Can Roy1, after twenty years of working at a lathe shift his skill to qualify as a linesman if men are wanted in that field? Can Roy2, after living forty years in Middletown with his roots driven deep pick up his family and move to Seattle if men are wanted on the docks? Can Ro圓 now unemployed hibernate like a woodchuck and live without eating because a year hence there is to be a demand for machinists in the television industry? Can Roy4 change from man’s work in a machine shop to women’s work in a rayon factory? What kind of employment awaits him? Where does it await him? When does it await him? Whether they do or do not, certain relevant human factors must be brought into the concept. But the increasing obstinacy of unemployment in the modern world indicates that many do not. Often like Roy, they learn new trades at inferior pay. Do they find other work? Many of them do. Millions of Roys have suffered for a greater or lesser period. Referents for the term are very plentiful. It is not hard to check and recheck the facts of technological unemployment. You can halt any working man and ask him to tell you how he or his friends have lost their work from time to time because of new inventions. You can examine the curves of output per man-hour for this commodity and that and note how they have been rising for fifty years. Employment shifts, but does not decline and the same amount of money continues in circulation. On purely logical grounds, you cannot get round it. Workers have to build the aeroplane or the factory, giving more employment. This money he either spends, let us say for a private aeroplane, or invests in a new pin factory. On the other hand, if the first factory has a monopoly of the new machine and does not choose to lower the price of pins, the owner of the factory takes in more money. Therefore the factories making stockings employ more help and no unemployment results. Therefore housewives spend less money for pins and have more money to spend for silk stockings. Presently competition lowers the price of pins as the machine is generally adopted. The logic proceeds like this: A new machine is put into a pin factory to take the place of men. I know what I am saying, for I have debated the matter in public with classical economists and can tick off the arguments with my eyes shut. They prove by irrefutable logic that technological unemployment is impossible. And then I hate talking to Alex because every time I do all I can think about is how I told Maria to hook up with the love of his life and I just-” Alex can hardly stand to be around Maria and Maria feels betrayed because she knows Michael’s keeping things from her and she suspects that I know what that is. And now, it’s like I don’t know us anymore. I stopped in for two seconds, got the very biased cliff notes version, and gave shitty advice. But because she did, Alex got hurt and I just- I feel like I screwed over my best friends because I was too wrapped up in my own problems to really hear about theirs before I got involved. And then she started this thing with Michael which has just hurt her because Michael’s a mess. I told her she couldn’t help how she feels and Alex couldn’t expect her to. Maria came to me and admitted that she had feelings for Michael and that she knew Alex did too and I told her to go for it. “I know this is largely Michael’s mess but I still feel like I played a part in it. “I think I hurt both Maria and Alex, really badly.” Liz focused on stuffing the bags and ignored Isobel’s huff.
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