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Foxconn Cuts 60,000 Jobs, Replaces With Robots (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a bid to accelerate growth and reduce labor costs, Apple supplier Foxconn cut 60,000 jobs at a single factory, work that is now being completed by robots. As many as 600 companies in the Chinese manufacturing hub of Kunshan may have similar plans to automate their workforce, according to a government survey. Foxconn spokesperson Xu Yulian said, "The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labor costs." He added, "More companies are likely to follow suit."
These changes are spurred in part by a desire to reduce labor costs, but have also been made in response to an explosion at a Kunshan factory in 2014 that killed 146 people. The explosion was attributed to unsafe working conditions in the Taiwanese-owned metal polishing factory, which were recognized and documented. After the explosion, the local government pledged 2 billion yuan per year in subsidies to support companies that install industrial robots on their production lines.
These changes are spurred in part by a desire to reduce labor costs, but have also been made in response to an explosion at a Kunshan factory in 2014 that killed 146 people. The explosion was attributed to unsafe working conditions in the Taiwanese-owned metal polishing factory, which were recognized and documented. After the explosion, the local government pledged 2 billion yuan per year in subsidies to support companies that install industrial robots on their production lines.
Do it means all this Chinese unemployed manpower is back to writing fake reviews on the web and clicking links to generate revenue?
That sucks...
Those who say "we're going to build our economy by bringing back manufacturing" are deluding themselves. Those who vote for those people are also deluding themselves. (yes, this is a not so veiled Trump reference)
Robots are cheaper than Chinese labor now?
Having a bad job in an unsafe factory? Or having no job?
And sadly this will make the workers more desperate, the owners will hold even more power of them, and the conditions for the remaining jobs will get worse.
Thats what the manufacturers lobbied for, so it must be best for the country.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
"And so it begins"
robots will just push the manufacturing back to us where they get faster and cheaper shipping.
I know, those horrible lower costs should have never come along. We were better off when 43% of our income went to food (circa 1900), instead of 11.5% (circa 2015). We should have never improved technology; we were best off when cell phones cost $4,000 (1983, $9,000 in 2015 money) and 2 hours per week of voice would cost you $250/month ($550/month in 2015).
All we ever got for lowering costs were a bunch of whiny middle-class talking about how poor they are spending 40% of their income on junk, buying more and better health care, and buying larger houses than ever. Not only that, but poor people can more easily afford things like food, so they don't die and shut up as fast as when 90% of the labor force was farmers.
We were best off when Americans were poor because everything was high-cost. Anyone making less than ten million dollars per year doesn't deserve rich-people luxuries like cars, home ownership, pools, medical care, and cellular telephones. Only the elite should have internet access.
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That doesn't mean there'll be anyone working in the factories!
You really haven't thought this thing through.
You are welcome on my lawn.
. . . .the trend to automation of mass manufacturing has been accelerating for decades. The REAL question is, what do we do with the displaced manufacturing workers, who are becoming increasingly replaced by robots? And the "service sector" does not have jobs for them, either.
There is a rather ominous trend when you have a surplus of workers, especially young male workers without prospects. The long term solution is fewer children, as is happening in the West. But all too often, the short-term result is war.
I'm sure someone will start suggesting "basic income", and as automation increases to the point where we transition to "prosperity economics", that may well be the long-term solution. But getting through the short term is likely to be worrisome. . .
End good sure, anything thats messy and dirty will stay there due to epa regs. Or more correctly shift to whatever country has lax regs at the time.
No sir I dont like it.
On the plus side, there's probably less need for railings on the rooftops and pavement cleaning/repair services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
I've been telling people essentially the same thing. When jobs come back to the us they will be jobs for robots.
Your sarcastic tone was unnecessary to get your point across. In the long run it's impossible to argue with the benefits of industrial efficiency, and robots are a clear winner over humans for efficiency.
The problem is that society (an umbrella term encompassing individuals and their attitudes; government lawmakers and executives; and corporations' leadership) collectively has few ideas (and even fewer plans to actually implement those ideas) about what to do to take care of the laborers whose jobs are being taken away by this efficiency. We continue to see global population growth; there are more people than ever, but fewer jobs are needed as automation increases.
The whole "let them eat cake" philosophy won't work. You're talking about a 21st century revolution in the way business is conducted. You can't expect the current societal structures and economic theories to continue to work when you're making such a drastic change. The change is ultimately for the better, but only if we change our society to look after the people who will be out of work.
Let's hope that industrial efficiency and automation helps us reach the high ground, instead of delving into a horrid dystopia.
Still relevant: http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
Robot suicides.
Hey, remember all the crap that was going on about automating the ordering process at Wendy's? Wah wah the job losses? Robots are getting cheaper and humans more expensive. Even China is now automating to save on labor. Sure there's a few countries left, but as jobs go there soon enough they'll earn their way out of poverty too.
If your job could be done by a robot, it's time to start thinking about a new job. And also time to start thinking about what to do when most jobs are done by robots (owned by rich people or corporations) and almost everyone is unemployed.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You think we can do robotics cheaper than China? That is a laugh...... All the new robotics equipment is made in China.
love is just extroverted narcissism
That sucks for those people, but it was kinda inevitable.
As progress marches on, demand for unskilled labour gets lower and lower. In fact, one could argue that the demand for ANY labour at all gets lower and lower, as many tasks that used to be done by people are now done by robots or other automated systems.
This is going to cause problems in the near future: You can't simply fire thousands and thousands of people an not expect people to revolt.
How to solve this? I have no idea, but if we can make basic income work, that's one step in the right direction.
All true.
For people who actually HAVE a job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How long have you been predicting it? For decades, China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has lost jobs to China.
You know, if you plan to compete with robots for jobs, it usually involves whips and people singing funny-sad songs...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, all the new robotics equipment will be made in the U.S. by robots.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
It brings tears to my eyes. China has finally fully embraced capitalism!
That I would live to see that... *sniff*
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, there are a few ideas that eventually will be forced to take shape out of necessity:
1. Basic income. With all this productive efficiency that don't need human labor, either you deal with a mass uprising, kill them off, or you tax the rich (those who've benefitted) enough to quell the masses with a basic income. You'll then essentially create two classes of people: productive people and dilettantes.
2. People will, due to a lot of time, a need for work and that creativity humans are known for, create more stuff that only humans can create. One obvious area is art and personal services. We saw the shift from physical labor to factory labor when agricultural technology improved. We're now seeing the shift from factory labor to office and household labor due to manufacturing technology improvements. In the future, gadgets may be what food is like now: something only ~5% of the population needs to work on and is universally supplied to all. People will spend ~10% of their income on it just like they do clothes and the majority of spending will be on "touchy feely" objects like "artesian, infused craft beer".
If a factory in north america can make the same product with the same robots as one in china, then shipping costs become an unneeded expense.
However that leaves other costs for: remaining workforce, labor, enviromental and tax laws that may be favorable elsewhere, capital expenditure to build new factories, etc.
Silence is a state of mime.
After the explosion, the local government pledged 2 billion yuan per year in subsidies to support companies that install industrial robots on their production lines.
what this effectively says is that "workers paid companies to replace them with robots" which is only a good idea if the companies in turn pay to take care of those who lost their jobs. don't get me wrong, full automation is the [inevitable] future and it should be embraced but it will only be sustainable if the benefits of automation are shared rather than consolidated. this is the basis of a post-scarcity world.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ya, the US kinda shot itself in the foot. In a race for cheaper labor, it moved all that manufacturing infrastructure and expertise to China. The US government refused to spend while the Chinese poured billions into transportation and seed money to kickstart their world-class manufacturing industry.
It's no longer the case that China is just cheaper -- they simply do it better and on a more massive scale than anything the US could hope to do. The supply chain and business logistics alone is a nightmare to try to start from the ground up. That kinda thing takes decades. Good they China has been doing it for decades....
Just shut the hell up...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
what to do to take care of the laborers whose jobs are being taken away by this efficiency
You simply accept this as an obvious premise, when there is little evidence that the robots are really "stealing our jobs". Past waves of technological change resulted in temporary disruption, but did not result in permanent job loses. There is little reason to believe it is happening this time either. Economies are not zero-sum, and a job lost to automation does not mean a jobless person. Robots are used where they have a comparative advantage, but, by definition, that is not all jobs.
'personal services'. ... ...
But - what if you are not better than a robot?
I can (if rich) in principle have a band to wake me up by playing live music, while someone gently fans me to keep me cool, followed by a maid to wipe my bottom in the toilet, and
Then on to my butler bringing food in from the chef,
'Personal service' - some of these tasks are - in many peoples opinion - actually better done by machine.
The other problem is might I in principle like a butler - yes.
Do I want a butler who is an unemployed truck-driver who has had to retrain, and hates it - not so much.
Why should they? All the electronics engineers and component suppliers are in China, not US. You can't bring anything to empty place, you need to have whole ecosystem and it is long gone.
The "horrible lower costs" are simply delaying the inevitable, under current social and economic tendencies (at least in the U.S.), breakdown of society.
You cannot have a sustained and constantly increasing wealth inequality as we are currently experiencing without severely impacting the economy, and certainly not without civil unrest. Our economic model works best when there is a maximum movement of wealth through the entire structure of the society. You will always have a group of the disfranchised (for one reason or another), but if expendable income is restricted to only a small segment of population, things will get nasty very quickly - and we are getting close to that point, if only as evidenced by current favorites among general population for the presidency of the United States.
Automation is simply increasing the speed with which we are regressing to the old societal structure with a small percentage of wealthy on top, a vast group of people barely making ends meet in the middle, and utterly destitute for the "middle class" to look down upon (or be scared with by their "betters"). The problem with out current technology level in this equation is that it allows elimination of the "padding" in between. For quite some time yet there will be jobs that, for one reason or another, will not be automated, but at the same time the competition for these will steadily increase as others end up with no other employment opportunity.
The only winning side here is going to be those who control manufacturing (or manage to keep running the current smoke-and-mirror game with "financial investment" that is such a large portion of U.S. corporate wealth reports)... assuming they will have the means to control, or eliminate, the undesirable rabble.
But then, I'm pretty biased being exposed on daily basis to people who believed in the "work hard and you'll make it" bullshit, and ended up broken up and discarded with nary a thought by those who benefited most from their work.
