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Old 05-13-2017, 02:26 PM
 
Location: Ruidoso, NM
5,667 posts, read 6,555,600 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 69Charger View Post
I think people are putting way too much into the new robotic trend. If anything, it just creates more jobs to take care of the robots.
Automation is always a job destroyer. If the aggregate cost of automating wasn't lower, certainly no one would invest in it. And aggregate cost is aggregate wages. If you don't understand that, then it would be good to ponder it until you do.

Automation isn't bad, rather it's the only route to prosperity. We just need to spread the wealth so that demand increases, and better higher paying jobs are naturally created to meet it.
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Old 05-13-2017, 02:54 PM
 
Location: Paranoid State
13,044 posts, read 13,801,844 times
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The real problem is that automation & robots aren’t destroying enough jobs. <== Not a typo. ROBOTS ARE NOT DESTROYING ENOUGH JOBS.

Too many sectors, such as health care or personal services, are so resistant to automation that they are holding back the entire country’s standard of living. For every medical doctor, we have 2.5 billing administrators on the medical provider side, and another army of billing administrators on the insurance company side. The medical practices employ these armies of glorified clerks in an attempt to extract reimbursements from insurance companies who in turn employe armies of glorified clerks in an attempt to minimize reimbursements. None of these people improve medical care. With good automation, we should be able to eliminate almost all those people, driving the cost of the health care/health insurance systems down.

It's not just health care.

If automation were rapidly displacing workers, the productivity of the remaining workers ought to be growing rapidly. Instead, growth in productivity—worker output per hour—has been dismal in almost every sector, including manufacturing.

Since 2007, low productivity sectors such as education, health care, social assistance, leisure and hospitality have added nearly 7 million jobs. Meantime, information and finance, where value added per worker is five to 10 times higher, have cut or barely added jobs.

This calls for a change in priorities. Instead of worrying about robots destroying jobs, business leaders need to figure out how to use them more, especially in low-productivity sectors.
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Old 05-13-2017, 03:37 PM
 
Location: Ruidoso, NM
5,667 posts, read 6,555,600 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty View Post
business leaders need to figure out how to use them more, especially in low-productivity sectors.
Businesses already have plenty of incentive to be as efficient as possible.

Sadly government needs to do this. In medicine we have a cluster fok of special interests trying to grab bigger pieces of the pie, and requiring mounds of paper work. The entities in charge of medical regulation and organization need to be canned and we can start over fresh.

BTW, your statement regarding adding jobs to finance is disingenuous. At best it is an aid to investment and production, but increasingly it's more like a leach. Not something you want to grow.
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Old 05-13-2017, 04:08 PM
 
2,994 posts, read 5,561,823 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 69Charger View Post
I think people are putting way too much into the new robotic trend. If anything, it just creates more jobs to take care of the robots.

100 years ago, 40% of American jobs were agricultural. Today it's 2%. Does anybody think that other 38% of the population, at the time, knew what a systems net engineer or an Uber driver were going to be?

We are going to be just fine. Tomorrow's jobs haven't even been invented yet.
How does a robotic machine that took lets say 5 jobs away create more jobs? All it takes is one or two guys to fix or maintain a machine.

The only thing good about automating certain jobs is it fills the job openings that the younger generation is too "cool" or lazy to do.
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Old 05-13-2017, 04:10 PM
 
3,670 posts, read 7,142,199 times
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I think if you have half a brain you can usually anticipate it and work around it
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Old 05-13-2017, 04:15 PM
 
Location: Beautiful Pennsylvania / Dull Germany
2,205 posts, read 3,317,115 times
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Not automation is the problem, but distribution of the productivity generated by the robots. On an overall society level - robots can do the same output as could have been done by humans. So the same goods or even more goods could be produced with less labour. It is just that in the current situation all those benefit goes to the owner of the robot, while it was going to the worker before. We cannot and should not stop automation where it makes sense, but we should think about who should benefit from automated production systems in the end.
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Old 05-13-2017, 04:57 PM
 
Location: Ruidoso, NM
5,667 posts, read 6,555,600 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Douglas Dakota View Post
It is just that in the current situation all those benefit goes to the owner of the robot, while it was going to the worker before.
Exactly. More productivity/wealth increases need to be in the hands of consumers so they can increase demand to keep pace. Increasing demand creates new jobs to make up for the ones eliminated.

