'Tis the season of ... rocky, risky, but rewarding relationships.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: MARKETING SOLUTIONS

"... Account openings double in October at BECU ... Randolph Brooks FCU reports 22% of new funds through ACH are from Bank of America ... Online account opening up as much as 40% at Andera, Harland and Fiserv."

--"Bank Transfer Day: Technologists Say Thousands Already Switching," Credit Union Times, Oct. 22, 2011

THE TEA PARTY, OCCUPY WALL STREET AND BANK TRANSFER DAY. The outbreak of peace on earth appears a little behind schedule this year. The upcoming 2012 presidential election makes it unlikely this next year will be any less noisy and unsettling. A global financial system teetering on the edge only adds to the chaos. Finally, there is the challenge of tough economic times. Gallup CEO Jim Clifton in his new book "The Coming Jobs War" concludes there is a 1.8 billion jobs shortfall on the planet that translates into a staggering 50 percent of adults seeking work worldwide. Let those numbers soak in--the implications are stunning. Our challenge here in the United States is literally the tip of a very large iceberg.

So while there is much anger and contempt directed at our government and corporations, it masks a more fundamental and substantive problem. We live in a world economy that rewards using technology and other tools to lower labor costs and thus the demand for laborers. It presents a mammoth challenge: How do we employ the inhabitants of our planet? A society that destroys work at such a rapid pace will not make our evermore connected world happier, more civil and less violent

In an agrarian society it took a tremendous amount of work just to produce food. As late as 1890 it took 40 to 50 labor hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat; by the 1980s that number had shrunk to three labor hours, and it continues to decline. In an industrial society it took great masses of workers to produce the goods. Yet even as our population has increased by about 10 percent since 2001, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has fallen from 17 million to under 12 million. The service economy created millions of workers but we are becoming the technology-enabled, self-service society and the jobs of tellers, toll booth attendants, elevator operators, telephone operators, secretaries and clerks have disappeared, and they are not coming back. Granted, there are shortages for positions like software engineers, truck drivers and nurses to name three, and there are certain jobs that workers seem...