EdEarl

All I did is add month to month and year by year data. I wouldn't be surprised if various BLS data is not in agreement, because powerful people want favorable reports or collecting accurate data is difficult.

Well, I'm having difficulty finding accurate information. I used http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServletto get the number of jobs added and lost from 1964 through 2014, and summed their data to find that 82,685,000 jobs have been added to the US job market. Elsewhere I found the population for 1964 and 2014 to be 191.9 million and 319.3 million, which is a change of 127.4 million. Thus, jobs are trailing population gain by (127.4-82.7) by 44.7 million. Thus, the percentage of people working in 1964 was higher than the percentage working in 2014 (assuming the statistics are correct). If the same percentage of people want work now as 1964, and that is effective job loss regardless of there being more total jobs. The reason it is an effective loss of jobs is that it no longer takes as many jobs per capita to produce goods and services for the population as it once did. I think it is at least partly due to automation.

I'm not sure what you expect as an example, but let's consider brick making and brick laying. At one time bricks were made by hand, and building the Great Wall of China required millions of people. We now have automated brick making factories and brick roadway printing machines and mechanical mason. If someone funded another great wall, the combination of earth moving equipment and brick making/laying machines would allow it to be build with hundreds or thousands of workers instead of millions. The tunnel boring machines used today have significantly reduced the number of workers needed to dig tunnels. Automated car manufacturing is used today and United Auto Workers membership has dropped significantly. Of course, there are auto workers who are non-union. Nonetheless, I suggest that if there are more auto workers today than ones used to build early Ford cars is due to increased market penetration and additional automobile complexity instead of "automation creates jobs," which seems contrary to common sense. Perhaps you would like to provide an example of how automation creates jobs.

There were numerous events and decisions that led to that downturn and loss of jobs.I think more automation will cut deeply into jobs recovery, especially AI, e.g., driverless vehicles. Manufacturing will not be the only affected industry. In some cases large programming projects are needed before automation takes over jobs. We do not know when and what software is nearly ready, and cannot estimate how quickly jobs will be lost. Only time will tell.

I don't believe the job losses are a moot point, and I do believe more and more jobs are being lost to technology. Furthermore, I believe in the limit automation will be able to do almost all jobs; the only question is how quickly. Moreover, historically technology changes have occurred faster than people expect. Time will tell.

I agree that it is relevant to the discussion, but a person who has lost their job is less likely to search for why they lost their job than look for another. In this sense, it is not extremely important why they lost their job; it is more important to create a job or make it unnecessary for them to need a job. Moreover, at this time penetration of 3D printing into manufacturing is low (I think), which means few jobs can be displaced by the technology just now. IMO automation will replace more and more human workers, but the idea is not mine, for example: http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/news-release-oxford-martin-school-study-shows-nearly-half-us-jobs-could-be-risk-computerisation

The 2008 recession ended June 2009, yet employment fell or remained stable all those years, there was a very slight increase in 2010. GNP grew every year from 1948 till 2012, except 1949 and 2009; thus, some of the economy was robust during that recession. It's beyond me to explain it. My point is that jobs are falling and population expanding, which means more and more people do not have jobs. There are a myriad of reasons, some of them improved productivity via automation and some due to the recession; there is too much complexity to identify precise causes and effects, in many cases. In the long run, it doesn't matter why people do not have jobs. I think many of our social problems are related, but again, the issues are complex and difficult to identify causes and effects.

Between 2008 and 2012 the number of jobs in the US decreased by about 2 million, a decrease of 500,000 per year. The population between 2000 and 2010 increased by about 73 million, an increase of 7.3 million per year. Unemployment statistics do not report on people who have given up looking for work, and resort to crime or begging to feed themselves.

Haven't heard of anything like that; someone needs to try it.

Yes, the world is changing; jobs are disappearing because of 3D printers and robots. We will have to adapt politically and culturally.

https://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf These toys are great for kids, and kids at heart. They include a motor and generator, but most are very simple, and all can are inexpensive enough for any child.

3D scanning means shapes can be scanned and printed. See: http://www.pi3dscan.com/. At this time scanning is limited to external features, which means one cannot scan something with internal features; however, CT, MRI, sonar, etc. scanning will be used in the future to scan internal features. The technology is already used to build houses: huffingtonpost.com and another concept: wimp.com/printerhouse And, micro-scale printing: nanoscribe, nano-scale printing: koreatimesus.com. As 3D printers become available for various materials, the technology can be developed more quickly. And, I think we are already limited by the speed at which people can imagine, design, fund, 3D print, and assemble new 3D printers. Dissemination of 3D printers and CAD software is probably be limited by patent and copyright laws, because they tend to keep prices high until expiration. Open source software is limited at this time, and I suspect copyright and patent laws are preventing many improvements. Open source hardware is improving and diversifying rapidly. Thus, users of open source 3D printing systems will probably be handicapped for many years, unless they can afford commercial software.

This discovery seems to change the proportion of normal and dark matter in the Universe, and perhaps double the total number of planets. I wonder if the number of rogue planets is also similar; in other words, are there as many planets between stars are there are around stars?

There are two central ideas in this thread, one concerning gravity and magnetism, and the other about energy and mass. Do you not understand either one or both? If your question concerns the energy-mass idea, it is related to E=mc^2 (Einstein), which relates mass and energy. Anytime a mass gains energy, i.e., warming or being magnetized it gains mass. To truly understand you need to get into the math and physics. A good place to start is https://www.khanacademy.org/.

TED Talk about a 3D printed kidney

Teaching K-5 special ed students is different from post-doc students. Although this forum doesn't have that broad a spectrum of members, it does have a wide range of people with varying education and experience. I suspect all of us vary our communication style to meet the needs of various members. IMO such variance is not dumbing down, but being smart enough to tailor communication to an audience, which requires careful crafting that not everyone can do.

IMO an automated machine shop, one with all kinds of computer run machine tools and assembly robots, will be a kind of 3D printer whenever things can be made without human intervention, except for programming the tools. Thus, I think the answer to your question partly depends on how one defines 3D printing. But, even if you limit the definition to additive 3D printing, the technology will be blended with automated factories and be a major part of manufacturing one day. One might consider nature as a 3D or 4D printer that makes all kinds of things, including stars, sand, trees, algae, blue whales and fairy wasps. Nanotechnology may be able to mimic some of those processes, and blend them with traditional manufacturing processes to make other things that nature does not. However one defines 3D printing, the process of making things will change, and 3D printing will be part of it.

Fox News is appropriately named; I'm surprised they have not changed it. Forgive me for the OT comment.

I believe it is also used pejoratively, which means some people may misunderstand when it is used correctly.

I agree, in addition this discussion illustrates the care and concern moderators here have toward the board's conversations and members. Unfortunately, it will not prevent people from having bruised egos when being told they are wrong, and is unlikely to stop some from saying unkind things about the moderators.

This paper discusses several energy storage methods, but not springs. Examine this Wikipedia page. It gives energy density for various things, including springs, which are at the bottom of the list (i.e., lowest).

Fuzzwood is correct because magnetism and gravity are different forces.

The most power possible from a person is about 1/10th HP; whereas, most cars have 100HP engines. Thus, it would take more than 1000 man hours for people to charge the force cells for one hour's driving. I think your ideas have some insurmountable problems.

It's available on Netflix and is quite good.

A glucose test device and about 50 tests strips cost about US $20. If you can afford it, buy one and test yourself. If you know someone that tests themselves, you may be able to get one from them for free. I get a tester with 50 test strips every couple of months, which I'd give to a friend or relative once it had about 5 test strips remaining.