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Automation To Take 1 in 3 Jobs in UK's Northern Centres, Report Finds (theguardian.com)
Workers in Mansfield, Sunderland and Wakefield are at the highest risk of having their jobs taken by machines, according to a report warning that automation stands to further widen the north-south divide. From a report: Outside of the south of England, one in four jobs are at risk of being replaced by advances in technology -- much higher than the 18% average for wealthier locations closer to London. Struggling towns and cities in the north and the Midlands are most exposed. A total of 3.6m UK jobs could be replaced by machines. The Centre for Cities thinktank says almost one-third of the jobs in the Nottinghamshire town of Mansfield, near the Sports Direct warehouse, are involved in lines of work under threat as robots begin to replace humans in the years up to 2030. Jobs at the highest risk of replacement include those in retail sales, customer services, administration and warehouse work.
good to see it making the issue into the public consciousness. This has been pointed out a few times in these automation threads but it wasn't all sunshine and kittens when the first two industrial revolutions came. It took decades for other tech to catch up and employ people. During those decades there was mass unemployment, poverty and wars. We're about to do the same thing. Sure, in 80 years it might be all good, but you and me are going to live through some (maybe all) of those 80 years. It would be nice if we learned something from the last 2 revolutions and did something about it.
And no, retraining doesn't help. It's no good retraining for scarce jobs you know.
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Efficiencies including automation has a net economic increase.
Yep. And that economic increase goes entirely to the people who own the robots. Basically: the rich get richer, and the working class gets unemployed.
In retrospect, British attempts at protectionism were counter-productive. But of course, Trump has never bothered to study history, so he cannot learn from it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Imagine for a second, that a magical pill is invented, that prevents any and all illness in humans. It is fairly easy to make and needs to be taken once only at any point after birth.
Would you be seriously lamenting the unemployment of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff — and begrudging the pill's inventor(s) and/or manufacturer(s) their billions of dollars?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
They are blaming Romanians and hoping that Brexit will magically give them a better job.
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Protectionism would have helped, not hurt. Free trade globalism is pure money-theory wankery and in the raw it inflicts misery on people, to benefit the already wealthy.
That's not to say you cannot have benefits from some globalisation... but democratic governments inflicted poverty on their own people on a nebulous 'global agenda'.
Just because a potter could transform themselves into a buggy whip maker and buggy whip makers found work in an auto factory, it doesn't mean the progression is going to continue forever.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It was crushed by globalism. Why mine coal in the North of England these days when you can get it shipped over from places where mine workers are paid the rough equivalent of nothing?
Why employ people to make cloth, when you can get it from abroad where workers are paid next to nothing and shipping costs are insignificant?
Why employ people to make clothings from that, when you can get it from abroad where workers and paid next to nothing too?
so all the old manufacturing industries that made Britain the richest country in the world - all the rag trade, wool trade, mining, heavy industrials, they've all gone elsewhere where workers are cheap. This is a net effect of globalisation.
Now you can say it was destined to happen, and it probably was once the world discovered it could do the same stuff cheaper, but then there was an issue where the replacement work was heavily skewed towards the already-rich, things like financial services, but the powers that be required a large mass of workers to support the rich, and so for some bizarre reason we decided to import large numbers of migrants from these countries so the workers could get even cheaper to support the rich, thus making the underlying problem even worse.
But the rich didn't care - they were rich, were getting richer, and any social problems won't affect them.
The question so what to do about it though really boils down to sustainability, so workers would make things here for large cost (think hipsters in Shoreditch selling organic coffee for £10 a cup, or t-shirts for £20 each) but applied to the rest of the country, and a reduction in population so the ability to do this becomes realistic. Minimum wage would have to rise massively, and benefits reduced massively too. And all that would require firm borders that prevent the $1 t-shirts from coming in, or the welfare migrants, or the economic migrants willing to work for next to nothing too.
And that'll never be allowed to happen, the rich like their workers to be cheap - back when the borders were thrown open in 1997, the cry was that nannies and builders were demanding too much and we needed to make them cheaper so those with too much money got to keep more of it for themselves. And so it'll continue. There's a reason the rich "metropolitan elites" want to remain in the EU so the status quo can continue without impediment.
The industrial revolution wasn't kind to the average worker in the early years. Long hours, dangerous working conditions, and low pay. But over time it got to a point where a high school education (or even less) and a factory job was all that was needed for entry into the middle class. But that didn't just happen. It took a ton of regulation and unionization, - both of which have fallen out of fashion. At the same time, public education was greatly expanded.
In today's world automation does create some high paying jobs, - for the ones doing the automating. There are other well paying jobs, but they typically require a college education. Rather than making the necessary education free, like what was done in the past, college costs are skyrocketing. Many (most?) start their careers in significant debt. And will that education be sufficient to keep them in well paying jobs for 3 or 4 decades while they save for their retirement? Probably not. Technology is advancing fast enough that they'll need to change jobs several times, maybe requiring more time consuming and expensive education to stay ahead.
I'm sorry, this situation is different. We are not prepared. I suppose they weren't then either, but this is going to require some serious rethinking of what society owes people, what people owe society, and how they should be contributing.