P4B
Limp Gawd
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Most ppl just cant remember enough info past a few mins and you all expect tons of ppl to get higher education? I dont see it happening without a google implant!
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US Will Be Hit Worse by Job Automation Than Other Major Economies
- Thread starter Megalith
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Lunas
[H]F Junkie
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So if 50% of all blue collar work is done by robots then the bottom rung of the economy is pushed off by workers displaced above them so we will have by 2030 all of the people working min wage shit jobs will be either out of work replaced by robots or replaced by displaced more competent workers who had to downgrade to get by... so Millions of jobless unskilled laborers... yeah great looking like assured income will need to be a thing... Look at south dakota reservations for how well that will work out... Meth heroin bath salts and alcoholism rampant and uncontrolled.
Airbrushkid
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The greed will destroy these companies in the end. Gates is right they should taxes the shit of of the robots. When you replace all the humans. Who the will buy there product? The robots why they don't need there products that humans do. Trump won't be able to help them.
Oh look, more silly doomsday prophecies. They could at least attempt to use realistic time periods. Whole sectors of the economy are just barely using software effectively after how many years? And I'm supposed to believe that mission-specific hardware will be developed, tested, and adopted for 40% of all jobs in barely more than a decade?
Automation will eventually get there, but 13 years is silly.
Automation will eventually get there, but 13 years is silly.
SamuraiInBlack
Supreme [H]ardness
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It's easy to be pro-automation, until your profession is next in line for it.
That being said, I am okay with jobs that have high risk of death/dismemberment, or exposure to hazardous materials being done by machines instead of people. Money means nothing to a corpse, and you can't provide for your family if you're dead.
I work in a semi-automated facility now, and I can tell you the machines are no better than their human counterparts at best. The machines also are incapable of maintaining good quality, so they can churn out a bad part just as easily as a good one doing the same automated process. And you can't write up or fire a machine for putting out shitty parts, because it's a machine just going through the motions it's programmed for. And because said machine is probably very expensive, a company won't be quick to replace it and just simply make all the grunts deal with it. Thankfully humans have eyes and hands that can address the quality issues and fix them.
I am skeptical that full automation will apply to every manual labor gig, as long as a human can be a better machine than the actual machine, or at the very least, is still necessary to fix the machine's shortcomings.
That being said, I am okay with jobs that have high risk of death/dismemberment, or exposure to hazardous materials being done by machines instead of people. Money means nothing to a corpse, and you can't provide for your family if you're dead.
I work in a semi-automated facility now, and I can tell you the machines are no better than their human counterparts at best. The machines also are incapable of maintaining good quality, so they can churn out a bad part just as easily as a good one doing the same automated process. And you can't write up or fire a machine for putting out shitty parts, because it's a machine just going through the motions it's programmed for. And because said machine is probably very expensive, a company won't be quick to replace it and just simply make all the grunts deal with it. Thankfully humans have eyes and hands that can address the quality issues and fix them.
I am skeptical that full automation will apply to every manual labor gig, as long as a human can be a better machine than the actual machine, or at the very least, is still necessary to fix the machine's shortcomings.
Wrong. We've actually got too many college graduates for the number of jobs now. The US economy is just fundamentally broken. It used to be that one income could take care of a family. It now takes two or more. We had a pretty good mixture of workers to do everything that society demanded because people would do what was necessary to get by. Government then declared the war on poverty and the end result was that we have just as many poor but those poor do nothing but collect a check from the government. In order to correct the imbalance, the government let illegal immigration go unchecked so that the poor from other countries would do the work that our poor no longer would do. On the higher end of the socioeconomic ladder, the government decided that in order to compete in a global market, our corporations needed to reduce their labor costs. They then created the H1B visa to pull in legal immigrants from third world countries like India as a cheap labor pool and ultimately suppress wages in the STEM fields (primarily Tech fields). Add in NAFTA and other free trade agreements and you see a large outsource of jobs to other countries. Throw in a very high regulation cost and the highest corporate taxes in the industrialized world and you have a shortage of new jobs.
