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Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate
An anonymous reader writes "An article at FiveThirtyEight looks at the likelihood of various occupations being replaced by automation. It mentions President Obama's proposed increase to the federal minimum wage, saying big leaps in automation could reshape that debate. '[The wage increase] from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour could make it worthwhile for employers to adopt emerging technologies to do the work of their low-wage workers. But can a robot really do a janitor's job? Can software fully replace a fast-food worker? Economists have long considered these low-skilled, non-routine jobs as less vulnerable to technological replacement, but until now, quantitative estimates of a job's vulnerability have been missing from the debate.' Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years (PDF): 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff. There are other jobs with a high likelihood, but they employ fewer people and generally have a higher pay rate: tax preparers (99%), freight workers (99%), and legal secretaries (98%)."
The higher the minimum wage, the more incentive there will be to automate those minimum-wage jobs. If it'd average out to $11/hr to have a robot do some cleaning, and the minimum wage is $10/hr, then a janitor willing to work for $10/hr will have a job. If the minimum wage goes to $12/hr, the robot will take the job instead.
I read somewhere an essay written around the time the minimum wage was being increased a few decades ago. This was during a time when there were still elevator operators. The author predicted that after the increase, elevator operators would get phased out in favor of automated elevators. That probably would've happened anyway, but raising the minimum wage probably helped speed up that process.
If it gets really bad there will be pressure to illegalize automation of certain classes of jobs.
I used to work in the IT dept. for a company that replaced forklift drivers with highly automated forklifts Vimeo: (http://vimeo.com/75513911) that were able to load trucks. The justification was never the cost of labor, but the increased accuracy in the supply chain, the ability to "house keep" (i.e. moving product bound for shipping close to the dock door it was headed out of, to increase maximum warehouse capacity by reducing average trip times); during the slow hours, as well as reduced damage to product, equipment and the facility. Automation is not about cost, its about having a machine do some work BETTER than workers. Arguing the cost is like arguing that cars are better at moving goods than humans because it costs less per mile to drive a car than it does to pay someone to carry your good. It does cost less, but thats not the point. Automation can scale much faster and increase accuracy, without increasing costs. Thats the point of automation. The benefits were obvious to anyone who had ever seen a mis-ship report or calculated the % of accidents involving a forklift. These units delivered
Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years: 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff...
A few other jobs that were lost to technology:
The knocker-up was a person whose responsibility was to go out to people's houses and wake them up so they could get to work on time. Alarm clocks eliminated the need for them.
Acoustic locators were people who listened to acoustic mirrors to detect incoming aircraft before radar was invented.
And sure, we can talk about buggy whips. The point is, quite a few jobs and entire industries no longer exist as a result of automation. We can start throwing our shoes at the machines like during the industrial revolution, or we can enjoy the benefits they bring us, accept the growing pains, and adapt to the new world. Personally I don't want to have to pay some guy to come knock at my window every morning so I can go to work. I hope I live long enough to talk to the younguns about all the ridiculous jobs that used to exist when I was their age.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
With the vehement anti-socialist thread that weaves throughout the American culture, the US will be one of the hardest hit by the coming automation age.
More socialist countries will have a chance of moving to the age of leisure, while America, god bless her, will move to the age of the gutter.
I live in a country where the minimum wage is roughly $15USD. More crucially though, I live in an area with low unemployment so the practical minimum wage is considerably higher.
What we have seen is changes like such as smaller retailers only have a single staff member on during the week. This means that when the staff member goes to the bathroom or gets lunch, the shop closes briefly. For larger retailers there is an ongoing shift towards self-checkouts, but as they are constantly pushing their costs this seems independent of wage levels.
Other fields have seen similar pressure. Restaurants try and make do with less staff, warehouses focus more on minimising idle time and companies may consider how often they really need the bins empty.
All of these are fundamentally positive changes.
So it is about costs.. just the reduction of costs from increased efficiency and production rates caused by the automation
Humans are bad at conceptualizing the very large and small, and the very slow and fast. We are pattern recognizers, but just like we have optical illusions that fool our biological eyes, there are mental situations that fool our inner circuitry.
The tech is advancing faster than moore's law, and we haven't even started using all the new meta-materials and graphene, nanotubes and all the rest.
People like to be the straight man, they like to be no-nonsense - they find comfort in being the reasonable one and enjoy a nice philosophically cul-de-sac where if history proves them correct then they reaffirm their own beliefs and if they are wrong then they still get all the benefits of the tech arriving for mass consumption. They are pleasantly surprised, if you asked anyone about the self driving cars and cellphones in the 1980s they would have said its more than 100 years away - and yet we have them now.
