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America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

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Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#111

Post by jimbokun »

jacobgkau wrote: post #65
dragonwriter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't, and the proof of that is that landlords don't already charge 100% of income. You seem to be assuming housing rental is an perfectly monopolistic market, which it isn't, and any place where it even loosely approximates that needs to correct that whether or not UBI is adopted.

I had to move out of an apartment a few years ago and into a spare half-story at a friend's house. The apartment was attempting to raise my rent, while not to 100% of my income (yet), a significant amount. Their excuse was "that's the market rate now," and when I told them to F off and went to check other nearby apartments, they were correct, that was the "market rate." I have absolutely zero doubt that if the govern…

This argument applies equally to never increasing anyone’s wages. If income goes up for anyone, rent will instantly rise to match the increase.

(It’s not clear why this only applies to rent and not other things people spend money on.)

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#112

Post by onemoresoop »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #73
ryandrake wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Other wealthy people. I knew someone in the yacht-building business who would say "If you want a business that will last, sell to rich people--they're the ones who have money." We are very quickly moving towards a world where the economic activity (earning + spending + producing) of the median person is insignificant ne…

Wealthy people would buy hundreds of millions of different phones? I strongly doubt it. Luxurious electronics for very rich people is usually something like iphone with diamonds covered back. This solves nothing and creates zero innovations.

Maybe they’ll subsidise them so they can monitor us 24/7/365

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#113

Post by papertokyo »

imtringued wrote: post #6

China is known to scale out in the low end market without having a strategy to go upmarket. Reading this article I honestly got the opposite impression. China is hopelessly behind Japan in both high end machine tools and robotics.

It "was known" in the 60s that Japanese electronics and cars were inferior in design and quality. Chinese products are going through the same trajectory.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#114

Post by kccqzy »

megaman821 wrote: post #100
tartuffe78 wrote: post #2

Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth year after year.

Why are manufacturing jobs special? People will upgrade their tastes to consume more. Middle class houses with artistic stone work and well-manicured gardens. Skin treatments, massages, and health scans galore. More entertainment and more niche too. Banking apps that could win design awards. We are nowhere near the end of useful work.

Your comment perfectly illustrates why communism doesn't work. The one-sentence summary of communism is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" and clearly people's needs grow. I don't know how much longer CCP can still keep communism in its name; how will CCP leaders reconcile that the fact that only by abandoning communism did the country rise?

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#115

Post by llamaimperative »

jimbokun wrote: post #106
llamaimperative wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI won't fix much for a far more trivial and mechanistic reason: adding $1,000/mo to everyone's income merely gives landlords the ability to charge ($1,000*n bedrooms)/mo more in rent.

Applying it to rent is arbitrary. The general point is that it is inflationary for all goods and services. That is assuming UBI is funded through government borrowing as we saw with COVID stimulus. If funded through new taxes the inflationary impact should be much less. (I don’t have enough economic training to determine how much less.)

Well it's not quite arbitrary because it will induce supply in other goods and services. Rent in high COL areas is driven primarily by land rent (i.e. cost of land, regardless of whether that land is actually rented to the building on top of it or not), which has zero supply elasticity.

And then the other portion of rent (the building itself) is also pretty darn supply-inelastic as well, though not entirely.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#116

Post by fragmede »

iszomer wrote: post #39

I would like to see a robot hand try and plug in a MCIO or OcuLink connector to its MB port because even my fat fingers have trouble seating them in correctly.

you know that pick and place robots are used to put and solder the components onto the board that you're trying to plug the OcuLink connector to, right?

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#117

Post by keybored »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #2

Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth year after year.

Why is this difficult to imagine? The capitalists need human labor commodity as long as, well, human labor commodity is the only labor commodity that can do the job. Once it (if ever) isn’t? And they own all the robots that can do the work? And they own all the robot soldiers that can protect their ill-gotten wealth? (Just in short total automation) Well, no need for consumer capitalism any more. Then you just have totalitarian capitalism where everyone else will have to live out their lives at the total mercy of those overlords.

(It doesn’t have to pan out like that. But the point remains that there’s not law of nature that consumer capitalism has to continue, even under Capitalism.)

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#118

Post by onemoresoop »

chasd00 wrote: post #96
Fricken wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has squandered its advanced manufacturing capabilities, warning bells have been sounding for decades, and yes, those chickens will eventually come home to roost. Not yet but soon.

trying to spread democracy to China through its economy was the biggest mistake the US has made in 50 years.

It seems eager to make even bigger mistakes. The current administration started playing with levers it does not understand.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#119

Post by llamaimperative »

jimbokun wrote: post #111
jacobgkau wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to move out of an apartment a few years ago and into a spare half-story at a friend's house. The apartment was attempting to raise my rent, while not to 100% of my income (yet), a significant amount. Their excuse was "that's the market rate now," and when I told them to F off and went to check other nearby apartments, they were correct, that was the "market rate." I have absolutely zero doubt that if the govern…

This argument applies equally to never increasing anyone’s wages. If income goes up for anyone, rent will instantly rise to match the increase. (It’s not clear why this only applies to rent and not other things people spend money on.)

This is correct, it does apply to all forms of wage increases. I wouldn't say "instantly," but yes that's why cities are perpetually expensive despite constantly increasing productivity. They are highly productive ergo they have high wages ergo they can sustain high rents ergo they have high rents ergo they "are expensive" compared to adjacent markets.

Mentioned above but I'll put it here too for other readers: the reason rent is unique is that in high COL areas, it's driven primarily by the price of land which is has zero supply elasticity. Higher prices induce supply in all other forms of goods and services.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#120

Post by aaronblohowiak »

regularization wrote: post #97
tartuffe78 wrote: post #2

Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth year after year.

Keynes wrote about how this can be done, while kicking the can down the road. Basically debt of all types, and government spending. For the US this would be military expenditures and social welfare for the elderly. Of course the can can only be kicked down the road so far. So to answer your question more in depth, there was a German exile in England who wrote a book answering this question back in 1867.

And yet the revolutions he inspired end up (in many ways) more dystopian than the capitalism they seek to replace..
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