The government message for at least the last 30 years has been that we just need more of our citizens with college degrees and everything will be fine. So in order to make sure that happens, the government gets into the student loan business and basically takes it over. Now every student can get a loan for college which of course lets the colleges raise tuition way beyond the rate of inflation so that college is more costly than it has ever been before. There's also no checks and balances on whether the students can actually pay back this money. We've got students going into whatever degree feels good to them like women's studies with no concept of how this will get them a job after college. So we've now got a very indebted young population that after getting a college degree are no more qualified for a job than when they entered college. Most of the vocational trade program in high schools have been done away with or people have been discouraged from utilizing them in favor of the college track. Our society is just out of whack because there aren't enough people getting the correct education for the jobs available. This is a problem that market forces can usually fix but the government needs to stop interfering.
The government message for at least the last 30 years has been that we just need more of our citizens with college degrees and everything will be fine. So in order to make sure that happens, the government gets into the student loan business and basically takes it over. Now every student can get a loan for college which of course lets the colleges raise tuition way beyond the rate of inflation so that college is more costly than it has ever been before. There's also no checks and balances on whether the students can actually pay back this money. We've got students going into whatever degree feels good to them like women's studies with no concept of how this will get them a job after college. So we've now got a very indebted young population that after getting a college degree are no more qualified for a job than when they entered college. Most of the vocational trade program in high schools have been done away with or people have been discouraged from utilizing them in favor of the college track. Our society is just out of whack because there aren't enough people getting the correct education for the jobs available. This is a problem that market forces can usually fix but the government needs to stop interfering.
Private_Ops
[H]ard|Gawd
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Talk like this always makes me wonder if our world will end up in a credit based economy like some sci-fi stuff (and even some games portray).
I'd like to add a tid bit that isn't exactly directed towards anything but relevant. The last 50 years or so I'd say has been a huge shift in the cultures in our country. If you took all our modern day problems (economy, education, violence between race/colors/what have you, etc...), there is no one simple answer... you could most likely point out factors that have led us here but, thats about it. If we truly wanted some sort of harmony (not in human nature I'd say) you'd pretty much have to do a forced wipe so to speak.
I'd like to add a tid bit that isn't exactly directed towards anything but relevant. The last 50 years or so I'd say has been a huge shift in the cultures in our country. If you took all our modern day problems (economy, education, violence between race/colors/what have you, etc...), there is no one simple answer... you could most likely point out factors that have led us here but, thats about it. If we truly wanted some sort of harmony (not in human nature I'd say) you'd pretty much have to do a forced wipe so to speak.
So what color are the Unicorns on your planet?
So much fail I don't even know where to start.
Guaranteed income is just a guarantee that a majority of people will never bother working. If they are not working, they are not paying taxes. If they don't pay taxes, they will always vote to raise taxes on the other guy. Eventually the other guy will give up and move to another country, join the ranks of the non-working and start collecting their Guaranteed income.
A tax based on total wealth? You already taxed my income while I earned it, now you want to tax the increased value of my home and all the money I've managed to save over the past 40 years so I can some day retire? Then you are going to give it to someone who didn't bother saving for retirement?
Taking excessive amounts of money from the people who create jobs is the quickest way to destroy the economy.
Everyone gets $30K per year? Even babies?
How about immigrants? How about people in jail? How about people who retire to another country?
Guest I should have 4 kids, because $30K x 6 people would pay me $180K per year. I could live pretty good on that amount.
Given that Piketty is a graduate of Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in France, I expected better from, and of, him.
(There's a reason why the top Wall Street firms have a tendency of getting their top math guys/quants from Ecole graduates from France, as opposed to other countries, including Asian ones).
As for the Donald, looks like his economic plan is focusing on the military and infrastructure, from what little I can tell (not too shabby an idea, given that it's right out of FDR's playbook).
*seemingly obligatory* I'm a centrist, so no emotional "skin in the game", as it were.
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Colleges in present-day America, IMHO = overeducating our "college masses" to make them suitable for "ivory-tower" debates, NOT the "realities" of work.
