And where are the robots being designed and built?
The facts might be right
But a lot of plants have just moved everything overseas
For taxes and regulation
EPA chased all the chip plants overseas…chemicals
Actually, Robots AND China are eating our lunch. And the Chinese aren’t stupid, they are mechanizing too.
But robots won’t spit in my food, so I may once again be able to patronize fast food establishments once again.
Yes, but manufacturing robotics, and making software and hardware for robotics opens up an entirely new sector for jobs. Unfortunately, too many of these jobs are not in the US.
What a joke. American’s aren’t out of work because of robots. They are out of work because of artificially high minimum wages that eliminate starter jobs and, more importantly, because of open borders politicians who are letting the entire population of Latin America into the United States to work. If technology was the issue, we’d all be a lot richer if we went back to manufacturing methods from the late 1800s or early 1900s.
Total and utter BS. Factories that have been completely automated and produce products with essentially ZERO labor content have been packed-up and moved lock, stock, and robots to low-cost countries in order to avoid punitive taxes, fees, and insurance rates.
Read Boston Consulting Group’s papers on “reshoring” to understand why this is starting to reverse despite horrible policies. Trump will accelerate the trend with favorable trade agreements and by ending punitive anti-business policies.
“Since 1989, manufacturing output has surged 69%”
Every time I hear this type of statistic I cringe. It makes it sound like manufacturing in this country is doing great, but what they don’t tell is how that compares with consumer spending.
The long term trend of consumer spending in this country is about 3.6%, so although manufacturing has “surged” 69% since 1989, consumer spending has surged somewhere around 160%. So where did the other 91% go? China, Mexico and all the other places Trump is talking about.
This article, by saying that adjusted for inflation, manufacturing is near all time high, is really saying that manufacturing in the US peeked in the 80’s and has grown very little since. Most of the growth in demand for products is being met by imports.
While the issue of automation is real, it doesn’t come close to accounting for the mass destruction of manufacturing jobs in this country.
Automation has not displaced American workers.
Automation has been taking place since the 1920s and has driven economic expansion, productivity and economic growth and raised standards of living to levels not believed possible.
A perfect example is the rise of high speed computer controlled machine tools. there are now more high skilled machinists than there were back in the days of counting the thousandths on a manual machine .
CNC systems have started entire new industries
There are also software programmer jobs, technician jobs and support jobs than ever
Well, seeing this comes from yahoo - a Marissa Meyer and Katie Couric anti-Trump website, I’d take this with a grain of salt.
Robots are a factor, to be sure, but other non-tecnological issues abound in this country. Most stemming from a communist-leaning government.
The take home of this of course is that Trump is all wet. Sorry girls, Mr. Trump knows exactly whereof he speaks.
The only thing to get out of this piece is that Yahoo is biased against Donald Trump. Some of us have already noticed that. We have also noticed that Donald's detractors always tend to be less cerebral than our candidate, who is well aware of the many once great American Corporations, who have been manufacturing less and less of their merchandise in the United States.
It is that reality that is devastating communities across the sub-continent. But that awareness is apparently over Yahoo heads--either of the local variety or of those whom Gulliver discovered on his fourth voyage.
Ro-bertz! They took err jerbs!!!! ;)
Factories relocated to China and Latin America also make use of robots and automation, and yet they still have a high demand for human labor as well.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. Everywhere I go service is utterly horrible, even with companies once known for service.
1) people don’t listen. No matter how clearly you state an order, explain your need, people don’t listen. I’m not just talking about fast-food-—it’s everywhere. I spent hours with a saleswoman for a new home we were building. I stated again and again, “We have plenty of money for a down payment, but my monthly payment CANNOT be more than $X”. Again and again she would mindlessly print out a document only to have the final number be $X+ something. I said, “You aren’t LISTENING. I can put down as much as needed, but the monthly number must be $X.” After several attempts, she finally got it.
Now, some of this is the attention span issue. But another big part is the computerization of everything. People who take your order are so anxious to get to their next stock question they don’t even let you finish ordering because they are tapping on their screens.
2) The roboticization of products is getting to the point that once anything breaks, you cannot fix it. Our tv system in our house is fully prompted (”Watch a DVD,” “Watch DirectTV”) but if anything happens, you can’t even turn the TV on-—or if you can, you need to keep 4 separate remotes, fully programmed and up on batteries-—for every single device.) Cars are getting to where you can’t drive without the seat belt bell driving you nuts. I’m not stupid, but when I rent an unfamiliar car, it takes me 20 minutes sitting in the lot just to figure out how to change radio stations, turn on the air, etc.
3) Devices supposedly for our “safety” are now utter nuisances. Who has had a smoke detector start chirping, but it’s so high in a vaulted ceiling you need a hook-and-ladder truck to reach it? I’m having all mine ripped out and replaced with the (expensive) 10 year devices so that I just don’t ever have to change them. Hotels have heat and air pre-set so you can’t cool a room.
4) Need a product replaced? Good luck. My wife bought Sur la Table plates. These are not cheap. She needed 10. ALL TEN arrived broken or chipped. She reported it. “Oh, that’s ok, we’ll send you new ones.” She said, “Wait! You MUST pack them differently. Only paper separated them.” No one listened. Next set of TEN arrived, all broken. Once again they replaced. This time she got four. On and on til eventually, after four orders and probably 40 total plates, she got 10 not broken. What did this cost the company? If they did this 100 times, the costs would be massive.
Or consider this: we bought a sofa set at Ashley Furniture-—not a high end store, but decent stuff and good prices. There was a “throw” on the sofa, so my wife said, “Can we just take the throw with us and then you won’t have to deliver it?” Salesman said “fine.” He marked it on the sheet.
When the sofa was delivered, there is another throw. My wife said, “We already got this.” The guy looked at his (uncorrected) sheet and said, “No, you got a throw coming.” We (stupidly and honestly) insisted he take it back. Two weeks later we went to buy another large dining room piece3, but this time our Ashley credit card was tapped out-—because instead of just deducting the throw, the wizards at Ashley placed a whole NEW order on the system (charged to our card) then deleted the previous one . . . but the previous one didn’t come off the card yet!
What’s my point in regaling you with all these stories? It is that I think a human revolution is brewing. We see it in politics, we see it in the economy, we see it everywhere. I think soon we will see a massive resistance to a great deal of automation/roboticization and a return en masse to human made goods, QUALITY human service, the removal of computer “answering systems”, etc. (Just try having a problem with your credit card and not knowing a pin number.)
I’m not sure exactly when we’ll see this, or where it will show up first, but the times, they are a changin’.
The Great Shift Toward Automation and the Future of Employment
http://hubpages.com/business/The-Great-Shift-and-the-Future-of-Employment