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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

#101
post #8

"[...] 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." Uhm, that's halfway decent careers turning into far fewer and shittier jobs. That's jobs disappearing. And it ignores that eve…

That's BS about being capable of navigating Interstate highways autonomously. Whoever does the research needs go actually go along an Over The Road truck driver and actually see what challenges technology face. Different highways with crumpling road markers. Severe weather. Unpredictable human drivers. Fueling. Construction sites and their differences between displaying markers. I do not see autonomous technology tak…

There are many routes which are possible to automate today. Those will become human-free first, leaving the humans to compete for the remaining 95%.

Then another 5% of routes will become computer navigable, and the remaining truckers will compete for the remaining jobs.

Then between automation and improved maintenance due to the higher regulatory fees afforded by automation, more roads will become auto-navigable by dint of maintenance and standardised marking.

There will be a pincer movement, roads coming up to standard, standards converging on what automated trucks need, and automation becoming better at navigating any road.

By 2030 there will be far fewer humans driving anything.

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

#102
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.

Don’t forget persistent currency manipulation meaning that goods manufactured exactly the same way with the same cost of goods sold would be 30% cheaper in the USA because of the devalued Yuan.

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

#103
Obligatory CGP Grey “Humans Need Not Apply” spruiking: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

Deals with the issue of why current types of automation are different to industrial automation an why we won’t be creating new “machine fixer” jobs when the new machines take our old jobs.

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

#104
post #69

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…

"Ah yes, noted Leftist bastion" checks notes "the National Review"

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

#105
post #91

“You're creating a slippery slide transfer straight into socialism” This seems to beg the question: "Would Amazon be less successful if it paid a living wage to those who labor in its warehouses and those who work to manufacture the products it sells?"

1. Does Amazon get away with paying warehouse workers less than others?

2. Are you presuming no one else will pay them a living wage either so they MUST work at Amazon?

3. Are Amazon warehouse workers prevented from getting living wage jobs elsewhere?

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

#106

And therein lies the real problem with Yang’s outlook. It’s not just unrealistic. It’s lazy. And this is why Yang is the most prescient of any of the candidates. He looked at the problem, broke it down into its basic components, extrapolated what was going to happen, and found the most straightforward answer (UBI) from the large search space of possible solutions. You know, like a computer programmer would. So I fund…

> If I had a budget of a few million dollars

But 1k a month would make this happen?

If 1k UBI is causing this tragedy of the commons then you owe it to yourself to fix this, earn more, move to LCOL area and start curing diseases

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

#107

> Meanwhile, the overall job market is fine... In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, according to the US government's Bureau of Labor statistics, current earnings for production, nonsupervisory employees on private non farm payrolls is $23.65, in constant inflation-adjusted 1983 dollars for September 2019. In February 1973 that was $23.33 an hour. Almost a half century of economic growth, in a good economy, and w…

Wondering aloud if there are any studies that figure out how much these workers should be earning proportional to the productivity increases in the last 40 years?

What is the “cut” workers can expect from their output charted through the last century - this number must exist

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

#108
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…

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.

It will free up a lot of workers to do other things

Right now if you want to employ them you have to compete with McD burger-flipping, now they will be available for your next enterprise

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

#109
post #18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read the study here: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/driverless/ "Autonomous trucks could replace as many as 294,000 long-distance drivers, including some of the best jobs in the industry. Many other freight-moving jobs will be created in their place, perhaps even more than will be lost, but these new jobs will be local driving and last-mile delivery jobs that—absent proactive public policy—will likely be mis…

Those last mile delivery jobs also already exist. That market isn’t going to grow, necessarily, because long distance becomes autonomous.

Wouldn’t lowering costs for freight mean an increase in trips ?

More things can be shipped farther away therefore more last mile jobs?

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's BS about being capable of navigating Interstate highways autonomously. Whoever does the research needs go actually go along an Over The Road truck driver and actually see what challenges technology face. Different highways with crumpling road markers. Severe weather. Unpredictable human drivers. Fueling. Construction sites and their differences between displaying markers. I do not see autonomous technology tak…

There are many routes which are possible to automate today. Those will become human-free first, leaving the humans to compete for the remaining 95%. Then another 5% of routes will become computer navigable, and the remaining truckers will compete for the remaining jobs. Then between automation and improved maintenance due to the higher regulatory fees afforded by automation, more roads will become auto-navigable by d…

What? 10 years?
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