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Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

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Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#81

Post by primroot »

jorprp93j wrote: post #28
PakG1 wrote: post #3

In a 2018 paper, UC–Berkeley sociologist Steve Viscelli suggested that in the most likely scenario, long-haul truckers, who tend to make middle-class wages, will be replaced by poorly paid drivers tasked with steering autonomous vehicles through tricky city streets, which onboard navigation systems handle less well than highways. That’s not all jobs disappearing. It’s jobs changing. I'm not sure if the author is clai…

First, jobs are work in that they’re emotionally boring repetitive tasks the bean counters have whittled down into cost saving nonsense. So fuck them: https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but... Second, there is a ton of work out there our society likes to ignore the value of because it’s not shallow novelty: https://aeon.co/essays/the-key-to-jobs-in-the-future-is-not-... And really if automation…

“In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.” - Marx

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#82

Post by traderjane »

nyhc99 wrote: post #69
alexandercrohde wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly I don't really understand the article's point. Is it that say McDonalds switching to electronic kiosks to order your burger is going to create as MANY tech jobs as it took away? Because that doesn't pass the smell test.

There were a slew of anti-yang articles that came out from the leftmost media sources immediately after the debate, owing to the fact that Yang made Elizabeth Warren look unprepared in her answer about job loss. Andrew Yang, snake oil salesman: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/andrew-yang-tech-entr... Is Yang doing more harm than good to the case for universal income?: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/20…

What is the basis for saying Politico has a bias in some direction?

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#83

Post by bloaf »

MilnerRoute wrote: post #27

The article's most compelling point for me is the graph it links to showing all U.S. manufacturing jobs from 1939 to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP There's a big, sudden drop in 2000. It also cites a paper that says that the number of factories in the U.S. has been dropping (between 2000 and 2014)...

I don't understand the weight assigned to factory closures. If I could make all the product in one robot-factory vs 3 people-factories, I would expect 2 factory closures. I think it must be coupled with the assertion that productivity isn't rising. But I think it is very interesting to look at the graph you linked compared to the graph for non-supervisory employees:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES3000000006

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#84

Post by brycehamrick »

mikedilger wrote: post #39

This complaint about robots and AI taking all our jobs is hundreds of years old. Still hasn't happened. US is at record levels of employment. Humans are terrible at predicting the future. Let's just wait and see and react when it actually happens. My guess... there will be plenty of jobs for humans for thousands of years to come. Ever since the industrial revolution jobs have gone by the wayside. We no longer have wa…

I take real issue with the unemployment rate claim. The federal U-3 rate is a politicized number that has over time been reduced to an incredibly narrow definition. U-6 is much better because it includes discouraged workers who have given up on seeking employment and part-time workers who want full-time (an increasingly large population). In 1994 the BLS changed the U-6 to exclude long-term discouraged workers which had the effect of lowering the rate. As John William's Shadowstats shows, when you adjust long-term discouraged workers back into the U-6 rate unemployment is actually well over 20%.

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#85

Post by remote_phone »

The other part of the equation is that retraining are a complete failure. The idea you can teach a truck driver or a coal miner to code is a fallacy.

Retaining programs have a 0-15% success rate. It’s basically useless. What happens is that middle aged people get their jobs automated away and they are left with nothing. Look at what happened after manufacturing jobs left the Midwest. This is the bigger problem is that large swathes of the population will have no viable jobs after automation.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#86

Post by jorprp93j »

primroot wrote: post #81
jorprp93j wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, jobs are work in that they’re emotionally boring repetitive tasks the bean counters have whittled down into cost saving nonsense. So fuck them: https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but... Second, there is a ton of work out there our society likes to ignore the value of because it’s not shallow novelty: https://aeon.co/essays/the-key-to-jobs-in-the-future-is-not-... And really if automation…

“In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, t…

Yeh. Though I think it’s not explicit enough? A bit open to literal interpretation only.

I actually see it as “too little” new information that’s of utility to the general populace.

We spend then “too much” time focused on “too few ideas that matter”.

Like what celebs eat is discussed more than environment, and on and on. Too little new progress is made to satisfy these less discussed but ultimately far more important problems.

Thinking Keynes, our demand has been nudged to focus on consumerism, celebrity, gainz!. But we maybe need to balance that with the demands of the literal majority being shat on.

I’ve seen it discussed here too, that focusing on poverty via a statistic emotionally numbs analysis, ignoring that it’s still hundreds of thousands or whatever number it is, of real people barely scraping by.

We’re fetishizing opinions that we’re obliged to import as education from our parents and institutions, which is unavoidable. What is avoidable and manageable is the content of those opinions.

Free speech is generating whatever syntax you want. You’re not owed a society that kowtows to the embedded semantics.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#87

Post by darepublic »

Don't know how quickly it is coming but I think ubi is the right direction for civilization. People are fighting tooth and nail for meaningless bullshit jobs that low key function as a form of government assistance but waste your entire adult life in the process.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#88

Post by sedachv »

aodin wrote: post #35

> over the very long term, automation probably has played a role in limiting manufacturing’s share of employment in the U.S. Factories really have become more advanced and efficient since, say, the 1970s. Can anyone at Slate read a chart? US employment in manufacturing as a percentage of non-farm labor dropped from 32% post-WW2 to less than 10% today [1]. This change didn't start "sometime in the 1970s", but has been…

> Job re-training is mostly a myth

Job re-training is more than a myth, it is another Reagan-era privatization scam, designed to funnel public money to private for-profit training centers and trade schools. Gordon Lafer's _The Job Training Charade_ is a great book on the subject.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#89

Post by ThrustVectoring »

aey wrote: post #65

Yang is totally wrong about automation. The main cause of the shift of manufacturing from US to China is trade policy and China’s monetary policy. If automation was the problem, then US would be price competitive on goods with China. Somehow US automation is only good enough to eliminate jobs in the US, but not good enough to compete with cheap labor in China.

The US's position as a prestige currency of choice certainly contributes, too. Foreign savers really want dollar safety, so the US has a net capital outflow in the form of Treasuries, which means it must take a net inflow of goods and services. The end result is that American consumers pay less than they should for goods, all because other governments can't or won't provide the safe assets that their citizens desire. These low consumer goods prices are definitely not good for domestic manufacturers.

Re: Andrew Yang's ideas on automation and mass unemployment are not based in reality

#90

Post by ethbro »

aey wrote: post #65

Yang is totally wrong about automation. The main cause of the shift of manufacturing from US to China is trade policy and China’s monetary policy. If automation was the problem, then US would be price competitive on goods with China. Somehow US automation is only good enough to eliminate jobs in the US, but not good enough to compete with cheap labor in China.

> If automation was the problem, then US would be price competitive on goods with China.

This (and the article's similar approach) is only half of the equation.

'If automation was the problem and cheaper than offshored labor, then US would be price competitive on goods with China'

There are two independent variables: the cost of offshore labor (China recently, SE Asia and Africa now) & the cost of automation.

Businesses are going to pursue whatever is most cost effective.

But people are incorrectly ignoring automation because it isn't a problem now.

Put more restrictions on offshoring labor (thereby raising its cost) and automation is going to start looking very important.

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