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Customization! Can't be done by robots and will continue to be done by unskilled humans in near future!
I don't go to McDonalds or Burger Kings but often visit Subways and Chipotle. And every time, my food is highly customized. A little bit more of this or a little bit less of that. Can robots do that, probably, but we are not there yet for mass deployment. If Siri can't understand my accent, I doubt a cheap fast food robot would. So until that happens, I will let inferior humans make my $5 footlongs and burritos!
I can imagine McDonalds employing fewer people in the future. At the same time, machines and robots require regular maintenance and some know how. Hopefully, this would create a few decent paying jobs in the process.
I understand what you are getting at, but the good, skilled machine repair jobs will be irrelevant to the moaners complaining that their "career" at McDonald's fry machine doesn't pay enough.
America, through much of her history, has always had a labor shortage.
America, through much of her history, has always had a high wage policy. Prof. Michael Hudson explains (despite the title, it's not mostly about tax rates, and I do not advocate a 90% tax rate): Why America Had A 90% Income Tax | Michael Hudson
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuck's Dad
The last several years of slow/sluggish economic growth are an anomoly [sic]from a historical perspective
The last several years of slow/sluggish economic growth are the predictable result of immigration and trade policies pursued since 1965-1970by the RepubliCrat party.
Yes, I think the economy is going to crash in 2015 and there won't be money for robotics, let alone the engineers needed to build and maintain them.
Robotics is here to stay. Nothing can drive it away no matter where the economy goes. The impact of robotics is so massive and across industries/functions/regions that it will be pursued vigorously.
Like I've said before in other threads, our economic model is woefully obsolete. I don't mean our business model - I mean our entire economic system. It's unsustainable now, and unless we put on the brakes, our way of life is essentially doomed. The whole world will be run like some places in Africa - with horrible, grinding, 3rd World poverty for 99% of the people while the other 1% live in walled-off, heavily guarded "paradises" and enjoy the fruits of the 99%'s labor.
I know that sounds like a typical sci-fi movie, but sci-fi authors have been pretty damn good at successfully predicting the future.
The idea of going to work and earning a paycheck is fast becoming an impossible way of life. There are too many people and too few jobs. The addition of more people to the population is not generating proportionally higher demand - because wages are too low. The vast majority of jobs (almost 70%) created since 2010 are considered low-wage. These jobs only generate a demand for basic necessities like food, housing, and energy. Most everything else is just too expensive on a very limited budget.
The higher paying jobs are becoming harder and harder to obtain. It will not be long before only those graduating from Top 10 schools will even be in the running for a mid-to-high paying job. Given the massive increases in tuition and student loan debt, only those who come from wealthy families will be able to afford a college education which means civilization will regress to a point where only the wealthy can afford to be wealthy; everyone else will be trapped in poverty. Most will be unemployed, and unemployed people can't go to McDonald's to make use of robotic hamburger flippers. Thus most retail and restaurant businesses will eventually fail - as the wealthy are not eating in those places and those in poverty can't afford to go there. Essentially a very slow but very steady cascade effect will occur with people making less and less money causing more and more businesses to close putting more and more people out of work causing more and more people to drop out of the economy causing more businesses to fail ... etc. so on and so forth.
Eventually, we'll end up with a society that pays people with perks and privilege rather than money; those with power will dole out special dispensations to those who are useful; everyone else will be ignored, left to fend for themselves outside of the heavily guarded walls of "paradise."
The thing is - economics is not science. There are no immutable laws, only laws that we made up. Human beings can change the economy in any way we see fit; we really can make new economic laws that would stave off this nightmare scenario. Because the discipline of economics is more about human behavior than it is about money.
But will we change it? No, probably not. And we'll keep beelining right for the collapse of Western civilization, at least the one we know, and that will cause all the rest of the civilizations to collapse, as well.
The thing is - economics is not science. There are no immutable laws, only laws that we made up. Human beings can change the economy in any way we see fit; we really can make new economic laws that would stave off this nightmare scenario. Because the discipline of economics is more about human behavior than it is about money.
But will we change it? No, probably not. And we'll keep beelining right for the collapse of Western civilization, at least the one we know, and that will cause all the rest of the civilizations to collapse, as well.
Bunk! An efficient society is driven by "dollar votes" -- the workings of supply and demand. If it rewards a relative few, it's because the overwhelming majority are a nation of sheep -- led around by the nose with the manipulators of Madison Avenue and Hollywood at the controls.
Until nature starts to catch up with us at threescore years or so, most of us can live a lot better, and for a lot less, simply by refraining from the herd instinct. Eventually, of course, we fall victim to the same concerns which have ensnared everyone from time immemorial, but the fool who thinks that Big Brother, or any form of power-broker can address that, or any other of the faults of human society, is merely selling his/her birthright -- and a lot of other peoples' in the process.
Oh gee, I'm not buying a robo-burger. I'll make my own burger at home for a lot less money and get a better burger made the way I want it.
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