"the biggest shift in labor that the modern world has ever seen"

[Christians4LessGvt]

White House Predicts Massive Job Losses to Robots


AP Photo

by NATE CHURCH

23 Feb 2016

There is no doubt left that the robots are coming. Along with the rise of a manufactured source of labor comes the question of benefit. While in the long term robots may take over the most mundane and dangerous occupations, the latest "Economic Report of the President" suggests a much more aggressive trend.

The report suggests an over 80% chance that jobs paying less than $20 per hour will eventually succumb to the cybernetic revolution. Jobs in the $20 to $40 look to be cut by about one-third, but positions at the high end should see less than 5% losses to automation. The numbers are staggering and, if true, represent the biggest shift in labor that the modern world has ever seen.

The White House emphasizes the need for education and training to make up for the potential loss of lower tier jobs, but the Bank of England?s chief economist observes that the problem could run much deeper. Andy Haldane has called the advance of automation technologies a "regressive income tax on the unskilled" that could "further widen income disparities."

In a speech entitled "Labour's Share," Haldane makes the case that "technology has made it easier and cheaper than ever before to substitute labor for capital, man for machine." This prediction is to the tune of an estimated 80 million lost jobs in everything from skilled labor to sales and customer service.

It's tempting to suppose that these are problems for another day, that the future is perpetually uncertain. But this future is standing on our doorstep, and we are only a few steps away from being forced to answer. We'll need a workable solution, before large parts of humanity are simply rendered obsolete.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/23/white-house-predicts-massive-job-losses-to-robots/

[Xavier_Onassis]

Obviously the few people who own the robots deserve all the income they produce.

The only trouble is that if you deprive the economy of a middle class, there will be no one to buy the products made by the robots. Even Mitt Romney's family owned only seven mansions and a dozen cars. Rupert Murdock has no need for more than one yacht.

I don't thing the White House can be blamed for this.

[kimba1]

More machines means more welfare. Eventually machines will have to provide at no profit.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Once the robot has been paid for, it can work for less than the proverbial third world barefoot sweatshop worker under a tree in Zamboanga. It can work 24 hours a day in conditions in which a human being could not even survive. It will never complain, all it requires is electricity and maintenance. It will not rebel because it does not have the ability to perceive that it is overworked and mistreated.

Note that Trump complains that "The Chinese are killing us". But somehow, Trump feels it necessary to have his neckties manufactured in (where else?) the People's Republic of China. Somehow, even though the retail price was $50, he did not offer the work to Americans. Not even the Americans that run sweatshops staffed by Chinese contract labor in American Samoa and labeled "MADE IN USA".

Most of the jobs were not stolen by Mexicans or Chinese: they were stolen by Americans using American made robots.

Or perhaps the Chinese made the robots as well.

But there can be no consumer society without consumers. If we require the consumers to pay for stuff, then we will have to provide them with money, credits or something of value.

[Christians4LessGvt]

Boston Dynamics Shows Off Agility of Latest Version of Atlas Robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY

[Xavier_Onassis]

There is a PBS program on robots tonight I plan to watch.
I am interested in this, and I am very glad I am retired and it does not threaten my lifestyle.

They replaced my job with several adjuncts who miss a lot of classes. And they waived the language requirement for a lot more majors.
They have focused on hiring more administrators and paying them twice what they paid me.

They will not be replacing anyone with robots, because the administrators are dummies.

[Plane]

  How many accounting jobs evaporated with the invention of the spreadsheet?

[Christians4LessGvt]

I am very glad I am retired and it does not threaten my lifestyle.

Me2....I hope my timing will be near perfect for retirement
and I will be sliding into the shadows when a lot of this crap hits the marketplace.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The spreadsheet did not replace accountants, it just made it easier for them to account.

This is not the same as a factory robot.

The best paying job in a car factory was the painter. Now robots do the entire job. The car comes in on a track and someone paid low wages pushes a button. There are no car painters in factories anymore.

[kimba1]

the problem is when robots replace labor is what do you use robots for afterwards when people can`t afford product.

[kimba1]

With robots you can't tell people to get a job anymore

[Xavier_Onassis]

In a lot of places, you cannot tell people to "get a job".

Like the coalmines in West Virginia that have closed because they cannot compete, even as non-union "gyppo" mines, with strip mined Wyoming coal.
In Buckhannon, WV, where I once lived, you could not even get a job at McDonald's or Burger King, because there were none. There were a couple of burger joints run by families that only hired their cousins and nephews.

The only solution was to leave WV completely.

The local newspaper was called the "Republican Delta"  (originally the "Whig Delta", because the founder said that if you drew a line across above where the two rivers met, it looked like the Greek letter Delta.