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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 only reason you are pro-socialism is because you have not yet experienced a socialist government that has been taken over by angry nut jobs. When that happens, maybe not in your lifetime, your socialist citizens will be in no position to oppose it. America is unfortunately more socialist than capitalist at the moment which is why you see "to big to fail" crap. In a truly capitalist system, to big to fail would be impossible. Only in a socialist system can the government decide who is "to big to fail" and consequently "to small to succeed". You long for "true socialism" as defined in your texbook. Sorry, has never happened and will never happen. People with greed (and all other negative emotions) get in the way. Human nature trumps all political systems. The best you can do is to try and let peer pressure bring out the best in others and hope empathy grows.
There needs to be a word for the opposite of a luddite: someone who throws every high-tech word or phrase they can think of together with barely an idea of what any of them really mean and passes off the resulting hodgepodge as some sort of profound idea of the world to come.