THE EDITOR, Sir:
ON FEBRUARY 6, a letter of mine about technological unemployment, its long history and society's reluctance to acknowledge its economic and social importance was published. Two events in the past fortnight impelled me to reiterate and try to clarify what I wrote.
First, the report of business profits show a slight improvement for the last quarter of 2002 but no reduction in the number of unemployed. Second is the serious problem faced by labour unions and their members from stevedores to school teachers.
We need to make a clear distinction between the effect of technological unemployment on the unemployed or grossly underpaid and its effect on what we loosely term 'the economy'. The wealth of the state is quite certain to be augmented by any technological advance. This by no means coincides with economic hard times usually the contrary.
For a Jamaican to recall a time of buoyant prosperity may take a pretty long memory. However, at 85, I find my most vivid memories are of the 'roaring 20s' and the ensuing Great Depression (buttressed by later reading about what I had lived through as a growing boy).
Two centuries of the Industrial Revolution culminated with the internal combustion engine, the automobile and the airplane. After World War I, the world leapt into the most delirious business boom in history. Technological unemployment was then nothing to worry about. In fact, a 'floating pool' of unemployed was seen as a boon to business, for it kept wages low and the unions timid. New jobs, the theory went, would be there for the energetic and ambitious jobs in new industries spawned by the very same technological breakthroughs. Each new breakthrough would continue to provide employment in an ever climbing and endless prosperity. Why did it last only eight years?
I am, etc.,
JOHN SEARS
96 3/4 Old Hope Road
Kingston 6.
