The first month

Regardless of how you feel about Donald Trump, no one from any political persuasion can accuse him of not doing what he said he was going to do on the campaign trail. He's writing Executive Orders as fast as he can write them and there has been some sort of crisis at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the day he took office. His opponents are as perplexed as ever, his supporters exuberant and those in the middle don't really know what position to take which includes a number of Republican congressmen and senators. And this isn't just the take from America; this is generally the take from everywhere. Trump has stood the world on its head and few people know what's going to happen next.

Trump started his campaign with a dark vision of America and that hasn't changed. If you only listened to him, you would think that the United States is in the death throes of existence but, obviously, when you look for bad, bad is the only thing you find. I wish he would cut down on the bluster, the lies and the twittering and get serious about his job as the most powerful man in the world but right now that looks unlikely. He has always been a man that loved power and control and now he has more of both those things than he's ever had before.

One of the campaign pledges he made and something he continues to highlight on an almost daily basis is that he intends to be the "greatest job creator that God ever created" and he WILL bring jobs back to the United States that have been lost overseas during the tenure of other Presidents. On this point he is dead wrong. Trump has long blamed the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in this country on bad trade deals and cut-rate competition from China and Mexico, attacks that have struck a chord with Rust Belt voters, when that populist rage should really be directed at the robots.

A recent study found that 85 percent of manufacturing job losses from 2000 to 2010 was caused by automation, not out-sourcing. (The Week magazine) American firms have been steadily cutting employees and replacing them with machines that are cheaper (they don't need benefits) and more efficient (they don't take vacations). The Week magazine goes on to report that U.S. factories now produce twice as much stuff as they did in 1984, but with one-third of the workers we had then. And smarter machines will soon steal a lot more jobs. An Oxford University study predicts that 47% of U.S. jobs will be automated over the next two decades. Some 1.7 million truckers could be rendered redundant by self-driving vehicles and computers could replace millions more store cashiers, insurance underwriters, tax preparers and other similar workers.

This machine replacement has happened, is happening and will continue to happen because the most important number for anyone in business is the bottom line. If they can produce products cheaper than before, they'll make more money than before and that's the ultimate goal of a business owner. Mr. Trump can't do anything about machines that do the work faster, better and cheaper than their human counterparts. The only thing that COULD be done is to provide federal funding in terms of loans and grants to retrain those who have lost their jobs due to robots. And that needs to be done quickly.

Many of us are still stuck in the '50s. We see that period as an idyllic time when everything was perfect and we want to go back to the way things were. But one of the first things you learn when you read and study history is you can never go back. Things are always changing; sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, but nothing remains static. We couldn't have imagined, except in a science fiction movie, that workers would one day be replaced by robots but many have been and many more will be. So we can wring our hands in despair or we can start work on finding a solution to the problem.

Promising to be the greatest job creator God ever created without a specific plan is not a solution to the problem.