BloggeRhythms

As the newly elected president neared the end of his campaign and continuing through the opening weeks of his first term in office, the point’s often been made here that very few truly understand his modus operandi. However, with the aborting of the health care tax revision, Trump himself has once again made significant progress. 

By demanding a vote on the bill on Friday, the POTUS forced disclosure that supporting votes were lacking, bringing the issue to a disappointing head for many in his party. However, what also happened is that leading House members are now compelled to take a much closer look at the detail and restructure of the legislation, without playing a purely political game for their constituents.

And then, at the same time, Democrat leadership realized that since the bill was going to remain unchanged, it’s continual failures and almost certain demise now remained their problem as owners of the legislation entirely. Resulting in another win for Trump himself.       

As reported by FoxNews.com yesterday: “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday jumped at a chance to find common ground with President Trump on coming up with a solution to a new health care bill, as Trump’s aides opened the door to working with moderate Democrats on health care and other pressing issues.”

In his overture, Schumer also said that Trump “must be willing to drop attempts to repeal Barack Obama’s signature achievement, warning that Trump was destined to “lose again” on other parts of his agenda if he remained obligated to appease conservative Republicans.” 

Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week,’ If he changes, he could have a different presidency. But he's going to have to tell the Freedom Caucus and the hard-right special wealthy interests who are dominating his presidency ... he can't work with them, and we'll certainly look at his proposals.” 

However, since this is the first time Schumer has even hinted at moving away from totally objecting to anything involving Trump or his party, it’s likely that there’s far more acquiescence ahead in Schumer’s future.  

And, as far as Schumer’s “warning” about Trump’s “losing again” in the future is concerned, Trump wasn't the one who blinked first this time around. Which not only provides a quite clear indication of what Schumer’s baseless warnings are worth, but confirms that it’s Trump in the driver’s seat now and intends to stay there in the future.

On another, somewhat complex, subject Andy Kessler discussed the robotics revolution @wsj.com yesterday, offering Bill Gates perspective on the topic.

At the outset, Mr. Kessler compares Bill Gates to Ned Ludd, an 18th-century folk hero of anti-industrialists. In the 1770s Ludd “busted up a few stocking frames—knitting machines used to make socks and other clothing—to protest the labor-saving devices. Taking up his cause a few decades later, a band of self-described “Luddites” rebelled by smashing some of the machines that powered the Industrial Revolution.” 

The Ludd similarity seen by Mr. Kessler stems from an interview with the website Quartz, where Gates said it would be OK to tax job-killing robots. “If a $50,000 worker was replaced by a robot, the government would lose income-tax revenue. Therefore, Mr. Gates suggested, the feds can make up their loss with “some type of robot tax.” 

That, according to Mr. Kessler is “the dumbest idea since Messrs. Smoot and Hawley rampaged through the U.S. Capitol in 1930. It’s a shame, especially since Bill Gates is one of my heroes.”

Mr. Kessler went on: “When I started working on Wall Street, I was taken into rooms with giant sheets of paper spread across huge tables. People milled about armed with rulers, pencils and X-Acto Knives, creating financial models and earnings estimates. 

“Spreadsheets, get it? This all disappeared quickly when VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually Microsoft Excel automated the calculations. Some fine motor-skill workers and maybe a few math majors lost jobs, but hundreds of thousands more were hired to model the world. Should we have taxed software because it killed jobs? Put levies on spell checkers because copy editors are out of work?” 

Coming to his point, Mr. Kessler wrote: “Mr. Gates killed as many jobs as anyone: secretaries, typesetters, tax accountants—the list doesn’t end. It’s almost indiscriminate destruction. But he’s my hero because he made the world productive, rolling over mundane and often grueling jobs with automation. The American Dream is not sorting airline tickets, setting type or counting $20 bills. Better jobs emerged. 

“Mr. Gates may be worth $86 billion—who’s counting?—but the rest of the world made multiples of his fortune using his tools. Society as a whole is better off. In August 1981, when Microsoft’s operating system first began to ship, U.S. employment stood at 91 million jobs. The economy has since added 53 million jobs, outpacing the rate of population growth.” 

And then, once again, readers illustrated their knowledge, acumen, and informed perspective in their astute commentary, as follows: 

Eric Hanly wrote: “Mr. Gates may be worth $86 billion—who’s counting?—but the rest of the world made multiples of his fortune using his tools. Society as a whole is better off." 

I'm amazed at how many readers can't understand this point.  Not only is "society" better off, but the government ends up taking in more tax revenue from "job killing" technology like excel and Word (not that more tax revenue should ever be our goal.)” 

Greg Balaze responded to reader Eric Hanly, commenting: “That's the thing people keep over looking. There will be an economic shifting as automation and Robotics enables much more that we can do. There will be some uncertainty at first, but we will discover new jobs we can do as the new economy progresses.”  

William Mullaney wrote: “Bill Gates got this one wrong.  Technical innovation creates more and better jobs than it destroys. This doesn't necessarily happen right away but it happens over time. 

“Many manufacturing jobs go unfilled today because workers often don't have the required technical skills.  But it is not difficult for workers to get these skills.  In fact they can often get the needed training in a matter of weeks.   

“The answer is not to throw up the white flag and decide that the future is bleak for blue collar workers.” 

And then, in responding to William Mullaney reader Tom Painter posted the comment that caused this writer’s interest in the subject to begin with.   

Painter wrote: “@William Mullaney "Bill Gates got this one wrong.  Technical innovation creates more and better jobs than it destroys. This doesn't necessarily happen right away but it happens over time. The idea that it should be a net jobs creator has in fact not, maybe not yet, occurred. Created many new kinds of jobs? Yes.  Created numbers of jobs in those new kinds of jobs, greater than the numbers of jobs eliminated?  Has not happened. Ignore the unemployment rate.  Just look at the labor participation rate.  Its decline did not start in the Obama era. It began in the mid to late '90s.” 

So, what we have here are several readers whom are examples of many that well understand technological advances taking place and offering positive thoughts regarding future values of innovation.   

And then one who, perhaps without realization, offered an opinion which isn’t really scientific but far more political in reality. Because the drop in the labor participation rate came from legislative changes, not automation. 

Guidelines in the health care tax reduced the work week to 30 hours, while environmental over-regulation caused significant industrial reduction or loss of employment completely as factories shut down. Additional jobs were lost as major businesses moved operations out of the U.S. due to some of the highest tax rates in the world. Even oil production limitations caused employment shrinkage, as rising fuel and energy costs shrank budget availability for other purposes.  

All of which, and more, caused the lowest labor participation rate since Jimmy Carter, as often noted here. Automation itself had almost nothing to do with Obama job losses whatsoever.     

That's it for today folks. 

Adios