It looks like it may not be safe for millions of unskilled, low paid drones. The next couple decades may feel like getting dental work done by Szell for the burger flippers, retail clerks, and most liberal arts graduates currently working in the service industry.
If 80 million of the current 143 million jobs can be done by robots, the FSA could grow quite large. I wonder how the country would sustain itself with 70 million people working, while 200 million sit at home watching Jerry Springer?
Luckily for me I happen to be on the far left side of that chart where it is relatively safe. At least until this guy shows up some day to replace me.
Eighty million U.S. jobs are at risk from automation, a central bank official said Thursday.
Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, speaking at the Trades Union Congress in London, said 80 million U.S. and 15 million U.K. jobs are in danger of being taken over by robots.
In October, the U.S. employed close to 143 million people outside the farm sector.
Haldane added the jobs that are most at risk from automation tend to have the lowest wage. “In other words, technology could act like a regressive income tax on the unskilled. It could further widen income disparities,” he said.
He did allow that, in past experience, technological advances end up boosting demand for new goods from new industries requiring new workers.
“Yet the smarter machines become, the greater the likelihood that the space remaining for uniquely-human skills could shrink further,” Haldane said. He said what was previously unthinkable even a decade ago is now reality, like a driverless car.
Being a central banker, Haldane further pointed out that the narrowing of slack is having less impact on wages than in the past. “That might arise because technology has made it easier and cheaper than ever before to substitute labor for capital, man for machine,” he said.
He said the case for raising interest rates in the U.K. “is still some way from being made.”
As a friend of mine( A New Yawker) recently said ” thank God we’re old and haven’t got to live in this shit much longer.” ..always a silver lining.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov15/labor-scarcity11-15.html
Why I Will Never Hire Anyone, Even at $1/Hour
November 10, 2015
In other words, labor had scarcity value. This is no longer true, as we shall see.
The second industrial revolution (telephony, radio, consumer marketing) required more training, but there were tens of millions of relatively well-paying entry-level sales and paperwork positions created for people who were automated out of factories. For example, my father made enough selling appliances at Sears in the 1950s to buy a house, support a wife and four kids and pay for luxuries such as modest family camping vacations.
This is simply not true in the third industrial/Digital Revolution: the jobs being created are not entry level or low-skill, except for informal menial jobs like running into Target to do some shopping for a highly-paid person who will pick up their items from you on the curb.
These menial service jobs are often awarded to the lowest bidder, while the enterprise that operates the auction skims a significant chunk of the revenues.
Believers in “technology always creates more jobs than it destroys” also overlook the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (and others) who identified the job-killing trend that cannot be reversed: the cost of labor is rising for systemic reasons that supercede supply and demand of labor.
In other words, the total compensation costs of labor rise even when labor is abundant or in over-supply.
Sounds like something a replay of WWI attrition warfare can easily solve. Now that the military is accepting freaks of every stripe, we should be able to eliminate an assortment of problems.
Thankfully, stir the pot shit-flinging is also relatively safe …… unless Kumar the Cowfucker suddenly develops a sense of humor.
Greetings,
The rise of the machines is something I’ve been warning people about for some time as I do specialized media work for organizations that have been discussing this and the implications a robotic workforce will present.
The various government agents that are present at these events see no other option other than that of everyone magically floating up into some higher (and better paid) level of employment. They actually believe that the machines will free us all up to be fantastically wealthy day traders, youtube stars and export moguls. It is rather funny to watch.
The scientists worry about the social implications that their creations will bring and rightly fear the calamitous effects of near zero employment. They wish to know how a society where only the government, some protected unions and the machine owners have income will turn out for the 90% of the population that doesn’t have anything to do (or to eat).
The corporations think that this cant come fast enough as they are 100% sick and disgusted with all the regulations that come with using humans to do work. I can tell you this, the very day that a machine costs the same as the human it replaces is the very day – no, the very minute that that human will be fired. These guys are hell bent on it and working towards it each and every minute of each and every day.
The bread & circus show will have to grow to levels not seen since the Roman Empire or most humans will need to be liquidated. I’ll leave it up to you to ponder which road we’ll take.
The only movies I will watch are of this variety. The taking of Pelham 123, 3 days of the condor, 52 card pickup, etc. the Jews used to make good movies. Now, not so much.
Katerra is archie.
Does this mean blacks are completely obsolete?
“But…but…if automation replaces all the workers, how is anyone gonna have any money to buy all the stuff automation produces…?!”
Seems there’s a certain mindset ’round these parts that believes otherwise.
I’d love to see their (rational) response.
I suspect Star will soon pop up demanding Trumpeting his hero Trump’s latest promise pass a law outlawing automation and technology that might reduce jobs.
Yep, that will work.
“Demanding and Trumpeting” it should read above. Trumpeting – get it? I crack me up.
This is a short story about automation’s effects and two very different ways of dealing with them.
I think of it as a thought piece, just setting the stage of a not-too-distant and scary future populated by lots of smart robots and potentially (likely) many fewer jobs.
Artificially intelligent automated machines that learn and can be upgraded wirelessly should scare the shit out of any thinking person.
NickelthroweR and Backtable especially should enjoy this story…http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Nope. Totally cool with automation and technology, as long as it happens in the united states
It wont happen in “just” the U?S. It is happening around the world.
backbabble, you’re punching above your weight again. Llpoh and I are just having some fun.
Blacks obsolete? Far from it. Who will play football, sing and dance and most importantly, riot?
Starfcker, I’ve got neither the time nor the inclination to debate you.
You’re so profoundly naive when it comes to economics and reality, using “maff” with no, none, nada understanding of the ontological (big word, I know, but you can look it up) nature of the financial universe that I’m immediately reminded that it’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but damned-near impossible with an idiot.
Automation gonna make stuff? Hokay, it takes skilled hands-on to repair stuff. Or install stuff.
As far as a society with relatively few actual workers? Mack Reynolds wrote about that around a half-century ago. Free reading on Gutenberg.com. 🙂
Backbabble, my main problem with you is that you bore me. Maybe i could be replaced by a robot. But I bet your boss could replace you with a black chick that just graduated from community college. Can you say massive upgrade?
Too late Chickenfckr, I’m 54 and retired.
I did it with degrees in finance and law, ran my own investment firm for 22 years, and sold it at 46, (yup, BEFORE the Bust few saw coming) and live in a very nice and paid-for (as is everything I own) lakefront home, education funded for my kids, and enough distance between and the masses to be comfortable.
And I did it by betting against clueless, know-it-all dumb-asses like yourself; people who walked through my office doors begging to buy the “hottest” tech stocks during the dot.bomb era (I refused). The same dolts who went on endlessly in the early 2000’s about real estate “going to the moon.” The same people who today think we’ll tweak the system and, “By Gawd, turn this thing around!”
But Christ. You. Are. Fucking. Clueless…
And I’m busy.