Robots Are Taking Some Jobs, But Not All: World Bank (mercurynews.com)

Some Amazon stores have no cashiers, and Waymo is testing self-driving taxis. Are robots taking our jobs? It depends on what you do and where you do it, according to a new report by the World Bank released this week. From a report: "Advanced economies have shed industrial jobs, but the rise of the industrial sector in East Asia has more than compensated for this loss," said the report, titled "The Changing Nature of Work." That may seem like good news in a broad sense, but not to the people whose jobs are disappearing. Technological advances and automation are making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

"Workers in some sectors benefit handsomely from technological progress, whereas those in others are displaced and have to retool to survive," the report said. "Platform technologies create huge wealth but place it in the hands of only a few people." The World Bank recommends a new social contract that includes investment in education and retraining. Would that help American workers? "Policy-makers in Washington may have talked about the need to better prepare lower-skilled workers for the future transition, but little has been done," Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said Thursday.

Comments

This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[rsilvergun]

because they're afraid we might start taxing their robots.

Yes, your job might not be automated, but the millions who are about to lose jobs to automation (or already have) aren't just going to go quietly into that good night.

A lot of them will end up destitute. They'll start looking for somebody to solve their problems. A man. A Strong Man.

A lot of them will study and find new jobs. Your jobs. They'll flood the market with new labor and drive down your wages. This is what's meant by "race to the bottom". Some of you will join the ranks of the destitute looking for that Strong Man to save the day...

I keep saying it folks, we've got an election in two years, and it's going to be a turning point. We've seen Democratic Socialism work just fine where it's been tried. There aren't really a lot of other solutions to automation besides a war so big it kills off 30% of the excess workforce. And I don't think that's an option anymore. The rich aren't going to let us break their stuff this time, but we might be able to use the apparatus of Democracy to pry some wealth from their hands.

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[ceoyoyo]

The view of the job-seeker is so short sighted. People have been conditioned to think they *need* to have a job, which causes them to seek jobs, any jobs. If your job can be done more efficiently by a robot, why would you want to do it? If you derive self worth from your work go do something that's useful!

People need money, not jobs. The morality police like to equate the two, because it means people have to go out and do work to get the money they need. But if robots are doing most of the work then fewer people need to work.

I think we are entering a period where our economy changes in very basic ways, based on the above. That will inevitably require changes in the way wealth is distributed, as noted in the summary. I think you're right about the ultimate incentive to do this, but I hope very much that the rioting masses don't demand that the elite invent more useless make-work jobs for them.

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[fluffernutter]

Also people tend to forget, the people who do lose jobs will start to flood other industries. My buddy was in a similar situation and was laid off arguably due to automation. He decided to pursue his life long dream of being a residential contractor. He's pretty damn good at it too and has built quite a client list in a short time. Now he's competing with guys who would have had those jobs and the pool of available labor gets larger and wages get smaller for everyone. Just because your job cannot be done by AI, it doesn't mean that it won't be affected.

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[alvinrod]

Then perhaps we should do away with all of that automation and return to a time where over 90% of the country were farmers. The race to the bottom is precisely what allows us to live in such luxury, because all of the things that we need and many of those which we want have seen drastic price reductions because various enterprises were consistently finding new ways to undercut the competition.

I suppose Democratic Socialism works if you’re fine with everyone paying the majority of their income in taxes. I’m not. Hong Kong and Singapore do quite well, so perhaps we should emulate their model instead since they get those results for a lot less of their personal income. Why pay a higher cost than we need to?

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[bluefoxlucid]

because they're afraid we might start taxing their robots

Okay let's start with this.

Not enough pictures, but here's the gist: if the economy only produces hotdogs and buns, automating hotdog manufacture gets you producing 33% more hotdogs with 33% less labor. The journalist screams that millions of jobs have been destroyed, yet unemployment is low because we now need to produce 33% more buns and it takes 33% more labor to do that.

Long ago, we proclaimed America's economy was agriculture. Agriculture became more-productive--we make more agricultural products today than we did when we had 25 million farm workers, and we have fewer than one million farm workers--and there was this economic crisis because the agriculture industry collapsed. America didn't collapse: we got a lot of manufacture jobs.

General Motors was once the biggest company in the world. It was called the "Heartbeat of America". Manufacturing was American employment. We hear this story a lot today...oh, wrong story. There's a nursing shortage, and nursing is becoming a bigger part of our employment base because manufacturing is so damned productive. We manufacture a lot more today than we did in ages past; now everyone's getting into services--accounting, nursing, lawyering, even fast food.

So what does this have to do with taxing robots?

Imagine if we obsoleted 30% of our workforce.

Now imagine if the products didn't get any cheaper as a portion of income. We spent 40% of the average household income on food in 1900 and 13% in 2000--and in 2000 we ate a lot more food out of home, meaning we spent a lot of that 13% on services (the food number is closer to half that). As the cost of food and transportation went down, we spent money on other things.

"Taxing the robots" freezes economic growth and creates poverty. It's just raising the price for the consumer--or rather preventing the price from falling as jobs vanish.

If you want to turn productivity gains back to workers without increasing consumption, shorten working hours. This actually reduces the number of available jobs, but productivity gains increase the number of available jobs anyway.