Let's put it another way:
A number of years ago, I was in-between jobs and had to get work: thanks to a mentor, I got it by working as a "sandwich maker" at a Subway's in Manhattan (one of the top 5 busiest and most profitable in the entire US). Having been in the "ivory tower lands" for quite some time, I was only saved by the fact that I had worked in my uncle's restaurants in the roles of: dishwasher, busboy, and waiter (during summers and holidays) during my high school/college years.
My co-workers in Subway, all of whom were immigrants, knew that I was the only "university boy" in their ranks, and liked that I was working just as hard as they were; oftentimes joking to me that no "average American" would be caught dead working this kind of dead-end job to survive (perhaps in the Midwest or South, but definitely not in glorious NYC). Indeed, whenever we had an opening at work, all the guys who applied were other immigrants (apparently all the "college grads" applied at Starbucks, and the like [trendy, artsy, hipster cafes and stores]. Definitely not Dunkin Donuts, Subways, McDonald's, etc -- and one had the feeling that the "college people" wouldn't have survived there, anyway, due to a appaling lack of "common sense". You know, flashy moneyed young folks, and grimy, difficult, "ironically stereotypical" work environments usually don't mix, and definitely NOT in the same social circles).
We were making hundreds of subs a day, all at a very fast pace, and often to a clientele that consisted of:
- Wall Street types (we were in Wall Street, right next to the bull)
- Tourists (tons and tons during lunch hour)
As for the tourists, I quickly learned what my co-workers already knew: if you don't know the person's language, use pointing and grunting. It is truly the universal sign language, lol.
Needless to say, I learned a TON there, none of which was ever taught in any class that I ever attended, or any lecture that I ever went to (or even, any white-collar job I ever had, up to that point).
How did we do? Quite well, actually, and our tip jar would be full at the end of the day, every weekday (weekends always tended to be slow). There were 6 of us (including the manager), and every month, we'd divide up the tip jar, averaging $30-60 per person each month.
In case you didn't know, that (while an absolute joke by busboy/waiter standards) is a LOT by Subway's standards. Tell me: when's the last time you saw the tip jar at Subway's always full at the end of every month?
It got to be that we had to chain up the tip jar, because some homeless guys would attempt to steal it, from time to time.
Working at that Subway's firmly convinced me that folks who have never had to go through such "laborious, menial activity" in a very high-stress environment (NYC, Wall Streeters, tourists) are probably the last ones you want fixing the problems that such "laborers" go through -- and those types of folks can be found, more often than not, in an "ivory tower" environment (one need not even be "rich", to enjoy the ignorance of the "rich", in terms of dealing with the working class and poor -- which is one of the few truly egalitarian things in America today).
It seems that many a "Gen Next" person, in and around their 20s, are woefully ignorant of the realities that their grandparents and great-grandparents (maybe their parents) went through; the Greatest Generation consisted of many a person who had to do a lot of menial work at some point in their lives, often for even lower wages than the already meager amounts we were making at Subway's (think Depression-era wages and realities).
IMHO, that "Greatest Generation" spirit in America is dying a rapid death. And if it goes, so does America's hegemony (and it absolutely sucks to be a "former #1 footnote" in history. Just ask the Egyptians or the Greeks during Rome's Imperial period; and in modern times, the British and the French, both of whom, from time to time, imagine that they are still on top, and that the USA are still the parvenu nouveau riche, like it was before World War One).
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naib
[H]ard|Gawd
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Well the POTUS can be replaced by a Twitter bot so meh....
UBI is a horrible idea. Lets just pay people not to work...that will make everything better all right!
Who is going to pay for that? You do realise that money has to come from somewhere right? Oh right it comes from us working stiffs so you can sit on your arse and do nothing. Bugger off I say.
Who is going to pay for that? You do realise that money has to come from somewhere right? Oh right it comes from us working stiffs so you can sit on your arse and do nothing. Bugger off I say.
D
Deleted member 204526
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But roughly half of the population simply does not have the requisite IQ.
