Popular Culture, Technological Unemployment & Pointless Jobs

The 21st season premier of South Park occurred last night. One of the parts of the plot was a group of blue collar members of the majoritarian white class that find themselves underemployed and reduced to a job an Amazon Alexa can do. Though unaddressed in the episode--an Austrian School lad might imagine that a coercively enforced state set minimum wage in the fictionalized world of South Park might just be the reason the underskilled workers are dislocated by the markets that do not value their labor. Clearly Luddites were in minds of Trey and Matt when constructing this episode. You may still be able to watch the episode by consuming online ads at the url following this post below.

David Graeber discusses "bullshit jobs" in this video:

As discussed by Jeremy Rifkin in "The End of Work" the "Luddite Fallacy"--that the net number of jobs in the economy due to technological advance decreases as time advances toward infinity--may be about to expire. The South Park episode mentioned jobs such as trucking likely to be hurt by continuing techonological advance, an observation made relatively recently by Federal Circuit Judge Posner among others who have their eyes open.

http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

Osbourne & Frey estimated 2013 estimated that 47% of American Jobs could be automated within the next twenty years. Perhaps the nonsensical guaranteed job for laborers not worth their value in the South Park episode is not so far off, if not already in effect?

What do you think? Do you like how political the South Park episode was? What do you think will techonological advance lead to full employment or a guaranteed minimum income? Let me know in the comments if you want.

http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s21e01-white-people-renovating-houses#source=2b6c5ab4-d717-4e84-9143-918793a3b636:63a32034-1ea6-492d-b95b-9433e3f62f8d&position=1&sort=airdate