unlike most Americans who have not waken up to the fact of what this country really is, I am keeping my eyes wide open - for opportunities elsewhere.

Moneygrubber,

you cannot have it both ways. Most Americans cannot afford to shop at all without outsourcing. Americans don't want to pay a high price for anything, yet at the same time they don't want to lose their jobs to those who can make the same thing cheaper.

The laziness I refer to is mental laziness. Voters want everything but no tradeoff and this is what they get in the end. It's like the Californians want Mexican illegals out, then how much do they want to pay for their veggies and fruit? Oh, you mean the welfare Americans will get off their butt and start picking fruit? When is the last time you see a white guy doing anything remotely close to manual labor? Janitors, fruit pickers, construction workers, these are professions "reserved" for the Latinos.

At the same time, you want to stop outsourcing? Fine with me, but I am not sure how many of those on minimum wages can afford to have their monthly expense go up 2x, 3x. Oh wait, isn't that a form of socialism that you HAVE TO give jobs to someone despite their expensive labor rates? Aren't we becoming like Europe?

Most probably, I know Meg Whitman much more intimately than you, Misstrial, and it is a joke that you put her in the same category as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Either you do not know what you are talking about, or you are just reading too much mainstream media brainwashing stories.

OO - so you post that you are an American citizen? Since when did you arrive?

My family has been here for five generations and all I can say is that if you feel the way you do about Americans, then probably the best thing for you would be to return to your native country and re-establish yourself there.

Just so that you know, I can tell by your arrogant tone, punctuation and grammar that you are a newbie to this country. Do yourself and the rest of us a big favor by going back to wherever it is you came from. Thanks!

Sorry but I don't need to know Meg Whitman personally in order to include her with Gates et al. Ebay is a huge worldwide online store(s) and auction site. Interesting that since Meg left, eBay has over the past year, laid off about 2000 workers here in the SV.

btw, my family has achieved great wealth here starting from scratch unlike your lame assertion. If I told you the name of one of my relatives whose product is sold in every drugstore in the nation, you would recognize my family name immediately. Or, maybe not since you're new here. :/

Those who are interested in how wrong OO is, can simply watch "How Did You Get So Rich" with Joan Rivers on the TVLand channel.

~Misstrial

thunderlips11 says

It’s about low wages, pure and simple. And there is no shortage of IT guys or engineers, that’s just an excuse to bring in more H-1B visa holders at half the price of Americans.

There is a massive shortage of GOOD engineers. If you're having trouble finding work as an engineer, it's because you aren't any good.

zetabeos1 says

There isnt a shortage, we certainly didnt have one when we saw tech industries grow double digit year over year back in the 70s 80s and early 90s.

No, sorry, there's a massive shortage of competent people. Just because there are people with degrees and experience doesn't mean that there isn't a shortage.

Of the last 20 people that I've interviewed, only one of them was competent enough to even consider hiring.

Misstrial says

Misstrial
OO - so you post that you are an American citizen? Since when did you arrive?

My family has been here for five generations and all I can say is that if you feel the way you do about Americans, then probably the best thing for you would be to return to your native country and re-establish yourself there.

OO is an american citizen ..period.He has the right to think as he wishes. If you start arguing that you came to US 5 generations before him and that makes you more special then an american indian will ask you the same question.
Your comments about asking him to go back to where he came from were rude. you probably came 120 years earlier than OO ( just guessing) in the 20000 years of colonization period of US. To give you a perspective, If we compress the whole US colonization period to 1 year, its like coming on 28th december and making fun of guy who came on 31st of december .

You can believe whatever you want, and indulge yourself in your little imagination that people get rich because of hard work in this country. Tons of people work their butt off, few of them can even afford a house. You can probably secure a living by working hard, but to become rich, you need to be lucky, and being born into the right family seals the deal. To become filthy rich, you need all that, plus a sheer lack of morality.

You are correct on all points. However, I don't believe this is to be a patently American design.

By the way, I think being disillusioned by your country and countrymen is not seditious or unpatriotic - quite the opposite. It shows that you are attentive and that you care on some level, and that's exactly the type of citizen we need more of.

How long your family has been in the US is a completely meaningless fact. My paternal family has been in the US for much longer than 5 generations. Big fucking deal.