Don't blame the American public for taking advantage. They have been trained to fill the consumer role in capitalism which is to look for the best price always. Just as a corporations role is to make the most profit always. The failing rests solely with government, which is the only entity that was supposed to be independent enough to prevent this from happening.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Jails and prisons fill up and in the usa do to stuff like cruel and unusual punishment they have better doctors then Medicaid. Room and board and so on.
I'm getting very tired of reading this same comment over and over. It never comes with any indication of where you expect these jobs will come from. Don't bring up buggy whips and horse carriages either, because the automobile actually increased domestic employment so in that case there was somewhere for people to go.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> We need to lose this mentality of selling our time and labor to make a living.
> and when I have an answer, I'll be sure to first make my billions off of it before I share with the World.
My company is pretty much fully automated from the customer's perspective. Our automated systems provide the service to the customer. One of the first things I did when I got hired was I analyzed the code and made the automated system run 30% faster, and more reliably. Because the changes which I did once were deployed to dozens of servers servicing thousands of customers, it was very valuable to the business. It basically multiplies my value by thousands of times - I improve the code once, thousands of customers benefit forever.
It's been true for a while and I think it will become more true - for a good income it's best to provide knowledge and skill rather than basic labor. I study about 6 hours per week, and will continue doing that. That might be a new frame of mind for many, that your job is to a) improve your skills and knowledge and b) apply that immense knowledge. Also, for ling term financial stability you've got to invest the 10%-15% of your income in income-generating assets, so you become a part-owner (shareholder) of the robots and other equipment through the businesses that own them.
I wonder now why if robots are doing the work and the labor arbitrage and savings and competitive advantage of slave labor is not longer a big cost savings why can all this manufacturing be repatriated to the USA?
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
China still has a quality issue. Yes, stuff is cheaper. Yes, quality is still suffering.
Artesian beer? Bud Lite, you mean?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mass automation of grunt work and more free time because of it should be a good thing. But, we don't know how to distribute the resulting goods and wealth. We seem to be entering a new phase of history and economics with different rules. It's both exciting and frustrating.
The economies of "mature" nations are not behaving normally:
1. The "recovery" is slower than past patterns.
2. Inflation is too low. Economies tend to do best with inflation around 2.2% (annual), but we've been hovering around 1.7% for a while.
3. Low interest rates are not triggering investments.
4. Investors and companies prefer sitting on cash instead of investing.
Taxing the wealthy heavily is one common suggestion for distributing this "jammed" wealth, but this rubs many people wrong.
Outright printing money and distributing it to regular consumers is another suggestion (AKA "helicopter money"), but nobody is sure of the side-effects.
Reducing regulations is another suggestion, but most federal regulations were put in place because one or more organization were doing sleazy things. We don't want to become a 3rd-world dump in order to compete with the 3rd world by polluting more and having abusive working conditions. State-level regulations, which are often passed with less scrutiny, are possibly a better place to clean up bad laws, but require state governments to act.
What are the other options? We may have to just experiment with one or more of the above, but admitting you are experimenting looks bad, politically.
Table-ized A.I.
That's why we need robots, AC - so that third world workers can have NO jobs!
Then you and they can stop your whinging moaning and complaining about slave labour conditions because you won't have ANY labour conditions to worry about.
See that? Problem solved.
You're welcome.
I really wonder why job sharing is missed?
I get the basic income and its really not a bad idea. But what I don't get is if you look at the current world, we see two trends.
1. People working really hard
2. A lot of people needing work
Sounds like a recipe for work to be shared. Fewer hours per worker.
Now I get it, not all jobs can be shared. But there are a lot that can. There's also a lot where you can just double up on labor to have a more resilient system or have people with assistants.
I work hard as a software developer. My wife is an account and somehow is always working hard. There are people willing to work who could offload some of our tasks. Yet, our economy is not managed that way for a variety of reasons.
We could start off small by changing the tax code removing the penalty for job-sharing. Get rid of payroll taxes or provide an equivalent tax credit for companies who hire more people. It should be a wash at the very least if a firm hires 1 person 100k versus 2 at 50k.
Heck, it should be in favor of hiring two people.
From there, reduce the work week and maybe even legislate more.
So-called 'Universal Basic Income' will not scale up; everyone points to small EU countries who are only talking about it, haven't actually done it, who don't have trillions in National Debt to deal with. It won't work here in the U.S and in any number of first-world countries.
You UBI people also make another fatal assumption: That people, not having to work, will 'find their purpose in life'. They will not. Most people have no clue, their entire lives, what their 'purpose' is, and never find one; these people need to be given a purpose; it's called 'earning a living and surviving', AKA 'having a job'. Most people will sit around, eat, have sex, get fat, litter the planet with their directionless offspring, and otherwise get in trouble out of utter boredom and too-much-time-on-their-hands, all on the government dole.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Uh...... what? Let me get this straight:
I write a post expressing concern for the welfare of the people who are losing jobs to automation (the "99%" in your undirected diatribe of rage against me).
You come back then accusing me of basically being a consumer (which, by the way, would have similar attitudes and behaviors in ANY advanced industrialized country; the US just happens to be marginally better at throwing larger amounts of cheaper crap at its citizens to buy, due to favorable foreign trade laws.)
Either you're replying to the wrong person, or you _completely_ misinterpreted my post. Or you're just stupid and have such pent up hatred inside you that you just spew it at anyone and everyone at random. Anonymously, too, of course, which is why you feel perfectly fine throwing such vehement personal attacks at me. I bet you wouldn't say the same to my face.
Oh, and for the record, I live close to the poverty line. Above it, yes, but nowhere near sniffing 6 figs. I'm a 50 percenter at best.
No that would be Olympia beer:
https://youtu.be/o2VcqffbbH8
https://youtu.be/lgn0NXckqQs
"Ain't never seen no Artesians..."
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Innovation and automation have been happening continuously for the past 250 years. Go visit a modern factory. They are already 90% automated. If you look at the slow rate of productivity growth, automation appears to be slowing down rather than accelerating, since most of the repetitive manufacturing jobs are already automated, and automating service jobs is much more difficult.
the automobile actually increased domestic employment
All previous waves of technological change increased employment. So why do you believe "This time is different"?
The thing is... lowering cost is a good thing for everyone. We do want to make things more efficiently and put people in less danger in manufacturing. The problem is that we expect people to support themselves with these jobs, and they're disappearing as robots can do the work of an assembly line much better than any person overall.
Honestly, I am a little surprised that an avowedly Communist country like China, is allowing this to happen. Mind you, not *that* surprised, this IS China after all, but still at least a little bit. I guess they really did take all the authoritarian parts of Communism and dropped everything that was even remotely redeeming about the idea.
Don't worry, with inflation moving along, we'll all eventually be making ten million dollars a year.
Cost of labor only applies to humans. Far into the future, where robots with advanced enough AI to build other robots, their labor will effectively be FREE. Meaning, wealth is a human social construct not applicable to machines with AI. So that said, what I see in the market is mass labor deflation couple with excessive spending to prop up those that are unemployed. What we have here is a wicked case of stagflation that's redefining the importance of "wealth".
Life is not for the lazy.
And to add further damage beyond the reduction of manufacturing jobs, focusing only on reducing costs results in a throw away culture. If you lower the costs enough, you remove incentive to actually fix anything that's broken. That's fewer repair jobs and far more waste.
Humans are too expensive to keep, so they should be killed. Except for the rich ones, who can keep themselves and won't share their mountains of cash with the rest. They agree with the robots: "kill them! nobody touches my money!", especially in the light of the fact that "get a fucking job you lazy human" doesn't actually make sense anymore.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
One basic problem of our economy is that unskilled labor is perfectly competitive, meaning that the price of unskilled labor is always driven down to the cost of subsistence. Combined with high structural unemployment, this also means that bosses can treat workers ever worse, because the workers have ever fewer options. As technology improves faster, automation becomes more frequent and things look even worse for the unskilled laborer because there are not even enough unskilled jobs to go around. We have historically solved this problem by making it more attractive to hire unskilled laborers rather than replace them with automation, but this has a trade-off: it retards technological progress, and we end up with a bunch of people doing terrible jobs that could easily be replaced by robots, just because we have a moral preference for work. We could, however, give an incentive to innovation and automation while also avoiding the problems of mass poverty. If everyone received a basic income just sufficient for subsistence, then workers could quit their terrible jobs without starving, and a large portion of these jobs could be automated without leading to any social crisis. We could also do away with restrictions on the labor market that make it difficult to hire and fire unskilled workers (such as the minimum wage), because losing your job would not put you in danger of starvation. Technology could finally spring ahead unimpeded by politicians distorting the labor market in order to save obsolete jobs. There would be large efficiency gains in society as a whole, as we could eliminate complex welfare schemes, and probably a lot of employment litigation as well. It is not a perfect system, since much of the gains would be redistributed from the owners of capital (who will benefit from the automation) to our unskilled laborers. This is, of course, a massive distortion in the labor market, but I would argue that it is a better distortion than the complex system we have now, which hinders technological progress. Instead of forcing companies to keep people in obsolete jobs, these workers would have time and opportunity for re-training, increasing the pool of skilled laborers and making technological investment easier. If someone is really unable to learn any useful skills, they might just receive the basic income and remain unemployed, but this is already what happens in our current economy; we just have a gigantic welfare bureaucracy designed to pretend that we're not already doing this. A basic income would streamline welfare and shrink all levels of government massively, leading to further savings.
You might say that it's immoral to give millions of people a living wage for nothing, and that it will ruin the country, but we actually already do this: it's called "inherited wealth." Many millions of Americans inherit enough wealth that they would never have to work if they didn't want to, and yet they are still in the labor force. Humans have worked for millions of years. Each generation has left something lasting for the following generations to build upon, and we're finally reaching a point whereby we can successfully automate most unskilled labor. By instituting a basic income, we would simply acknowledge that the world's capital stock is, to a certain extent, the common heritage of mankind. We would also get a lot of awesome robots.
Actually, maybe I'm totally wrong and a basic income combined with eliminating a minimum wage would make it more attractive to hire humans, since you could pay them less. Who knows? What's the worst that could happen?
One hopes those 60k now unemployed take some time and read up on what Chairman Mao might advise in his Little Red Book - unless CentralParty Corporation has already banned it (along with Das Kapital).
Most people will sit around, eat, have sex, get fat, litter the planet with their directionless offspring, and otherwise get in trouble out of utter boredom and too-much-time-on-their-hands, all on the government dole.
