The American economy will not only need to create new jobs, it will need to create new kinds of jobs and new relationships between workers and employers as we work to build the next version of the American dream.

In the 19th century, government promoted the rise of the family farm, selling cheaply and ultimately giving away millions of acres of farmland, and promoting the rise of railroads

In the 20th century the government promoted the rise of large, stable corporate employers that offered armies of white and blue collar employees lifetime employment and a bevy of benefits.

Those 20th century policies won’t produce the same results in the new era. In many ways, the old jobs policies will now get in the way. The new economy needs a different framework to encourage new kinds of jobs and new industries; the faster we get to these the faster we will emerge from the death throes of the blue model into a new and much brighter world.

Manufacturing may well come back to the United States to some degree, but it will be capital intensive, automated manufacturing. Armies of blue collar assembly line workers won’t be making middle class livelihoods from unskilled factory work.

Lifetime employment will continue to go the way of the dodo. So will many of the aspects of the employment relationship that went with that. Defined benefit pension programs are already pretty much toast; so too is the implied social contract that the employer, like a feudal lord, would provide lifetime protection and security so long as the employee, like a good and faithful serf, provided labor and loyalty.

Those who still have something close to lifetime employment – tenured professors and teachers, civil servants and other government employees, postal service workers – feel the unwelcome winds of change. Many who now have these benefits will likely lose them; such jobs will be much more rare and much harder to come by for new generations of workers.

We don’t now know exactly what new services, new organizations, new products and even new professions will characterize the unprecedented information-rich economy that is beginning to rise around us. Nothing like this has ever been seen before, and it is impossible to plan for a future shaped by so many disruptive technologies all coming on line in such quick succession.

In our times, the advantages of unplanned capitalist innovation and competition are even more valuable than usual. We need an era of social and business experimentation. Many of the bright young people who a generation ago would have gone to work for large corporations or law firms, or moved into tenure track academic positions, need to find new ways of making a living. The young people who would have gone into factory jobs or routine but secure clerical positions must also find new ways of using their skills and talents. The terrain is uncharted; the old systems don’t work.

Government needs to clear unnecessary obstacles out of the paths of the pioneers of the new economy. The single most effective way the government can support the necessary change is to adapt its regulatory and employment policies to the needs of the start ups from whose ranks the leaders of the future will emerge. That is not the only type of change that would help, but it is the most important one.

The jobs of the future will not all come from start-ups and small business, but a very large proportion of them will. The best industrial policy we can have now is a policy that supports the rise of new information and service based enterprises. Small business and other, innovative forms of creative association (like co-ops and partnerships) will be a key engine of growth growing forward. - Via Meadia

US ghettos-driven by liberal ideology;forged by unions & bankrupted by self-serving Dems catering 2parasites! #uppers pic.twitter.com/Ee2L5QRmhY

— Janie Johnson (@jjauthor) April 19, 2015