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'We Need Robots To Take Our Jobs,' Veteran Tech Reporter John Markoff Explains Why (recode.net)
Former New York Times technology reporter John Markoff used to think robots taking jobs was cause for alarm. Then, he found out that the working-age population in China, Japan, Korea and the U.S. was declining. From a report on Recode: "We need the robots for two reasons: On the one side, there are not enough workers," Markoff said on the latest episode of Recode Decode. "The demographic trends are more important than the technological trends, and they happen more quickly. On the other side, there's this thing called the dependency ratio, the ratio between caregivers and people who need care," he added. "For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally."
Population decline is an issue in many countries, primarily with low birth rates, but I think here they're speaking of the problems with population aging.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"Basic Income can never work because it is "central planning" and that has never worked."
No it's not, you're making that up. The government sending its citizens a check every month is not at all the same as central planning of the economy.
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The idle rich are a very small set of people. Most people do something with their lives given the opportunity. And that's the problem we need to solve: giving everyone that opportunity. We as a society suck at vocational training, and we can fix that.
In Germany if you want to work at, say, Mercedes, you'll be an intern on the factory line by 16, having gotten an education specifically tuned for that job and the chance to do the work. By graduation, you're there in that well-paying skilled manufacturing job.
America has over a million high skilled manufacturing jobs unfilled due to lack of trained workers. The companies aren't going to do that on their own -- they aren't schools -- but we as a society can surely work together with those manufacturers to make it happen. But instead we turn up our noses at blue-collar work, dismiss the working class as stupid racists, and generally separate education from labor as far as we possibly can. It won't end well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.