Yes, this is exactly what the millions of Americans who are independently wealthy do all day. Or do they actually get a great education, work even harder than everyone else, and make great contributions to our society? Probably a little of both. If you don't think inherited wealth ruins the rich, there is no reason to think that a UBI will ruin the poor either; unless you think that the poor are inferior in an absolute and unchangeable sense.
Dude, don't get upset.
For every person that misinterprets your meaning, there is a person like me, that likes reading you
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Because I choose not to accept anything on blind faith. The world is different, the economy is different, corporations are larger and more powerful and people are now seen as an expense not an investment, we have globalization. I have every reason to think this time will be different. How could you not think this time will be different?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This sort of automation only happens when a $15/hour minimum wage is introduced!!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that society (an umbrella term encompassing individuals and their attitudes; government lawmakers and executives; and corporations' leadership) collectively has few ideas (and even fewer plans to actually implement those ideas) about what to do to take care of the laborers whose jobs are being taken away by this efficiency.
It's time. If you do it too quickly, your unemployment rate spikes. Unemployment is a constant because of technical progress; unemployment from technical progress leads to new jobs as costs cause reductions in price (people keep arguing this is false while the proportion of income that buys any given good keeps dropping...), giving consumers the power to buy new things, requiring labor for production (which creates the basis of their price--their cost); and technical unemployment coming *faster* than new job creation leads to rising unemployment. Too much at once means Industrial Revolution: 85% unemployment for 70-100 years because a tiny consumer market only recovers fractionally.
More in a bit.
We continue to see global population growth; there are more people than ever, but fewer jobs are needed as automation increases.
This is a contradiction; it's inobvious due to economic complexity.
Technical growth tends to reduce scarcity.
In a nutshell, scarcity occurs when costs grow faster than scale. For example: You have fertile land enough to feed 1,000,000 people, and have 500,000 people; 10% of your population (50,000) is needed to produce food. Add 20% more people (+100,000) and you need 10% of those to make food (10,000): 600,000 people, 60,000 people involved in food, food takes the same labor time, invokes the same cost per unit food.
Once you have 1,000,000 people, it changes. Growing your population by 20% (200,000) means you have to use less-fertile land. You normally need 20,000 people to produce food for the extra 200,000 people; but now, with this poor-quality land, you have to bring in irrigation and fertilizer. Even so, the land produces 80% of the yield, so you need 1.25 times the raw land and thus the labor, fertilizer, and irrigation all scale. So per unit land, you now need 14%; and you need 1.25 times that, so 17.5%. That means making food for those next 200,000 people requires not 20,000 laborers, but 35,000--*that* food is 75% more expensive.
In 1970, India produced 2 tonnes of rice per hectare, selling for $550/tonne (~$3,000/tonne in 2000); by 2000, India produced over 6 tonnes of rice per hectare, selling for under $200/tonne. That's three times the rice per unit of land, and a total reduction to under 7% as much labor per tonne of rice. The straight reduction just means rice costs less; it's the producing more rice per unit land we're looking at here: your scarcity cap is now three times as high. Where you could produce food to scale up to 1,000,000 people without the price per unit food increasing, you can now scale up to 3,000,000 people.
That's where your population growth comes from, and it's where it stops: scarcity pressure always triggers a population arrest. I have no idea why. It works that way on animals, too: they just stop breeding as much when there's not enough food. It's especially weird with humans, since there's no reason rich and middle-class--who can financially handle more and more children--would decide to scale back their breeding. In theory, all rich people are Angelina Julie.
You can't expect the current societal structures and economic theories to continue to work when you're making such a drastic change.
They do. My economic theories are prototypical to modern economic theories; I aim at mechanism (hence why all things are labor: capital--machines, etc.--is produced and maintained via labor; land--mines, ore, etc.--is a mediator replaceable by other means, and we select based on technical progress) while others aim at measurement (hence why supply-and
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More people have jobs now than in 2010, and the unemployment rate is low... really low. Labor participation is still freakishly high and needs to come down, though.
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Innovation and automation have been happening continuously for the past 250 years. Go visit a modern factory. They are already 90% automated. If you look at the slow rate of productivity growth, automation appears to be slowing down rather than accelerating, since most of the repetitive manufacturing jobs are already automated, and automating service jobs is much more difficult.
the automobile actually increased domestic employment
All previous waves of technological change increased employment. So why do you believe "This time is different"?
Personally, I see it because machines are getting smarter and smarter faster. Once Machine Intelligence matures a little further and is coupled with automation, we're going to see this type of thing cut in to more markets.
Can't handle the truth? Need to live in a fantasy where the middle-class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer, jobs are drying up, and all the growth that's made our country and our world *extremely* wealthy never happened?
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Nothing has really changed. If anything, it has become easier. It was pretty difficult in the old days to change professions. Your father was a rice cutter, you became a rice cutter. Your family's name in rice cutting got you the business you needed to make the money when you replaced your father. It wasn't as easy to switch to coconut picking, cotton picking, fishing, or cattle raising because automation replaced 4/5 guys in rice. Your last name didn't have a history in those fields to get you enough business to make it a lively hood.
You also needed to be an apprentice for a master and Masters just didn't take people from other professions just because they showed up at the door and said "I lost my job."
Today, there is a tremendous amount of access to change careers. The same family can actually have members with different careers and can choose to change it mid-life. Something that was very difficult to do 100 years ago.
What we face today isn't a bigger problem than what the Industrial Revolution, end of WWI & WWII, discovery of the Americas, and prior similar labor events had.
Yeah, I don't have any monetary policy theory about that. Inflationary fiat currency is the best type of currency, and we need some kind of strategy to replace $4 million gasoline with $$4 gasoline eventually.
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My point is that there isn't a good reason to bring back manufacturing if there aren't going to be any jobs coming with it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You've just put your finger on it.
3. How people will find purpose and happiness when AI and robots are better than them at most things needed in the economy.
Oh, that problem and
2. massive ecosystem and species loss and
1. global warming
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Well said, but you missed a big one: Goods that are imported are taxed at a much higher rate than materials that are imported. If we can make the same product with the same robots and not need to both ship and get import taxed on the final product, it likely makes it really cheap. And that is even if we still have to import the raw materials in bulk.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
are those robots under-aged?
This just supports what Trump has said all along about straight white males being discriminated against.
Who's going to buy those goods, given a robot workforce?
You are welcome on my lawn.
enough to try and kill themselves?
Let me add, I'm not really saying things will be different this time. I'm saying this is all part of a continuing trend; the same automation trend that you are talking about. Except now automation is not just for factories, it is for everything. It is a known fact that salaries have been stagnant since the 70's despite a 12x increase in productivity. Executives now make, what, 800x more than the common worker as opposed to 20x more in recent memory. Everything is changing and the end game has always been to lower costs as much as possible. Except when automation was expensive or not available, people were seen as necessary cost and now they are expendable. Really this is all obvious, not even sure why I'm taking the time to explain it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm trying to deduce what kind of belief system might be behind such a post, and I concluded (charitably) that you are being sarcastic with the intent to imply that we *shouldn't* be displacing workers with automation.
Great, OK.
So let's just completely do away with all automated information systems. We can keep computers because human beings can manually input data into them for public benefit (e.g. Wikipedia), but oh no, we can't automate anything, because that takes *jobs*.
Want to buy a new piece of electronic equipment? Head to your local Best Buy. We don't need no stinkin' automated Amazon warehouse taking all our jerbs! Oh, and by the way, that piece of electronics you just bought is hand-soldered, hand-machined, and completely unique. It's "Artisan". It's also anyone's guess as to whether the thing actually works. Why is my coworker's laptop 20% faster and much more stable than mine? Why, because a more experienced Artisan crafted it, of course.
Want to file for retirement? Head to your local Social Security office. We don't need no stinkin' online form taking all our jerbs!
Want to safely operate an airplane? Better bring all those Flight Engineers out of retirement and re-expand cockpits with a third seat and a console full of analog dials and switches. Hey, at least if he flips the wrong switch, the computer won't be there to automatically warn him that he's a stupid idiot about to kill 220 people, right?
Want to buy a train ticket? Great. Go talk to the lady at the counter, rather than sliding your credit card into the machine. At least she'll smile at you, possibly share interesting and engaging stories about her life, and help you out with a free ticket on that one day when you forgot your wallet. (This one is sincere; I really do like ticket agents and the personal service quality they bring to the experience of public transportation.)
Here's the thing, though. There are some jobs that computers and machines (or machines controlled by computers) do better than humans. Repetitive, mindless jobs. Mechanical jobs.
The reason we're able to produce so much stuff so efficiently today is because we use all these machines and all this automation to increase yield without having to pay umpteen workers to do it.
Heck, I think it would be nigh impossible to feed the world's population today without modern agriculture. Think of how many more jobs it would take to till fields by hand with scythes and manure, compared to tractors and artificial chemicals! We have an incredible capacity for converting petroleum into food. But that's suddenly a bad thing because of the potential jobs that could be handed out if we didn't do that? (BTW, it's worth mentioning that nobody *needs* to go hungry in the world today with our current food production. Hunger is a distribution (of wealth, and food) problem, not a capacity problem. It would definitely be a capacity problem if we resorted to fully manual farming, though.)
If you acknowledge these points, then you must acknowledge that industrial efficiency is beneficial. And once you accept that, the whole shaky house of cards built around "dem machines taken our jerbs!" falls down. It's only "your" job as long as it's needed.
But, as I emphasized in my first post, I don't think we can just sit back and not care about all the displaced workers. We need to have a good solution in place to ensure that these people can lead happy, fulfilled lives and also present them with opportunities to change to careers that have not been automated (yet), or indeed, careers that might never be automatable.
Will robot consumers come back with the factory?
Because I choose not to accept anything on blind faith.
It does not require "blind faith" to believe that the tomorrow will be more-or-less like today.
The world is different, the economy is different
Basic economic principles apply just as much today as they did in the past.
corporations are larger and more powerful
No they aren't. A century ago, the largest corporation, Standard Oil, was 2% of the economy. Today, the largest corporation, Apple, is a tiny fraction of that. Concentration of power in corporations has greatly diminished.
people are now seen as an expense not an investment
Corporations have always seen people as an expense.
we have globalization.
As a percentage of the economy, international trade was higher in the spring of 1914 than it is today. Two world wars and a great depression changed all that, but today's globalization is not new.
