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The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#11

Post by dougabug »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

As automation continues to improve, we see that fewer and fewer people are sufficiently skilled that they cannot be replaced at least in part by technology. Even tasks demanding high cognitive abilities gradually shift into the domain of what advanced machines can do. I wonder what kind of leverage average software engineers will have when machines can write better code than an average programmer? Or allow one developer to do the work currently requiring a hundred.

And how can there be a labor scarcity when productivity has risen to levels where we can overproduce almost everything we can think of, far outstripping our natural resources?

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#12

Post by chipsy »

dougabug wrote: post #11
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

As automation continues to improve, we see that fewer and fewer people are sufficiently skilled that they cannot be replaced at least in part by technology. Even tasks demanding high cognitive abilities gradually shift into the domain of what advanced machines can do. I wonder what kind of leverage average software engineers will have when machines can write better code than an average programmer? Or allow one develo…

A lot of our inability to automate comes down to not being able to operate at a big enough scope. For example, all commuter transportation problems are ultimately caused by having too many people, too distant from one another. But we can't simply move them closer together for a variety of reasons, and so we have to think about trip planning instead. But we could also reduce the need to make trips and reduce the average length of each trip.

The future is going to be full of complicated thoughts like this - problems to which automation can solve some things but policy and design solves others. We'll have to be really good philosophers to avoid catastrophic error.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#13

Post by gregjwild »

RobertoG wrote: post #7
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #3

A newspaper which is pro the right-of-center government, pro big business says that there is no need to reign in big business; because despite their winning streak over the last few decades and the mounting criticism of mounting inequality, things are going to turn against them any day now , honest! Film at 11.

I think the important message is more general: "don't worry because markets equilibrium will solve all the problems. Don't look too hard to the last 30 years, it was not a policy problem, it was just a demographic anomaly. Our theories are good and worked perfectly." What surprise me is that they use the capital vs. workers narrative.

The right wing press just loves to fain Marx when it suits their own narrative.

That said, I often wish the mainstream left would diversify their own font of knowledge. Especially given most don't read him.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#14

Post by creshal »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

> And with the refugee crisis we just magnify the problem because the refugees will have to be integrated, they have to learn German and still lots of them will be lower educated than the rest :/

The EU already has 23 million unemployed (and a lot more in minimum-wage bullshit jobs nobody wants or needs), a million refugees won't make problems significantly worse than they already are.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#15

Post by gregjwild »

SixSigma wrote: post #2

And the home secretary is going to say today that immigration is bad for the economy ! In my sector, Supply Chain Management, we are facing a skills shortage. * Warehouse operatives are moving from many low skilled pickers to a few skilled robot sitters and the latter are in short supply. * Procurement - moving from the soft skills of buying person to person over the phone to electronic exchange and online bidding -…

Interestingly, there is pressure on both sides there - greater automation means that new skills are needed for the few jobs left, but the fact you're talking about training a handful, rather than training at scale makes for more expensive training per head.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#16

Post by mschuster91 »

creshal wrote: post #14
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

> And with the refugee crisis we just magnify the problem because the refugees will have to be integrated, they have to learn German and still lots of them will be lower educated than the rest :/ The EU already has 23 million unemployed (and a lot more in minimum-wage bullshit jobs nobody wants or needs), a million refugees won't make problems significantly worse than they already are.

> a million refugees won't make problems significantly worse than they already are.

Oh yes, they already do. The housing market in German cities is already fucked up beyond limits because our politicians have slept for years, and 1.5m refugees now needing winter-resistant housing (so, no tents) bring the market to its knees.

But I'm thankful for the refugees, because they show our politicians they can't sleep forever.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#18

Post by dazc »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

"The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction."

The trend in construction for the past decade has been towards less labour intensity.

So no good news here either.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#19

Post by gadders »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #3

A newspaper which is pro the right-of-center government, pro big business says that there is no need to reign in big business; because despite their winning streak over the last few decades and the mounting criticism of mounting inequality, things are going to turn against them any day now , honest! Film at 11.

The mounting criticism of mounting inequality is a political position. It's not an objective statement of fact. They are free to ignore it if they disagree with it.

Re: The coming labour scarcity will shift the balance of power, pushing up wages

#20

Post by sageikosa »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

This might be true for high-skilled jobs, yes. But the vast armies of uneducated, second-or-third-generation-jobless people will have their jobs slaughtered by automation. Truck/cab/freight delivery will be automated, freight handling and shipping will be automated, cleaning of public and private areas will be automated. The only field I can see which will depend on low-skilled worker armies is construction. And with…

You are missing service industries in general and elder care (poignantly relevant with the article's emphasis on demographic shift) specifically. A large older population with a smaller worker pool to draw on will drive up demand for caregivers, exhausting the rapidly devaluing savings of the elder generations.
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