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China passed the United States as the #1 manufacturing economy in the world during the Great Recession. The US is still a very strong #2 with about $2 trillion in output compared to China's $2.5 trillion. The erosion of high paid manufacturing jobs has pretty much equal parts automation and offshoring as contributors.
Manufacturing OUTPUT and manufacturing EMPLOYMENT are two different topics. By upgrading to pilfered versions of what in the west were already outdated technologies, China -- with three times the population and ten times the number of manufacturing workers -- was eventually able to match and surpass the US in terms of OUTPUT. But like every other manufacturing economy in the world, their manufacturing EMPLOYMENT peaked in the 1990's. Since then, China has lost more than 10% of its manufacturing workforce, and if you'd followed the math, you'd have realized already that they have LOST in that time more manufacturing jobs than what the US presently has. Notions of "our jobs" having somehow been "outsourced" to Mexico, China, or anywhere else in the world as if they were tokens on some sort of giant game board are simply silly. Technology made quite a lot of manufacturing jobs unnecessary, just as happened in agriculture a century and more ago.
I'm a career development engineer and I've spent my career in tech startups. You grossly overestimate the number of tech jobs required to implement and do sustaining engineering for something like a CNC machine.
Would you agree that automation always targets the low-hanging fruit, and that the higher up the food chain you go, the more difficult and expensive it becomes even to conceive of a machine that could step in and do the job without a huge expense of some sort?
Then what is your estimate for the number of people needed to develop/market/sell/support a CNC machine vs. how many people it replaces?
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In terms of US jobs, it's enormous. The market leaders in the machine tool industry are Trumf (Germany), Shenyang (China), Amada (Japan), DMTG (China), Komatsu (Japan), DMG Mori Seki (Japan & Germany), Schuler (Germany), Jtekt (Japan), .....
Haas, 14th on the list, is a US company with a couple percent market share. The US jobs for the machine tool industry suppliers are sales and support techs. I know quite a few people who do that support tech thing. They're in Mexico more than they're in the US much of the time. Those machines have displaced a huge pool of skilled machinists with much less skilled computerized machine operators who make less money and produce 10x more output. Spacely Sprockets and Coggeswell Cogs employ George Jetsons but they don't pay George Jetson wages.
Would you agree that automation always targets the low-hanging fruit, and that the higher up the food chain you go, the more difficult and expensive it becomes even to conceive of a machine that could step in and do the job without a huge expense of some sort?
oh are you talking about pilots? at one time it was a pretty prestigious job, now the autopilot does most of the flight time
Even with healthcare, using a da vinci machine, it's possible that in the future fewer surgeons are needed. Instead of having many surgeons of the same practice spread through out the city/region, a hospital system could set up the machines then have the primary surgeons operate out of a central location for all of the sites. Sure, they still need "bed" side surgeons but maybe not bed side specialists in the future.
It will start with incentives to not have children. That will likely be sufficient.
Actually, birth rates in both developed and developing countries are falling now. I think the birth rates of European countries have fallen to below the replacement level, and the US birth rate is approaching that. If it were not for immigration, these areas would begin to see actual population declines in the near future. I also recently read that China has relaxed its strict one-child per family policy because it's been so successful.
Would you agree that automation always targets the low-hanging fruit, and that the higher up the food chain you go, the more difficult and expensive it becomes even to conceive of a machine that could step in and do the job without a huge expense of some sort?
It's tough to automate creating intellectual property.
If you're hiring minimum wage staff to do a repetitive task job, it's tough to justify investing the capital in automation unless there is a very fast payback on the capital. The McDonalds burger flipper is likely to remain a human for a very long time. There's a very quick payback on replacing the customer-facing side of fast food with touch screen kiosks. A human will continue to hand you your paper bag of McFood prepared by humans.
I think the next big frontier in automation is the medical cartel. It's approaching 20% of GDP and most of that is labor costs. That is likely to go very high up the food chain and will be driven by government (Medicare/Medicaid) and the insurance industry. The people displaced won't be the ones dealing with bed pans for $12.00/hour CNA wages. It will be the highly paid physicians and the support staff surrounding them. I suspect in a lot of cases, "going to the doctor" will become as much of an anachronism as Marcus Welby, MD making house calls.
oh are you talking about pilots? at one time it was a pretty prestigious job, now the autopilot does most of the flight time
Even with healthcare, using a da vinci machine, it's possible that in the future fewer surgeons are needed. Instead of having many surgeons of the same practice spread through out the city/region, a hospital system could set up the machines then have the primary surgeons operate out of a central location for all of the sites. Sure, they still need "bed" side surgeons but maybe not bed side specialists in the future.
We're on the same page on health care.
50 years from now, it's hard to imagine that pilot, truck driver, bus driver, "mailman", UPS driver, and FEDEX driver will exist as job classifications. In many states today, truck driver is the single largest occupation. Buh-bye.
It wouldn't matter if robots were poor at those things. Only a tiny fraction of humanity would have the talent to make a viable living at it. Like now.
Few really care about true art as reality TV is more important. We live in a constantly evolving culture where the hottest and newest sensation goes from viral to forgotten within 48 hours only to be seen in a TBT FB post a year later.
Robots won't do anything of the sort in our lifetimes.
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