This was a prominent critique of capitalism 150 years ago, and why every developed country has complex schemes to redistribute wealth. It's the only way it works.

Unfortunately when automation gets even more advanced, there is a bigger problem looming: Robotics will change everything
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Old 05-13-2017, 05:38 PM
 
Location: Portland, OR
9,855 posts, read 11,882,811 times
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This is the kind of thing City Data is good at. Supporting the contrarian viewpoint to the reductio ad absurdum with a straight face, and influencing the weak minded. That's how we get a Trump in office. That is why it is dangerous and must be resisted. Automation, more accurately (as already stated by another) the misuse of automation, is destroying this country. Hollowing out the population into the abject poor, who are so marginalized that they are unaffected by changing paradigms, and the wealthy and ultra-wealthy, that are buffered by wealth and use that wealth to create more wealth without any checks.

There are tens of thousands of suicides and drug overdoses of healthy, young, and potentially useful Americans each year. "Deaths of Despair" they are called. We are going to miss them. Badly. But not yet. By the time we do, it will be too late. In the meantime we have the shills for the Corporate Elite whitewashing the truth, and attempting to conceal the unfolding disaster. Automation, in and of itself is NOT the problem. The problem is insisting, as the author of this thread does, that there is no collateral damage to the labor sector. Of course there is. And the answer, the only answer that makes sense, is a Basic Income program, that will provide a living wage for the redundant workforce created by ever growing automation and innovation. It's past time. Insist on it. Ask for it by name. Otherwise you are going to die, slowly and horribly when whatever it is you do, can be done by a machine. Not cheaper, necessarily, just be done by a machine. And that is more things than you think. A LOT of medicine is about to become automated.

A self check kiosk is not cheaper than a human cashier. They cost two hundred thousand dollars per six station unit. That isn't cheaper than six minimum wage cashiers and the nanny's that utilize them will never trust human shoppers to be honest about being 21 when they purchase liquor, or buy organic lettuce instead of the regular kind. So many POS (point of sale) operations will insist on keeping humans in the loop, to reduce those kinds of exposure. But wages will be lower. Job security non-existent. Instead of being $15/hr. Minimum wage in the U.S. will simply be "market rate". Essentially zero. Workers will be paid like Uber drivers. You might get paid $3.00/hr. one day, $5.00/hr the next.

For most of our existence, purely intellectual careers have been limited. We are just big Chimpanzees when all is said and done. Looking down your Blue Collar nose at the next generation of Blue Collar workers just because you are now safely retired, and out of danger is disingenuous and nasty. Be ashamed. If you have children, grandchildren, or simply have a social conscience, do not be sucked in by the arguments that young people are all lazy, and deserve to be left for dead, if they don't go to Medical School. Help them fight for a Basic Income, paid for by the outrageous profits of a globally intertwined network of oligarchs who are sucking away the wealth of the planet and piling it up in the Cayman Islands, out of sight, out of reach, out of any benefit to anyone... not even themselves!!
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Old 05-13-2017, 07:46 PM
 
Location: Florida
3,128 posts, read 2,228,797 times
Reputation: 9157
Quote:
Originally Posted by 69Charger View Post
I think people are putting way too much into the new robotic trend. If anything, it just creates more jobs to take care of the robots.

100 years ago, 40% of American jobs were agricultural. Today it's 2%. Does anybody think that other 38% of the population, at the time, knew what a systems net engineer or an Uber driver were going to be?

We are going to be just fine. Tomorrow's jobs haven't even been invented yet.
Obviously, you've never worked in an automotive plant where robots have replaced hundreds of workers. As for robots creating more jobs to take care of them, that's not how it works. The existing maintenance crew has to be trained to work on them, not new maintenance men.
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Old 05-13-2017, 08:09 PM
 
Location: Morrisville, NC
9,129 posts, read 14,690,660 times
Reputation: 9032
Quote:
Originally Posted by 69Charger View Post
I think people are putting way too much into the new robotic trend. If anything, it just creates more jobs to take care of the robots.

100 years ago, 40% of American jobs were agricultural. Today it's 2%. Does anybody think that other 38% of the population, at the time, knew what a systems net engineer or an Uber driver were going to be?

We are going to be just fine. Tomorrow's jobs haven't even been invented yet.
You know why there was such a huge drop in farm employment? Automation. We have way more people to feed yet since we aren't using a hoe or walking behind an Ox with a plow, fewer people can harvest that food.
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