Economists Worry We Aren't Prepared For the Fallout From Automation (theverge.com)

A new paper from the Center for Global Development says we are spending too much time discussing whether robots can take your job and not enough time discussing what happens next. The Verge reports: The paper's authors, Lukas Schlogl and Andy Sumner, say it's impossible to know exactly how many jobs will be destroyed or disrupted by new technology. But, they add, it's fairly certain there are going to be significant effects -- especially in developing economies, where the labor market is skewed toward work that requires the sort of routine, manual labor that's so susceptible to automation. Think unskilled jobs in factories or agriculture.

One class of solution they call "quasi-Luddite" -- measures that try to stall or reverse the trend of automation. These include taxes on goods made with robots (or taxes on the robots themselves) and regulations that make it difficult to automate existing jobs. They suggest that these measures are challenging to implement in "an open economy," because if automation makes for cheaper goods or services, then customers will naturally look for them elsewhere; i.e. outside the area covered by such regulations. [...] The other class of solution they call "coping strategies," which tend to focus on one of two things: re-skilling workers whose jobs are threatened by automation or providing economic safety nets to those affected (for example, a universal basic income or UBI). They conclude that there's simply not enough work being done researching the political and economic solutions to what could be a growing global crisis. "Questions like profitability, labor regulations, unionization, and corporate-social expectations will be at least as important as technical constraints in determining which jobs get automated," they write.

Comments

What about it?

[rsilvergun]

aside from climate change this is the biggest issue facing the human race this century. We've built a civilization around the notion that if you don't work you don't eat and we're about to run out of work. Productivity gains are already biting into wages. If minimum wage had kept pace with inflation it'd be > $20/hr. Instead it's about half what it was in the 70s inflation adjusted.

I keep hearing they'll be new jobs. But what I see is high paying factory jobs being replaced by low paying service sector jobs. We keep ignoring the fallout from the last few industrial revolutions. Luddite wasn't always a casual insult, it was a movement in response to job loses from new tech. It took 80 years for more new tech to catch up to the job losses from the last industrial revolution. This is fact, look it up.

Finally I get the people who kid themselves and say it's not a problem. What I don't understand is all these folks acknowledge the problem and shrug saying "laissez faire". Seriously, when in your life has the best answer to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it all works out for the best?

Re:What about it?

[sg_oneill]

Socialism, the real thing, wont happen any time soon, it really need genuine economic distress, the sort you see south of the border before people decide keeping the rich rich and the poor poor is not working out so well for them. Marx pretty much said effective socialism arises out of peoples self interest (And specifically as a class of people poor folks basically deciding theyve had enough and banding together to solve it). As it stands Americans have too much invested in capitalism to want it to go away completely.

However hybridized social-welfare systems are both plausible but also effective. Europe, Australia, Candada, etc all have similar histories of strong investments in capitalism, but have also adopted degrees of welfare to ensure people dont fall completely out of the net with health and basic living standards.

At some point politicians will be forced to realise that either they get a decent welfare and healthcare system in, preferably a universal minimum wage or some income tested variant, or people will start lighting things on fire or pointing guns at politicians.

Re:Income per capita is meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you work for someone else, you're a slave to their whims. I know plenty of guys here in Texas who make tons of coin doing their own thing. My lawn care/painting buddy from El Salvador makes over $100k a year painting two house a week in the Woodlands/Conroe/Spring area. He also employs three full time lawn care guys who cut lawns for the wealthier white guys at 75-100 a lawn, and they do 10-15 lawns a day. The lawn guys are making $60k a year, no nights, no weekends, no on-call BS. I'm half tempted to go into the trades myself because IT is a shell of its former self.

I started off as a Unix admin, moved to Linux, can program, admin about anything, but everything in Houston has been either outsourced or went to the "cloud". All of the wealthiest people I associate with are self-made: plumbers, electricians, and welders. All are $100k men and they all work for themselves. I've come to the conclusion this summer that I might make the break into the trades because they cannot be outsourced or automated. You cannot automate plumbing needs, welding in the specialty my buddy does, or running and installing electrical lines. Hell, my barber buddy made $80k last year in a two man shop. I'm fully convinced that a man is only his own man if he works and generates his own income and calls the shots.