How could you not think this time will be different?
I don't see any reason to believe that "this time is different", and I also don't see any evidence. What is happening today is just an extrapolation of trends that started centuries ago.
Benefits are another big cost of additional workers. If health insurance was provided by the government that would help quite a bit probably.
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The US needs to bring these automated factories to the US. That will bring in taxes and some income taxes as not all jobs are going away. Our leaders are clueless at to what is happening in the world economy. Robots don't require OSHA protection.
Speak for yourself. If I had enough money to retire right now, I'd have more than enough cool personal projects to last me the rest of my life. :-)
But seriously, you're right that most people need some kind of work to have a purpose. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be corporate work for a company trying to make a profit. Right now, there are lots of nonprofits that just can't work because of the costs involved. I have at least a couple of them in mind right now that I'd love to start, but lack the tens of millions of dollars of seed money to build facilities and hire people. (I'm not going to hire people unless I know I can keep them employed for more than a few weeks, and that's not something I can do with my own personal cash supply.)
However, if I knew that there were millions of unemployed people on the government's payroll who would be willing to volunteer, that would change the equation significantly. Suddenly, I could bring in volunteers for the nonprofit to do the work, and I wouldn't have to worry about not being able to pay them, because they would be guaranteed enough of an income to pay the bills. I might even be able to raise enough money to supplement that income a bit, knowing that if things got tight, we could cut our expenses down to basically zero without our staff starving.
I predict that a basic income would create a new revival for nonprofits, providing a wellspring of staff willing to volunteer.
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Why did the author of the article single out Apple? Foxconn is *everybody's* subcontractor.
Kind of amateurish.
It does not require "blind faith" to believe that the tomorrow will be more-or-less like today.
Yes, because we're all galloping around in carriages cracking our buggy whips. And going to bed early to spare candles.
Economic investment statements always come with the warning that Past Performance does not guarantee Future Results. Sometimes even the longest ride comes to a permanent end.
So-called 'Universal Basic Income' will not scale up; everyone points to small EU countries who are only talking about it, haven't actually done it, who don't have trillions in National Debt to deal with. It won't work here in the U.S and in any number of first-world countries.
You UBI people also make another fatal assumption: That people, not having to work, will 'find their purpose in life'. They will not. Most people have no clue, their entire lives, what their 'purpose' is, and never find one; these people need to be given a purpose; it's called 'earning a living and surviving', AKA 'having a job'. Most people will sit around, eat, have sex, get fat, litter the planet with their directionless offspring, and otherwise get in trouble out of utter boredom and too-much-time-on-their-hands, all on the government dole.
Okay, calm down.
You are predicting that something won't work based on little more than your opinion. Let's throw some facts into the mix.
POINT 1
Taking the US as an example, since you mentioned it specifically, note that the GDP per capita in the US is a little over $53K per person. If the productivity output of the US were evenly distributed, that means that every man, woman, and child could spend $53,000 on goods and services this year, and next year they would have another $53 to spend.
Count only the working adults (about half the population) and that number doubles.
POINT 2
Productivity has about doubled since 1970. That's only 40 years ago. If you believe the trend is linear, it will double again in another 40 years, but if it is exponential, then it will quadrouple in another 40 years.
POINT 3
A hypothetical $1,000,000 invested in an index fund is expected to return around 7% interest over the long term. You need to take the long view on this rate, and not cherry-pick individual past decades - it's been consistent with the rise of productivity. See point 2 above.
Given 1% for management fees and 2% to account for inflation, that $1 million would pay out $40,000 per year in perpetuity.
The US could start a process of putting $1 million deposits aside and awarding the payouts to working class people on some schedule. A lottery, for example. If you want to work, you don't have to enter the lottery.
Note that the cost of the Iraq war was $1.7 trillion dollars, spent over a decade. That amount of money awarded to worker annuities could have reduced the workforce by 1.7 million workers, making the remaining jobs easier to find.
POINT 4
Note that we are rapidly developing self-driving vehicles. The first self-driving semi is on the road right now!
Even if the self-driving vehicle isn't useful 100% of the time (snow, limited visibility), by my calculations this will dump 2.5 million into the labor force almost instantly.
Note that Amazon is experimenting with delivery by drone. This could potentially drop another million into the workforce almost overnight. (If you include postal workers and some others not accounted for in the previous link.)
POINT 5
Regardless of whether you think it will work or not, something has to change.
You either make it work, or try to survive the burning destruction of the US, a modern recast of the French Revolution.
Do you have kids? You might consider what type of world you want them to live in.
Once Machine Intelligence matures a little further and is coupled with automation, we're going to see this type of thing cut in to more markets.
That will almost certainly happen, because that is what has always happened with technological change in the past. But just as likely, new technology will open up huge new markets for products and services that we can't even predict ... because that is what has always happened with technological change in the past.
and then, the new robotics equipment will build a new middle class, of robots, who'll ride in self-driving cars to fully-automated WalMarts to buy all the shit the robot factories are producing. Joy! Self-sustaining economy achieved!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
i think whats a little more important is that a lot of what we have is built on inequality elsewhere. im not sure how i feel about it sometimes. i like having what i have - a decent house, modest car, good food, im not hurting at all. but even if i had half of what i did id be doing much, much better than people in 3rd world countries that slave away and...well, it's not exactly great
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
That assumes that the people being replaced are capable of doing those jobs. What you fail to take into account is there are many people that aren't capable of doing much more than a basic manual labor job. The perfect sort for a robot to do. What happens to those people when there are no jobs available? In addition there's the question of retraining all of the people that were displaced by the robots since it seems few companies are willing to pay for training new employees.
The choice in the 90s was to sink capital into automated factories or turn the capital over to investors and offshore.... they picked the latter.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It is a known fact that salaries have been stagnant since the 70's despite a 12x increase in productivity.
Real (adjusted for inflation) household income in America has gone up 46% since 1970. Productivity has roughly doubled (nowhere near 12x).
Really this is all obvious
Just because something is "obvious" doesn't mean it is true.
We can build consumer robots programmed to buy the products built by the robots.
2. People will, due to a lot of time, a need for work and that creativity humans are known for, create more stuff that only humans can create. One obvious area is art and personal services. We saw the shift from physical labor to factory labor when agricultural technology improved. We're now seeing the shift from factory labor to office and household labor due to manufacturing technology improvements. In the future, gadgets may be what food is like now: something only ~5% of the population needs to work on and is universally supplied to all. People will spend ~10% of their income on it just like they do clothes and the majority of spending will be on "touchy feely" objects like "artesian, infused craft beer".
Sadly, as many have found out, the future has not resulted in 15 minutes of fame, or long tail for people's creative outlet... Inter-connectivity of modern social networks only seem to amplify the hit-miss of creative outlets making the block busters bigger and the long tail languish in obscurity. We have morphed into a winner-take-all blockbuster society (not respective of the actual financial returns).
As a specific example, a 2006 study on the Rhapsody all-you-can-eat music services, the top 10% of tracks (of millions), got 76% of all plays, and the top 1% got 30% of all plays. On the bottom end, the growth of the number of tracks with no plays at all in a week is growing almost at the same rate as the number of tracks, but over time the zero plays/week tracks were growing at an exponential rate. On the studies that have examined the viability of the "long tail", the general conclusion is that only the people that have the interest/capacity/time to explore any catalog in-depth even venture to the tail. The sad fact is that populations that venture into the tail don't appear to grow at the same rate as the population and thus are not a fraction of the population, and not even a power function.
Maybe when we have a huge population of your so-called "dilettantes" that create an audience for creativity, but the sad truth may be that when we get there, we will find out that there just aren't many creative people out there, and we will still have blockbusters, and dust collectors.
I predict the extra time we have simply won't be for anything at all except for social bonding (e.g., BS-ing sessions, etc), as we simultaneously don't create, not consume any broad creative outlets of our fellow human beings because they are inferior to not really even novel. Maybe we can just concentrate walking on improving ourselves by retracing the footsteps of the illuminati of the past like star trek TNG claimed we will do (notice how they all play old classical music and read old books as part of their self-improvement process)...
Welcome to the future, reliving the past...
If the floor jobs where reduced from 110,000 to 50,000 floor workers and each American has 8 bosses that's 450,000 jobs, Bob.
Nobody is starving in the US -- the rest is goalpost shifting by whiners.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
one factory with 60,000 workers... assuming humane shift times(hah), you could run 3 shifts, so... 20,000 people per shift. That is a HUGE freaking factory... like a basketball stadium full of workers, every shift, in one factory.
Same was said with assembly lines and mass production over craftsmen, and farm machinery over oxes and farmhands.
Did you know almost everyone lived on a farm 200 years ago, and now just 2% of the population works one?
All you guys, 200 years ago: Oh my god! Farms only need 2% of the work force? Everyone will starve with no jobs!
Machines tookerjerbs!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's not built on inequality; it's built on productivity and wealth.
If 60% of your society spends its time making food for 100% of society, and the other 40% spends its time making clothing for 100% of society, then we can all live in caves with no medical care. When we invent new technology reducing agricultural labor to 2% and clothing to 4%, we can build space ships and cars and have a health care system.
The poorer societies don't produce anything we can't produce cheaper here. It's cheaper because... well... the slaves have to eat, and the cost of food for a slave who hand-makes a set of plates is the same as for a person who makes 1,000 of them using a machine. Their problem is they're behind in technology ("technical progress" is the standard economic term), which is why we take the culture-destroying path of forcing our modern technology on poor, third-world countries: it gives them health care, reduces the percentage of their population in poverty, and increases their access to luxuries; although it does completely stamp out their culture and superimpose our own, rather than letting theirs grow to something different.
I can end poverty in developed countries at or above a certain wealth level; I can't end poverty in the world. To end poverty in your country, you must reach a level of technical progress which produces an amount of per-capita wealth at which siphoning off the amount necessary for each person to live at subsistence level doesn't damage your economy compared to the next-most-optimal welfare system. As a pre-requisite, you have to hit a level of growth at which providing welfare doesn't outright collapse your economy and spread even worse poverty for the attempt.
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Nor is the dirt floor existence these jobs, and environmental laxity, provided.
One way or another, union opposition in the wealthy west was opposed to them peasants.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
These changes are spurred in part by a desire to reduce labor costs, but have also been made in response to an explosion at a Kunshan factory in 2014 that killed 146 people. The explosion was attributed to unsafe working conditions in the Taiwanese-owned metal polishing factory, which were recognized and documented. After the explosion, the local government pledged 2 billion yuan per year in subsidies to support companies that install industrial robots on their production lines.