There are good reasons to raise minimum wage with productivity and to provide a sort of universal dividend; the reasons you've given are complete bullshit.

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[fluffernutter]

Ah yes, the "cashiers and truck drivers will become robot repair people" theory.

wrong target

[1ucius]

" the need to better prepare lower-skilled workers "

IMHO, it's not lower skilled workers who should worry. It's high-skilled, highly-specialized workers. It's a big drop in pay from a "senior [X]" position to "new hire" in some other job category.

And that's assuming anyone will hire an old fogy into a new hire position.

This is the worst scenario

[hackingbear]

If robots can take ALL jobs (in relatively short period of time,) then human race will be liberated from labor, products and services will cost next to nothing, and people can do whatever they like or just vacationing all year round. The problem is that robots take only incrementally more and more jobs but slowly. So on one hand, increasing number of people have no work and no income, yet at the same time, the demand for those other jobs such as healthcare or elder cares are not decreasing, but yet people are not willing to pay for those jobs still requiring human (because those other people needing the services have no jobs.)

I think you're underestimating the upheaval

[rsilvergun]

caused by the industrial revolution. Luddites weren't just angry conservatives (literal, not political) trying to maintain some mythical "way of life", it was a movement stated due to massive unemployment brought on by innovation in the textile industry. It became a generic insult because we're so far removed from their (very real) suffering.

There was close to 80 years of unemployment following the industrial revolution that is seldom talked about (if you took history in high school or college you got maybe a paragraph at best). This is because text book historians like to keep an upbeat tone and because school boards are often staffed by economically conservative (political now) who don't want anyone speaking ill of capitalism. Go find a book called "A People's History of the United States" if you want a sense for how screwed up American history actually is.

In your bun example the problem is that the laid off hot dog makers can't buy hot dogs anymore. So bun sales go down and there are layoffs on that side too. But since it's food any you have to eat the owner of both factories can and will raise their prices (e.g. inflation).

Normally the government steps in here to maintain the food supply, but we've been pushing a right wing, winner take all form of capitalism since Reagan. Add to that food exports and climate change and there's a very real possibility that US citizens will see food shortages. Even if there's enough food to feed us it may be shipped to other markets where folks pay higher prices.

If this happens you'll have millions of folks with guns and no options. Like I said, they'll go find themselves a strong man.

You're hinting that laissez faire capitalism is fine because the system is self correcting. We know from experience that our food supply (and our health care system while I'm on the subject) are _not_ self correcting. We know what robber barons. We know what farm subsidy programs are for and we know that penicillin for children used to be watered down.

Bottom line: When in your life has the correct solution to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it goes away? Because that's more or less what you're suggesting.

Re:I think you're underestimating the upheaval

[bluefoxlucid]

You're hinting that laissez faire capitalism is fine because the system is self correcting

Nope, I'm suggesting that the jobs aren't all going away forever and that the economy actually doesn't work in this magical way people imagine.

The main point, however, is that the proposed solution is wrong. The proposed solution is to ensure the jobs never come back by ensuring the need for labor goes down while the prices don't.

When in your life has the correct solution to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it goes away? Because that's more or less what you're suggesting.

Oh, the correct solution is to correct how minimum wage works and provide a universal dividend. Basically, all the shit you're babbling about with our economy isn't a food shortage problem (you're trying to project over from technological unemployment to climate change with a broken bridge, and the point here is the economics of progress and the shift in jobs--climate change is a separate problem), but a liquidity problem.

Minimum wage doesn't solve any liquidity problem (it actually makes it worse); however, a larger minimum wage doesn't increase unemployment rates, either--sort of. The labor force grows with job availability, and a larger minimum wage reduces job growth, leading to slower population and labor force growth.

When you combine minimum wage with a liquidity-crisis-solving tool like a universal dividend, the minimum wage acts as a modifier on the money multiplier effect: each dollar from the Dividend (or any assistance program, social insurance, or other stimulus) is divided proportionally less into outflow and more into wages. Combine a structural minimum wage at 2/3 the GNI/C (basically $21/hr, although we'll need to phase it in over years) with a Universal Dividend and a robust welfare and social insurance system and you essentially eliminate poverty and retain minimum unemployment at all times.

In other words: the correct solution to these particular economic problems is to pour money on it so it goes away.

lower full time to 32 hours to start with X2 ot 60

[Joe_Dragon]

lower full time to 32 hours to start with an X2 ot rate at 60 hours going to X2.5 at 80.

What you're missing

[presidenteloco]

Is that we are hitting an inflection point where computers and computerized machines are getting better than (most) humans at most types of work. And the computers and machines can be expected to keep improving in capability faster than new educational techniques/tools can improve human capabilities.
So computers/machines will become increasingly superior (more effective and more cost-effective) to more humans for more categories of work.

So every time you say, increasing productivity increases production and adds more jobs, I will say that going forward, increasing productivity increases production and adds more work for computers and machines, with no net increase in human jobs.

Pre-inflection-point economic models won't work after the "machines are more effective and more cost-effective than humans" inflection point.

You can say, well that's never happened before, so it won't happen this time. And I will say "That's a simplistic and overly conservative way of predicting the future".