I've been considering the vast life changes the internet has brought to our lives. As I think about the number of jobs the internet
has created, I wonder how many jobs have been lost due to the internet. If you consider the success of Amazon -it is internet driven.
Yet how many jobs and businesses have vanished due to the internet.

Here's the question: The internet, more jobs gained or jobs lost?

Since the Industrial Revolution, tech advances have changed the workforce.

And as a result, the quality of life has seen incredible improvements.

Just a couple of generations ago, most people worked with their hands. Now, machines do most mundane work and for the most part in this country, humans use their minds instead of their backs.

The Internet/computers represent just another step in that evolution. And I'd argue very strongly that although there are always businesses and people that suffer to some degree, far more benefit.

Until this weird pandemic unemployment rates were near all-time lows and most Americans are challenged by excess, not scarcity.

I've been considering the vast life changes the internet has brought to our lives. As I think about the number of jobs the internet
has created, I wonder how many jobs have been lost due to the internet. If you consider the success of Amazon -it is internet driven.
Yet how many jobs and businesses have vanished due to the internet.

Here's the question: The internet, more jobs gained or jobs lost?

I'm biased because the internet has payed for my houses and cars and such for 20+ years, but I feel like there's definitely been a net benefit.

I'm biased because the internet has payed for my houses and cars and such for 20+ years, but I feel like there's definitely been a net benefit.

There is absolutely no question.

And I've made the point many times that society in general has improved drastically over time. Generally speaking, the more we know, the better things are.

That's true of business and society as a whole.

I see these posts all the time on Facebook, mainly by baby boomers:

"My generation had hot metal slides on the playground, high monkey bars over asphalt, no seat belts... And we turned out better than the 'everyone gets a trophy' generation." Of course, this is ridiculous as childhood mortality rates are way down and I can remember 2 different kids getting killed when I was in grade school and a bunch more that died on the road in high school.

"We rode out bikes everywhere and never had to worry". Yet violent crime is way, way down from when these people were kids, it's just they don't think their own kids are safe.

"Look at these low prices for gas and McDonald's from 50's/60's!". Adjusted for inflation, these things are no more expensive now and often cheaper.

"Nobody was divorced when I was a kid and now everyone has some sort of condition." I can clearly remember several moms on my own street that were clinically depressed and never got treatment, and how if they got smacked around by their husbands 'they had it coming'. Tons of untreated alcoholism and other domestic issues.


Things are way better than they used to be and I'm as sentimental as anyone you'll ever know.

Pretty soon AI will replace the necessity for using human brain power to do jobs that require such as banking, movie and music production, business decisions, etc.

This is what has made me change my opinion of UBI and become in favor of moving to it. I do feel as if humanity is going through a revolution right now and we don’t even realize it.

It’s also interesting people constantly love to pretend things are going to sh!t but all stats indicate the opposite. The rich are getting richer but so are the poor. Poverty is decreasing worldwide. Violence is decreasing worldwide. The standard of living across the world is going up. People across the globe are embracing civil rights and bigotry is no longer acceptable. I feel as more of the world embraces science and not pseudoscience we will see exponential advances in medical, engineering, and space exploration breakthroughs.

This is an exciting time to be alive.

Every single aging generation has been swearing the younger people coming up behind them will ruin society with their laziness and loose morals.

Most older people equate change with negativity when the opposite is the actual truth.

Every single aging generation has been swearing the younger people coming up behind them will ruin society with their laziness and loose morals.

Most older people equate change with negativity when the opposite is the actual truth.
It will be interesting to see if my generation(millennials) do that. It’s funny because I love music and movies but feel as if they have been going downhill in general since 2015. But sometimes I wonder if it’s just me getting older and not understanding. I do remember many older people always complaining about new music and movies during my childhood when I always loved many movies that came out.

It will be interesting to see if my generation(millennials) do that. It’s funny because I love music and movies but feel as if they have been going downhill in general since 2015. But sometimes I wonder if it’s just me getting older and not understanding. I do remember many older people always complaining about new music and movies during my childhood when I always loved many movies that came out.

They/you will.

It's as inevitable as the tides.

Since the Industrial Revolution, tech advances have changed the workforce.

And as a result, the quality of life has seen incredible improvements.

Just a couple of generations ago, most people worked with their hands. Now, machines do most mundane work and for the most part in this country, humans use their minds instead of their backs.

The Internet/computers represent just another step in that evolution. And I'd argue very strongly that although there are always businesses and people that suffer to some degree, far more benefit.

Until this weird pandemic unemployment rates were near all-time lows and most Americans are challenged by excess, not scarcity.

So do you think, overall, there has been an increase in the work force because of the internet?

So do you think, overall, there has been an increase in the work force because of the internet?

Due to all advances, yes.

Until the pandemic, more people were employed in this country than ever before.

Amazon alone has over 1 million employees last I saw. Yeah, a lot of low level retail jobs have been eliminated, but they've been replaced with slightly higher paying, on average, warehouse jobs, and tons of higher paying technical jobs. I've seen a lot of folks get opportunities they wouldn't have gotten without the internet, and that's not considering the secondary implications of how the internet has changed the world and business.

