FOD 2011.06.20

Barack Obama exposed - again - his complete and utter lack of knowledge regarding the economy and job creation. In an interview on the Today Show, obama stated:

“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”

There are at least two major problems with this statement. The first is that it is factually inaccurate.

At the dawn of the self-service banking age in 1985 ... the United States had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the United States had 352,000 ATMs – and 527,000 bank tellers.

Furthermore, the number of bank branches has increased dramatically. The branches require both humans and ATMs. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that teller jobs will grow about 6% from 2008 to 2018. It predicted other banking jobs would increase as well.

The second, and more troubling problem with obama's statement is that it reveals his twisted thinking that innovation kills jobs. It completely ignores the development, installation, maintenance, and support functions associated with ATMs. It also ignores the fact that technological advances free up people to perform other more productive functions.

Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is a long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices…

The belief that machines cause unemployment…leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat…

Finally, even if we accept obama's premise that ATMs eliminate teller jobs, so what? The automobile eliminated buggy-making jobs, while creating an entirely new industry that transformed America.

That's called progress, and most of us think that's a good thing...