What To Do After Robots Take Your Job

sarahnaomi writes In 2013, researchers Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School dropped the bombshell that 47 percent of US jobs were at risk of computerisation. Since then, they've made similar predictions for the UK, where they say 35 percent of jobs are at high risk. So what will our future economy look like? "My predictions have enormously high variance," Osborne told me when I asked if he was optimistic. "I can imagine completely plausible, incredibly positive scenarios, but they're only about as probable as actually quite dystopian futures that I can imagine."

In a new report produced as part of a programme supported by Citi, he and Frey outline how increased innovation—read: automation—could lead to stagnation.

Comments

Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[gurps_npc]

All it can do is change the work you do.

I am sick and tired of Luddites that claim robots will steal all the jobs.

Jobs are not a limited resource. Jobs are dependent on things we need to get done.

Once upon the time 100% of jobs were focused on getting food. Hunting and gathering became full time work when population was high. Once farming came around, it freed up some people to do other things. They did not suddenly become lazy do-nothing people. Instead they took up lower priority tasks, and turned them into full time jobs.

Things like clothing manufacturing, which used to be done in your spare time, turned into full industries. New products like shoes, alcohol, luxuries etc. were created.

The question is, are there still things we need to do, but have not been able to afford? The answer to that is YES. We have education, science, space exploration, green technologies, and a host of other things that we has decided would be nice, but we simply don't have the manpower to do.

We will not run out of jobs, instead we will do things that we can not even imagine today. Anymore than a hunter/gatherer could imagine someone would be paid to sell food at a basketball game.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[Sir_Substance]

Jobs are not a limited resource. Jobs are dependent on things we need to get done.

Our capacity to get things done is increasing in leaps and bounds.

1 farmer today can do the work of a 20 farmers from 200 years ago. Yes, he does it using machines which took a thousand people to design and build, but those machines are made in one factory and used by 10 thousand farmers nationwide.

So 11,000 people today are doing the work of 200,000 from 200 years ago.

Our efficiency is going through the roof. We are already at the break even point in western nations. Unemployment rates are indicative of a society where there is less work than people. We could have everyone working two days a week. Yes that would introduce extra overheads, but we have the excess manpower to manage them, so why not?

This could be a cause for celebration, it's what mankind has always wanted, but here we are with people like you, who can't let go of the 40 hours work week, and you're pushing people into poverty because of it.

Madness.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[MickyTheIdiot]

Not to mention that the removal of the new deal and systematic attack on labor has made sure that the benefirts of that productivity has gone to mostly the top .01%.

George Jetson, on the famous cartoon show, used to complain how long the 3 day work weeks were! Everyone that put in work was supposed to benefit. It isn't working out that way.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[Wycliffe]

Technology can NOT eliminate work. All it can do is change the work you do.

This only holds as long as someone is willing to give you food/money for your work.
The problem we're seeing today is that 90% of the stuff people want and need is produced by a handful of people.
Food is provided by just a few farmers. Software is written once by a handful of people and cloned millions of time.
Movies are created once and cloned millions of times. Millions of people all watch the same handful of ball players.
What happens when you have no useful skills to barter with because a robot can do the work cheaper?

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be a cause for celebration, it's what mankind has always wanted, but here we are with people like you, who can't let go of the 40 hours work week, and you're pushing people into poverty because of it.

Madness.

Generally people are working more than 40 hours (in the USA at least). Additionally, the USA also raised the retirement age to 67, So despite automation, we are working longer days and longer lifetimes. Businesses won't let you work fewer hours without taking a cut in pay unless it's mandated by the government. Even then, we've allowed businesses to call every one salaried so that if you decide to work 20 hours a week you'll still probably put in 50 hours.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[radtea]

This could be a cause for celebration, it's what mankind has always wanted, but here we are with people like you, who can't let go of the 40 hours work week, and you're pushing people into poverty because of it.

There are different ways of stating the problem.

1) "Technology is eliminating jobs! How will we cope with the unemployment?"

