US Companies Put Record Number of Robots To Work in 2018 (reuters.com)

U.S. companies installed more robots last year than ever before, as cheaper and more flexible machines put them within reach of businesses of all sizes and in more corners of the economy beyond their traditional foothold in car plants. From a report: Shipments hit 28,478, nearly 16 percent more than in 2017, according to data seen by Reuters that was set for release on Thursday by the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shipments increased in every sector the group tracks, except automotive, where carmakers cut back after finishing a major round of tooling up for new truck models.

Comments

Good

[alvinrod]

I know that there are plenty of people who like to complain about loss of jobs, but this is good. We wouldn’t be able to afford to own even a quarter of all the nice shit we currently have without advances that automated away inefficient human labor which makes things expensive. Go back far enough and almost everyone would need to be farming so that we all wouldn’t starve.

Not good [Re:Good]

[XXongo]

The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots-- that is, the rich people.

Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period. You can't work your way up from working class to middle class to ownership class, because there is no path upward. If you aren't a member of the class that owns the robots, you live on whatever dole the people who own the robots choose to give you.