An explosion happens at an industrial site due to unsafe working conditions. Instead of pledging 2 bil yuan of taxpayer money for, I dunno, better safety code enforcement, they give the company money to help them get rid of the workers and put in robots.
LOL. The "People's Party" indeed!
Worker exploitation has ended for 60,000 workers at this greedy corporation!
but a factory in china can make them even cheaper with more pollution. robots + pollution == $profit$
If you don't think inherited wealth ruins the rich...
Actually, I do think inherited wealth ruins the rich... I'm not aware of any specific studies, but I think many people share that fear.
On the high-profile side (e.g., Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sting), many have publicly shared that they have a strong desire not make their kids into trustafarians... As another data point, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management indicated that 2/3rds of the people setting up trusts have indicated their concern about the negative impact of passing on wealth to their children...
Then there's the well known issues with lottery winners. This group is well studied (mostly because usually winners are public record). In one study, 70% of Florida lottery winners were bankrupt within 5 years. Apparently, overall, your odds of going bankrupt every year after winning the lottery go up 1% higher than the general population (because of geometrical progression, 1% is quite significant over time).
That's not to say people aren't "happier" to have inherited money (I won't argue people are less happy to have inherited money), but being happy, working hard, having a purpose in life, and making contributions to society are all orthogonal dimensions (being orthogonal does not make them exclusionary)...
I'm one of the people in the "too much work" camp, and I would absolutely love to split my job with someone in the "needs work" camp... so long as it didn't mean that I got less money. I probably could easily get my boss to hire someone to help me, but at the cost of my own hours (and thus pay). And I need that money, that's why I put up with a job that completely overwhelms me with work almost every day, because it's better than dying in the streets when I'm old like my parents because I could never afford to buy a house.
So sharing jobs still boils down to somehow arranging for workers to get more money for less work, at which point they can afford to work less, which then frees up jobs for the people who don't have work. Since that money isn't going to flow down to those who need it naturally (or it would be already), any kind of forced redistributive solution may as well just get straight to the point: move money from those who have it to those who need it. (Most simply: give everyone a fixed x% of the mean income, funded by a flat x% tax in everyone's income, which results in a proportional redistribution automatically varying by the mean income and the income distribution; people near the mean don't feel it much at all, people very far from the mean get or lose a lot). Then get rid of the minimum wage since there's an alternate safety net in place now, and let the jobs situation sort itself out naturally according to market forces; jobs will pay less, but there will be more of them, people will still have incentive to take them, and (back on topic) as automation makes less and less work necessary, everyone will automatically share in those benefits and we will gradually transition to a post-scarcity society.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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Motorola made phones just fine in America and they were plenty profitable. It's just that they were _more_ profitable when they didn't have to clean up their mess. The solution if tariffs. If countries want to brutally oppress their citizens then I can't compete unless I'm being oppressed to. You know that, you're just uncomfortable with the implications.
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How is a consumer economy supposed to work given a robotic workforce?
You better be prepared to have a much larger welfare state.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Same here.
I NEVER understand those folks that say, "I'd keep working even after I won the lottery".
If I won take home of say....$3M or so, upon which I could invest and live off the annual interest, I'd leave skid marks out the door at work. I dunno if I'd even give notice. I likely would, but who knows.....
But seriously I have a TON of stuff I'd rather be doing than working.
Awhile back I had about 7 months off between contract gigs. No big deal, I save just for this....
But may average day, I'd get up, walk the dog...jump on my motorcycle, and hit the gym for a couple hours, back home to do a few things, and generally....jump on my motorcycle (it was spring/summertime) and ride around New Orleans. Some days Id go see one of the many museums here, or shoot pictures in City Park, etc....always something going on here.
I'd do that till about 3pm when my friends would start to get off work...and then go meet them at the bars for a couple of drinks, then home..dinner, etc.
Frankly I could pretty much do that the rest of my life....and if I got bored with that....VACATION to somewhere fun maybe in the US.
Yep, if I had enough money where I didn't have to work...I would NOT.
What I listed above was just fun relaxing about town, but on other days, I have a ton of hobbies and all that can keep me 110% busy and satisfied.
I HATE work. I really do. The only reason I have a job...is to earn money to support my lifestyle (home, toys, chicks, etc) that I enjoy in my life.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There's an enormous amount of power to be gained by deciding who does and doesn't get to eat. There's an entire class of individuals with a vested interest in seeing that the problems you described don't get solve. Their high social standing depends on it...
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Since everyone on Slashdot is convinced that every Foxconn worker is a suicidal slave, it seems obvious the loss of 60,000 jobs will be received with cheers by those in China.
"At last, we are Free!" they will shout "Free of work, free of money that supported my whole extended family! Yay!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing is, most of us here in Europe already have it of sorts. I just checked the standard for social aid here in Norway, essentially the lowest form of benefits if you don't qualify for anything else and have no means to sustain yourself. Last year it was 5700 NOK/month = $8200/year + cheapest form of housing with insurance and utilities. Norway is expensive so purchasing power parity adjusted that's more like $7400 and since we have 25% general VAT, 15% on food the government will make quite a bit back so maybe more like having $6000 in the US. But with rent, insurance and utilities taken care of you can stretch those $500/month quite a bit if you just look for second hand stores, flea markets, giveaways and such. That said, some counties have also introduced activity requirements so you will be wasting your days doing community service, not just sit around and play WoW. But nobody's going to end up in a tent camp, unless they have such drug problems we can't really house them anywhere.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
With a post-scarcity society, we can go one of two routes: A basic income, or spend money on prisons, police, military, training, dealing with crime/terrorism when a disaffected populace becomes an insurgent populace. I personally think a basic income is cheaper in the long run, and can allow a nation to focus on something other than existing or basic security in its borders.
Even in 1984, the proles got -something-.
How is a consumer economy supposed to work given a robotic workforce?
You better be prepared to have a much larger welfare state.
Honestly, I think we need a much smaller society. Big business (profits$$), left-wing groups (votes), and politicians of all stripes (easy economic growth) have pushed open borders and mass immigration for years. Immigration is easy economic growth. But what matters to most people is not aggregate economic growth, it's individual growth.
I view the US as being in a position like a high-end university. We can, in essence, take in anybody we want to. I remember you posted that you were a UC undergrad (I got a grad degree from UC). UC maintains its unique culture and high-degree of excellence because it can select who it wants. If UC suddenly allowed in hundreds of people for the wrong reason, UC would change for the worse. Well, I'm utterly convinced that a robotic future is coming. I'm convinced that within my lifetime, most farm harvesting will be done by robots. (As a side note, imagine a a swarm of tiny agricultural bots that could zap insects without widespread spraying of pesticides--talk about organic.) I thin a lot of driver/transportation jobs will disappear. We've already seen a lot of high-skill/high-training jobs like lawyers disappear over the last decade, though that owes more to sites like LegalZoom.com and RocketLawyers.com than robotics. Doctors are next.
The US does not need lots of low-skill, low-education workers. I fully admit to being purely a pragmatist and not very empathetic the others here, but I do worry about what happens when the need for a lot of low-skill labor dries up.
I think a law outlawing over 40 hours per week unless you are a 1%+ owner of a company would work.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Push it to $12 trillion per year deficits and give everyone $30,000 as a baseline income. Sure there would be inflation, but everyone would have $30k per year to deal with it.
Actually the reason you don't have ideas to deal with it as it isn't a huge problem yet. People are last minute planners. So as it worsens more ideas will come forth.
Before doing something rash as basic income or other popular socialist idea. Something simpler can be done.
Lower taxes and simplify the regulations on business's with less than 20 employees and less than 10 million a year in income.
The trend and it has already started is smal local businesses are beating up chain stores in specific markets. Local produce, local meats, local clothes etc. the big chains are struggling, but mom and pop shops are springing up all over the place. Make it more profitable and easier to make them, and you can put people to work doing things that matter. Robots are good, but can't think and reason. So let robots do the mind numbing tasks. And let people work their strengths.
Bonus small busineesses come and go but they don't hurt and depress an area econimcally like when big companies do.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
There's definitely a trend toward robots.
But I don't even have a robot to mow my lawn, one of the easier tasks to automate. There's a lot of physical work to do.
-Dave
trillions in National Debt
The National Debt is actually the (base) money in circulation. If the National Debt was ever to be paid off nobody would have any money to spend. It would be counted as equity not liability on the national accounts if it wasn't for History. In other words it is not a problem and people should stop getting their panties in a bunch over it.
I really wonder why job sharing is missed?
Per-employee overhead, primarily due to unfunded government mandates, and government "head taxes", such as disability, and so on. Although there is also the matter of "flooring", if work spaces are not shared serially between employees as well, since you need per employee equipment, desks, etc., otherwise.
Until it costs me the same amount to hire workers so that 2 @ 60 = 3 @ 40 = 4 @ 30 = 5 @ 24 = 6 @ 20... there will be no incentive for an employer to participate in job sharing programs, and a huge financial burden, should they choose to do so.
I suspect that the marginal additional costs associated with training and employee management could be eaten as a cost in exchange for coverage, since losing an employee for a period of time, say in the 5 @ 24 case, means a 20% drop in productivity, compare to a 50% drop in productivity, as things sit today.
But until it costs mostly the same, the people who want to deal with the lack of job availability through a reduced workweek and job sharing, can "pretty much go screw themselves" (I'm quoting here -- don't shoot the messenger).
2. Inflation is too low. Economies tend to do best with inflation around 2.2% (annual), but we've been hovering around 1.7% for a while.
You believe the government numbers? I don't, the price of stuff is rising, they are just being really selective about how they measure it.
3. Low interest rates are not triggering investments.
Blame Obama... I'm a business owner, I have money. I'm not investing it because I don't trust the Democrats. If Hillary wins, I still won't invest it (not here anyway). If Trump wins, I will.
I have other business owner friends who feel the same way.
Taxing the wealthy heavily is one common suggestion for distributing this "jammed" wealth, but this rubs many people wrong.
That doesn't work. France tried it by raising the top tax rate to 75%. Result? Tens of thousands of the wealthiest have left.
The US corporate tax rate is 35%, yet few large companies pay that. Raising it will just reduce what you collect, not increase it.