2) "Technology is increasing productivity! How will we distribute the gains?"

3) "Technology is reducing total workforce requirements! How will we reduce the work week?"

Each of these assumes a different fixed aspect of the economy. The first assumes that industrial capitalism will chug on, basically unchanged, while unemployment rises to unprecedented levels. History suggests this is unlikely.

The second assumes that productivity gains will continue without the incentive of paid work.

The third assumes that paid work will remain the only way of distributing productivity gains.

The rise of industrial capitalism saw enormous social upheaval. It is likely that the rise of total automation will produce something similar. We have no idea what that will be (I certainly don't) but it's important that we recognize that while not everything will change, everything could, and not confine our imaginary futures too narrowly. We're going to be wrong regardless (because our imaginations are terrible tools for knowing reality) but in this case we're more likely to fail by being too narrow in our view than too broad.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[tmosley]

Rather than shortening the workweek so my a better idea to move the retirement age forward. You go to school as normal, then work full time for ten years, save enough money that you can live off the interest/afford your own robot whatever to make you passive income, and retire around 30.

Of course, first we need to get the government and its massive debt (and the idiotically low interest rates that result from their complete control of central bank policy ie 0% interest rate policy) out of the way. Otherwise, we'll all just keep having the fruits of our increased productivity redistributed away either to government employees or the 0.01%.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[jythie]

On the other hand, in each major wave of such innovation what we have generally seen is an increase in mean income but a decrease in median. So each jump creates a small number of well paying jobs and a large number of jobs that pay worse than the displaced positions did. Even within your example, the agricultural revolution was indeed a boon for society on the whole, but the people working the actual agricultural jobs had it worse than when they were hunter gatherers.

And while this sounds great if one pictures themselves being on the winning side of that equation, even when one is not, that increase in misery has a way of translating into things like higher crime rates and decay.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[CaptainPinko]

Our society doesn't just need jobs, it needs predictable jobs. It needs jobs that a person of median intelligence and median means and median grades can work towards in highschool go to college for and the reasonably get hired at that gives them 40 hours a week of work for a decent wage to afford with a partner a house and two kids and then can expect to maintain that job/career roughly for their working life. That is the backbone of our society. Saying that there will be jobs is fine, but if those jobs boom and bust or require midlife retraining or insane amount of ours or risk, well that doesn't really help. The main point is what do we need to preserve our way of life, not just the jobs themselves. These are the kinds of jobs that made America the envy of those living under communism and brought it down. I would know since my parents under the cover of night smuggled themselves out from under the iron curtain. It was definitely not for the opportunity to participate in unbridled capitalism.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[jythie]

Well, it is not that they lack the long term view, it is that their priorities put a heavier weight on the short term consequences since they are the ones being asked to bare it. Long term views are great when one is reaping the rewards or at least are not personally impacted all that much, but 'other people will be richer later' is not that big of a 'plus' for people who are becoming poorer in the now.

It is also worth noting that the 'new jobs opening up' tend to be in smaller numbers than the jobs closing down. So out of a displaced population, a few people will go on to do better, but the majority will have a lower quality of life even after things settle down. So they see the long term view, but it does not benefit them, and the people who it does benefit tend to have a bit of a blind spot in seeing outside their own class.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[idontgno]

Sure.

1) A robot may not injure profits or, through inaction, allow profits to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Re:Technology can NOT eliminate work.

[Sarten-X]

You both agree $2/hour is an acceptable wage

Until someone else comes along and offers $1.50 an hour. Then the next guy offers $1, and so on, racing to the bottom. Now the government is still footing the $7.25/hour bill for the company to have an unskilled workforce at $0.01/hour of payroll expenses. The workers don't care, because they still see $7.26/hour income to sit and play games.

Since the company's able to hire so cheap, they bring in a hundred such workers to boost their employment numbers. Having 150 employees rather than 10 lets the company seem more important. Sure, there's some overhead expense, but it's easily paid for by the huge payroll savings.

