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Half the Work People Do Can Be Automated, Says McKinsey (techinasia.com)
Half the work people do in their jobs can be automated, according to a study published by McKinsey Global Institute. From a report: Instead of assessing the impact of automation on specific jobs, the study went to a more granular level by looking at the activities involved in various jobs. The logic is that every occupation has a range of activities, each with varying potential for automation. McKinsey found that 49 percent of the activities people are paid to do in the global economy can be automated with "currently demonstrated technology." That involves US$11.9 trillion in wages and touches 1.1 billion people. The study encompassed over 50 countries and 80 percent of the world's workers. China, India, Japan, and the US accounted for half of the total wages and employees. Not surprisingly, the two most populous countries, China and India, could see the largest impact of automation, potentially affecting 600 million workers -- which is twice the population of the US.
A stupid article. Almost everything can be automated, the crucial question is whether it is cost-effective to do so. It is not surprising that a lot of the activities that can be automated concerns workers in China and India, because in most cases, it's simply more convenient not to replace an $2/h organic automaton with a robot.
Here is your anecdote. A friend of mine was working on the manufacture industry. They had a branch in India, and his role was to mentor the product manager of the Indian factory. For a long time, he insisted that the factory in India bought this expensive machinery that they had been used in the Arizona for their production. The factory in India refused to do so by showing that paying 10 people to do the same job, for 100 years, would still be cheaper than actually buying the machinery.
Moral of the story: stupid article, move on.
Why would the wealthy change how capitalism works? It serves them just fine! All they need is enough money to build a barrier between them and the starving and a way to import goods directly from other countries. Drones should be advanced enough to move goods from international shipping hubs by then, and land right in their compounds.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Or, maybe we could all just work fewer hours per week. Which would leave more time for, you know, living.
I heard a story from a friend who works with refugees. One family, he found a good job for the father, got them settled, etc. After a few weeks the father had stopped going to work. My friend asked the father what had happened, was there a problem with the work? Was it too difficult to get to work? Did they not like you?
No, he said, it was none of these things. He stopped going to work because he realized his children were growing up without him and it was his responsibility to be home to take care of the family. Once that was accomplished, then he would go to work. This then, of course, led to conversations about having to pay for things you need for life and so on, but I think there is a grain of truth here.
Life != work and there would be plenty of great living to do outside of work.
We create new and different jobs. 100 years ago computer programmer wasn't a thing. Now it is. The US agriculture industry died and was replaced by a manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is being replaced by service. As we start to eliminate service jobs, we will replace them. Perhaps artists will be profitable?
Secretarial work has been dieing out as well and those admins have been moving into different positions. Same with travel agents. Now we have wedding and party planners.
There are industries with a shortage of people. The economy is changing. People need to adapt. There is plenty of work. You just have to be willing to do it.
John Adams said "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine."
We do not want to hand our children our jobs.
Everyone is not creative. Everyone can't write, and most can't well enough that anyone would want to read it. Many can't sing, or draw, or express themselves beyond the level of a 3rd grader.
Does our current "fiat currency" "crash every other year b/c of market greed?" Yes, there are ups and downs in the market, but I wouldn't call it a crash.
And while I agree there needs to be a social safety net, people need to deal with change. This isn't a US problem. It isn't even necessarily a problem. All that said, automation isn't free. You can automate lots of jobs, but it may cost more to automate than it costs to pay someone to do it. Flipping burgers can easily be automated, but currently its cheaper and easier to train a 16yo to do it. They can also make fries, take out the trash, clean tables, and do other tasks. All that can be automated as well, but not cost effectively. Now, if we ever get iRobot humanoid style robots for under $100k, that will be extremely disruptive. That's likely at least a generation or more away though.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
The same arguments hit in the19th century. Factories were scary! The Barron's of wallstreet and CEOs ruled. Illegal immigrants from Ireland , China, and Italy were taking all the jobs. Professional box makers, clock makers, textile tailor jobs were all disappearing! It was the end??!
Or was it? It turns out without the industrial revolution we wouldn't have a modern lifestyle today. It sounds very similar to today. Replace ethnic groups and names of baron titans to ones today? Viola.
True you do not have housewives as rich tailors making shirts anymore. You do not see professional box makers nor time keepers (before alarm clocks they would knock on your window to get u up) anymore. But we have cars, cheap goods, and the migrants descendents are all middle to upper class now.
Goods will become cheaper as globalism expands these countries buy our stuff back as they enter middle class. Look at China? Japan was poor too. Now we make money off them. When the dust settles 50 years from now we all will be rich. Africa will be the last challenge. Everyone will be better off
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It's not people who refuse so much as who can't; and that doesn't mean automation will wipe all jobs away, either, regardless of what the doomsday predictors who fear the pneumatic air gun and wooden shipping pallet say.
Wages are paid from revenue--from what's spent. Savings is made by keeping wage instead of spending, and spending more than wages means cutting into savings or creating debt. Wages represent labor time, and form the basis of price: if you need 10 hours of $10/hr work to make a thing, it can't sell for any less than $100 (although it can sell for more than that), else you can't pay your workers at all.
There are a lot of weird economics involved; one of them is that the money transfer only supports so many jobs at a given time, and that trade and technical progress make temporary unemployment. Technical progress is the purer form: internally, new technology means some people become unemployed for a few months or so, and your unemployment bumps by 0.1% until the prices fail to keep with inflation and the consumers buy more stuff with the money they're no longer spending--which requires more labor, thus replacing the jobs. Trade resolves itself in 1-3 years generally, and causes more or less labor force growth--early or late retirement, grad school versus employment, birth rate changes, more or fewer immigrant workers (trade uses outsourced workers--sending money away, not bringing workers here), and the like.
During these temporary transitions, some people can't get jobs. Some people need to be around when we suddenly need more laborers, but also will only work half the time as a result of our fickle economy and their happenstance place in it. As trade and technical progress increase the purchasing power of our same amount of labor, a smaller fraction of our income represents the necessary funds to support these people, and thus the general welfare; eventually, that fraction is smaller than the economic cost of not supporting them (e.g. if a transient laborer dies homeless, then you need to replace him by raising a child--a useless human being who only consumes for 15-20 years, providing no wealth of labor back to the economy during this time).
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This study says that for the average job, half of it can be automated (the repetitive part).
Fifteen years ago, I would spend one hour writing software, then two hours testing it. Now the testing is mostly automated. I write code and when I check it in the automated system runsva bunch of tests. It then alerts me of any problems revealed by the automated tests. Automating half of my job has meant I can spend more time creating new software and less time testing, while producing higher quality because I never forget to run one of the tests.
And yet we have billion dollar industries built around watching people play ball.
My friend who is a handyman has a 6 month waiting list of jobs people want him to do. The house cleaners around here all have waiting lists. So do the daycares. There is work and plenty of it. They just require personal responsibility and initiative instead of just waiting for the boss to tell you want to do. Don't want your job to be automated? Be useful and adaptive. Add value beyond the machine.
My entire job is automating tasks that people do. Just because I automate a job, doesn't mean a person gets fired. It means the people responsible for those tasks become responsible for more/different tasks. Which I then automate. The net result is more is accomplished.
ATMs resulted in an explosion of the number of bank tellers needed because suddenly there were more things that 'needed' to be done. The realization that a person doesn't have to do a task, means that we can re-task that person. If you cannot be re-tasked, then you have a problem and it isn't that I just automated your job.