The same way that job loss to imports and illegal aliens was handled, Federal deficit spending. The amount of deficit spending we've done the last two decades, we should be on fire with inflation. Jobs loss and a poor economy is why that hasn't happened.
People who want this just like with imports & labor dumping are keeping it going with de facto money printing. At some point it will all fall apart and the string pullers will l just cash in and head to the Caymans.
lilbabycat
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If we don't stop throwing aid money at the lowest intelligence, highest birth rate countries in the world there won't be any species to evolve. Think idiocracy and beasts of no nation put together.
There will be fewer people in most of the world to fill the jobs we have today. ( http://populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2016/ ) Population trends really gets bad in places like Russia, Japan and Germany. Here in the US it's not so bad and I personally think we're going to see more businesses move back to the US over the next decade as the world gets more chaotic and harder to do business in. Populism / Nationalism isn't just an accelerating US phenomenon. It's happing in lots of places. I think we're also at a point in this world where regional conflicts are going to be a lot more common and put a damper on a lot of advancements. Luckily, we're (the US) isolated enough that we're not going to get involved in nearly as many conflicts as much of the world will. I think our days of being the worlds police force is just about over.
TheCommander
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A college education does not guarantee a job. Many college degrees are worthless and many newly college grads have a hard time finding a job; wages are not great either for many of them. There are always other options where you can learn skills that can help get a job such as trade school, military, apprenticeship, etc... Most people in the country do not have a degree and are doing fine and many of them make more money than people with college degrees. That being said, I think college is great but... it depends on how you make use of the resources there and what you want to get out of it. The STEM fields are something I feel should be promoted more.
Eventually though, I think every job will be replaceable by robots or machines of some sort.
piscian18
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The funny thing is that while everyone is whining about Mexicans illegally coming here and stealing sub-blue collar work India and israel are shipping people over here in droves to suck up all the actual technical well paying work. Thats the future, post-automation world. I don't have any skin the game as my job obscure and engineers like me are more elusive than bigfoot, but man if you're a Cisco grunt level Engineer you better start working on a specialty right frigging now.
(sorry if I'm all over the place, I haven't had much sleep)
Re: Education
Mike Rowe (did Dirty Jobs, and Somebody's Gotta Do It) has been advocating for jobs that are more labor intensive - cleaning out gutters, electricians, some mine working, plumbing, various farm jobs, etc. Things that don't require a Masters or Bachelors. There are many people out there who have these ridiculous degrees who often can't find a job in their field. They end up with jobs that don't pay well and they have massive debt. It's not that people don't want an education -- it's just that the system is so fucked up that people can't really pursue their dreams. The mantra has been "work smarter, not harder", and thanks to that everyone is going for similar fields and end up oversaturating the market. On the other hand, there are all these jobs that people don't want to take because they feel it's beneath them.
Re: Automation
There are many jobs out there that will be lost. Be it 10, 20, 30, or 50 years, a time will come when automation will have a greater chunk of the job market, leaving many people out of work. Universal Basic Income is great in theory, but much harder to apply in reality. Canada seems to have a major initiative on this, and I think the US should be watching very carefully to see how it develops. They're already ahead of us with healthcare as far as coverage. Let's see how they do with UBI. We will need to work on some solution in the meantime. I just hope that we don't do what Republicans have -- they bemoaned and voted literally hundreds of times to repeal Obamacare... and when the time came to act on it now that they have the majority in all branches, they fuck that up and can't even pass any bills because they do a great job of shit talking but when it comes to actually doing something - to find a solution? They just crash and burn. We need to start thinking about some kind of solution to the problem while it's in its infancy. And I hope that the government will be united in this, we need everyone working together because if things go from bad to worse, eventually it will make us look back at the great depression and wish we had it that good.
Re: Education
Mike Rowe (did Dirty Jobs, and Somebody's Gotta Do It) has been advocating for jobs that are more labor intensive - cleaning out gutters, electricians, some mine working, plumbing, various farm jobs, etc. Things that don't require a Masters or Bachelors. There are many people out there who have these ridiculous degrees who often can't find a job in their field. They end up with jobs that don't pay well and they have massive debt. It's not that people don't want an education -- it's just that the system is so fucked up that people can't really pursue their dreams. The mantra has been "work smarter, not harder", and thanks to that everyone is going for similar fields and end up oversaturating the market. On the other hand, there are all these jobs that people don't want to take because they feel it's beneath them.
