Rambling with Mrs. Arlene
Praise the Lord everyone. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I pray the year ahead won’t be nearly as rocky as the one we have just put behind us. Satan and his helpers are definitely trying to kill and destroy spiritually as many of God’s people as he can. We as christians better hold on to the promises of God, because there’s coming a time when that will be all we have to hold on to.
I felt the presence of God enter the room a little while ago and I knew the article was on the way. God spoke to my spirit and he said, “My child have you really celebrated my birthday or has your mind been on buying gifts, cooking up good food and deserts, and getting together with family and friends?”
It kind of startled me at first. Then he spoke again, “There’s nothing wrong with celebrating and gathering with family and friends. But how many times, when you were all together was my name or birthday mentioned? I know you prayed over the food and I know you love me.” And then he just got silent. I stood there staring into the distance and then I thought to myself: I have so much to do. Working out of a wheelchair is not like being able to get up and walk and be able to get things done. But then I realized we do put too many things ahead of God. If you stop and just think about it without God, we are nothing. We can only do what he allows us to do. He can wave his arm or snap his finger and end it all. But he is not going to force us to do anything we don’t want to do. It has to be our decision.
I myself have got a lot of things to think about. My house is like a grand central station. I love people and I love to visit and tell people about God. Some don’t want to hear about God. So, what am I to do? Please pray for me. I love my Jesus and I don’t want to live without him. I want to do more this coming year to serve him and encourage people to turn to him and dedicate their lives to him. Then their families and friends will turn to him and we can all be together in heaven someday. Then there will be no more sorrow. What a day that will be. Call me at 662-803-4690 or write me at 40 West Alice Street, Noxapater, MS 39346. I hope to hear from you soon. May God bless each and every one. Happy New Year. I pray it will be the best year ever! Just remember if we walkw ith God it will be okay.
With lots of love, Arlene and Emerald Barrett.
Coming soon: automation
The coronavirus pandemic’s impact on 2020 is far-reaching and will be talked about for decades. But if a report from the Southern Regional Education Board is accurate, its long-term effect on employment trends is just getting started.
The organization originally predicted that automation — getting robots or computers to perform tasks instead of people — would replace a significant number of jobs by 2030. But the president of the education board told the Jackson Clarion Ledger recently that the response to the virus has moved the timeframe up to 2025.
“We’re experiencing the fourth Industrial Revolution,” board president Ste-phen Pruitt told the newspaper. “Computers and robots work with us rather than for us.”
In Mississippi, this means up to 30% of jobs could be lost to automation in the next five years. The SREB report says the people most vulnerable to losing their job in this fashion are those with the least amount of education, women and minorities, and workers aged 16 to 23 and 56 to 74.
To put a number on it, up to 589,000 Mississippians are at risk of losing a job, having their work hours reduced or leaving the labor force altogether.
Industries likely to experience significant automation include food preparation and service, sales, installation and maintenance, transportation and production.
A lot of jobs fit into these categories, and the report offers broad solutions like retraining adults for skills that will be needed in the future, along with doing a better job of preparing young people for college, job training and careers.
Whether this wrenching change arrives by 2025 or 2030 is not really important. The point is that it’s coming, and people whose jobs are at risk need to be aware of what lies ahead.
It does not take a crystal ball to see, for example, that once a fast-food restaurant chain figures out how to integrate burger-flipping robots and computer software into its workflow, people will start disappearing from its payroll — and competitors will copy its success.
But one thing to keep in mind is that the American labor force has proven itself to be remarkably adaptable to new forms of work. If you watch a movie that’s set around 1900, you’ll sometimes see a guy in the background whose job was to go around and ignite all the oil-fueled overnight streetlamps. Electricity eliminated the need for this work.
Something else that’s long gone are the horse-and-buggy jobs that got eliminated upon the invention of the “horseless carriage,” known today as the automobile. And a more recent example of a job that disappeared is the nice guy at the service station who filled up your gas tank and cleaned the windshield. The self-serve convenience store wiped them away.
The point is that any Industrial Revolution is bound to create new opportunities for productive work. This has happened before, and it is sure to happen again — in ways that we may not yet realize. Workers at risk have five to 10 years to prepare for the coming changes.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
