Automation

[-Pjackso]

I suspect automation will catch on slowly - at the lower end menial jobs.
The displaced people will need to train-up for higher end jobs then they were in.
This pushes everyone up - hopefully doing more productive jobs - and hopefully more pay.

The catch is:
1) The transition needs to be slow (I don't think that's a problem),
and
2) there needs to be some re-education options for the displaced workers. (I think this is where the challenge will be)
They're already at the bottom of the bucket, just lost their job, and most likely broke. ....So how can they afford new training?

I don't have the answers.

 

[Hobbes]

Article about truck drivers that will lose jobs to companies like Otto

https://www.axios.com/heres-where-jobs-will-be-lost-when-robots-drive-trucks-2276682948.html

 

[mr ed]

When the New World Order does away with cash you will be working for credits.
The lazies on welfare will get the basic credits per month and the working will get more based on what the government thinks your job's worth.
Most jobs will be eliminated by automation or regulation.

 

[ShaunyP26]

I've been reading quite a bit about automation, and i've listened to a podcast interview of Barack Obama talking about automation and how it's affecting jobs in the U.S.

I'm wondering how ya'll feel about automation in the workplace, and how it will displace jobs in the long-term.

http://www.payscale.com/career-news...will-make-lot-good-middle-class-jobs-obsolete

Will it be necessary to have a sort of social safety net, force companies to hire people, or will automation have little or no effect on unemployment? Not everyone is an engineer, a scientist or a technician, how will this effect our economy in the long-term?

Automation can't replace every job, but wouldn't have to reach that point before it hit economic growth and incomes. Total spending and total income always equal each other i.e. your spending equals someone else's income and vice versa. If the robots concentrate income to where most people can't buy what the robots produce then the value of that production will plummet and along with it the windfall profits that come with that. Under a purely free market system this would tend to be self correcting over the long run, but rich robot owners have a big incentive to lobby and rent seek and that is what they will do.

So redistribution of robot wealth (Bill Gates actually proposed this the other day) or ruthless enforcement of the robot owners interests, is likely the only way a system like this could sustain itself.

You should check out Four Futures or Superinteligence if you want a really deep dive. Izabella Kaminska over at Financial Times Alphaville also talks a lot about this.

 

[ShaunyP26]

Here's an article on the Gates proposal. Capital (Robot production) is also currently taxed at a lower top rate than labor in the US tax code, for the record.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/02/22/2184839/the-misguided-logic-of-a-robot-income-tax/

 

[ShaunyP26]

There's also the Robert Gordon view that fears of rapid automation is mostly misplaced because productivity growth is actually stagnating and has for quite awhile. After all, SnapChat is going public and could be valued at $20 billion and it's just a better way to send pictures of your junk. Not exactly a world changing innovation.

 

[ShaunyP26]

Automation will only have a major effect on mass production. Still, technicians will be in demand to build, set up, feed material to, inspect, and maintain the automation. Piece work by skilled labor will always be in demand.

Back when automatic transmissions started appearing in cars, people said that drivers would eventually lose their left leg because there was no longer a need to push a clutch pedal.

With automation, production goes up, price comes down, people have more to spend elsewhere which creates demand for other products, new innovations, different skills, etc. etc.

Automation has never caused a depression or recession. Those things are caused by increased government with higher taxes and tougher regulations. Greedy unions artificially increase the costs of the production of goods which will limit demand and cost jobs. Rising insurance costs don't help either.

With government and greedy unions out of the way, there will never be a need for a 'safety net' for laborers, skilled or unskilled.

Woody

Not really. Private sector unions haven't been a relevant force in America for at least 3 decades. Even places with loads of unionization like Germany and Denmark aren't exactly third world countries.

Though I am curious how higher taxes and increased regulation caused the Great Depression. I know of no credible study that says that, even among schools of thought that would want to believe that.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

Not really. Private sector unions haven't been a relevant force in America for at least 3 decades. Even places with loads of unionization like Germany and Denmark aren't exactly third world countries.

Though I am curious how higher taxes and increased regulation caused the Great Depression. I know of no credible study that says that, even among schools of thought that would want to believe that.

Study up on the tariffs that went into effect in the late twenties/early thirties(or thereabout) and you can come to the same conclusion my school of thought has brought me to. And, the "Great Depression" isn't the only incident in time that severe regulation and too high taxation has promulgated. Many recessions have been caused as well.

Woody

 

[ShaunyP26]

Study up on the tariffs that went into effect in the late twenties/early thirties(or thereabout) and you can come to the same conclusion my school of thought has brought me to. And, the "Great Depression" isn't the only incident in time that severe regulation and too high taxation has promulgated. Many recessions have been caused as well.

Woody

Smoot-Hawley, which I assume is what you're referring to, wasn't enacted until the middle of 1930. By then the US was already almost a full year into the depression. Certainly it didn't help the situation, but it didn't cause it, since it happened almost a full year after the crash of 1929. There were many failures that contributed to the Great Depression. (I recommend Lords of Finance: the Bankers who Broke the World, if you want an accessible and recent book on the subject.) The real cause of the Great Depression, or at least the one most universally agreed upon by economists, was a liquidationist policy pursued by treasury secretary Mellon, drastically tighter than normal monetary policy pursued by the Fed, and a large pullback in domestic spending. (See Keynes' Paradox of Thrift on that last one.)

 

[ShaunyP26]

Study up on the tariffs that went into effect in the late twenties/early thirties(or thereabout) and you can come to the same conclusion my school of thought has brought me to. And, the "Great Depression" isn't the only incident in time that severe regulation and too high taxation has promulgated. Many recessions have been caused as well.

Woody

Mellon famously said this:

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."

It did not actually work out like how he predicted, it's fair to say.