Re: Automation
There are many jobs out there that will be lost. Be it 10, 20, 30, or 50 years, a time will come when automation will have a greater chunk of the job market, leaving many people out of work. Universal Basic Income is great in theory, but much harder to apply in reality. Canada seems to have a major initiative on this, and I think the US should be watching very carefully to see how it develops. They're already ahead of us with healthcare as far as coverage. Let's see how they do with UBI. We will need to work on some solution in the meantime. I just hope that we don't do what Republicans have -- they bemoaned and voted literally hundreds of times to repeal Obamacare... and when the time came to act on it now that they have the majority in all branches, they fuck that up and can't even pass any bills because they do a great job of shit talking but when it comes to actually doing something - to find a solution? They just crash and burn. We need to start thinking about some kind of solution to the problem while it's in its infancy. And I hope that the government will be united in this, we need everyone working together because if things go from bad to worse, eventually it will make us look back at the great depression and wish we had it that good.
Design1stcode2nd
Gawd
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Let me know when they can make a robot that can actually clean my house. The roomba is a joke, needs to be emptied/attended to all the time, will suck up cat barf, cat toys, crap the kids leave on the floor, etc, etc
There are also jobs that that require a certain level of artistry and craftsmanship that no robot will be able to handle. Making ikea furniture? Sure.
There are also jobs that that require a certain level of artistry and craftsmanship that no robot will be able to handle. Making ikea furniture? Sure.
Todd Walter
Gawd
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If your machines can't tell if they're producing good parts then you need better machines and that's where the world is headed. It's reasonably trivial to add a vision system but it's not cheap which is the reason you don't see it attached to everything yet. This is going to change very soon (in industrial time, mind you); most of our customers have shifted to a zero defects model instead of PPM and we literally cannot afford to ship bad parts. Currently we achieve it with a labour pool of temps that do multiple sorts but the continual increase in minimum wage (and associated payroll taxes) means we will soon achieve parity with automated sorts. This will reduce our workforce by a third.
As for human dexterity being irreplaceable, check out the pancake stacker:
jtm55
Gawd
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Hi All
Let me know when a robot has compassion, a key requirement in the direct care health field. Hell, a lot of humans don't have it.
Let me know when a robot has compassion, a key requirement in the direct care health field. Hell, a lot of humans don't have it.
Todd Walter
Gawd
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Since when? Doctors get trained to be dispassionate explicitly so they can make rational decisions about their patients.
psy81
Gawd
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I said it before in another thread and I'll say it again, Trump will build that wall and bring these jobs back and make America great again ;P
jtm55
Gawd
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You clearly have not worked in the medical field. Nurse's Physical Therapist Ect need & have compassion.
Ahhh, Utopia.
If a man doesn't have to hunt his meals, he'll sit on his ass and do nothing at all.
Sure, there are a driven few, usually driven either by a love for their field or a great desire to help others and better man's state.
But these people are few and far between, hence the reason so few actually create anything that makes a real difference and why a very few actually create all the good shit.
The rest are just going to atrophy. They won't even wear their togas to town.
Which is why I went to the emergency room, because I had an object in my eye and I couldn't get it out, it was scratching the shit outa my eye.
So I sat out there waiting, then I was moved into one of those cutained rooms and waited some more.
Then this chick rolls in with some sort of optometrist shit and puts a dye in my eye and she has a peek and says "yep, you have some good scratches on your eye".
Then she starts writing my prescription ........
So I ask her "Are you going to get this shit outa my eye yet ?"
She says "What ? it's still in your eye?"
I said "That's what I told them when I checked in, I have something in my eye that I can't get out".
Finally she flushes out my eye. It hasn't healed yet, it's been over a year.
