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Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

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Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#131

Post by wombatpm »

harryh wrote: post #43
enraged_camel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake: technologies like this -- which bring massive cost-savings to companies -- tend to arrive sooner than most people think. The incentives are just too big to ignore. Mining companies in Australia are already using self-driving trucks to transport ore. http://www.businessinsider.com/rio-tinto-using-self-driving-... And self-driving cars are just around the corner in the USA. Trucks will follow maybe hal…

You think cars come before trucks? Trucks seem easier to me. Driving 500 miles on a very standardized highway seems like an easier problem than negotiating city streets and picking up hard to identify passengers from a curb.

Truck driving in the city, negotiating alleys and backing into loading docks. Sure that might be awhile. But long haul Interstate driving? With all of the restrictions on driver hours? That is coming as fast as possible. 8 hours driving at an average speed of 50 mph gives you 400 miles per "day". 24 hours at 50 mph gives you 1200 miles per day. Everyone saves time and money.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#132

Post by [deleted] »

astazangasta wrote: post #127
harryh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "absorbed"? My point (well Scott Sumner's really) is that there hasn't been a breakdown between pay and productivity. People are still getting paid more if they are more productive. It's just that somewhere around 1970 or so the median worker stopped getting all that much more productive. Now, maybe that's what you meant by your graph. In which case, fine. But most people look at that an…

I think that's exactly what happened. For example, what I described earlier, medical costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation in the US while outcomes did not improve much at all, is the median worker being cheated out of their productivity gains: it means they are paying more and getting less, while health care providers and people who own patents on drugs or medical devices get more. This change has absolute…

[deleted]

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#133

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #127
harryh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by "absorbed"? My point (well Scott Sumner's really) is that there hasn't been a breakdown between pay and productivity. People are still getting paid more if they are more productive. It's just that somewhere around 1970 or so the median worker stopped getting all that much more productive. Now, maybe that's what you meant by your graph. In which case, fine. But most people look at that an…

I think that's exactly what happened. For example, what I described earlier, medical costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation in the US while outcomes did not improve much at all, is the median worker being cheated out of their productivity gains: it means they are paying more and getting less, while health care providers and people who own patents on drugs or medical devices get more. This change has absolute…

Increased costs for health care(1) are a measure of where workers are spending their money. That's an orthogonal issue to measures of worker productivity.

1. It's a side issue, but I'd also dispute your statement that people are getting less. Life expectancy has increased ~10 years in the US since 1970.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#134

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #133
astazangasta wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's exactly what happened. For example, what I described earlier, medical costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation in the US while outcomes did not improve much at all, is the median worker being cheated out of their productivity gains: it means they are paying more and getting less, while health care providers and people who own patents on drugs or medical devices get more. This change has absolute…

Increased costs for health care(1) are a measure of where workers are spending their money. That's an orthogonal issue to measures of worker productivity. 1. It's a side issue, but I'd also dispute your statement that people are getting less. Life expectancy has increased ~10 years in the US since 1970.

People in the US are getting less than in other places, in terms of health care. Other countries also haven't seen the same gap in gdp/income.

Arguing that workers are less productive because they earn less is a tautology; it also requires us to believe that workers magically stopped being more productive in 1973 after decades of improvement.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#135

Post by susan_hall »

WalterBright wrote: post #126
susan_hall wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are avoiding the issue. I have to assume that you have no answer to the question. It is more difficult to raise children, and we lack metrics that show that decline. Listing a bunch of neat stuff doesn't show that the standard of living has improved. As a point of comparison, imagine if it now cost 50%, to raise 16 children, than it had 100 years ago. In that situation, we could compare like with like, and we cou…

Polio: http://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/sokol.html Mortality wasn't the big concern with polio, it was the debilitating life-long after effects, and the adverse effects of pervasive fear of it. You want to believe things are worse in America, I can't change your mind. In my own lifetime things have gotten visibly better. My father lived into his 90s, and he'd recount how things have gotten quite a bit better…

I can put this differently: if I had a CFO who confused gross revenue with net profit, then I would fire the CFO and hire someone better.

We can easily list cool stuff that happened over the last 100 years: radio, television, cell phones, the Internet.

We can easily list bad stuff that happened over the last 100 years: environmental degradation, global warming, the increase in the percentage of income spent on transportation, difficulties in raising children.

What do we get when we subtract the bad stuff from the good stuff? Until we have good metrics for doing that, we are like the CFO who confuses gross revenue with net profit.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#136

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #134
harryh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increased costs for health care(1) are a measure of where workers are spending their money. That's an orthogonal issue to measures of worker productivity. 1. It's a side issue, but I'd also dispute your statement that people are getting less. Life expectancy has increased ~10 years in the US since 1970.

People in the US are getting less than in other places, in terms of health care. Other countries also haven't seen the same gap in gdp/income. Arguing that workers are less productive because they earn less is a tautology; it also requires us to believe that workers magically stopped being more productive in 1973 after decades of improvement.