Outright printing money and distributing it to regular consumers is another suggestion (AKA "helicopter money"), but nobody is sure of the side-effects.
Bull crap, the side-effects are clear and obvious. 1930's Germany and 2000s Zimbabwe.
What are the other options?
Reduce the population, limit the birth of children, and probably war... the long run may well have a basic income and everything made by robots, but the transition from here to there will be very messy..
It will probably involve a period where poor people kill rich people, similar to the olden days when the people revolted and killed their lords.
I'm looking forward to it.
Spoken like a poor person...
The difference this time around is weapons are not equal between rich and poor, government and citizen, and the stupid liberals want to disarm themselves.
Take it one step further, watch the updated Atlas robot video walking outside on snow. Now advance that robot 10 years and give it a gun.
Now build 1 million of them.
Who is going to be killed again?
Yes, this is exactly what the millions of Americans who are independently wealthy do all day.
Many of those people either had a good upbringing with parents that taught them well, or they earned the money and thus are not "normal people".
You average wage worker won't behave like them.
If you don't think inherited wealth ruins the rich
Plenty of people inherit wealth and squander it. Those who earn it tend to do better.
Trump's kids, for example, did not have the same "chance" growing up that most kids get. While they have learned business and can make something of themselves, they got a MASSIVE head start because of who Dad is.
And that is NOT just because of the money, but because of the knowledge, schooling, and exposure they received.
Giving $50,000 to your average idiot won't produce anything like the same results.
Human robots replaced by mechanical robots.
The big news here is, China's workforce isn't the low cost workforce any more. Now look to SE Asia and Indian subcontinent for that.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So, we're going to jettison everything South of the Mason-Dixon?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know you're just trying to be cutesy, but I'm always in favor of polities splitting up into the smallest units that people want.
We're already seeing companies like walmart doing the "job-sharing" thing, hiring people only part-time so that they have to get food stamps to eat. The only thing that would prevent that would be to lower the number of hours to be considered as full time, and then walmart will just go from 20-some-odd hours a week part time employees to 15-hour-a-week part time employees.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re believing gov't inflation statistics: I won't entertain conspiracy theories here. We can take that debate elsewhere.
Re: "I'm a business owner, I have money. I'm not investing it because I don't trust the Democrats" -- Why not? The best economy of recent years was under Bill. I don't count Reagan because he had a "stimulus" by jacking spending and debt way up.
Re: "Result? Tens of thousands of the wealthiest have left [France]" -- Where are they going? Let's punish tax heavens: they use gimmicks to suck away wealth and because we let them they keep doing it. Tell the WTO to go to hell: we negotiate on OUR terms.
Re: "[inflation] side-effects are clear and obvious. 1930's Germany and 2000s Zimbabwe" -- Different circumstances: apples to oranges. And, we can try it in increments so it's not an all-or-nothing thing.
Table-ized A.I.
Who knows where the jobs will come from. Nobody a hundred years ago predicted anything much like what we do today. Very few people working today do anything remotely resembling typical jobs from a hundred years ago. We have always found things to do for money when technology destroyed old occupations, why would that ever stop? Maybe most people will create universe simulators and play god. Maybe that has already happened and we are inside one of them!
Man, you really need that seminar!
been trained to...look for the best price always.
My mom's friend's mother was from Russia. Not only would she obsessively look for the best price, but she would spend fifteen minutes arguing with a store manager until they took 20 cents off the price of something (it didn't matter what, she had to win) to make her go away. She thought it was silly that American stores had price tags on things.
The American public has nothing on the Russians in his respect.
You're wrong. If you eliminate all other government spending (like you said), then taxes could go down by half a trillion, not rise to double.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
People have been predicting the end of the world for millenia. They have always been wrong. You're wrong too, and all the shitheads who predict the end of the world tomorrow are wrong as well. All those doom and gloom prophets have been wrong. All of them!
Man, you really need that seminar!
Innovation and automation have been happening continuously for the past 13000 years.
I notice how the burden is still on the woman in your scheme.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
machines are getting smarter and smarter faster.
The space shuttle could autonomously land itself with a computer less capable than a 1990's calculator. Control of a great many things do not require smarter and faster, the power necessary has been here for decades.
Conservatives blame everything on regulation out of habit. Somalia hardly boomed when there was zero regulation, except the pirate biz.
And many of the economies with strong middle-classes, such as Canada, Germany, and the European countries Bernie talks about are not lightly-regulated.
I think the "threat" of alleged future regulation you talk about comes from Fox News, not the Democrats. Turn it off: it lies to you.
Re: "it is the economy that drives the inflation rate" -- They are related, but I disagree it's a one-way relationship.
Re: "When you have no idea what policy is going to be one day to the next" -- Nobody has a crystal ball, get over it: wars and change happen. Trump is not exactly a pillar of predictability either.
Table-ized A.I.
Horses are doing fine and are no longer subjugated to hard labor. And more plentiful than 10,000 years ago.
Tried that. Depending on which group you were in, it didn't work out so well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Far more waste, but far more recycling jobs. And recycles metal is less energy intensive to produce, so double win.
Why not? The best economy of recent years was under Bill. I don't count Reagan because he had a "stimulus" by jacking spending and debt way up.
You don't have to understand, you just have to believe it.
Bill Clinton isn't why the 90s were great, the Republicans in the House are why the 90s were great. He was just along for the ride.
Where are they going? Let's punish tax heavens: they use gimmicks to suck away wealth and because we let them they keep doing it. Tell the WTO to go to hell: we negotiate on OUR terms.
No, you don't understand... They didn't send their money overseas to a tax haven, they physically left France. As in, moved to another country because no one is going to pay 75% of their income to the government.
Or do you plan to build a Berlin Wall around America to keep people in?
BTW, a lot of French went to the UK, which shockingly has better taxes than France does. Others went to Germany, Belgium, and the US.
What made it run out so poorly for the South was being attacked by a different country. Don't you know about the War of Northern Aggression?
In all seriousness, slavery had to end and, IMHO it would have ended, if perhaps on a slightly longer timeframe, anyway--soon Slavery had ended pretty much everywhere else, and economic and political pressures would have forced it to end in the south. Maybe things would have been nicer for the South and the North if they had peacefully split. Maybe not. Hard to say.
It's a truism that statists and those whose well-being is embedded in the apparatus of the state will always favor expansive government power. It's why the elites always favor greater centralized authority and are anti Scottish independence, Catalonian independence, Brexit, etc. What skin does Obama have in the Brexit game?
Soylent Trump? Eewww
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah right, you are cherry-picking combo's. Okay, I'll play this game: specifically what did GOP do then that made the econ take off?
Those 3 countries are more socialist leaning than USA, and arguably doing better per middle class.
There's often an optimum balancing point. France may have over-did it; I won't disagree there. Find the right balancing point like UK, Germany, Canada, and Belgium did.
You seem to be making Bernie's argument for him, without using the dreaded "S" word.
Table-ized A.I.
It [the National Debt] would be counted as equity not liability on the national accounts if it wasn't for History.
We're paying interest on it. That makes it a liability. One doesn't pay interest on equity.
The National Debt is actually the (base) money in circulation. If the National Debt was ever to be paid off nobody would have any money to spend.
How do you explain the money people used before we had trillions in national debt? The debt might make up a portion of the base money now, but it isn't the entire sum. If it were payed off there would still be plenty of money left to transact with. Worst case, people come up with their own medium for indirect exchange, one based on assets rather than debts, as people have done for thousands of years—it's not as if money can only come from the government.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The only thing that will get a lot of people to figure out that mass immigration is a bad idea is when they can more directly see the costs. So for example allocate a pool of money for basic income. The more people you divide that over, the smaller the pool gets.
I agree that we should reduce the work week. Hell, we should reduce it to a few hours a week. But this will be met with great resistance from the capitalists. It would significantly reduce the GDP. It costs more to train three people than one, and it takes more management and meetings to get everyone on the same page.
Frankly, it's usually the less mathematically astute individuals who are playing the lottery in the first place. I have nothing against people who play for fun, but if you are playing for a chance to get rich then you are mistaken.
You might be surprised at the jobs your local craft beer brewer has had in the past. Or personal trainer. Or the person working at the spa. Or yoga instructor.
There's already an explosion in those industries even now as they become cheaper while simultaneously becoming more in demand.
Well, the "gig economy" that's growing is kinda exactly that. Uber and equivalent services are essentially filling people with work on-the-fly.
The problem, as you note, is that laws about employment that were established for an entirely different decade still have a stranglehold today and have not been updated for the new economy -- an economy many find scary and wish wouldn't happen.
Think about the problems Lyft, Uber and Airbnb are having with cities going "well, you didn't categorize the people who work for you in the buckets we allow".
A little historical perspective: at the time of (and during) the Civil War, the Confederacy was expanding slavery and attempting to expand it to countries in Central and South America.
I know it's conventional wisdom to say that "slavery would have ended anyway", but few people can say how it would have ended.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We're paying interest on it. That makes it a liability. One doesn't pay interest on equity.
Only the portion that holders have swapped into treasuries has interest paid on it. The government can swap them back at any time to suit its monetary policy.
How do you explain the money people used before we had trillions in national debt?
That was part of the billions in national debt. As the economy grows it needs more money. And it needs more money to grow :-)
If it were payed off there would still be plenty of money left to transact with. Worst case, people come up with their own medium for indirect exchange, one based on assets rather than debts, as people have done for thousands of yearsâ"it's not as if money can only come from the government.
Most money comes from private banks. But they expect it to be paid back, with interest. With no government money being created the banks end up with it all eventually. Asset backed money has only ever been a small thing. It is barter by proxy and cannot sustain a growing economy. Credit based money has always been the big thing. Anyone can create it, the trick is getting people to accept it.
During probably ten years of my career I wouldn't have stopped working if I won $1B dollars (I might have taken a short break to line up advisors to manage it though) because I loved my development job -- startup companies can be a lot of fun. I really couldn't imagine anything more fun than those jobs - real enterprise customers, real solid software built from scratch, spirited debate within/between development/marketing/sales/support, a new puzzle (often attached to a crisis) on a regular basis. What's not to love?
Although, I might have begun to have a car and driver or a helicopter take me to/from work discreetly (the commute part certainly wasn't a part I liked).
