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Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

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Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#121

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #115
harryh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion isn't that everything is hunky dory. What he does conclude is that labor's share of income hasn't much changed. What has changed is the distribution of income between laborers. As has been noted in about a million places, gains have increasingly been going to those at the top. Your chart implies some sort of breakdown between productivity and income but does not demonstrate that productivity gains have…

Median income remaining flat is entirely consistent with productivity being absorbed by the high end.

I'm not sure what you mean by "absorbed"?

My point (well Scott Sumner's really) is that there hasn't been a breakdown between pay and productivity. People are still getting paid more if they are more productive. It's just that somewhere around 1970 or so the median worker stopped getting all that much more productive.

Now, maybe that's what you meant by your graph. In which case, fine. But most people look at that and they think that the median worker started getting cheated out of their productivity gains. And that's probably not what's happening.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#122

Post by smokeyj »

afarrell wrote: post #110
smokeyj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does automated truck drivers unequivocally equal economic inequality? It's theoretically possible that this labor is now freed up to create value for lower income households.. The only reason self driving tech won't be commoditized will be regulatory barriers. You can imagine why entrenched interests would lobby for such.

> It's theoretically possible that this labor is now freed up to create value for lower income households. If there is competition, then it is true that driving down food/commodities prices will create value for lower income households. But a solid portion of that value will still accrue to the companies running the transit networks using fewer people. Google has spent years trying to enter the field of self-driving…

> I don't know enough to do that with any confidence.

From an epistemological perspective no one does. No one person in this world contains the knowledge needed to manufacture a modern day pencil from scratch.

I don't think the term "income inequality" accurately describes the problem. Someone growing richer doesn't mean someone else had to become poorer. The problem more accurately is that poor people are poor.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#123

Post by aisofteng »

stale2002 wrote: post #41
fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumption that everything will be cheaper seems a bit disingenuous, because why would these companies want to automate themselves so badly if they weren't going to keep most of the savings as profit? Even if prices were lowered by a few percent for some goods thanks to cheaper shipping, that's little help when you have no source of income. This will only exacerbate the demand-limited economic slump we're curren…

Because of supply and demand and competition. If companies could squeeze more money out of customers why wouldn't they just do so right now by raising prices?

Because they would all have to collude to not lower prices, which is illegal. Once one lowers prices - which will happen, because doing so will lead to better business immediately - the rest have to follow.

Such is the nature of competition, and one of the basic reasons why it works. Frankly, I'm surprised it still needs to be explained.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#124

Post by susan_hall »

WalterBright wrote: post #113
susan_hall wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the 1800's, having children was a net asset because they were put to work as soon as they could walk" You are expanding upon my example without explaining it. My point remains: has the standard of living gone up? If people could do productive work at the age of 10, but now they have to wait till they are 25, then what metric do you use to prove that the standard of living has gone up? If you want to argue that le…

Polio wasn't conquered until the 1950's. > what metric do you use to prove that the standard of living has gone up? Average height, longevity, infant mortality are good proxies. Median wage doesn't mean much as it doesn't say what you can buy with it. Have you ever been to Disneyland? Yellowstone? Traveled internationally? Only the rich could do that in 1900. People didn't even brush their teeth until after WW1. Few…

You are avoiding the issue. I have to assume that you have no answer to the question. It is more difficult to raise children, and we lack metrics that show that decline. Listing a bunch of neat stuff doesn't show that the standard of living has improved. As a point of comparison, imagine if it now cost 50%, to raise 16 children, than it had 100 years ago. In that situation, we could compare like with like, and we could say that everything had gotten universally better. Since we don't face that situation, we run the risk of only counting the good stuff, without counting any of the bad stuff, and thus falsely concluding that things have gotten better. If we'd like to count DisneyWorld on the positive side, where do we count the increased difficulty of raising children?

Your point about polio is bizarre, as it was never the dominant factor in childhood mortality. The steepest decline in childhood mortality was during the period from 1850 to 1900.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#125

Post by [deleted] »

xapata wrote: post #97
DavidWanjiru wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if this video [0] is anything to go by, most of the other jobs will be automated as well. And although I have no foresight to know how it will pan out, it looks like advances in technology (which have produced previously unimagined jobs for humans - hello, Android dev), advances in technology in this new age will only create new jobs for automatons, not for humans. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQ…

Until we hit the singularity, programmers can always get more meta -- thinking about how to do the job rather than doing the job, no matter what the job is. It's infinitely recursive. In the not-so-distant future, nearly all jobs will be programming jobs. That or shaking hands and smiling.