So do you think, overall, there has been an increase in the work force because of the internet?
Look no further than Silicon Valley— the Bay Area:

“ From 2010 through 2018, the Bay Area gained roughly 882,000 jobs, EDD figures show. Over the same stretch of years, the nine-county region produced a relatively puny 177,000 new residential units, measured by building permits issued in the area.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/21/bay-area-job-market-extends-winning-streak-climbs-record-highs-tech-google-apple/amp/

No doubt the majority of those jobs were tech related many directly related to the internet.

Look no further than Silicon Valley— the Bay Area:

“ From 2010 through 2018, the Bay Area gained roughly 882,000 jobs, EDD figures show. Over the same stretch of years, the nine-county region produced a relatively puny 177,000 new residential units, measured by building permits issued in the area.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/21/bay-area-job-market-extends-winning-streak-climbs-record-highs-tech-google-apple/amp/

No doubt the majority of those jobs were tech related many directly related.

Wow! That's pretty impressive!

Amazon alone has over 1 million employees last I saw. Yeah, a lot of low level retail jobs have been eliminated, but they've been replaced with slightly higher paying, on average, warehouse jobs, and tons of higher paying technical jobs. I've seen a lot of folks get opportunities they wouldn't have gotten without the internet, and that's not considering the secondary implications of how the internet has changed the world and business.

Amazon already employs thousands in Oklahoma and starting pay in their warehouses is $15/hour plus full benefits. That's far better than almost all retail operations pay.

And, they sell lots of items through local suppliers.

I still think it's important to support local retail but far more people were shopping at Walmart than these smaller stores long before Amazon came along.

Wow! That's pretty impressive!
It’s absolutely insane LOL. It’s come with many negative consequences including nightmare commute times that make cities like Dallas and Houston look like a rural commuting breeze.

As much as I’d love to see OKC get some of the corporate relocations Texas has seen, I wonder how long it will be before Texas’s insane growth catches up with it and leads to the severe traffic seen in the northeast and west coast.

Texas thus far has been fortunate to see traffic getting bad but Ngo anywhere near like what California or New York experiences. I don’t think it’s long before that is no longer the case. I also don’t think it is long before OKC starts to see traffic congestion similar to Dallas. I’d place my bets on that happening before 2035.

So do you think, overall, there has been an increase in the work force because of the internet?

The tech economy has grown exponentially in the US. I don't know if that addresses your question directly, but one reason the stock market has grown -- even during the pandemic -- is that tech and Internet businesses are just immensely more valuable than they were perceived to be.

Online retailers such as Amazon definitely impact brick and mortar businesses, but I saw a recent report indicating that Amazon serves as a platform for hundreds of thousands of small businesses to sell their products, so it's a double-edged sword.

There are more jobs now than ever before.

They just shift and will continue to do so.

Same is happening in the energy industry, BTW. We worry about it here because of the oil & gas industry but tons of jobs are being created in alternative energy fields. And the real work is being shifted from oil rigs to high-tech manufacturing.

More jobs, yes. But has this translated to higher standards of living for society at large? It seems that in the 50's and 60's a middle class lifestyle could be had with one parent in the workforce. Now not so much.
Yeah Amazon is paying 15 an hour but comparing that to the wages of unionized workers in the 50's-70's seems to be a poor tradeoff. I see quantity over quality.

OKC needs to break the mold of listening to oil and gas guys and look at what is happening in Austin. It is remarkable. They have had like 90 tech firms announce relocation there since January; the latest is Oracle.

It was laughable watching Kevin Stitt try to lure Tesla to Tulsa. For one, Stitt is a total embarrassment and not the person you want trying to persuade an iconic tech company to locate here. Second, he is playing with a bad deck. We don't have the human capital needed here to pull that off...yet.

Also, on a side note, does it seem like Stitt hates OKC? Maybe because we voted against him, I don't know, but he pushes Tulsa for relocations and does things like move the state health lab out of OKC.

Yes, Austin is cool and scenic and unique, but it's also educated. 47% of the residents there have at least a bachelors degree. Until this state gets serious about education and higher education (I know, LOL), we are not going to be positioned to take advantage of this technology boom.

Soonerguru, I couldn’t disagree more that it was laughable for Stitt to try attempt to get Tesla to go to Tulsa. One thing I admire about tulsa is they have a can do mentality and that is what Texas has which makes it so great. Regardless of Stitt’s past, his attempt to bring Tesla to Oklahoma was awesome and much better than the typical Oklahoma defeatist mentality.

More jobs, yes. But has this translated to higher standards of living for society at large? It seems that in the 50's and 60's a middle class lifestyle could be had with one parent in the workforce. Now not so much.
Yeah Amazon is paying 15 an hour but comparing that to the wages of unionized workers in the 50's-70's seems to be a poor tradeoff. I see quantity over quality.

The standard of living today is easily 10x greater than the 50's and 60's.

Almost every household could function very well on one income they just choose not to. People eat out often 3X a day; when I was growing up in a middle class family in the 60's we ate out maybe 3 times a year. Our school lunch was 35 cents and we'd STILL go home for lunch every day.

