#Alana Semuels, "Fewer Jobs, More Machines," TIME, August 17/24, 2020.
"One study estimates that about 400,000 jobs were lost to automation in U.S. factories from 1990 to 2007." "The U.S. shed around 40 million jobs at the peak of the pandemic, and while some have come back, some will never return. One group of economists estimate that 42% of the jobs lost are gone forever."
"Robots could replace as many as 2 million more workers in manufacturing alone by 2025, according to a recent paper by economists at MIT and Boston University." "Even before the pandemic, a study by a global consulting company estimated that automation could displace 132,000 Black workers in the U.S. by 2030. Gabe Delport, the CEO of a company named Vdacity, estimates that one billion people will lose their jobs over the next ten years, due to AI, and if anything, COVID-19 has accelerated that by about nine years."
#Karen Voght, "Tipping Point," Mother Jones, September/October 2020.
"Service industry worker made up the largest group of Americans who filed for unemployment in March and April in 2020." About 100,000 new restaurants opened their doors in the 2010s, the journalist Kevin Alexander wrote in his 2019 book, "Burn the Ice."
"Dishwashers, food preparation and hosting jobs consistently rank among the worst-paid positions in America. Restaurant workers in many states have no health insurance or paid leave, and rely on tips for much of their salary. Without tips, these workers make as little as $2.13 an hour -- the legal minimum in 19 states."
#Andrew R. Chow, "Now playing at drive-ins..." TIME, August 17/24, 2020.
" 'Drive-ins are being contacted like they used to be, from everything in the community,' says filmmaker April Wright, who directed the documentary "Closing (?) Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace." 'They're hosting church services, weddings, graduations, dance recitals, concerts, stand-up comedy.' "
"Some 300 independent drive-ins operate across the U.S. They typically make most of their money during the summer, when students are on break, and blockbusters roll in every weekend."
#John Walcott, "How Maine and its lobsters..." TIME, August 17/24, 2020.
"Maine's lobster sales are sinking fact. China was the industry's best customer until 2018,when Beijing retaliated for U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods by slapping a 25% levy on the elite treat, while reducing its tariffs on Canadian catches." "Not only have Maine's lobster sales plummeted, keeping a lobster business running has become harder as Trump's tariff wars have escalated."
#Sasha Abramsky, "Bad for Business," The Nation, August 24/31, 2020.
"Now US business interests are beside themselves with anger over the Trump administration's recent efforts to shred the H-1B visa program and protections under the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, and deny visas to international students whose colleges have moved to online courses during the pandemic."
#Dan Kaufman, "The Last Stand," The New Yorker, August 17. 2020.
"Five years ago, the price of milk fell precipitously, accelerating the long unrolling of rural Wisconsin. Since 2010,the population in two-thirds of the state's rural counties has decreased, leading to a shrinking workforce, fewer jobs and businesses, and slower income growth rates than in metro counties."
"Wisconsin has seven thousand dairy farms, roughly half the number that it had a decade ago." "Ninety per cent of Wisconsin's milk is used to make cheese; if the state were a country, it would be the fourth-largest cheese-producing nation in the world."
""As in many rural areas, suicides in Wisconsin have increased dramatically in recent years, reaching a record of nine hundred eighteen in 2017."
#David Gauvey Herbert, "Silver Lining Dept. FLUSH," The New Yorker, September 14, 2020.
"This spring, the bell tolled for the porta-potty industry. The S. & P. 500 lost a third of the value. Unemployment hit fourteen per cent. Events were cancelled, from film festivals to flea markets and fun runs. Who would need toilets now?"
"Portable toilets are a two-billion dollar industry, but it's a tough business."
#Justin Nobel, "A Physician of Faith and Reason," AARP Magazine, August/September 2020.
"Only about 7,000 physicians in total have the specific training needed to attend to the unique combination of ills that can haunt the approximately 49.2 Americans who are 65 and older." "According to a 2018-2019 American Board of Medical Specialists report, Louisiana has just 55 geriatricians. The shortage of geriatricians in the United States has many causes: Older people are projected to outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history, reaching 77 million by 2034, the Census Bureau recently reported, and the number of doctors-in-training going into geriatric medicine isn't keeping up."
"A 2017 survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges reported that medical students are typically graduating from four-year programs with debts of around $190,000. That motivates new doctors tp avoid choosing to become geriatricians, whose pay is significantly lower than that of other specialists."
ADDENDUMS:
*In his most recent book, Bob Woodward quotes President Trump telling his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, that "my fuxxing generals are a bunch of pussies, because they care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals."
#Rudy Giuliani is working with Andriy Derbash, a Russian-linked election interference actor.
*Trump says he will put down an "INSURRECTION" within "minutes."
*Fox News host Jeanine Pino has accused Joe Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs: "I think there's probably --possibly -- drugs involved. That's what I hear."
*According to Media Matters for America, about twenty candidates are on the ballot for the Senate and the House this fall, [and have] expressed an affinity for QAnon.
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