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The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

nytimes.com

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Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#31

Post by tmnvix »

edblarney wrote: post #30
tmnvix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what happened during the industrial revolution? Unemployment went down, wages went up. In fact the cost of human labour rose dramatically. It should be added that wages going up and the emergence of a middle class was not a direct result of increased productivity. The labour movement had to fight hard to ensure that those productivity gains were shared with workers. The problem we face with automation is that t…

"It should be added that wages going up and the emergence of a middle class was not a direct result of increased productivity. " I fully agree that the labour movement was essential. BUT - wages did definitely rise far before labour got going - and wages could not rise as they did without underlying productivity gains. But yes - the labour movement was essential.

> ...wages could not rise as they did without underlying productivity gains

Absolutely. The challenge with automation is ensuring that the increased productivity benefits all of society (not necessarily equally). As useful as capitalism is, it doesn't really have a mechanism for doing this properly. The solution will always have to be political.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#32

Post by inimino »

carsongross wrote: post #18

Whatever. In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves, and, while we wait for the End of Work, stop making the middle of our IQ bell curve compete with countries that don't give a shit about their environment, the concept of intellectual property or the safety of their workers. We can figure the automation problem out later.

Automation saves money, bringing jobs back doesn't, that's why the jobs went away in the first place.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#33

Post by inimino »

clock_tower wrote: post #26
torpfactory wrote: post #12

I think we are destined for a future of political and social instability in the world if we continue to define labor and its compensation as we do now. We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required. The resentment of the winners (capital owners) by the losers (jobless masses) may lead to great upheaval, to be harnessed by willing politicians of short-sighte…

Are you familiar with potlatch society in the old Pacific Northwest? With wealth readily available, the "big men" of a tribe (roughly chiefs, but not hereditary) competed to see how much they could give away to their neighbors and rivals; all you had to do to eat well, or make it through a bad winter, was to admit that your neighbors were led by a great and glorious chief. This system didn't work very well at the tim…

What is the advantage of this over universal basic income funded by taxes?

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#34

Post by carsongross »

inimino wrote: post #32
carsongross wrote: post #18

Whatever. In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves, and, while we wait for the End of Work, stop making the middle of our IQ bell curve compete with countries that don't give a shit about their environment, the concept of intellectual property or the safety of their workers. We can figure the automation problem out later.

Automation saves money, bringing jobs back doesn't, that's why the jobs went away in the first place.

Who, whom.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#35

Post by Ironchefpython »

carsongross wrote: post #18

Whatever. In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves, and, while we wait for the End of Work, stop making the middle of our IQ bell curve compete with countries that don't give a shit about their environment, the concept of intellectual property or the safety of their workers. We can figure the automation problem out later.

> In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves

How? There's obvious long term financial value in having local supply chains and manufacturing expertise. Therefore state capitalist systems will subsidize local manufacturing in the short term, while anarcho-capitalist systems will flock to set up shop there to capture convert those short-term subsidies into short-term profit.

Do you have a solution that will work to build high-tech manufacturing infrastructure in the United States with no corporate incentives and no US government intervention? (I mean besides tweeting brags about job creation)

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#36

Post by wvenable »

edblarney wrote: post #21
torpfactory wrote: post #12

I think we are destined for a future of political and social instability in the world if we continue to define labor and its compensation as we do now. We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required. The resentment of the winners (capital owners) by the losers (jobless masses) may lead to great upheaval, to be harnessed by willing politicians of short-sighte…

"We currently don't have a social understanding for navigating a world where little human labor is required" Yes we do. The industrial revolution had far greater impact on labour than any of this mysterious AI will ever have. The first 'machines' powered by coal etc. instantly 'unemployed' hundreds of people per unit. Go ahead and look at the productivity/capita charts for the early 19th century - UK citizens were mu…

> tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost their jobs' due to some AI or machine?