There is absolutely nothing that the US can do to "bring back" industrial jobs. Those jobs are gone and are disappearing even from China and India. One Chinese person is necessary to do what it took 10 Americans to do 100 years ago.

That doesn't mean that goods will continue to be produced in China though. As machines do more and more of the work, optimal factory placement will be based on the cost of transporting raw goods to the factory + the cost of transporting products to consumers.

Bringing back a bunch of low paying grunt work isn't going to mean a god damned thing. Logging? It's mostly machines. Fishing? Giant nets. Farming? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

You named a bunch of industries that are all increasingly automated. This is a good thing! Human beings should not be working 40+ hours a week. When we were a farming society, the 72-hour work week made sense. When we were an industrial society, the 40-hour work week made sense. Now we're an information society, and we just don't need 40-hour work weeks. Western Europe is already showing signs of dwindling work weeks, with France hitting something like 30 hours at this point.

This is all OK. Automation lowers costs. In 50 years the US (as well as much of the "wealthy" world) will probably be something like:

- Peak employment will be about 80% (currently it's generally considered around 95%)
- Employees will put in around 20-30 hours a week in most industries (3 x 8 would be my guess)
- A 4-year college degree will be as essential as a high school diploma is today, and a Ph.D will be considered a pre requisite for most professional jobs.
- About half of all employed people will be dealing with low-paying menial tasks that are just too difficult to automate, like cleaning and maintenance. Child care providers will also be very commonplace.
- Human hands will almost never touch the products that you buy in stores, except in raw materials extraction and shipping.

Because of this situation, the following will also be inevitable:

- Total taxation roughly doubled
- Very strong social safety nets; public medical systems, free university education, strong financial support for the unemployed and retired

For most people, life will be a lot better than it is today, but there will still be plenty of people bitching about taxes and government spending (or lack thereof) to make it seem familiar.

Wow. You've just distilled the very essence of the mechanized dystopia that I shudder to think might ever be realized. A sort of Koyanisquatsi meets Chris Langan meets The Terminator crossed with Blade Runner.

There's many compelling theses arguing against the age of automation, (especially Better Off by Eric Brende), as well as the beauty of toil and working with your hands (Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work), and they do a better job of it than myself, but suffice to say, what may seem like shitty menial grunt work to you is the type of work that a very broad demographic genuinely thrives at, and work that you and I directly benefit from. Work, in and of itself, is not a bad thing that needs to be automated out of existence. Toil alone has its benefits to the human spirit and is intrinsic to our very ecology. Many of life's themes we naturally discover in the setting of practical, hands-on work. On the other hand, if you have people doing work they hate, or for which they possess minimal or zero aptitude/faculty, then I guess the argument for a totally automated, sedentary society suddenly seems a no-brainer.

As for the death of industry in this country - this IS a bad thing. For one thing, we have little to no ace in the hole when our IOUs come due during a crisis like what we are presently experiencing. No real infrastructure to fall back on. As things presently stand, our GDP is based upon nonproductive consumables. Even if we can't build back from scratch what we once had, we could sure as hell do worse than embrace some of the sensibilities from our industrial hey day. Even some of the better tenets of Fordism look hugely attractive in light of today's industrial model, but especially in contrast to total automation. As for the One Chinese person doing what 10 Americans did 100 years ago - that's really not fair. Just for starters, you do not get the same end-product with the same level of quality control that you did when you had ten American's making it 100 years ago. This is, in fact, measurable, and not subjective. It's part of why it has become a boutique-ish privilege to enjoy anything made today to the same specs as what it was made to fifty or sixty years ago. Just look at the build quality on homes today. Look at your Ipod compared to an off-the-shelf stereo amplifier from forty years ago.

What I take away from your synopsis of things to come is bleakness, which is maybe why I'm a little bemused at your seeming enthusiasm for it. Not everyone is going to want to choose between being a Ph.D in a subject, or snaking out a septic tank. Not only does it seem to me that there will be a much diminished role for the human being - esp. the working and middle classes - but also a lackluster, soulless standard of living to look forward to, except for the filthy rich who can afford such elite, boutique thrills as manufactured goods.

It's not always going in reverse to take a few cues from history. I see our genesis as a society kind of like multiple takes in a movie where the last take wasn't always the best. I think we lost some really good material a few takes back in this country.