Now the government is paying for a huge workforce of unskilled and unproductive labor. They're not producing much, so the taxable economy isn't increasing at all, and of course the tax rate isn't going to be 100%, so there is no way for the government to actually afford to pay its guaranteed wage.

Taking another perspective, your plan essentially gives every employer a $7.25/hour/employee tax credit, with no defined mechanism to recoup the losses.

Even if the employer companies are more productive because of their huge workforce, the government only sees a percentage of the value the employees produce. If the government supports the answering-machine employee at $7.25/hour, will the employee be productive enough (through improving the company's sales) that the government would get $7.25/hour more in taxes from the company? That's a pretty tall order for a phone operator. Considering an (overestimated) corporate tax rate of 50%, the employee would need to single-handedly earn $14.50/hour for the company before the government would break even, $7.24 of which goes to the company's after-tax income.

It's a pretty straightforward government subsidy supporting corporations.

This is politics, not technology

[mbone]

When will people get it through their heads that this is really all about the acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, and is fundamentally a political matter, not a technical matter?

From TFA "The report calls for a long-term plan to make economic growth inclusive." We had that. It was called the New Deal, and it was dismantled in the 1980's by the Reagan Administration.

Re:This is politics, not technology

[jellomizer]

Most of politics are just talking heads. The Free Market will make jobs.

The key issue with Technology is that it is taking up those low level jobs, where the strapping young fellow can get their feet wet in the business world, and work their way up the corporation for bigger and better things.

Technology replaces these jobs in particular areas, which makes working up the company difficult.

There isn't much demand for the starting paper pushing type of job, computers are good at moving data from one spot to another. So the new college grad, no longer gets a job, where he is interacting with all the people in the organization and getting a good handle on the bigger picture on how the place works. So in order to work at the organization you need to have a particular speciality in place. Thus being placed in a particular department with little chance of moving out. So your career growth now becomes moving companies as there is limited growth at just any one company.

Nothing to do

[Falos]

Look. Look there, at that guy. The young, healthy frycook.

Maybe he's heard that without exclusive skills, he'll end up in terrafoam someday, so he's decided to try and buy a ticket from the diploma printers, and trying to scrape together at least SOME of the gouging education costs (which have long since skyrocketed past "easily afforded with a 20h/wk part-time") rather than become another sucker hooked by the predatory student loan system.

Is there anything for this guy to do? We're already post-labor. We don't pay shit for "labor". There are no ditch diggers. Even those burgers he's flipping, he's only paid because he has the "skills" required for a warm body to deliver a result. The warm body itself is worthless.

Is there anything for this guy to do? He has a few options today, but the moment a robo-cook's cost ticks under his $8/hr or whatever? The existence of that job will evaporate. Globally. "Overnight", if you will.

Is there anything for this guy to do? There's a lot of naive posts saying "There will be jobs" with examples like fucking scientist. We have an ideal, motivated homo sapien right here, eager to work and rearing to go, and no robo-owner will look twice because nothing he does is worth money.

We're in tech, we've got some of the best tickets for The Ark, but we're not going to need ten billion robot repairmen.

Re:Not gonna happen

[ArcadeMan]

Your job, assuming your rights were protected 100% against illegal copying, still require people to pay for your intellectual property. And media is one of the first thing to go when a family budget gets tight. So your last hope would be to collect a huge amount per copy since only the rich will be able to afford it but there's a lot less rich people than middle class or lower class people. And even the rich people won't pay for your works past a certain amount, so whatever happens you still won't be able to live off that.

So your title is absolutely correct if it's the answer of your last sentence.

You're living in a dream world.

it is business, not politics

[swell]

In the US, a corporation has only one mandate- maximize profits for shareholders. There is no rule about being nice to employees or customers or suppliers or environment. There is no rule against manipulating governments in ways that increase profits. There are legions of lawyers across the land who will sue on behalf of shareholders if there is a perceived failure to take a profit opportunity.

