Posted on 03/14/2014 11:30:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Big changes are coming to the labor market that people and governments aren't prepared for, Bill Gates believes.
Speaking at Washington, D.C., economic think tank The American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Gates said that within 20 years, a lot of jobs will go away, replaced by software automation ("bots" in tech slang, though Gates used the term "software substitution").
This is what he said:
"Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses … it's progressing. ... Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set. ... 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model."
He's not the only one predicting this gloomy scenario for workers. In January, the Economist ran a big profile naming over a dozen jobs sure to be taken over by robots in the next 20 years, including telemarketers, accountants and retail workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I would like one of those Butler-bots in “Sleeper”.
Can we have a bot POTUS? Something that actually recognizes logic?
By dint of regulation and taxation, government has functionally outlawed employing actual people for many tasks. Add to that the destruction of the education system, resulting in a ‘workforce’ as ignorant as a Houston Congresswoman and it becomes a mathematical necessity for businesses to replace as many warm bodies as possible with automation.
If the bots are from Microsoft, they’ll be fired for taking too much sick leave!
hey Mr. Bill...I'd like to know what robot is going to wipr your ugly little butt when you're just another demented peasant?...and what bot is going to put that catheter up your ying yang to drain your bladder?..and who is going to to dress your open sores on your coccyx and who is going to doing rescue breathing for you when you're dying?....
the whole fact of the matter is that there will actually be need for MORE jobs in the long run...but they won't be manufactuting...they'll be FIXING things and transporting things and taking care of children and adults....
I was employed in a very well paid job. One day I made notes about the incredible number of mindless repetitive tasks I did and started thinking up ways to automate them. Most of them could have been automated using just Excel. Granted you’d need to know how to program in Excel, but it all doable. Tasks I regularly spent four to six hours on could be automated with eight hours work and then be virtually free after that. I looked around and listed all the tasks my department did that could be done away with. My boss was horrified. He said, in a threatening voice, “Fine, but you’ll be the first one laid off.”
We had government contracts and in general we were instructed to take the longest possible route. The more we charged the more the company made. (And that, is one reason why stuff costs the taxpayer so much.)
From the customer POV, you no longer have a waiter/waitress interrupting your meal every 10 minutes asking "how's everything tasting today?" but you do wait a little longer for coffee/soda/water refills. Bar service on the other hand seems faster. ;-)
software will however make parts of the nurses job easier which means they won’t have to hire as many nurses. this is already happening.
For example the old method of taking blood pressure require a nurse to place the cuff on you, pump it up etc.
He also suggested doing away with income and payroll taxes and NOT raising the minimum wage. Hmmmmm.
Then why the he double hockey sticks do we need more immigrants to fill jobs?
All I know is amnesty will fix this.
That’s where you implement the automation for yourself and use your new free-time to write that novel you’ve always wanted to.
This would explain his obsession with population control.
The elites have decided they won’t need us. And they’re working hard to meet that goal.
I believe he refers to those tasks that are repetitive and routine. Nurses used to spend most of their time monitoring blood pressure, taking temperatures, pulses and recording those results. This required a significant amount of their time. Now each patient has their own monitor to record data and transmit to the patient file.
What you describe are those that require personal attention, and even some of those may eventually be improved with technology.
Gates believes that the tax codes are going to need to change to encourage companies to hire employees, including, perhaps, eliminating income and payroll taxes altogether. He's also not a fan of raising the minimum wage, fearing that it will discourage employers from hiring workers in the very categories of jobs that are most threatened by automation. He explained: "When people say we should raise the minimum wage. I worry about what that does to job creation ... potentially damping demand in the part of the labor spectrum that I’m most worried about."
That's all the more reason why we ought to restore the import tariffs and bring as much manufacturing home as possible.
That's all the more reason why we ought to restore the import tariffs and bring as much manufacturing home as possible.
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