What's the answer when a company replaces people with machines? What happens to those people? What happens to that companies profits? What about protectionism? Ending free trade? What are the implications to welfare and taxation? What happens when robots replace half the workforce? Three-fourths the workforce? Ninety percent of the workforce?
You can't just keep retraining more and more people for fewer and fewer jobs. That is a dead end street. Unless population starts a serious decline we will either stick to the status quo and the number of poor will grow or corporate profits will have to be redirected to support those who lost their livelihood. The way things are going, some type of shit is going to have to hit the fan.
__________________ "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Ten Commandments ruling, June 27, 2005
Automation of manufacturing is not the problem, it has been going on for 200 years and will not stop. The precision of many components (electronic circuit boards for example) require something more repeatable and reliable than a person's hand to assemble them.
As time goes on and the quality of components improves, you need robotic types of processes to ensure the end product is acceptable. If the engineers did their job correctly, and automated system will also more reliably report faults within the process as well.
The problem is not that we are so clever we can design ourselves out of a job, but rather a large percentage of people have little "sense" in a factory setting. This is not to say they are lazy, they just do not understand what is important and what is not important to the manufacturing process they are performing.
With that said, there are many processes which will not be replaced by human hands anytime soon. The flexibility and dexterity of a pair of skilled human hands in invaluable in these situations.
It is also ironic that as we ship our manufacturing to developing nations the American "workforce" has never figured out how to ensure their own personal futures. You do this by enlarging your skill set through education (either formal or practical). The days of a guy putting on the same wheelnut day after day for 40 years and retiring with full benefits are over forever.
Automation of manufacturing is not the problem, it has been going on for 200 years and will not stop. The precision of many components (electronic circuit boards for example) require something more repeatable and reliable than a person's hand to assemble them.
As time goes on and the quality of components improves, you need robotic types of processes to ensure the end product is acceptable. If the engineers did their job correctly, and automated system will also more reliably report faults within the process as well.
The problem is not that we are so clever we can design ourselves out of a job, but rather a large percentage of people have little "sense" in a factory setting. This is not to say they are lazy, they just do not understand what is important and what is not important to the manufacturing process they are performing.
With that said, there are many processes which will not be replaced by human hands anytime soon. The flexibility and dexterity of a pair of skilled human hands in invaluable in these situations.
It is also ironic that as we ship our manufacturing to developing nations the American "workforce" has never figured out how to ensure their own personal futures. You do this by enlarging your skill set through education (either formal or practical). The days of a guy putting on the same wheelnut day after day for 40 years and retiring with full benefits are over forever.
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So if everyone enlarges their skill set everything will be okay. Got it.
Tell me, does enlarging your skill set create new jobs?
It is impossible to replace all these lost jobs. If everyone in America had a four year degree, etc. then we'd have a bunch of educated people with no job prospects. Enlarging your skill set only works if few other people do the same. We are witnessing the emergence of a permanently unemployed class of people - more poor. The smaller the world becomes the more we become like them. What did Thomas Friedman call it? Flat earth or something like that?
What are we going to do with all these people who's jobs have gone bye bye?
China is experiencing growth pains with higher wages, environmental concerns, labor needs, etc. Hopefully they'll peak before too much longer. But then there's India, etc., etc. Lot's of poor people in the world and corporations want to decrease costs. Not sure what the answer is if there is one.
__________________ "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Ten Commandments ruling, June 27, 2005
Enlarging your skill set only works if few other people do the same. We are witnessing the emergence of a permanently unemployed class of people - more poor.
The uneducated and unskilled in the US have bore the brunt of this extended recession far more than those that would be considered more skilled and educated. So in the last five years choosing not to increase your skill set has increased your chances of being unemployed.
I don't count finance or real estate brokers who have been wiped out, many of these clowns have little to offer anyone in the way of "added value". They were largely dead weight. In the mid '00s a lot of people made a lot of money in fees and commission. But it was largely BS, and many of these people were lucky to work in their industries at the time they did. It isn't that they aren't making as much as they should now, but rather they made far more than they were worth back then.
Thinking of it, that is what it really comes down to: adding value. The goal of a laid off person retraining should be to learn skills which make them more efficient, productive, and not easily replaced by a machine or illiterate on the other side of the world.
If you can collect a group of people, all with skills and work ethic, and have all of them understand the purpose of their particular labor and how it fits with the organization. Then doing their job to their fullest potential...no one can compete with them. No one. If the US as a whole had this mentality we would bury any other competitor, Chinese slave labor or not.
Eventually someone will grow a pair with developing countries, China in particular, and impose an environmental tariff on imported goods. The ecological record for these countries is deplorable, and the tariff should be equal to what the cost increase would be to comply with US standards. Tax revenue would go for clean energy investment infrastructure.
You could do the same thing with labor as well. If an imported item costs $20 and has $2 hours worth of overseas labor to produce it with an average wage of $1/hr, apply the difference between that wage and minimum wage US ($7.25 + 7.65% for employer FICA) to the item. We will see if they remain competitive if it is now $33.50. Tax revenue could go directly to extended unemployment benefits and retraining efforts.
Here's a great story that was on the Newshour last night. Some of our companies have done similar things. Overall though, it seems Germany cares more about it's people than we do. In the long run that makes for a stronger country. Here, it's usually sorry sucker, you're on your own. Also interesting to note that they have social benefits that far exceed ours. I guess that's why the Americans expats I saw on television about two years ago said they'd never come back to the U.S. (she was pregnant - they got all kinds of perks including free health care and a month of parental leave, even for the husband). Germany invests in it's people for the future. We care about profits now, to put it simply. Sure, there are cultural differences, but we have plenty of hard workers here to offset the slackers.
Something that I wonder about when watching this video is executive compensation and worker compensation. Frankly, if I were working for some of our companies, with their outrageous executive compensation, I wouldn't be too thrilled about doing my best for them. It all starts at the top with wisdom and smart strategic planning - greed shouldn't be part of the equation.
__________________ "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Ten Commandments ruling, June 27, 2005
Last edited by Turd Ferguson; 02-09-2012 at 05:12 PM.
Here's another story on Apple, as I remember it. It shows what our companies are up against and why we can't compete.
Steve Jobs got the first iPod prototype and it had a plastic screen. It scratched and he said "we can't have this - make it in glass". So immediately, the Chinese factory that was producing them rousted thousand of workers out of their dorms (they stay in dorms at the factory), swapped parts, and almost immediately was able to make glass screened iPods. No one here can do that.
From Burns's link: "...the Foxconns and Apples of the world, where dictatorial billionaires make closed-door calculations based on market share, revenue and profit at the expense of everyone, and everything else."
That's deregulated capitalism. Yet another example of why free markets don't work.
__________________ "Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Ten Commandments ruling, June 27, 2005
facinating 1936 video
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