This is the reason our society is polarized between the 1% and the rest. There are owners and there are workers. The owners enjoy low taxes and high profits. The workers compete for the scraps and pay for the war machines and government surveillance. The workers appear in the company books as an expense. To maximize profits, that expense must be minimized. CEO bonuses are largely based upon how that expense is minimized.

A new kind of corporation called 'Public Benefit Corporation' is emerging in some states. It allows profit, but these companies have a larger purpose that takes priority. This idea, if supported by the public, could help bring balance to the economy. OTOH if we keep buying from Public Screwing Corporations, abandon all hope.

I already solved this

[bluefoxlucid]

Amazon's automated warehouses become K-Mart's automated stock rooms. Check-out lines are replaced by assisted self-checkout, allowing one cashier to run 4-6 checkouts. Hamburger makers are replaced by hamburger making machines. Auto manufacturers use a fully machine-tooled line with only a few workers for final assembly. It's coming.

Our welfare system, in 2013, cost $1.62 trillion, of which $1.28 trillion was Federal spending. This is made up of Social Security Old-Age Pensions, Supplemental Disability Insurance, Food stamps, WIC, income security programs, unemployment, and the HUD direct housing voucher program. Just the Federal spending accounts for 37% of Federal spending, 46% of Federal taxes taken, and 55% of all Corporate and Individual income taxes taken at the Federal level.

If we drop the payroll OASDI tax and roll OASDI into general income, all income taxes increase by 9.34%. If we then slice those incomes by 55% and apply a 17.0% separate Dividend Tax on all currently-taxed Income, our tax brackets move from 16.2% on the lowest income earners and 39.6% on the highest income earners to 25.69% and 38.99%. Low-income earners around $9,000 income will take home $5000 more per year; middle-income earners at the $120,000 level will about break even; above that, it increases as high as a 3.17% take-home decrease around $400,000, again breaking even around exactly $2,000,000.

The base income tax system is progressive, and can be adjusted to smooth this out as appropriate; reducing the income taxes at the lowest level to around 0% would return the system to something resembling our current tax structure, with a 3% increase at the highest end. Considering this along with the above, the total taxes taken can raise from 16.2% to 17% on the most poor, and 39.6% to around 43% on the most rich. This compares favorably against current proposals to tax Millionaires and Billionaires at 45%, 50%, 60%, and 80%. Minimizing the taxes in the poor and middle-class ranges is a practical matter: it reduces their wage demand, reducing the cost of labor and slowing down all future transitions to new management strategies designed to reduce labor expenses; such management strategies have higher base cost, but lower labor utilization, and thus are cheaper only when labor is expensive or when the base costs factors of the new strategy have been refined into a significantly inexpensive form.

The 17% Dividend tax would be distributed among every natural-born, resident, American citizen over the age of 18. This specifically excludes the abuses of immigrants flooding to America to live on free Government money, and immigrants crossing the border illegally to birth an American citizen who then goes to live in Cuba or Mexico or wherever with a pension coming at age 18. It also excludes the abuse of welfare families popping out more babies to get at an additional per-child stipend by simply not providing one. The Dividend amounts to $6,558 in 2013; with the typical 3.4% total income growth per year, this amounts to $7,010 in 2015.

In 2013, a 750sqft apartment in a lower-class neighborhood rented for $725/mo, or $0.96 cents per square foot. Assuming an inflated $1.34/sqft, a 224sqft apartment could rent for $300. The model apartment houses a single adult individual and consists of a 6'x9' bedroom suitable to contain a twin bed and a small end-table dresser; a 10'x9' sitting room; a bathroom including a 3'x3' shower stall with corner sink basin and spigot mounted inside, totaling 20 sqft; and an 80sqft kitchen, one counter surface separating it from the sitting room to function as a prep surface and a dining table. These living arrangements provide an improvement over the standard soggy cardboard box inhabited by 600,000 of the United States's poor.

Assuming $300 for rent, out of the 2013 $546/mo, $246 remain. The cost of food is