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The rise of robots in the German labour market

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Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#51

Post by lispm »

adventured wrote: post #45
jojoo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a member of the German Education and Science Union i have to strongly disagree. Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it. Year after year all German workers have collective bargaining agreements close to inflation, while the economy booms. The union-reps are in bed with the companys and workers eat it up.

Where are you seeing that the German economy is booming? It hasn't net expanded in ten years. GDP 2007: $3.44 trillion vs 2016: $3.46 trillion It has been averaging around 1.5% GDP growth since 2011. That is not booming. Germany may finally climb above the pre great recession era GDP numbers in 2017. Germany is having the problems that it is, precisely due to the lack of meaningful economic growth. There's no scenari…

BIP in Germany in 2007: 2.5 trillion Euro

BIP in Germany in 2016: 3.1 trillion Euro

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1251/umfrage/...

1.5% GDP growth in a country with a developed economy and a constant population number is actually okay. In such an economy GDP growth is linked to population growth...

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#52

Post by lispm »

agumonkey wrote: post #18
lispm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still the East/West divide. Less jobs and lower payment in the East. Then there is a larger sector with low-paid jobs and lots of people from East Germany and Central/East Europe competing. The EU rights makes it easy for EU-citizens to look for jobs in Germany. Mostly everybody with medium- or high qualifications should have no problems finding a well-paid job. Across all ages. In the western parts of Germa…

I've recently read that the east still hasn't recovered from the pre reunification lag... crazy.

I don't think that's crazy. The GDR economy was dismantled after the war by the soviets quite a bit more than in the west. Then it had a socialist style economy for several decades, then with the reunification, the economy collapsed. Lots of industry went away because it was not competitive and based on old technology or for various other reasons. East Germany is near to countries which are even poorer. The young people moved to the west to work there. This creates all kinds of structural disadvantages which will be hard to overcome in 50 years.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#53

Post by usrusr »

adventured wrote: post #46
usrusr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has southern Italy ever recovered from not being the north? Has the American Midwest recovered from not being one of the coasts? Economies naturally concentrate and countering that takes not only effort and dedication but also wise decisions and luck. West Germany used to be very good at this, but concentration to a few major cities has been accelerating recently. It's not only eastern Germany that is being left behi…

> Has the American Midwest recovered from not being one of the coasts? That's not a great reference point. It only works well if you're only talking about New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut. California's GDP per capita is only about 8%-10% higher than Nebraska. Iowa is as high as Oregon. Illinois is 30% higher than Florida. Indiana is higher than Vermont. Wisconsin is higher than North Carolina. Minnesota is clo…

> California's GDP per capita is only about 8%-10% higher than Nebraska. [..]

But how are populations developing? When people follow the money, GDP per capita evens out, maybe to the point of overcompensation given enough mobility and optimism to "make it there". Just look at how real estate prices are not matching the distribution of GDP per capita at all: real estate is less mobile than people.

(Edit: and yes, there surely are also some economic hotspots within the Midwest, some of those states are huge and have plenty of room to have their own internal concentration patterns)

Back to real estate, which brings us back to Germany, where rising real estate prices (both owned and rented) have increasingly been on people's minds recently: the solution cannot be just rent regulation or construction deregulation, it has to go to the root, find was to Conner concentration, to make the backwaters more economically viable, where housing prices ar not rising but in free fall.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#54

Post by mdpopescu »

wiz21c wrote: post #10
sarabande wrote: post #2

It's admirable to me that unions protect low-skilled workers from losing their job, not by preventing them from getting fired at current wages, but by accepting wage decreases for their workers while getting them re-trained into jobs of higher cognitive skill. That seems like the fair and humane thing to do for workers, while at the same time not screwing over capital owners or stifling automation.

It is not admirable at all. It basically means that you're putting a competition between machines and humans. If machines do become smarter, then humans will be moved out of the equation (except for the 0.001% who can create and maintain the machines). This kind of fight may be good on the short term, but it legitimates the fact than man are inferior to machine. For example, it may soon legitimates that, contrary to…

Humans ARE inferior to machines - in some areas. I can't fly as well as an airplane or cut steel as well as a lathe, therefore someone who needs flying or cutting steel would be better off by using a machine instead of me.

What would the alternative be? Force businesses to hire me to "do my best" to fly people around?

Will this create social problems if / when machines are better than humans at everything? Sure, just like it happened in each field once machines were better at something - starting with the sewing machines and the luddites, if I'm not mistaken.

I do believe that the final result will be a Star-Trek-ish society where everybody has access to most things for free, and where everyone works only if they want to; however, I don't believe it will be easy to get there.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#55

Post by wiz21c »

mdpopescu wrote: post #54
wiz21c wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not admirable at all. It basically means that you're putting a competition between machines and humans. If machines do become smarter, then humans will be moved out of the equation (except for the 0.001% who can create and maintain the machines). This kind of fight may be good on the short term, but it legitimates the fact than man are inferior to machine. For example, it may soon legitimates that, contrary to…

Humans ARE inferior to machines - in some areas. I can't fly as well as an airplane or cut steel as well as a lathe, therefore someone who needs flying or cutting steel would be better off by using a machine instead of me. What would the alternative be? Force businesses to hire me to "do my best" to fly people around? Will this create social problems if / when machines are better than humans at everything? Sure, just…

Machines are superior sometimes, you're right (and for the best of us, that's for sure). But that's not my point. My point is that we shouldn't compare machines to men. Because too often one compares the perceived characteristics of men (like too expensive, wanting too much, having a consciousness, having babies,...) to other characteristics of machines, logically concluding that men are more troubles than machines.