As software developers, it's literally our jobs to put people out of work. My software is specifically designed reduce the need for increased labor as the company crows. In my industry, legal, entire departments (like night word processing) no longer exist.

The fact is you cannot extrapolate from 100 years of human history and say everything will continue on. People just a few hundred years before that could not have predicted anything about modern employment.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#37

Post by wvenable »

credit_guy wrote: post #17

I think it's likely that automation will be a huge creator of jobs. And I'm not talking about creation of high skill jobs at the expense of destruction of low skill jobs. I'm talking about a net creation of both low and high skill jobs. Allow me to explain. Here's a youtube movie of some robots in a Mercedes factory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VreG1iC65Lc There are thousands of movies like that. Lots of robots do…

> Alas, the programming, maintenance, re-programming, upgrading, not to mention construction of the robots still needs a small army of people.

If automation doesn't result in absolutely massive savings on employment, it just won't happen. You're army of people is more like a small platoon -- the army being entirely displaced.

But I think there is something to be said about automation allowing for creation to become more accessible. It might make entire categories of small-scale products designed by small teams possible in ways that were not possible before.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#38

Post by adventured »

Ironchefpython wrote: post #35
carsongross wrote: post #18

Whatever. In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves, and, while we wait for the End of Work, stop making the middle of our IQ bell curve compete with countries that don't give a shit about their environment, the concept of intellectual property or the safety of their workers. We can figure the automation problem out later.

> In the meantime, let's bring the manufacturing chain back here so we can build up the automation expertise ourselves How? There's obvious long term financial value in having local supply chains and manufacturing expertise. Therefore state capitalist systems will subsidize local manufacturing in the short term, while anarcho-capitalist systems will flock to set up shop there to capture convert those short-term subsi…

Sure, dramatically lower the corporate income tax rate and substantially reduce the massive over-regulation in the US economy. Check out the various regulation registries at the Federal level, the US is choking to death on thousands of unnecessary regulations (growing rapidly for decades) that are almost always written solely for the benefit of protectionism or for fake the-government-is-doing-something purposes (which happens at all levels).

The US corporate income tax rate has been a bad joke for a long time. Countries like Sweden at 22%, understood decades ago that it was bad economic policy to have a high rate. You tax the income of the wealthy as the offset. The US for example already has an extremely progressive personal income tax rate. For several decades the corporate income tax rate has been falling around the world; the world's average rate has fallen from near 30% to 22% in the last 12 years. The US isn't competitive, you see that in how we've been bleeding pharma & biotech companies off to Ireland. Over time, you start seeing R&D & operations offshoring because of that. Give it time and you've artificially created a lot more global competition through bad policy.

If you're a small to mid size manufacturer in the US, paying a 30% effective income tax rate is brutal if you want to compete globally while everyone else is paying far lower rates. Germany for example lowered their top rate by about 9 points a decade ago. Finland and Iceland have a 20% rate. Korea is at 24% and China at 25%. The European average is about 20%.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#39

Post by blackguardx »

wott wrote: post #23
blackguardx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has to service the machines. Also, big machines are expensive to transport, so it makes sense to make them closer to where they will be used, leading to more service jobs. There are also a lot of engineering jobs designing the hardware and software of these automated factories.

The whole point of automation is to increase benefit by increasing productivity, i.e. by either increasing the production output for the same amount of jobs, or decreasing the amount of jobs needed for the same production. Since we already produce about everything in the amount we need (and sometimes much more than we need), there is no point in increasing production (it would not be sold, consumed), so productivity…

No one is arguing that. The argument is if we should have automated factories in high paying regions (like the US). I'm arguing that having automated factories here is better than no factories here.

Re: The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China, It’s Automation

#40

Post by xbmcuser »

The global market was still expanding so all efficiency gains from industrial revolution and the internet revolution were absorbed. Where as today the global economy is stagnating. The efficiency gains in the next decade are expected to be a few times the rate of market growth which would put many people out of work making the global market contract further. This cycle could accelerate very quickly.
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