tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post5334681602837863829..comments2024-03-21T12:52:08.166+11:00Comments on Freedom and Flourishing: Do we face a future of more than ordinary economic disruption?Winton Bateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07383561940886657594noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-50436035733914414852015-07-16T09:35:52.538+10:002015-07-16T09:35:52.538+10:00Noric: Thanks for drawing my attention to this. I ...Noric: Thanks for drawing my attention to this. I will add the references in a postscript to my post on declining productivity growth. I will also read the OECD report and comment in a later post.Winton Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07383561940886657594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-84360548340574000832015-07-16T00:13:12.742+10:002015-07-16T00:13:12.742+10:00Winton: Thank you for collating comments into your...Winton: Thank you for collating comments into your Postscript. This is a footnote on additional information for noting.<br /><br />The question of what is happening to productivity has a different response in this article titled "Productivity Growth and the Diffusion Problem" (http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/productivity-growth-and-diffusion.html?m=1).<br /><br />It discusses the OECD's 2015 102 page report titled "The Future of Productivity".Noric Dilanchianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07971423154965231907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-77051755692203490842015-07-15T10:14:42.141+10:002015-07-15T10:14:42.141+10:00Jim: It is helpful to have your comments and comme...Jim: It is helpful to have your comments and comments of others with a different range of experience. That is particularly so in relation to the current series of posts on technological change. <br /><br />Nicolas: Thanks for your comment. I will be touching on education and training issues in my next post. One of the contributors to the report on the future of the Australian labour market that I will be discussing makes similar points to you about the need for learning to be self-directed and for people to learn throughout their lives. She suggests that people should be encouraged to manage their careers in the way they would manage a business. That seems to me to make a lot of sense particularly as the trend toward self-employment or small business seems likely to continue.<br />That would not resolve the problem of what happens to the people whose skills are becoming redundant. Retraining is not an easy option for mature age workers, particularly those who lack basic skills in use of computers and don't have good interpersonal skills. Some people in Australia are holding up the Danish approach as a model that we should consider. It sounds costly, but the alternative of supporting people on unemployment and disability benefits is also costly. Winton Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07383561940886657594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-21674789687798393532015-07-14T22:45:30.294+10:002015-07-14T22:45:30.294+10:00Hi Winton, I liked the way that you brought the co...Hi Winton, I liked the way that you brought the comments into the post. It's the same thing that I try to do from time to time because it adds value. It's also interesting that you are starting to get traction in comments. <br /><br />Hi Nicholas without the h! I totally agree about the need to keep learning and I also agree with your point on the speed of change in programming and indeed software in general.<br /><br />Just to extend the discussion a little, my experience as both a trainer and manager is that the great majority of skills are learned on the job. Modern schooling, and I think that this is a good thing, is focused in part on teaching people how to learn. Less so in Uni. Then they do, as you note, get stuck in jobs. Sometimes they end in a job that stretches them. They are the lucky ones. Often, they end in jobs where the new learning component is quite low after the necessary learning related to how we do things round here. Then, as you note, they ask for training. There is often a correlation between requests for training and bad management as well.<br /><br />So the challenge is in terms of new ways of working just how do you redesign jobs to enhance the learning experience, recognising that you are actually giving people the skills to move on? Jim Belshawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10075614280789984767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-54668810685317966582015-07-14T15:33:22.206+10:002015-07-14T15:33:22.206+10:00One of my professional activity is trainer. I help...One of my professional activity is trainer. I help companies to train their employees.<br />This is a very lucrative activity, since government is eager to force companies to spend money for training their employees. This push the price of corporate training to impressive level.<br /><br />Sadly, I think those "incentives" to reduce the skill gap only benefit me and training companies in general.<br />The problem is that in my field (programming) technology change so fast, that employees ALWAYS need training.<br /><br />The only sustainable way to fix the gap problem is not more training incentivized by government, but a general understanding that you should never stop learning after school.<br />In technology school, most of student understand that, and are able to teach themselves. But they often eventually get stuck into a specific job and their skillset stall. They then get trapped into a job they don't like anymore, and ask for training... repeat.Nicolas Dorierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07520502469712388579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-77525575836111339032015-07-14T11:41:36.715+10:002015-07-14T11:41:36.715+10:00Thanks Jim. I will bring your comment up into the ...Thanks Jim. I will bring your comment up into the post because it adds useful historical perspective. <br />Winton Bateshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07383561940886657594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1089082204850170942.post-78629513531384275802015-07-13T17:54:27.158+10:002015-07-13T17:54:27.158+10:00Hi Winton. I have been meaning to comment for a li...Hi Winton. I have been meaning to comment for a little while on your averages' post. I will come back to that. <br /><br />Just dealing with the scale of change, and if you work in 40 year increments from 1800s and look at the scale of change and major events in each period, you quickly get the feel that stability is unusual.<br /><br />Then if you look at major technological advances during the period, you can also see that the scale, timing and effects were arguably as fast and significant than anything we have seen in the last forty years. So I would argue that your intuitive feel is correct.<br /><br />The twenty five year "Great Moderation" is a little unusual, but not excessively so. In the newly formed Australian colonies we had quite a long run of economic advance up the 1848 depression, then another long run into the 1880s. After that economic activity was far more choppy. It was not until the end of the Second World War that we had another long growth period, if one broken by various economic crises, that ended in the 1970s. <br /><br />McKinsey loves models, standardised formulations, that can be used to gain publicity and sell services. I will comment more on their ideas later, but I really like the way that you are approaching some of these issues by asking questions in an integrated way.<br /> Jim Belshawhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10075614280789984767noreply@blogger.com