Compassion, maybe .... I'd gladly trade compassion and more intelligence.
lilbabycat
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I'd say its 50 / 50 those who truly care and those who don't give a fuck about people and only go through the motions because they went into the field for the money.
Compassion + Intelligence are rarely found in one person. Those that do have it end up in higher positions where the corporate beast quickly kills one or the other... or both from them. Then the day they leave / retire they give you that look of "yeah...I tried... but I only have so much energy... good luck with these assholes."
There needs to be a good balance between compassion and intelligence; in theory, having a good amount of both, and having the wisdom and experience to discern and make correct analytical decisions/diagnoses about a person's condition.
Sadly, that is sorely lacking, especially in the mental health field (I have a number of relatives that work in said field who have no lack of stories/anecdotes to share).
jtm55
Gawd
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I can't speak to you guys experience. I have always given my best to patients under my care regardless of the situation. This is true when I was Para Medic & remains true now that I'm a Physical Therapist.
What's lacking is some basic common sense.
The moment I told them I had someone in my eye that was hurting my eye they should have taken me straight back room and flushed my fucking eye out. Every moment was causing more damage, obtuse fucking idiots.
Instead you enter and you are put on a conveyor belt for treatment. On the one hand I do understand, many people go to the emergency room when they have no emergency at all. But you don't see the emergency room turning people away for this, not as long as their insurance is good enough to pay the crazy bills.
Please forgive me, I am biased. I have had some terrible experience with medical care in the US and frankly, I no longer trust them at all. In my case I have seen them fuck up more people then they have helped so I am a poor choice for meaningful discussion.
Doctors no longer run our hospitals, lawyers and bankers do. And no one ever accused either of these groups of possessing compassion.
EDITED: And that's as far off topic as I want to go.
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jtm55
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It's not even the lawyers and bankers -- it's the entire health-care system. The way health-care is currently managed in New York, for example, is a genuine travesty, with badly-needed hospitals being closed, and the former patients being transferred/relocated to other area hospitals, thus overloading an already overloaded structure. Little of it makes any sense, and, to be frank, connections are practically the only way to "insure" prompt, highly professional medical experts that will help you immediately, with wonderful results.
It's no accident that Lenox Hill Hospital is the the hospital of choice for those on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, for example.
Personal example: I broke the instep of my left foot during a sledding accident at my school's Connecticut "nature laboratory" during 8th grade. Only the fact that I was enrolled in a well-known (at least, on the East Coast) college preparatory school (and that the school was footing the medical bill) allowed me to have this guy: http://www.nyp.org/physician/dproye, one of the finest pediatric physicians in the entire world, fix up my foot (as a working-class kid, my family could never have afforded the astronomical sums demanded; all the more, for that specific doctor's services).
He did a magnificent job -- I've never had an issue with my left foot since. He's also one of the most compassionate people I've ever had the fortune to meet (he used to spend his summers in Africa treating the many needy people there, for free).
Without his services, I'd probably have ended up with some third-rate doctor, preforming a fourth-rate job, and (most likely) have developed more foot issues.
To this day, I appreciate my good fortune.
As of now, I still don't think that we are anywhere near robots that can provide the entirety of what that physician did for me -- I think that's still quite a ways off in the future.
Yeah, it's kinda funny how half of a large enough sample always tends to fall below the mean, isn't it.
I love all the seek higher education and you will be employed responses. Robots will not only b replacing cooks and drivers. Plenty of high paying jobs will be severely diminished too. Even now there are not as many middle income jobs,as there was 20 years ago. Education increases your opportunities but the number of jobs for hthe highly educated are dropping every day.
Yeah, so many people don't get that there's just not going to be enough jobs, end of story. Yes, higher education will increase your odds, yes, there will be some openings in trade jobs, but there's simply going to be more people who need jobs than are ones available. Figuring out how to deal with that situation is the only thing resembling a solution, everything else is just sticking heads in the sand.
The people bringing up the automation issue have been pretty clear that skilled labor involving direct human contact (ie. healthcare) jobs are one of the few groups that won't be much effected by coming automation so you're kinda whacking on a strawman here or completely failing to understand what is being brought up on in the various studies.