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A US Apple Factory May Be Robot City

Posted by Soulskill on from the rise-of-the-iMachines dept.

dcblogs writes "Apple's planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. A 2009 Apple video of its unibody manufacturing process has glimpses of highly automated robotic systems shaping the metal. In it, Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, described it. 'Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry,' he said. Apple has had three years to improve its manufacturing technology, and will likely rely heavily on automation to hold down labor costs, say analysts and manufacturers. Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory. First, a robot loads the aluminum block into the robo-machine that has a range of tools for cutting and drilling shapes to produce the complex chassis as a single precision part. A robot then unloads the chassis and sends it down a production line where a series of small, high-precision, high-speed robots insert parts, secured either with snap fit, adhesive bonds, solder, and a few fasteners, such as screws. At the end, layers, such as the display and glass, are added on top and sealed in another automated operation. Finally, the product is packaged and packed into cases for shipping, again with robots. "One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here," said Robert Atkinson, president of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."

41 of 602 comments (clear)

  1. Automation and unemployment by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the reason it can be done in the US is automation there's very little difference in terms of employment -- The capital holders get to keep more of their capital, some Asians get fired, and very few Americans get hired.Sure the GDP will rise but that won't make the slightest difference for the unemployed.

    Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    1. Re:Automation and unemployment by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

      ...or we need to grow the economy. Value creation isnt zero sum.

      Perhaps a little of both?

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    2. Re:Automation and unemployment by Iamthecheese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The present economy is growing in leaps and bounds leaving workers in the dust. "economic growth" is a meaningless metric when productivity allows this.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    3. Re:Automation and unemployment by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

      I suggest zombies. They're more cost-effective than robots, cheaper to replace, and on their off hours can do even more to reduce the number of unemployed.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    4. Re:Automation and unemployment by artor3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Having the robot factories here is good. We can tax the owners, tax the engineers, and use the proceeds to support all the unemployed people. Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment. We'll need to transition to a socialist economy to survive, and it will help if the factories are in our backyard.

    5. Re:Automation and unemployment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah good one... If all the robot factories are owned by few people, how will growing the economy help? We are probably less than 2 decades away from mass riots (And I only say that because I'm not an alarmist).

    6. Re:Automation and unemployment by Mr.+Tom+Guycot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We need to either drastically lower the hours for 'full time' work, while increasing wages to compensate, or stop being afraid of welfare and accept that everyone doesn't have to be employed, but still guaranteed housing, healthcare, and living expenses. The only other option is the one we're currently going down, which is that of some kind of sci fi dystopian corporate future with massive slums/even greater prison population (maybe they'll just start merging them). The other options will never fly because people are petty and will complain about someone not having to work as much as them.

      Full employment, with a living wage is just not possible anymore.

    7. Re:Automation and unemployment by c0lo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

      ...or we need to grow the economy. Value creation isnt zero sum.

      Perhaps a little of both?

      Question is: for how long?

      I mean, if the "workers" can't afford to buy the widgets, where's the growth in the economy produced by the" value creation"?
      Let me rephrase: in extreme, if there aren't any buyers, what meaning the "economy" term still retains?

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    8. Re:Automation and unemployment by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      This kind of sentiment is informed by 1920s misinformation. We've already solved the problem of not having any manufacturing jobs by transitioning to a service economy.

      If you still think manufacturing robots are going to cause 50% unemployment, consider the numbers: currently, 9% of the workforce is employed in manufacturing. Even if every single one of them got replaced by a robot and couldn't find a job anywhere else (unlikely), it would still only bring the unemployment rate up to ~17%. That 50% permanent unemployment rate isn't going to be a catalyst that will bring about a socialist economy, sorry. We'll all have jobs as shoe-shiners instead (actually in financial services, hospitality, retail, health, human services, information technology and education, but shoe-shiners is more hilarious).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:Automation and Unemployment by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But there is a hypothetical case where everything we need can be made by robots, even the robots. In that case we would need a new economic system to distribute wealth.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    10. Re:Automation and unemployment by Vapula · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The potential price would be little over the cost of raw material in a perfect world. Automation has always been pushed forward as a way to lower manufacturing costs AND product cost.

      Except that we are talking about Apple which is known to charge much more than needed and it's unlikely that the price will lower... In fact, the price may even increase as "it's made in US" with fallacies as "greater quality", "higher production costs", ...