1) Our health care system is certainly unusual and it might very well have problems. But, again, that has nothing to do with measures of worker productivity outside of the health care sector.

2) Other countries have significantly larger transfers from the rich to the poor. That certainly puts more spending power in the hands of the bottom half of the bell curve (which might be a good idea!), but it doesn't mean they're more productive.

3) I don't magically believe that increases in median worker productivity slowed in the 1970s, I believe it because it matches what I see in the world. GM used to employ 100s of thousands of people when it was one of the most valuable companies in America. Now Facebook holds that status with something like 15,000.

Technology has become this huge lever where fewer and fewer people are needed to make more and more stuff. So increasingly it's the people at the top end of the bell curve that are capturing these gains. A programmer can write software that gets used by more people than ever. A retail store employee is doing pretty much the same job now that they were doing 30 years ago.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#137

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #136
astazangasta wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US are getting less than in other places, in terms of health care. Other countries also haven't seen the same gap in gdp/income. Arguing that workers are less productive because they earn less is a tautology; it also requires us to believe that workers magically stopped being more productive in 1973 after decades of improvement.

1) Our health care system is certainly unusual and it might very well have problems. But, again, that has nothing to do with measures of worker productivity outside of the health care sector. 2) Other countries have significantly larger transfers from the rich to the poor. That certainly puts more spending power in the hands of the bottom half of the bell curve (which might be a good idea!), but it doesn't mean they'…

> increases in median worker productivity slowed

> fewer and fewer people are needed to make more and more stuff.

You're arguing against yourself, here. The latter is productivity increase, the former is productivity decrease. Also, productivity growth is not new, it has been going on as long as the economy exists. Machine automation has been occurring since the industrial revolution started, it did not start in 1973.

What started in 1973 was that the high end (basically, the owners of capital) stopped sharing productivity gains - meaning that where previously, workers were able to bargain for a share of the increase, now they cannot, because of various mechanisms of taking. CEO pay did not go up 10X because CEOs were suddenly drinking tiger blood and winning the Fields medal.

My original contention was that one of these was the shift away from the Bretton Woods system, with fixed currency exchange rates based on the dollar; going from here to speculative international currency flows and floating exchange rates is one possible mechanism for making workers less able to bargain for those productivity increases.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#138

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #137
harryh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Our health care system is certainly unusual and it might very well have problems. But, again, that has nothing to do with measures of worker productivity outside of the health care sector. 2) Other countries have significantly larger transfers from the rich to the poor. That certainly puts more spending power in the hands of the bottom half of the bell curve (which might be a good idea!), but it doesn't mean they'…

> increases in median worker productivity slowed > fewer and fewer people are needed to make more and more stuff. You're arguing against yourself, here. The latter is productivity increase, the former is productivity decrease. Also, productivity growth is not new, it has been going on as long as the economy exists. Machine automation has been occurring since the industrial revolution started, it did not start in 1973…

What started in 1973 was that the high end (basically, the owners of capital) stopped sharing productivity gains - meaning that where previously, workers were able to bargain for a share of the increase, now they cannot, because of various mechanisms of taking.

NO! This is EXACTLY what I (really Scott Summers) am saying has not happened. The share of national income going to labor (vs the owners of capital) has remained almost exactly constant since 1973 (and before then as well).

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#139

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #138
astazangasta wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> increases in median worker productivity slowed > fewer and fewer people are needed to make more and more stuff. You're arguing against yourself, here. The latter is productivity increase, the former is productivity decrease. Also, productivity growth is not new, it has been going on as long as the economy exists. Machine automation has been occurring since the industrial revolution started, it did not start in 1973…

What started in 1973 was that the high end (basically, the owners of capital) stopped sharing productivity gains - meaning that where previously, workers were able to bargain for a share of the increase, now they cannot, because of various mechanisms of taking. NO! This is EXACTLY what I (really Scott Summers) am saying has not happened. The share of national income going to labor (vs the owners of capital) has remai…

I already commented on this; his assumption is that the PCE is "correct" and the CPI is "wrong". I made a criticism of PCE that you did not address; it is merely counting increased health care spending (a significant mechanism of wealth transfer) as "labor share" of national income.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#140

Post by falcolas »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #70
falcolas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if truck driving were automated, they certainly wouldn't lower then. Personally, I imagine a lot of companies will use that extra money to buy out, take over, or otherwise eliminate their competition. I doubt the consumer will win.

You could have made the same argument about any technology when it was first created. Why didn't that happen?

It has happened; just look at how the computer manufacturers consolidated when off-shore production took the bottom out of that market.

Really, anytime a major player has cash on hand, they're going to buy out competition, either through acquisition or buying an equivalent product. When Oracle had liquid assets, they buy Sun. ATT and Verizon consolidated the cell phone market down to ATT and Verizon (and even attempt to merge down one step further). DeBeers buys every diamond producer on the market.

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