Posted on 02/04/2013 2:28:44 PM PST by neverdem
Get ready to hear a lot more about technological unemployment. The theory holds that automation, especially of the digital variety, is happening more quickly than entrepreneurs and human capital can adjust. And it’s why, says Andrew McAfee, co-author of Race Against the Machines, a boom in US manufacturing wouldn’t bring a boom in job creation:
– Manufacturing employment has been on a steady downward trend in the U.S. since 1980 (it increased some after the end of the Great Recession, but this boost appears to be leveling out).
– Manufacturing jobs have also been trending downward in Japan and Germany since at least 1990 and, as I wrote earlier, in China since 1996.
– Manufacturing employment decline is a global phenomenon. As a Bloomberg story summarized: “Some 22 million manufacturing jobs were lost globally between 1995 and 2002 as industrial output soared 30 percent. … It seems that devilish productivity is wreaking havoc with jobs both at home and abroad.”
Nor does McAfree buy the theory that even if manufacturing employment declines because of automation, the drop will be offset elsewhere in the economy. If goods can be produced more cheaply, it will free up purchasing power for other things, right?
Fair enough, but what if those other companies are also automating? One of the most striking phenomena of recent years is the encroachment of automation into tasks, skills and abilities that used to belong to people alone. As we document in Race Against the Machine, this includes driving cars, responding accurately to natural language questions, understanding and producing human speech, writing prose, reviewing documents and many others. Some combination of these will be valuable in every industry.
Previous waves of automation, like the mechanization of agriculture and the advent of electric power to factories, have not resulted in large-scale unemployment or impoverishment of the average worker. But the historical pattern isn’t giving me a lot of comfort these days, simply because we’ve never before seen automation encroach so broadly and deeply, while also improving so quickly at the same time.
Except for the fact that you used the term, "our money." Is my money yours?
Makes you mad anything is still made in the USA. How antiquated and stupid.
You Chinese handlers want you to take it up a notch, you seem a little lethargic this evening.
I’m not sure you’re right, if companies really are allowed to make most employees “29ers” and avoid Obamacare.
That seems like a way for the fedgov to boost the employment stats.
Government agencies (IRS, EPA, OSHA, ...) can price robotic ‘workers’ out of the country as successfully as they did human workers.
My view is that the cost isn’t the robot itself, but the cost of all the structure and regulation heaped on the enterprise by the local, state, and federal govts.
There was a good series of stories done (surprisingly) by the Gannett generipaper here in Indianapolis about a guy who worked at a donut bakery, and quit to start his own donut bakery.
The first thing that happened was when the building he rented for himself and his three (able bodied) workers was visited by the govt inspectors. There was no handicap access to the place, including the bathroom. Immediate $15,000 cost to upgrade.
Those are the kind of things that inflate business costs.
Shove it, don’t you have a CSA thread somewhere to promote slavery? (Your motto: “our slavery is better than theirs”).
If it isn't automated, IT WON'T BE IN THE USA.
Sheesh, think this stuff through.
Your check from the Chicoms clear?
Irritating that ANYTHING is still made in the f-ed up USA. Makes you made doesn’t it?
How about you? Lynch anyone, recently?
Are you spinning these ideas up in your mind?
You can point to NOTHING in this thread that even comes CLOSE to what you've typed here!
I've explained this.
Why are you trying to start an argument?
That's what Conservatives do.
EMOTIONS is what Liberals do.
Didn’t LEE sign something at Appomattox a long time ago?
True, but every manufacturing facility I know has reduced their maintenance staffs over the years. The last place I worked they reduced it from 17 to 14 while adding new machines and maintaining the old ones. Where I work now the place went from ten to three - all of us maintaining the same old machines that are at least ten years old.
One of my co-workers last places went from eight to one. Yes. He was expected to work at least 60 hours a week minimum.
"Vibrant" you say. I say you're uninformed.
Point B is the foodstamp lifestyle, which already dominates the low end of the IQ spectrum and is working its way up. Most everyone will become a human pet eventually. Idle hands are the devil's workshop so expect more violence and strife. Militaries are also automating, with the "cutting edge" of robotics. A side effect is wars are more likely. There is little political cost for robot losses.
If that’s happening, then they’re headed for closure; don’t be surprised by that. And all due to the causes from DC that are discouraging manufacturing in the USA to begin with. Sorry to hear about your situation.
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