    11. Re:Automation and unemployment by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Automation guarantees that we will, eventually, have 50+% permanent unemployment. We'll need to transition to a socialist economy to survive

      Yeah, because a majority of all the people are unemployed now that we only need 4% of the population to work on farms to feed us, right? Back around 1900, when 80% of the people in the USA worked on farms, who could have foreseen the horrific effects of mechanization of agriculture? The horror!

      You are very sadly misinformed about the effects of automation on productivity.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    12. Re:Automation and unemployment by Yoda222 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait for the robot replacing the service economy. A robot in the future could cut your hair or goes in your heart to fix your valve. The service economy is not immune to automatization. And I'm looking forward to it.

    13. Re:Automation and unemployment by cryptolemur · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Rewarding employers" does nothing in the long term, and only 'distorts the markets' in the short term, so it should have never been used, albeit it seems to be the idiocy du jour.
      Think about it: if there's no purchasing power, no matter how much the employer is rewarded, there's no cash flow to keep the business viable. On the other hand, if there is purchasing power and thus business, the employer doesn't need subsidies to survive.
      The best thing to do to national economy is to tax/destroy wealth at the top and create it at the bottom.
      That, and tax/moderate the financial markets regressively, but in relation to time between purchase and sale -- and start from 99.5% or so regressing to 15% in about ten years, forcing investors to care about the long term health of companies and aiming for stable and predictable markets.
      Oh, and cut the copyright to 25 years from first publication. But that's negotiable.

    14. Re:Automation and Unemployment by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're assuming that any person can climb the "ladder" of jobs as long as those jobs exist. In reality, people are forced to stop when they reach a rung beyond their ability. Most people can't be trained to be software engineers. Most people can't be trained to be scientists. Most people can't be trained to be artists of any quality. But while the height a person can climb is limited, there is no fundamental limit to automation. Eventually automation puts the starting rung out of reach of the average person and you are left with a mass of people unable to find employment anywhere in the economy, and limited in their intellectual capacity to be trained to ever get one of the scarce jobs that do exist.

      For those people there are three options:

      1. Grinding attrition to reduce their numbers through geographic isolation (prisons, slums, ghettos), violent crime (police abandon these areas and leave them to be ruled by gangs), and various poverty related causes of death (famine, malnutrition, lack of healthcare).
      2. Revolt and forcefully take enough to survive from those who have surplus resources
      3. Get folded into some sort of peaceful wealth redistribution system that provides for their needs and allows them to reach their personal potential, become educated up to their ability, raise a family, and live with dignity.

      It's interesting to note that option one is the inevitable result of free-market economics. It's the only end game that can play out once automation really kicks off in a society that completely shuns anything that seems like socialism. It's also, in my opinion, probably the most likely starting point. I think we're going to see all three of those stages in the next 100-200 years. We are already in stage one in many respects.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    15. Re:Automation and Unemployment by LMariachi · · Score: 4

      "Have you seen the unemployment and welfare lines?"

      I have, but you very obviously haven't, seeing as you're regurgitating 30 year old right-wing "welfare queen" bullshit. Only now it's iPads instead of Cadillacs. At least you're trending towards "somewhat plausible."

    16. Re:Automation and Unemployment by LMariachi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Believing that infinite growth is possible in an infinite world is perfectly logical. The problem is that we live in a finite world, and our growth-oriented model of capitalism strongly resembles cancer.

    17. Re:Automation and unemployment by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The same reason we didn't solve unemployment this time around by going to a 36 hour work week. That is, it might mean that the 1% have to wait till next year for that all important 5th yacht.

    18. Re:Automation and unemployment by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're missing an important statistic, as is everyone else in this discussion (and nearly all the others on Slashdot lately). That statistic is called the participation rate, and according to the Department of Labor, it's the lowest it has been since World War II. The number I saw last was a participation rate of 65%. That is, only 65% of the working age population is actually working. We are, in fact, trending towards 50% unemployment right now, and we're far far closer than the unemployment numbers would have you believe. I haven't seen anybody plot out the trend line, but I suspect it will not be too many years before we're at 50%. In other words, we'll have basically returned to the time when women did not work outside the home.

