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

latimes.com

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

#141

Post by falcolas »

MarkMc wrote: post #77
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.

If transport companies don't lower prices, won't new companies enter the market and undercut the incumbents?

I imagine (some of) the transport companies will lower their prices, it's the McDonalds, Best Buy, Wallmart, and everybody else who has no reason to lower their prices, even though their costs have dropped.

And so long as the cost to get into the industry is high (the up-front cost of a driver is effectively 0, whereas AI will be non-0), and the incumbents have the ability to drop their prices lower than any new startup (thanks to the efficiencies of scale), serious new competition will be rare.

Even considering all that, the cost for shipping something is remarkably low to begin with. $400 for an 40' shipping container worth of goods over 300 miles? Drop the driver from the equation entirely, and that cost would only go down by about $100. As a point of reference, a 40' shipping container full of bananas is worth in excess of $58,000 (1000 boxes per container, 100 bananas per box, $0.58 per banana).

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

#142

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #139
harryh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not his assumption:

This is not one of those “he said, she said” where reasonable people can disagree on whether the PCE or CPI is a better price index. This is a pay/productivity gap being invented by using the slowly moving price index (NDP, which is similar to the PCE) to make worker productivity look better, and the faster moving price index (CPI) to make real wages look lower. That’s not kosher. You need to use the same type of index for both lines on the graph.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

astazangasta wrote: post #139
harryh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #142
astazangasta wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not his assumption: This is not one of those “he said, she said” where reasonable people can disagree on whether the PCE or CPI is a better price index. This is a pay/productivity gap being invented by using the slowly moving price index (NDP, which is similar to the PCE) to make worker productivity look better, and the faster moving price index (CPI) to make real wages look lower. That’s not kosher. You need…

There is no difference between using NDP and GDP; the shift emerges only when you switch between PCE and CPI. It is totally about whether the PCE or the CPI is a better index. We can see this clearly enough from the fact that there is a notch in the graph one way and not the other.

If you simply don't believe in wage stagnation, then I'm not sure what this whole conversation has been about.

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

#145

Post by susan_hall »

zamfi wrote: post #108
hyperliner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be zero percent inflation, if the money supply doubled?

At the risk of being simplistic, because so did the "stuff" supply. Inflation is when the money supply increases without the stuff supply increasing, so each dollar is worth less stuff.

It is worrisome that the posts which are factually accurate are getting downvoted. This raises a question about economic literacy on Hacker News. Presumably the people downvoting this comment simply don't understand how the economy works.

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

#146

Post by dcposch »

Ressuder wrote: post #38
pcrh wrote: post #20

We don't have self-driving trains yet, except in very tightly controlled environments. So I think it's going to take more than a few test runs to show that self-driving trucks will displace drivers anytime soon.

I don't see what the two have to do with each other. Technical reasons aren't why we don't have self-driving trains, it's just that the economy of things becomes very different when your vehicle is about a kilometre or two long compared to maybe 25 metres. (Yeah, yeah, I know about the kilometre long Australian semi-trailer trucks, but those aren't really practical in most situations...)

Aussie road trains are at most 55m

(They are still really imposing and impressive, especially at night. On the extremely flat, straight desert roads in the Outback, you can see them miles before they arrive, like a star on the horizon. When they finally get to where you are, they fly by with a hefty gust of wind. They have steel "roo bars" mounted on the front for efficiently generating roadkill. They are loud, brightly lit, and more than half a football field long.)

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

#147

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #144
harryh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not his assumption: This is not one of those “he said, she said” where reasonable people can disagree on whether the PCE or CPI is a better price index. This is a pay/productivity gap being invented by using the slowly moving price index (NDP, which is similar to the PCE) to make worker productivity look better, and the faster moving price index (CPI) to make real wages look lower. That’s not kosher. You need…

There is no difference between using NDP and GDP; the shift emerges only when you switch between PCE and CPI. It is totally about whether the PCE or the CPI is a better index. We can see this clearly enough from the fact that there is a notch in the graph one way and not the other. If you simply don't believe in wage stagnation, then I'm not sure what this whole conversation has been about.

Wage stagnation is definitely a thing, but it's due to increasing wage inequality between different employees not due to capital grabbing an increasing share of national income. Labor's share is remarkably stable over time:

http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

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

#148

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #147
astazangasta wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no difference between using NDP and GDP; the shift emerges only when you switch between PCE and CPI. It is totally about whether the PCE or the CPI is a better index. We can see this clearly enough from the fact that there is a notch in the graph one way and not the other. If you simply don't believe in wage stagnation, then I'm not sure what this whole conversation has been about.

Wage stagnation is definitely a thing, but it's due to increasing wage inequality between different employees not due to capital grabbing an increasing share of national income. Labor's share is remarkably stable over time: http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/...

Getting hard to find this thread again, but I've been enjoying this exchange...

While that graph shows labor's share as stable, many others do not, e.g. in this piece by Jared Bernstein: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/why-labors-shar...

Of particular interest to me is that if you look at the BEA numbers, they split 'labor share' into wages and non-wage compensation (benefits, SS, medicare, etc.) - the latter share has climbed over time to 20%, meaning much of the stability in the "wage share" is just increasing money being paid to Medicare.

It's not clear what's being measured and not in that chart, but, for example, this St. Louis Fed data shows both an increasing Dividend share of GDP and a declining wage share of GDP:

http://qvmgroup.com/invest/2012/09/05/profits-cash-flow-divi...

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