As for the rest of my career, I would have probably quit and maybe started my own startup (or not -- depending on what ideas I could come up with).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I don't think the idea of basic income is that people wouldn't want to work or shouldn't work. As you pointed out, some smaller western european nations want that but most of the proposals I've seen see basic income as applied to the US view it more of an extension of the current social safety net programs and probably a better one at that; replacing food stamps, disability checks, unemployment benefits, etc.
We're always going to go through periods where there will be a lot of joblessness. This could be due to the natural economic boom/bust or massive technological change. During those times, it's better to have people not worry about the basics such as food/shelter and have them be able to focus on things with better long-term potential such as furthering education and rearing children.
A basic income with some sort of ladder system similar to the earned income tax credit would both allow people to not live in that stress-zone where they make no mental improvements and at the same time give them an incentive to earn more. The idea isn't that most people won't be working. It's that if they can't find work, they aren't living in desperation-level circumstances, which makes it infinitely harder to crawl out of.
Whether or not that works for the psychology of the US population is a toss-up.
So...go back to the barter system? You act like there were no problems with it and that common, controlled, centralized currency didn't fix a massive amount of those problems....
The average human has gotten more and more skilled and capable throughout history. That's an actual trend. You can read up more on the data for that from Erik Andeersen (yes, I know).
Mozart, by modern standards, would be a mediocre music player at best. The greatest olympians of the 20's would barely qualify for regional trials today.
Humans aren't static; we also improve with time. Your average McD employee is likely leagues more literate than many feudal lords.
Okay, I'll play this game: specifically what did GOP do then that made the econ take off?
They balanced the budget, cut government spending, and promoted a business environment that encouraged investment by private companies.
The 2000s were doing just fine as well, until the Housing bubble happened (and all parties are responsible for that one, I don't blame anyone specifically).
Since Obama, nothing but crap and anti-business nonsense.
Frankly, it's usually the less mathematically astute individuals who are playing the lottery in the first place. I have nothing against people who play for fun, but if you are playing for a chance to get rich then you are mistaken.
Well, if I'm not mistaken, all people play the uterus lottery, and the winners get inheritances.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say most of the people that became wealthy didn't specifically seek it out as part of a mathematical formula and more often than not got wealthy as a side-effect of other motivations (sometimes "fun"). Thus there's no particular reason to the children of such people to be much different than people who win a traditional lottery.
Perhaps there's some slight argument than there's some *nature* argument that such children got "good-genes", or some *nurture* argument that the rich parents instill some magic "hard-working" values onto their offspring, but that effect is probably just on they margin (you could have "good-parents" and win a traditonal lottery). They still simply won a lottery that they were forced to play and being mathematically astute or not had nothing to do with choosing to be born (but maybe there was some "fun" in their parent's contributions to the endeavor)...
Take it one step further, watch the updated Atlas robot video walking outside on snow.
Damn hadn't seen that one! For those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Enigma
Bullets are cheaper.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
The same way it ended everywhere else: it was no longer economically viable.
Seriously, do think it's cheaper to pay an employee minimum wage for manual labor for 8 hours a day, or do you think it's cheaper to be responsible for your employee's, food, housing and medical care? And if you do think so, that pretty much undermines your bullshit about "living wages" doesn't it?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
but lyfts and uber idea of employment is that they have the control and the works are 1099's that take most of risk but don't have the control of an real 1099
Check your sources.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You're just another person coming here claiming things will be a certain way yet totally oblivious to how it will come about and unable to link A to B. Waste of time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
True, Americans are also trained to not question their corporate overlords. What a funny mentality, isn't it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And now you've accidentally discovered the truth about our "free market economy". Minimum wage workers cost less than slaves.
Isn't it grand?
You are welcome on my lawn.
And that brings us right back to the inevitable libertarian bottom line:
"Killing people is a solution".
You are welcome on my lawn.
No one said anything about "everyone gets close to the same reward", unless you want to be arbitrarily loose with what you mean by "close", as I just gave an unspecified "x%", and varying that "x" could make it as close or not as we want.
Let's say we make x = 25. The mean income is around $50k/yr, so with x = 25 we guarantee that nobody makes less than about $1000/mo, pretty much solving poverty in one fell swoop. What does this cost everyone else?
Well, 75% of American make less than the mean income, so none of them pay anything for this; what they get out of it is always at least slightly more than what they'd pay. The bottom 50% of people would get somewhere between that amount and about half of it; those making the median income of around $25k would get around an extra $500/mo, the equivalent of a $3/hr pay raise at a full-time job. The next 25% of people who make between that and the mean income would get somewhat less than that, down to nothing at all when you hit the top of that bracket. The difference between the poorest most destitute person and someone at the 75th percentile would still be over $37,000, only $12,500 less than the $50,000 it currently is.
But what about the top 25%, who this actually costs? Are all their rewards gone? People exactly at the 25th percentile mark are completely unaffected, as already noted. People in the 5th percentile would end up taking home only $87.5k instead of $100k; still leaving the gap between the poorest of the poor and the 5%ers at over $75k, down from $100k but still plenty of motive. People in the 2nd percentile would end up taking home only $162.5k instead of $200k; still leaving the gap between the poorest of the poor and those 2%ers at over $150k, down from $200k.
If you think the possibility of making $12.5k for doing nothing is going to cause someone currently able to pull in $200k to do that instead of accepting "merely" $162.5k, I think you're off your rocker. And the average person making $25k isn't going to quit their job to barely scrape by on half of that, either.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Nobody pays for anything themselves. All wealth is social wealth.
OK, that's a slight overstatement. Kalahari bushmen probably still pay for most things themselves, but even they have (well, had a century ago) an immense amount of social wealth.
This is not to say that everyone contributes equally. That's clearly not true. But the wealthy are at least as likely to misappropriation and misspending (social) wealth as anyone else. And you can't even define "misappropriate" or "misspend" in an objective way. You can make laws about it, of course, but that is just abuse of (social) power, and (social) power is one kind of social wealth.
I'm temperamentally a libertarian (small "l", please), but I'm also a practical observer of human nature. If you remove laws from an area, the strong (in that area) will use their power to abuse the weak in that area...unless there are repercussions that they wouldn't like. This is not, however, a global assertion. Many people would behave morally, and not abuse power. But many would.
So. There's a real problem. If the wealthy can hire people to work for them at starvation wages, they will. And those who don't want to will be disadvantaged. If they can't, they won't. One of the features of a basic income is that people won't need to accept unfair wage deals. Some people consider this a disadvantage.
FWIW, I'm in favor of a linear tax system. Straight percentage of all income with NO EXCLUSIONS. Simple, easy to honestly administer, and doesn't require much bureaucracy. I'm also in favor of a "guaranteed baseline". y = mx + b. m is the tax rate, x is the income, and b is the negative of the poverty level, and is adjusted yearly. But only if commercial sponsorship of lobbying is illegal. This includes corporations, unions, political action committees, everyone. Now this doesn't mean that they aren't allowed to ask you to send in a letter or e-mail or phone call supporting them, it means they aren't allowed to pay you anything to do that in any way. And I didn't say anything about "while in office". It would also be illegal to promise to hire them afterwards. (Well, perhaps it should just be illegal to hire them afterwards? They *do* get pensions don't they?) This would cover ALL transfers of funds to anyone holding government office, or who has held government office. I didn't say anything about "but not if they worked for it", because that's not what I meant. Allowing government officials to be paid for non-governmental work sets up a strong perverse incentive, and this is true even after they leave the government. Let them subsist on their retirement package and the basic income. Or run for office again.
And that brings up the question about bribes offered before the person assume office...but I don't have a good answer there. (Well, I sort of do, but the best I could come up with is have office holders chosen by the selective service.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Bring back my Natalie Portman, NAKED AND PETRIFIED, goddammit. And get off my lawn!
Doesn't job sharing help dodge the ACA mandate (e.g. two 20 hour per week employees won't trigger mandatory health insurance coverage, but one 40 hour per week one would, oversimplifying away rules regarding number of employees overall)? I'm surprised this hasn't caught on just so cheap-ass businesses can get away without providing health coverage to their employees.
Due to political pressure from Ross Perot. I give that credit to Ross, not GOP. GOP didn't give a shit about debt under Reagan and Bush 1.
Please be more specific.
I'd like something specific there to analyze also. Many conservatives blame ACA, but other successful countries have HC systems in place that are not hurting them.
Table-ized A.I.
Doesn't job sharing help dodge the ACA mandate (e.g. two 20 hour per week employees won't trigger mandatory health insurance coverage, but one 40 hour per week one would, oversimplifying away rules regarding number of employees overall)? I'm surprised this hasn't caught on just so cheap-ass businesses can get away without providing health coverage to their employees.
No, you have to push them under 20 to avoid the overhead, and since you need a safety margin in case someone screws up by an hour (e.g. daylight savings time, or whatever), the normal number you push part time employees down to is 18.5 hours or less.
At that point they aren't "job sharing", they are "part time employees".
You also have to be talking about fungible workers, in order to get there; jobs which require minimal training, such as the one week you get before being put to work at McDonalds, or the type of job you'd call in a temp agency to fill, if you had someone out sick.
4@30 instead of 2@60 or 3@40, is still more full time employees. You have to push it down a lot further, so that's 7+ employees to push them to part time status.
And yes: you bet your ass that the increase in minimum wages has resulted in more people being pushed to be part time (or out, if the won't tolerate part time), and that the ACA has resulted in the same.
It does not require "blind faith" to believe that the tomorrow will be more-or-less like today.
Have you visited Colorado? The weather changes every 15 minutes, nevermind this "tomorrow" business.
The world is different, the economy is different
Basic economic principles apply just as much today as they did in the past.
But the economy is different. In America, there are both men and women in nearly every profession. 100 years ago, far more women were homemakers. People rarely moved out of state for college and then across the country for work. And as for (our understanding of) economic principles, they've certainly changed in the past 100 years. Keynes, Friedman, stagflation, supply-side economics. Shall we continue?
corporations are larger and more powerful
No they aren't. A century ago, the largest corporation, Standard Oil, was 2% of the economy. Today, the largest corporation, Apple, is a tiny fraction of that. Concentration of power in corporations has greatly diminished.
The makeup of the economy has shifted significantly. Work that used to be done within the family is now outsourced. For example, most people buy most of their food, rather than growing it. 100 years ago, childcare was not the giant industry that it is today. 100 years ago, the majority of Americans lived in rural areas; now they live mostly in cities. Because of these and many other changes, I don't think Standard Oil vs Apple is a relevant rebuttal.
we have globalization.