      There are plenty of people willing to argue this would be a good thing, and possibly it could have been. But it's not, and the reasons are too numerous to list, but I can hit the high points. First, wages have remained stagnate for two generations while the cost of living has soared, so it's no longer possible to support a family on a single income. Second, the divorce rate is way over 50%, so the nuclear family is effectively nonexistent. Third, people who have had the idea that they absolutely must work ground into their heads their entire lives who aren't able to find work become self-destructively depressed. Fourth, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there is no upper limit on automation, so we have no reason to believe the trend will stop at 50%. I could go on, but you get the idea.

      The obvious retort is we never had a 100% participation rate, and of course that's true. But it was once much higher than it is now. Those jobs have, in fact, been lost. Permanently and completely. That's why those people are no longer counted as unemployed. They're counted as non-participating. Because they will not ever be employed again.

    19. Re:Automation and unemployment by sjames · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In other words, a steadily declining income as a more or less steady pool of workers are forced to compete for an ever shrinking pool of less desirable jobs.

      I have seen automated convenience stores, automated cars/trucks, automated fast food and automated warehouses. Sure, they're just prototypes now, but not for much longer.

      So, back to the question at hand, what will it take to make sure everyone has a decent opportunity at employment sufficient to support themselves decently?

      Perhaps those evil unions can save the day (again) by forcing a 20 hour work week for a living wage. They'll need to present a credible threat of violence (again) to make it happen I would imagine.

      Word to the wise: If you don't want a socialist revolution here in the U.S. make damned sure not to put people's backs against the wall.

    20. Re:Automation and unemployment by Issarlk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then you just hope the cost of transport makes it uncompetitive to build products in China to sell in the US. With the oil peak it might work.

    21. Re:Automation and Unemployment by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, your unsupported claim does not address my rhetorical question.

      I've heard a lot of people spout this "poor people live like they're rich" line but I've been poor and I've seen poor people. in fact I'm poor now and I can tell you I'm not eligible for anything but the student loans that keep me alive at a sustenance level and VA health care because I was in the military and honorably discharged. My father is poor and all he gets is the social security he paid into. He's physically incapable of working and if he didn't keep a garden he would starve. My mother is poor and she's eligible for nothing. She works as a nursing assistant. One bad job and she'll literally be out on the street.

      My friend is poor, she also physically cannot work. on a good day she manages to clean her house. She gets medicine, a CPAP machine, and 700 dollars per month.

      I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    22. Re:Automation and unemployment by rasmusbr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The cost of raw materials would be close zero since that is also basically labor.

      The thing is that if we look back say 300 years we see that we already have close to free energy and close to free labor by 1712's standards. The average person today uses more energy than the richest king back then and the average farmer today produces as much food as a village of hundreds of people produced back then. We can produce so much food that we have to throw away or burn a significant fraction of it to prevent our food storage from overflowing...

      And yet we still have problems like homelessness and people dying from curable diseases.

    23. Re:Automation and unemployment by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So your solution to the greed of the "job creators" which is leading towards unsustainable wage disparities and high unemployment due to large-scale automation is to make it easier for them to get their fix by lowering employee benefits?

      GP was right, we do need a new economy to deal with the fact that people can't compete with robots anymore, we've been putting hackish fixes on this tarted-up barter system for too long and it won't stay running much longer. Trying to make people cheaper than robots doesn't seem like a good short-term solution. Maybe instead we stop giving into the money addiction of the few?

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    24. Re:Automation and Unemployment by Cheech+Wizard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.

      Totally wrong. You *assume* that because it becomes cheaper to manufacture something a company is going to lower its selling price. That is basic business school rhetoric that doesn't reflect reality. I used to manufacture a low volume product as a side business. I found that I could automate and reduce expenses 70% (this was in the late 1990's). I didn't reduce my price to consumers. I increased prices 15% within a year because my product was better made (in part no human errors in build), was more reliable (lower returns and warranty costs), and in part I found many people buy on price (higher price means better). Unit sales went down less than 10%. It did help me retire in 2003 at the age of 53. I do not deny that in *some* fields prices may come down, but almost all price reductions are due to competition, to some degree volume, and to some degree obsolescence.

    25. Re:Automation and unemployment by Cwix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We need to get rid of all of those damn socialist policies!!

      Hwys and roads.
      Public schools
      FDA
      EPA
      National Parks
      Medicare
      Fire Departments
      Police Departments
      Anything with the word community in it (Like gardens)
      Public libraries
      Public colleges/universities

      Stupid asshole. Some things are better when they are socialist, because we all reap benefits from them. Everyone in this country has reaped benefits from this list in one way or another. That does not mean we need to scrap capitalism. It does mean that we shouldn't dismiss "socialist" ideas out of hand.