We had one TV, no cable, rarely went/saw movies, and if we took a trip it was to see family with bologna sandwiches packed in the cooler in our 10 year-old non-A/C station wagon.

I did a study of my generation (born in 1960) vs. the homes they live in today. The amount of square footage per person has gone up by an average of 5 fold. I grew up in a family of 7 in a 1,600SF home and that was the norm even among mostly upper middle-class people of that generation. You almost never saw a home over 2,000SF anywhere and families were much larger.

I could go on and on.

The standard of living today is easily 10x greater than the 50's and 60's.

Almost every household could function very well on one income they just choose not to. People eat out often 3X a day; when I was growing up in a middle class family in the 60's we ate out maybe 3 times a year. Our school lunch was 35 cents and we'd STILL go home for lunch every day.

We had one TV, no cable, rarely went/saw movies, and if we took a trip it was to see family with bologna sandwiches packed in the cooler in our 10 year-old non-A/C station wagon.

I did a study of my generation (born in 1960) vs. the homes they live in today. The amount of square footage per person has gone up by an average of 5 fold.

I could go on and on.

This!!!!! You make it sound as if we lived in the same household!!

This!!!!! You make it sound as if we lived in the same household!!

It's how everyone lived back then.

I went to Putnam City which was the Edmond North of that era; most families were upper middle class. And the standard of living compared to now was much, much lower in every single respect.

I grew up in the 70s/80s in Edmond, and this also describes my childhood.

I also think about the bills my parents didn't have that I have such as cable, streaming services, internet, cell phones, and such. And even without those, my standard of living is still night and day what it was then, and what we expect from it, and we weren't exactly poor.

The standard of living today is easily 10x greater than the 50's and 60's.

I could go on and on.

My parents got their first color TV in 1964. The Mrs and I have 6 and 2 are 4k. Things are definitely better today.

I agree with every aspect of what Pete has written about our standards of living - and generally life itself - being exponentially higher today than in generations past. And I don't doubt that technology has indeed added more jobs than it has taken away.

I will say that the ongoing loss of local institutions in favor of larger and larger national and international organizations hurts a mid-size city like Oklahoma City on the margins. People will get goods and services cheaper, but having fewer decision makers in a community is a negative.

^

That's a very big intangible that cannot be quantified in any meaningful way.

OKC is way bigger than it was in the '60s and by all accounts, way more prosperous. Plus, we have a major league team that was made possible directly due to large companies investing, so I would argue the central point.

It's a dangerous game to pick out what some would identify as a negative without considering the broader context (like more women working as was stated up-thread).


Not trying to be argumentative, just providing perspective.

Pete, as always I appreciate your perspective.

No doubt OKC is way bigger and more prosperous than ever before. And the Thunder is actually a perfect example of my point. :) We got that team because we had large hometown companies that were invested in our city. Imagine a world where Devon and Chesapeake had been bought by Exxon and BP (or whomever makes sense in that analogy) prior to the Sonics becoming available. Imagine if Mid First had been bought by Bank of America. I think it would have been less likely that the team would be here. It was almost an accident of timing that we got them. Of course now the city is large enough to support them anyway, but I think we needed those companies 10 years ago, and I'm glad we had them.

I haven't lived in OKC for 25 years. So I use St. Louis as an example because it is going through this phenomenon. Inbev bought Anheuser-Busch and even though the employment is at the same number and wages may be the same, the decision makers are elsewhere. There's much less corporate philanthropy than before. They aren't using local marketing firms, they aren't using local accounting firms, they aren't using local law firms.

May Company, which owned Famous Barr, Foley's and others was based here. They had a huge downtown department store because it was connected to their HQ, at which hundreds of buyers, designers, and the like worked. Macy's bought them. Within a year the downtown department store was shuttered and a block of the city is vacant. Many people in the creative industry had to leave St. Louis for New York. Maybe a sweater is five dollars cheaper, I don't know.

OKC's examples are less dramatic. And as long as OKC participates fully in the capitalist cycle, it'll continue to grow and prosper. But we need to be creating things to hedge our bets and not simply waiting for the next inevitable Amazon warehouse.

OKC's examples are less dramatic. And as long as OKC participates fully in the capitalist cycle, it'll continue to grow and prosper. But we need to be creating things to hedge our bets and not simply waiting for the next inevitable Amazon warehouse.

Paycom, Loves, Hobby Lobby and scores of other companies have been home-grown.

You mention Mid-First being bought by Bank of America and that is exactly what happened with First National/Boatman's. And now we do have Mid-First and American Fidelity and BancFirst.

Things are way, way better from an employment standpoint than they ever have been.

Indeed.

I think we're talking past each other a little bit and it might be my fault. I'm not suggesting that OKC does not have home grown companies. Love's, Paycom, Hobby Lobby are all great examples of local companies prospering and there are many other examples. Hopefully they stay locally-owned (unlike, sadly, Sonic) and their ranks continue to grow. What I was trying to say is it's not just about numbers of people employed in a given city, or what their wages are. There are more factors at play in creating a truly prosperous place.

The larger point the OP made was about the internet and jobs and we should probably get back there.