The problem is, with all the naysayers and luddites, their combined negative outlook slows everything down instead of speeding it up by poisoning popular sentiment which is why it takes an Elon Musk to make electric cars and space companies. It's not that Ford could not have done it, it's that Ford and similar companies are staffed by people terrified to make a decision and try anything new unless it's 100% obvious that the time for a thing has come, which is usually when a competitor starts doing it.
We need access to space, AI, roboticized labor, and the endless energy the sun is currently wasting as it goes out into space largely untapped - and everything that makes those things come faster are good things.
The ultimate form of humanity is not toiling away for 40 arbitrary hours a week just because we had to up until now.
Thinking of some 1:1 replacement of a human with a human-shaped machine is too simple. The replacement will be of outdated, job-heavy business models with self-service models.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
No, it has never been tried. We haven't sufficient automation until recently. Go take a history class.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...were on to something. Not that mechanization is evil - it is progress. But what we're seeing now that we have not faced in the past is technology and automation advancing faster than society's capacity to restructure the economy so that everyone has an opportunity for some basic livelihood. Extremes of poverty and desperation are not a good alternative.
"at some point we're going to end up with a civilization like in Star Trek TNG"
First --- I wish, that would be an incredible and ideal future.
But society is based on power and control, both in government and private industry.
Government and private industry simply isn't going to say "Dear commoners, robots will do everything and you don't need to work and you get a free ride" --- will never happen!
And --- even if it did, look at what people with too much time on hands do to this world: crime, gangs, terrorists, cults, drug users --- most of societies ills are AVOIDED by making these people have jobs so they don't have free time.
I'd love to get to a Star Trek TNG future, but the vast majority of the populace isn't going to start creating and researching or coding solutions to the world's problems in their spare time, which is why it won't work. And the power and authority would never support a free ride of "their creations" or their use of their power.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Price has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with (perceived) supply / demand.
And unless you live in a dictatorship, you are not allowed to "demand" anything for any price, just as I am not allowed to "demand" you purchase any particular good or servi... oh wait. I forgot we passed the ACA.
A terrafoam house is probably nicer than what most poor people have today.
Historically, some have speculated that with automation comes more and more leisure time, people not having to work because all of their needs have been fulfilled. What ends up happening in reality however (as we see now) is that productivity gains do end up with fewer people working but instead of more people working fewer hours, there are fewer people working more hours. What happens when there are not enough jobs to go around at all?
People won't have enough money to pay for goods. Will labor be parcelled out so more people work less? Will there be a perceived "non-need" for so many unemployed people? What happens then? I can't imagine it will be a pretty sight.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Well if you ignore the fact that the project didn't save money-spent overall, then yes, its about costs.
What you are forgetting to take into account is that you get significantly more production, at a higher rate of accuracy with machines. In some cases (not all), the accuracy and production increase is simply unfeasible with a human workforce.
Its like asking how many postmen would it take to deliver all the world's email. There simply wouldn't be enough resources to do the job, regardless of cost.
I don't think you understand "cost" - if the increase in production and better accuracy didn't make the program cost effective, then they'd dump the smart forklifts and bring back the humans. Few businesses can afford to turn the core part of their business into a speculative testbed for technology that costs more to operate than the human workers it replaced. The project may very well have cost more than the human workers it replaced, but that expense was made up by the factors you just mentioned.
This doesn't take into account the one thing that most futurists never take into account. Maybe I'm not the only one who wouldn't enjoy going to a restaurant and not being served. Maybe I'd see that as a low-quality dive, and wouldn't be interested in a steak from a conveyor belt. Maybe the reason that I often go out to restaurants is specifically to be served by someone else. Maybe that's half the value.
That's great though, who the fuck wants to deal with salesmen? I specifically order all my clothes and music gear online because I don't want to deal with either snotty clerks or shady salesmen. Hell, I'd pay MORE to shop without human interaction. The fact that I can get better prices online is just an added bonus.
What about the impending failure of capitalism?
You're confused. Capitalism is doing fine. It's government that's failing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
it's the incredibly high cost of entry (burying lines, running copper) combined the the fact that you pretty much need a gov't mandate in order to get everyone to allow you to bury/run all those lines on their property (otherwise sooner or later somebody either holds the whole thing up because he's crazy, wants infinite money or some combination of the two).
But hey, never let a little thing like facts and reality get in the way of a good right wing rant I always say. How's the joke go? Fact have a liberal bias...