[deleted]

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#126

Post by WalterBright »

susan_hall wrote: post #124
WalterBright wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polio wasn't conquered until the 1950's. > what metric do you use to prove that the standard of living has gone up? Average height, longevity, infant mortality are good proxies. Median wage doesn't mean much as it doesn't say what you can buy with it. Have you ever been to Disneyland? Yellowstone? Traveled internationally? Only the rich could do that in 1900. People didn't even brush their teeth until after WW1. Few…

You are avoiding the issue. I have to assume that you have no answer to the question. It is more difficult to raise children, and we lack metrics that show that decline. Listing a bunch of neat stuff doesn't show that the standard of living has improved. As a point of comparison, imagine if it now cost 50%, to raise 16 children, than it had 100 years ago. In that situation, we could compare like with like, and we cou…

Polio: http://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/sokol.html Mortality wasn't the big concern with polio, it was the debilitating life-long after effects, and the adverse effects of pervasive fear of it.

You want to believe things are worse in America, I can't change your mind. In my own lifetime things have gotten visibly better. My father lived into his 90s, and he'd recount how things have gotten quite a bit better. Sure that's anecdotal, but you can look up statistics, too.

A "bunch of neat stuff" does improve standard of living. I'm almost never bored, for example.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#127

Post by astazangasta »

harryh wrote: post #121
astazangasta wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median income remaining flat is entirely consistent with productivity being absorbed by the high end.

I'm not sure what you mean by "absorbed"? My point (well Scott Sumner's really) is that there hasn't been a breakdown between pay and productivity. People are still getting paid more if they are more productive. It's just that somewhere around 1970 or so the median worker stopped getting all that much more productive. Now, maybe that's what you meant by your graph. In which case, fine. But most people look at that an…

I think that's exactly what happened. For example, what I described earlier, medical costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation in the US while outcomes did not improve much at all, is the median worker being cheated out of their productivity gains: it means they are paying more and getting less, while health care providers and people who own patents on drugs or medical devices get more. This change has absolutely zilch to do with changes in how productive anyone is and much more to do with how income is distributed, how property rights are enforced, how high-tech industry is regulated, etc.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#128

Post by duaneb »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #117
duaneb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. I don't think everyone--in this time or others--would agree with this. I certainly don't believe in being "better off", I think that's an illusion born out of minimization of our greatest fears. Just because you aren't about to die of tetanus does not mean your quality of life has improve at all.

People writing stuff like this should spend a year in a disease prone third world country away from all modern technologies like electricity and internet. Then you'll understand whether you really have a higher quality of life or not.

Well that's the thing, isn't it? Are you really more likely to be unhappy (or happy) unless you've seen both worlds? Happiness is relative to your frame of reference.

Disease is unfortunate. So is the destruction of our earth. The people dearest to me live thousands of miles apart and talk to me through Facebook. That too is unfortunate.

I simply wish i could dictate the terms of my lifestyle and I cannot. I understand most do not grapple with this problem.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#129

Post by duaneb »

WalterBright wrote: post #104
duaneb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. I don't think everyone--in this time or others--would agree with this. I certainly don't believe in being "better off", I think that's an illusion born out of minimization of our greatest fears. Just because you aren't about to die of tetanus does not mean your quality of life has improve at all.

> I certainly don't believe in being "better off" I do. Archeological evidence of American colonists' bones reveal that they worked extremely hard and died young. Look at their clothes in a museum - they look like childrens' sizes. Look at their teeth in bones in museums. Do you prefer teeth like that? I can buy an orange any day of the year. I have hot/cold running water. I'm warm in winter. I have clean water to dr…

If you have no option for better teeth, how much does that impact you? Serious question.

I really should have framed my example in terms of happiness rather than quality of life.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#130

Post by WalterBright »

duaneb wrote: post #129
WalterBright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I certainly don't believe in being "better off" I do. Archeological evidence of American colonists' bones reveal that they worked extremely hard and died young. Look at their clothes in a museum - they look like childrens' sizes. Look at their teeth in bones in museums. Do you prefer teeth like that? I can buy an orange any day of the year. I have hot/cold running water. I'm warm in winter. I have clean water to dr…

If you have no option for better teeth, how much does that impact you? Serious question. I really should have framed my example in terms of happiness rather than quality of life.

There are many terrible diseases today for which there is no effective treatment. Do you believe people are happy with that situation? I don't.
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