      --
      You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
    26. Re:Automation and Unemployment by Coisiche · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don 't know where all these poor people living like kings are but I'm pretty damn sure they only exist in the minds of conservatives.

      The meme is more widespread than that because certain media outlets supporting a conservative agenda will perpetuate the idea at every opportunity so that many taxpayers will believe that the single, most significant reason for a country's economic woes is down to people living it large on welfare.

      So long as the ruling elite can keep the in-fighting going among the people who massively outnumber them then they don't have to worry about attention being focused on them.

    27. Re:Automation and unemployment by Rich0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, but who would hire you for a few hours a month when their money would be better-spent on robots.

      I see two choices - either we all starve to death while robots harvest a bounty unlike anything the world has ever seen, or we give up on the idea that the only way to pay for things is to work for them.

    28. Re:Automation and unemployment by Phrogman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We had to switch to self-service everything because those shitty jobs you describe started getting paid a reasonable amount of money, and many good jobs were unionized and the unions spoke up for their workers to get them decent working conditions, a pension to retire on etc. Because paying for the labour of things cost more (as it should have) the slave-labour jobs disappeared and we did more ourselves to ensure that the cost of the things we paid for were kept down. If you want to be treated like Royalty you still can almost anywhere - it just costs a lot.
      The problem is that all a long the rich kept getting richer and have gradually been paying less and less taxes. Now they have engineered the destruction of many of the unions, so they can pay shit wages again and continue to get rich on the backs (and bodies) of the workers who make it possible for them.
      Corporations now rule the world in effect. Oh sure, they allow us the illusion of government and democratic elections but they control the strings behind the puppets we elect, and the government works to their benefit before ours mostly. Its not all cut and dried, not all back and white of course, its many subtle shades of grey too, but the welfare of the average person is not the prime motivation for the elected governments of the age. If it ever was it certainly isnt now.
      Increased reliance on automation is going to put even more people out of work. If they can automate the industrial side, whats to say they can't automate the service side too? Then where do the ex-members of the middle class go to find work?

      --
      "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
    29. Re:Automation and Unemployment by LMariachi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      An iPhone 3G that you couldn't give away for nothing on Craigslist counts as a "smartphone." What do you expect people to do, plunk quarters into increasingly nonexistent payphones to talk to their families or social services or arrange job interviews? Restrict themselves to some old-ass StarTac that isn't any cheaper, does much less, and can't talk to modern cell networks? For the same price you'd pay for a landline (which you can only use while you're at home) you can get a free smartphone with essentially unlimited talk & text, which you can use anywhere and also listen to music or play Angry Birds. I assure you that spending thirty-five bucks a month on mobile communications is far from extravagant living large.

    30. Re:Automation and unemployment by ninetyninebottles · · Score: 3

      basic and I mean BASIC health care

      Health care is not like the other things you list. Want to turn an average person into a criminal, even a murderer? It is easy, just put them or one of their loved ones in the position of a life saving operation being denied because they don't have enough money. Wealth inequality is the best predictor of violent crime. Be Very careful in how you define basic health care and really think about the costs because basic doesn't mean cheap to provide unless you're begging for a violent revolution.

      a basic education

      If you can't get a job with a basic education, how does this prevent societal disruption?

      That is why people have dual income families and a mountain of debt.

      Well that and the fact that real income/cost ratios have been going down for decades and wealth inequality has been going up and globalization has made markets less reactive to workers and the progressiveness of taxes is the lowest in many decades.

    31. Re:Automation and unemployment by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.

      I don't mean to belittle your concerns, but it's not as bleak as you paint. If the factory is in the US, it is still a net win for employment. Robots need to be manufactured, maintained, and repaired (I work in that industry). This is the kind of high-margin business that US companies can still compete in. The factory needs support services. The factory needs raw materials. The raw materials and finished goods need to be transported. Many of these jobs are much better than the line worker jobs that the robots are replacing.

