411–420 of 607 posts
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And the executives do this in a golden shower of trickle-on economics. ...which didn't work so well during the Reagan administration, but I guess we're on course to try it again.
No country has ever raised up poor people by eviscerating the wealthy.
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> But will it? My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. For example, ATMs being automated did cause a negative drop in teller jobs, but fast money any time does increase the velocity of money in the economy. It decreases savings rate and encourages spending among the class of people whose money imparts the highest multiplier. AI does not. All t…
> My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable. The problem with services is that they're typically resistant to productiv…
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Computers were roughly ~ $1000 in 1990. How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure inflation adjusted to $2565 today? Average minimum wage in the US is $11.30 so that's 29 days working at minimum wage. My family was on the border of upper-lower and lower-middle and we bought a computer once and used it for 10+ years. I dumpster dove later to scavenge parts for upgrading until the mid 2000s whe…
Yes and also keep in mind that low-income in US is high income in most of the world!
I'm based in the rich Western world. Whenever I travel elsewhere, I'm amazed by the cheapness of labor. Humans would attend a gas station or fetch items in a store. Why? They're completely unneeded, I can do (and WANT to do) that myself. I always feel sad about these people, trapped in an economic system that forces them into useless labour when they could spend their time learning actually useful skills.
One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…
IIRC, the way this worked was that by decreasing tellers required per branch, it made a lot more marginal locations pencil out for branches, at a time when the banking industry was expansionary. This is not so helpful if AI is boosting productivity while a sector is slowing down, because companies will cut in an overabundant market where deflationary pressure exists.
One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…
with ATMs, they wouldn't hand count money for withdrawals and deposits as much. they'd be doing more interesting and challenging things.
same thing will happen with AI automation -- the easy parts disappear, and youre left with undiluted 'hard parts' in your job. some people might like the change, but we'll probably learn that you need a good mix of deep/hard problems and light/breezy problems to keep mentally engaged and prevent burnout.
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But do they need to? If a job at a top tier company making $600k is eliminated and two jobs at a "more average" company making $300k replace it; is that really a bad thing? Clearly, there's some details being glossed over, but "one job paying more than a person really needs" being replaced by "two jobs, each paying more than a person really needs" might just be good for society as a whole.
It doesn't seem too bad when you cherry pick an outlier example, but what about when the person making $100k now makes $50k? I'm sure the retort of the AI optimist will be that AI will make the things that person buys cheaper, and there may be truth to that when it comes to things that people buy with disposable income... But how likely is AI to make actual essentials like housing and food cheaper?
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A lot probably depends on who can do the new jobs. In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living. Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized truck…
It's completely untrustworthy, so eventually we'll hit an inflection point where we discover that we either cannot use AI anywhere we need trust, or we'll put a human middleman in there. The latter sounds much more realistic. There will be plenty of jobs. We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this pr…
There's nothing magic about it. My point is that in the past it was often the case that building the machines that replaced jobs often created enough new jobs to greatly reduce the net job loss. The number of machines needed was proportional to the number of jobs the machines replaced so it scales.
When it is not new physical machines replacing jobs but rather software, often running on machines the employer already had, you won't get that kind of balancing job creation.
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A lot probably depends on who can do the new jobs. In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living. Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized truck…
It's completely untrustworthy, so eventually we'll hit an inflection point where we discover that we either cannot use AI anywhere we need trust, or we'll put a human middleman in there. The latter sounds much more realistic. There will be plenty of jobs. We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this pr…
Maybe I’m wrong, and I certainly have no studies backing up my feelings, but not having to work seems like it would be a massive psychological disaster.
Having external reasons to get up in the morning (providing for your family, being apart of some organization, etc) feel really important.