As a percentage of the economy, international trade was higher in the spring of 1914 than it is today. Two world wars and a great depression changed all that, but today's globalization is not new.
Citation please? https://ourworldindata.org/int... pegs 1914 international trade around 30% of world GDP and over 50% today.
How could you not think this time will be different?
I don't see any reason to believe that "this time is different", and I also don't see any evidence. What is happening today is just an extrapolation of trends that started centuries ago.
If today is simply an extrapolation of trends, then the future should be easy for you to predict, and you should be an incredibly wealthy individual.
"I intend to live forever. So far, so good."
The average human has gotten more and more skilled and capable throughout history. ... Humans aren't static; we also improve with time.
We certainly change with time. Convince me that literacy is important, and memory isn't. Remember, 2500 years ago the Odyssey was a story told around a campfire, and today people can't recite a single line of it if their Kindle runs out of battery. I'd propose that we are better adapted to our time than a feudal lord is, and that our odds of survival are lower than the average peasant if dropped into his time.
Japan had a quality issue. Remember that? They fixed it. China can too. And if they don't, do you really expect the hordes at Walmart to complain? And it's not just Walmart; it's also all those people who look at the major price difference, see the smaller quality difference, and say, "Meh... good enough." Harbor Freight sells "junk" tools that no contractor would proudly carry, but they're more than sufficient for your average homeowner.
for stories of robots fatally self-harming rather than work for Foxconn...
Requiem for the American Dream
I think you missed my point, which was that people like me would give people like them something to do, and they could afford to volunteer for people like me because they wouldn't have to work just to put a roof over their heads.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, the grand parent says that "You can't expect the current societal structures and economic theories to continue to work when you're making such a drastic change"
This hasn't changed. This has always been said... but the world worked out over all the prior labor changes. We never went into a "horrid dystopia". I did caveat that things were harder and now a bit easier.
I don't understand why the post was marked "Insightful". Population growth has drastically decreased. We are growing at a lower rate than throughout history. Even less so per person when you consider that there are more of us, more with the resources to successfully reproduce, longer lives, and less death. We have more food, homes, comforts, etc today than we did 100 years ago. He even uses a historic reference "let them eat cake" for gods sake.
The grandparent's post is history just repeating itself numerous times. The problem isn't even as big as past events and we did just fine.
Not me.
I'd party, travel....fun with friends, hobbies I have...chase more women on a full time basis....
But no, I'd never work again. I get absolutely no pleasure from work whatsoever with any job...it is only a means to an end for me, period.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Sorry, I misspoke. I meant jobs that deserve the name, not "something to do for 8 hours a day and take 8 bucks home".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well. Don't leave your house. I personally like having my servants bag my groceries, stock the grocery shelves for me in the first place, prepare my hamburgers, and otherwise wait on me hand and foot. I'm not rightly sure what I would do if the grocery truck just dropped its trailer off at Giant and nobody bothered to unload the food, put it on the shelves, or sell it to me. I guess I could go to McDonalds, where I would stand in an empty building in which nobody has unloaded the food trucks, nobody will make me a burger, and nobody will allow me to order a burger to be made.
I like eating.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
And that household of nine pay for that better TV by having to share it with three times as many people, along with sharing everything else in their household with three times as many people. That's an effect that already happens, can't be fixed, and already has disincentives limiting it, so it's a complete non-sequitur. Of course people who pool their resources can get better things, that they then have to share with more people. So what?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Call me back when men get pregnant and get abortions. Until then, it's definitely not equal.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Working at a startup never stopped me from chasing women - you're doing it wrong if it does!
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The same way it ended everywhere else: it was no longer economically viable.
Seriously, do think it's cheaper to pay an employee minimum wage for manual labor for 8 hours a day, or do you think it's cheaper to be responsible for your employee's, food, housing and medical care? And if you do think so, that pretty much undermines your bullshit about "living wages" doesn't it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery !Modern slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually. The United Nations estimates that roughly 27 to 30 million individuals are currently caught in the slave trade industry."
Economically viable, shmeconomically shmiable.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Good luck, so far nobody has lived forever so I call your odds poor.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The 2000s appeared to go well because of large government deficits. Clinton wound up with a balanced budget (at least by the smoke-and-mirrors definition) along with prosperity. Bush didn't do nearly as well, despite having a Republican house for his first six years.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It hasn't been possible for a group of enthusiastic warriors with personal weapons to defeat a real military force for a long time now. The Reagan administration ensured that civilians can't buy even standard infantry rifles. What such people can do is make areas essentially ungovernable, and I don't see robot soldiers doing anything about that for a long time. People who have something significant to lose aren't going to revolt like that, and that's how we've been keeping what domestic peace we have.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What's that got to do with people being little more than slaves. No, wait, slaves get food and shelter from their work, these people don't even get enough money for food and shelter for their work.
Seriously, slaves would be more expensive.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You just changed tack: your initial argument was that these people don't have jobs, but "something to do for 8 hours a day", implying that their work is not important.
As for your new argument, the bare-minimum, non-market cost of food and shelter for a human is something like $270/month, if you were keeping slaves. That doesn't count healthcare, which is now subsidized among the poor, although I'd assume slave healthcare wouldn't be.
Because of the inefficiency of markets in that particular aspect, the suggested (by me) risk-adjusted cost of food, shelter, clothing, utilities, and personal care for a single human in the United States with a different market is $580/month ($546 in 2013; the two years of growth 2014 and 2015 are 6.24%, and inflation is 4.24% over that period, so the modern suggestion targets a higher standard-of-living and broader risk reserves). The market adjustment is a 100% guarantee that every individual adult has that income as an absolute minimum; all current-market retail prices for the basic needs goods and services can profit off that consumer market.
Our current producer market doesn't target that consumer market because it doesn't currently exist. That is to say: the reason a single individual bringing home $15,000/year (or even half that) can't find food and shelter is he's such an insignificant, unimportant, and *unreliable* demographic that it's not profitable to target him as a consumer from which to derive income through the business pursuit of providing food and shelter to individuals of that income level.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Now think about how the market responds, long-term, to a minimum wage.
That's right: the set of minimum-wage jobs is unstable. Those people are risky, and must therefor pay higher prices to cover their risks. They don't have the money to pay higher prices, and so the cost of risk makes them less-profitable than simply targeting a higher-income market. The Government then steps in with HUD housing vouchers to bridge the cost-of-risk gap... for 1 of every 4 families who actually qualifies for such assistance; the rest go on a waiting list forever.
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Let it sink for a minute ... came to the conclusion you're saying we shouldn't give a shit about people who don't have money to spend on bling.
Wonder how that's going to sit with them. Hint: They're getting more, what do you think is the critical mass when they find out that together they can take on the rest of us?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Good! You got the joke.
Thanks for the detailed response. I do agree that most workers are not fungible in the way that forty workers working one hour per week can replace one worker working forty hours per week (to reduce the idea to absurdity).
came to the conclusion you're saying we shouldn't give a shit about people who don't have money to spend on bling.
I direct you to the uncontrollable certainty that your planned effort will fail to produce the intended results, and you conclude we should simply stop trying instead of selecting a different strategy that might actually fucking work?
Oh, I see. You're trying to argue by poisoning the well now, creating a fantasy image of your opponent that you can attack via emotional arguments.
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Same was said with assembly lines and mass production over craftsmen, and farm machinery over oxes and farmhands.
Did you know almost everyone lived on a farm 200 years ago, and now just 2% of the population works one?
All you guys, 200 years ago: Oh my god! Farms only need 2% of the work force? Everyone will starve with no jobs!
Ignoring that people left their jobs a the farms for much better paid jobs in the industry, instead of losing their jobs with no alternative - but hey, they can still compete with illegal Mexicans for farm jobs, right?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
What about the factory to build the robots.
What about robot repair and maintenance?
Whenever a task is automated with robots, jobs are created throughout the world to make this possible.
1. Design the robots
2. Build parts for the robots.
3. Improve the robots
4. Repair the robots
5. Paint (rust proof) the robots
6. Non-repair maintenance (grease gears, test quality, etc.)
7. Write code to interface with the robots
8. Document the robots (both the robots and the code API)
9. Market the robots
10. Sell the robots
11. Litigate all the robot related issues: patents, job loss, parts and price gouging, new laws, etc...
12. Build robots to build the robots (go back to #1)
Now, le'ts add to those jobs more jobs created when some of those who were laid off who start a new business.
After a significant innovation, the job market shifts labor forces from one place to another. It can take a few years but shifting jobs, not long-term job loss, is what happens.
It is usually only in the short term that job loss happens.
Oh, sorry. "... the reason a single individual bringing home $15,000/year (or even half that) can't find food and shelter is he's such an insignificant, unimportant, and *unreliable* demographic that it's not profitable to target him as a consumer..." must have somehow led me to assume that you want to say "if they can't spend, why the fuck should anyone give a shit about them".
Please enlighten me how I should instead interpret this.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please enlighten me how I should instead interpret this
Well, let's see what I actually said.
Our current producer market doesn't target that consumer market because it doesn't currently exist.
Gee, Larry, we could try to sell homes to this demographic of transient, unstable, minimum-wage workers! But wait... if we did that, they would frequently default on their leases, and not have money to cover damages they might cause. We would go swiftly out of business unless we raised their rents... but they wouldn't be able to afford that! There's no way for us to profit from this--or even break even. Let's just ignore them and do something else!
That consumer market DOESN'T EXIST. Businesses can't supply it because it can't purchase the service with sufficient reliability to keep businesses running. In other word:
it's not profitable to target him as a consumer from which to derive income through the business pursuit of providing food and shelter to individuals of that income level.
Compare that to the proposal, which is *less* income but...
The market adjustment is a 100% guarantee that every individual adult has that income as an absolute minimum; all current-market retail prices for the basic needs goods and services can profit off that consumer market.
Maybe if you were interested in actually looking for solutions instead of looking for people to attack, you'd see what was pasted right in front of your face. Instead, you're busy arguing that businesses should just magically provide unprofitable services and act as charities, and somehow keep operating when they have no capability to supply the service they're supposed to supply. Here's a hint: We can't actually take five loaves of bread and two fishes and feed 18,000,000 people, no matter how much you want to cry about how much humanity we should have about the whole thing.
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