Fact is that right now, in every media, machines are presented as a threat to employment of men. By presenting it as such, media imply the fact that for employment, machines are better. At the same time, governments, spend most of their time fighining against unemployment, which sort of criminalize people who don't get a job (they don' look hard enough, they're not flexible enough).

So all of this lead to a big problem : people don't get job and it's their fault and, moreover, for the simpler jobs, men are inferior to machines. So basically, we show men under a very dim light. That's what I see all around.

Now, if you tell me that machines will remove the hard part of some jobs (like heavy lifting, working in polluted environement, etc) and, at the same time, the benefits made by those who have machines ('cos machine are cheaper than men) are fully redistributed (save for capex) to those who lost their job, then we can have a talk.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#56

Post by pgeorgi »

goldbricked wrote: post #13
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only report from a viewpoint inside my own filter bubble obviously, but this "two or three jobs to earn a living" is something that is still associated with the US here and practically unheard of in Germany.

Well, then i guess your bubble has a particularly large diameter. With almost 1 in 10 workers in Germany being part of the 'working poor' [1], there would otherwise be one in your social circle. [1] https://www.boeckler.de/106575_109897.htm

"Working poor" in Germany means having to use the social security systems to make up for the difference between what they earn and what they need.

And yes, this means that those jobs are tax subsidized.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#57

Post by wiz21c »

imtringued wrote: post #15
wiz21c wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not admirable at all. It basically means that you're putting a competition between machines and humans. If machines do become smarter, then humans will be moved out of the equation (except for the 0.001% who can create and maintain the machines). This kind of fight may be good on the short term, but it legitimates the fact than man are inferior to machine. For example, it may soon legitimates that, contrary to…

The primary problem with automation is temporary displacement of workers. There needs to be a mechanism to connect skill demand to people otherwise people end up in low skill jobs. >If machines are to rule, then we have to change the way we redistribute the worth they produce. In theory if there is enough competition the price of the good decreases through automation. Imagine you're a business selling clothing where…

>>> Unfortunately in practice we have monopolies/oligopolies everywhere.

Exactly.

And to me robotics is so capital intensive that you'll inevitably have such monopolies (like in oil industry).

That's why I don't like when people look only the tool instead of the people affected by the tool (be they on on good or bad side of it).

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#58

Post by jernfrost »

kensai wrote: post #5
sarabande wrote: post #2

It's admirable to me that unions protect low-skilled workers from losing their job, not by preventing them from getting fired at current wages, but by accepting wage decreases for their workers while getting them re-trained into jobs of higher cognitive skill. That seems like the fair and humane thing to do for workers, while at the same time not screwing over capital owners or stifling automation.

This. Germany is one of the few places that Unions are working (mostly) as intended. When Germany was under pressure in the Schröder era, it was the Unions that helped dealing with convincing the workers to accept shorter shifts and salaries, instead of pushing companies to relocation or, worse, bankruptcy.

Works the same in Norway, but it is not because US/UK unions are so badly behaved. They behave as the anti-union system in the UK and US have made them act. Unions in Germany and Scandinavia work because they got considerable power and are represented on the company boards. That means they learn to take responsibilty by being given considerable responsibility and power. Unions in the US and the UK are not given any trust or power but instead are fought and sabotaged at every opportunity. This is what has made them a reactionary force dealing with management as the enemy.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#59

Post by readittwice »

germanier wrote: post #16
goldbricked wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then i guess your bubble has a particularly large diameter. With almost 1 in 10 workers in Germany being part of the 'working poor' [1], there would otherwise be one in your social circle. [1] https://www.boeckler.de/106575_109897.htm

The definition of "working poor" they use is not "having two or more jobs" but "earning less than 60% of the median". According to IAB 2.7 million workers have a second job in Germany (which is about 1 in 12). Most of them probably because they don’t earn enough in their first.

Not to forget that this number alone doesn't mean anything, we still need to compare this number to other countries or to the past. But then we also need to consider stuff like this: AFAIR the number of "working poor" or "relative poor" decreased in/after the crisis 2008. Why? Not because companies paid more during the crisis but simply since the median income decreased.

Re: The rise of robots in the German labour market

#60

Post by readittwice »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #24
agumonkey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. For those who know Germany, it's often said that even if the economic numbers are high, there's a lot of poor workers that need two jobs to live. Is it true ? true but only a small % ? normal according to you ?

In addition to what ManuelKiessling already said, I can also report that in my bubble this is not the case, but it is hard to accurately judge our bubbles. According to this bar chart on wealth distribution in the EU [1] there is a huge difference between the average and median wages in Germany, so I would expect the group of poor workers to be much larger than we think it is. Of course, being poor in Germany might m…

Your chart is about assets not income/wages as you claim. Since the chart is in German too, readers can't see that.

People in Germany seem to prefer rent over freehold property, this might explain Germany's low numbers compared to other states.

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