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Would an abundance of goods with no requirement for people to work their butts off making them would be considered a problem. What is wrong with just letting people enjoy fruit of the modern civilization without considering our collective wealth a downside? Plenty of people will still find a way to work in order to afford more exclusive stuff line posh houses, luxury vacations or whatever. Lots more would find something productive to do just out of boredom. For everyone else, we should just encourage responsible birth control in the sense that if you can not even find your own place in society you are not in the position to teach your children to do the same.
That's sorta the argument you'll hear. I saw an interview on Fox News years ago where they brought on an economist who explained he would combat automation by taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth. The host said, "But that's socialism" and he replied "that's right, I'm a socialist". The whole rest of the interview was the Host just trying to come to grips with the fact that the man just admitted he was a socialist. I think if he said he skinned babies for a living he'd have gotten less of a reaction.
After 70 years of being told that Communism == Socialism == Hitler == bad it's just ingrained in American Society. It's really the only answer to automation. There just aren't enough jobs. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers, and we only need so many scientists even if everyone was the next Albert Eisenstein. But the notion that a job, any job, is better than no job is heavily ingrained in America.
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"Capitalism" does not mean "free from government interference". In fact, it thrives (and maybe depends on) on certain kinds of heavy government interference: IP laws, a solid banking system, corporate charters, and limited liability spring to mind.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I believe the standard retort here is that despite many countries trying to implement communism over a 70 year period, all ended up with something with the general theme of authoritarian rule. It is reasonable to conclude that perhaps it is impossible to implement "communism" as Karl Marx envisioned - that it is a nice idea that cannot be realized with current levels of technology.
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Betcha if there is a pretty little girl in a short skirt at the checkout, next to a self serve, then you would happily stand in the 50 person line-up...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Why were there so many ancient "Romans"? - They didn't all come from Rome, they just called themselves Roman citizens in order to qualify for free bread from the empire (to the tune of 30kg/month in grain). Once the Roman army had basically conquered the known world and pillaged it's crops, the bread stopped being "free" and the empire disintegrated.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Greed
I'd rather have millions of corporate overlords than 1 government overlord.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
You're a human being with a reasonably competent understanding of basic technological concepts. There is a LARGE portion of the population who does not meet this criteria. [/understatement]
There are people who cannot grasp the concept of putting 3 color coded wires from one box into the back of another box. There are people who cannot understand the difference between their tv remote and their cable remote, and are probably the same people who need someone to clearly show them how to use their remote even though the purpose of each button is clearly labeled. Switching inputs on a TV between a cable box and a DVD player is a challenge to these sorts of people. And these are some examples of a technology (the tv) practically everyone is familiar with, the examples I've given are not new technological developments for TVs, these sorts of capabilities have existed on TVs since the 90s, giving roughly 2 decades for people to become familiar with them. But it still confuses the heck out of a good 20% of the population.
These are people who have trouble working their microwave and you expect them to suddenly work a touch screen order taker, and not screw it up? Not likely. And guess who these people are going to blame for their failure to operate? I mean it obviously wasn't their fault that your machine didn't understand that when I said only ketchup, I meant I didn't want mustard, I still wanted the pickles and onions.
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While it is tragic, I agree. Many low-paid jobs are low-paid because many people that do them do not care about the quality of their work. It is incredible what mistakes are made, products damaged and destroyed, customers made to suffer damage. This costs a lot and decreases service quality to a degree that you may lose customers. And you cannot use people with a passion for these slots, they will just leave again after a short while because they are bored.
Incidentally, a lot of outsourced programming suffers from the same symptoms: Code produced without understanding or interest in the matter. The few that care in outsourcing move rapidly to better jobs. The ones that stay are the dross and what they produce has negative worth.
On the side of how these people can participate in the economy, quite frankly paying them a stipend they can live of reasonably to _not_ work would be economically beneficial. It may sound harsh, but not working is the point of maximum productivity for them. And while we are at it, all bureaucrats should go the same way, the very core of what they do is destroying the productivity of others.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Right, in a holistic sense, everything a company does is about maximising money in, and minimising money out.
However, the point the OP is making is that this isn't a simple case of how much a computer/robot costs per hour or per unit vs the human cost of doing the same thing. Such that a change in the minimum wage would in some elastic way change the number of jobs that are automated.
His point is that automation is typically a fundamental change in the way of doing business, and will be driven by considerations far bigger than cost per hour or per unit.
In fact it may be that a business would automate even if staff would work for free. That may be the only way to compete. He gives the example of the inability of postal workers to compete with email for example, regardless of pay rates.