      Sure you have fewer "lose your hand in an industrial accident" kinds of jobs, and that is a problem for people who used to rely on those jobs instead of education. But it's better for the US employment situation than simply hiring a bunch of people in China. And productivity improvements are better for the population as a whole, even if it negatively affects those who end up being replaced by robots. I'm not sure what people with no skills will do when factories become more automated, but holding back productivity is probably not the answer.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    32. Re:Automation and unemployment by larkost · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your sited fact that we are at tle lowest participation rate since WWII is incorrect, as proof go to this page and then adjust the graphs to show the max timeline:

      http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

      We are on our way down, but still have not hit the 1978 numbers again (62.5%). Of course these numbers don't take in to account the large social change that has happened over time with women in the workforce: the move from mothers expected to be at home to the "norm" of two-income households.

      That all being said: we are definately on a long-term course to the unworkability of a capitalist society (much along the lines that Marx predicted, but not on the timeline he expected). But I don't think we are anywhere close to knowing what that course is going to look like.

  2. Aren't the US already a low wage country? by Casandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean sure, on paper wages in the US look high, but then again there's next to no social security. There's no mandatory health insurance, there's little public infrastructure. In some places you even need to have a car.... at least that's what the typical prejudices say.

    1. Re:Aren't the US already a low wage country? by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Interesting

      All of that is true, more or less. Somehow it works for us, except when it doesn't.

      I do envy the progress of Europe, but they face a different set of challenges. Imagine if all the nations of Europe were just states in a Federal Republic. Now imagine that Federal Government extracted billions of dollars each year to fund a military to kick around the world having adventures and spreading a specific political ideology. Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck. And after so many generations spent serving the Federal Government and its military people start really believing that's a better use of money than schools or trains or hospitals.

      That's America.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    2. Re:Aren't the US already a low wage country? by stenvar · · Score: 4, Funny

      I do envy the progress of Europe

      What exactly do you envy? The lower wages? The smaller houses? The lower retirement benefits? The lower levels of education? The lower standard of living? The higher taxes? The religious and ethnic conflicts? Do tell.

      Imagine trying to sustain a European welfare system with that anchor tied around your neck.

      True: US military spending is a drag on the US. However, we've been getting something in return, namely peace in Europe and Asia. After centuries of vicious wars and disruptions to the global economy originating there, that's been money well spent. Of course, it's debatable whether we need to continue spending it, but until a few years ago, it was absolutely necessary.

  3. Automation and Unemployment by FsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a myth that automation is bad because it leads to unemployment, but no-doubt that myth will be perpetuated here. Someone might even say "yeah it frees people up, frees them up to STARVE." Let's try to address that before it happens.

    As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.

    At one time, people would have spent virtually all their wealth on food. Because of improvements in automation, most people in the U.S. now spend a small fraction of their wealth on food, and this leaves extra money for, say, entertainment. At one time, having many people devote their whole lives to entertaining others would have seemed hugely wasteful -- those people should be out gathering food, after all -- but the wealth created by automation means that it's now a reality.

    Some folks also make the claim that the new wealth will be concentrated in too few hands, and most people won't get wealthier. That, too, is false: automation makes things so cheap that just about everyone ends up owning things like microwaves, air conditioners, and computers -- things that before were reserved for the rich. Here's a good explanation of this: http://youtu.be/OkebmhTQN-4

    --
    I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
  4. Automation by Osgeld · · Score: 3, Interesting

    its the only reason the company I work for can be competitive on cost in electronic assembly, that being said it takes a small army to keep the machines running and fed 24/7

  5. Re:Sounds like Sony's line for the Walkman by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They use manual labor because humans can be trained faster than automation can be set up. If I hand you a design and contract you do build it, the fastest way for you to get the first products out the door is to use humans. In quickly advancing industries like mobile devices, you can't stay on the leading edge and also use automation.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  6. It's not about American jobs or any jobs by gelfling · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's about brand management. Apple can now say they are making stuff in the US.

  7. Where are the "dumb" jobs? by mathew42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the past (and possibly now) the majority of jobs were repetitive low skilled (e.g. digging holes with a shovel, porter, assembly line worker, etc.) that just about anyone could do with a bit of on the job training. To leave school at 15 was not uncommon 20 years ago. The service / knowledge economy jobs require a much more highly skilled workforce. If you look at the previous transition from farm labourer to assembly line worker both jobs were relatively similar in terms of the type of personal attributes required.

    My concern for society is that with education standards dropping coupled with an entitlement / victim mentality that many people are being disenfranchised and have little chance of contributing to society. We cannot stop change, but we should plan for it.