Robots will kill the unions

[O3H]

50% of the jobs in the United States are at risk
from automation right now.

http://www.iseapublish.com/index.php...an-bernardino/

Yes, it will impact Detroit hard as well

[GMan]

I will start to worry when robots can spend money.

[Honky Tonk]

Robots Will Kill The Unions

I agree. I don't trust them. I think they will kill everyone. Those beady little electric eyes seem to follow you wherever you go in the room. I think they're plotting, just waiting, for the right moment. I'm going to unplug my toaster right now.

[emu steve]

50% of the jobs in the United States are at risk
from automation right now.

http://www.iseapublish.com/index.php...an-bernardino/

Yes, it will impact Detroit hard as well

Robots will kill employment sectors.

As far as unions, unions will probably thrive in certain sectors which have nothing to do with robots or automation.

Will robots teach? Collect taxes? Issue passports?

I assume traditional unions will lose memberships in manufacturing but I'm not sure about skilled trades.

Will a robot come out and fix a furnace? A garbage disposal?

[Tig3rzhark]

This should be no surprise to Detroit. Robotic automation of most jobs is unavoidable. Detroit may have put the world behind wheels, but we must be known for more than that. Otherwise, our city will remain as nothing more as a 20th century museum.

[Shai_Hulud]

Not a lot of content in that article. However, this is something I think about because I probably won't be at retirement age before the next wave hits.

Yes, some of the jobs lost to mechanization get replaced with other ones, but not all of them. So what happens when retail, livery, food service and healthcare jobs start getting replaced, all at the same time, the same way clerical and manufacturing jobs did?

[Dino]

The future is especially bleak if your name is Sarah Connor.

[Former_Detroiter]

This should be no surprise to Detroit. Robotic automation of most jobs is unavoidable. Detroit may have put the world behind wheels, but we must be known for more than that. Otherwise, our city will remain as nothing more as a 20th century museum.

You are correct. When I left GM in 1987 there were robots on the assembly lines.

[Lowell]

Will robots teach? Collect taxes? Issue passports?

The short answer on those is yes.

This is an interesting discussion for me as I am halfway through reading "The Rise of the Robots" by Martin Ford [Review Here].

Robotization has long ago hit Detroit [meaning auto manufacturing and manufacturing in general]. The action in now in the white collar realm and being driven by accelerating machine intelligence, self learning machines in particular.

AI--Artificial Intelligence--is the growing buzzword and hazard to human employment. Work that is done on keyboards and by voice can be learned by machines.

"Remember how you used to call support and get somebody with imperfect English in India?" <- That will be a common memory in, say, five years.

Machines that don't go to school by semesters but instead go 24/7/365 are mastering voice recognition at an accelerating pace.

Meanwhile other machines are learning every support detail to combine to tell you--in an English accent of your region--the answers quickly and accurately.

Teaching? Easy. Tax collection? Once an AI' has loaded all the IRS tax database watch out. Issue passport? Also easy.

Sure there will be human overseers but they'll be increasingly like firemen were on diesel locomotives.

Next up on the chopping block? Engineers and programmers.

[emu steve]

BTW, one should remember that automation [[in this case, "office automation") has led to the decline of the office occupation known as 'clerk-typist' or similar.

When I started in government, I wrote; they typed. Later, I typed what I wrote.

A friend who was a very highly paid worker once said: "my most valuable course in high school was typing."

This is a trend which has been going on for decades going back to office automation systems and later PCs and LANs.

[Lowell]

A friend who was a very highly paid worker once said: "my most valuable course in high school was typing."

I've said the same thing countless times.

I'm increasingly using voice dictation which I now find at 98% accuracy.

[emu steve]

I don't know what they do [[and don't) teach in high school but they need to teach 'real world' skills such as typing and keyboarding, PCs and IT related subjects, Internet research skills, etc.

I don't care if a person is 17 or 65 and retired, being able type, do PC work, know how to surf and research on the Internet, etc. is a 21st century necessity.

The Internet has literally empowered billions of people to seek out knowledge which they can use in their own lives.

Those who know how to effectively use the Internet have better chances to live a more prosperous, healthy life.

[Zacha341]

So true! I tell all young people to learn type and learning to type well. I did not take typing in high school [[I was an artist -- why would I need to type?) and had to learn formal full ten-finger typing in college!

...A friend who was a very highly paid worker once said: "my most valuable course in high school was typing."

[Zacha341]

Robots will kill employment sectors.

If the robots don't get us the computers will! Makes me think of this oldie techno/ funk tune by Newcleus:

Computer Age: Push The Button!

[casscorridor]

I don't know what they do [[and don't) teach in high school but they need to teach 'real world' skills such as typing and keyboarding, PCs and IT related subjects, Internet research skills, etc.

I don't care if a person is 17 or 65 and retired, being able type, do PC work, know how to surf and research on the Internet, etc. is a 21st century necessity.

The Internet has literally empowered billions of people to seek out knowledge which they can use in their own lives.

Those who know how to effectively use the Internet have better chances to live a more prosperous, healthy life.

'Real world' skills is the exact wrong thing to teach. Everything that would be taught will be outdated a year or two later. Rather, we should be emphasizing liberal arts, humanities, analytical thinking, design thinking, critical problem solving, and so on. These are the 'skills' of the future.

[gumby]

Robots will kill all humans.

[emu steve]

'Real world' skills is the exact wrong thing to teach. Everything that would be taught will be outdated a year or two later. Rather, we should be emphasizing liberal arts, humanities, analytical thinking, design thinking, critical problem solving, and so on. These are the 'skills' of the future.

I somewhat agree with you.

Typing which may seem like a rather pedestrian skill is actually a very good skill to have.

Being able to critical review information on the Internet is a valuable skill to have. An adult should be able to say: "My knee hurts" and go to the Internet and do some serious reading.

I think a foreign language say Spanish is good to know as our society has seen a lot of Spanish influence in recent decades.

Yes [[!) problem solving, statistics, basic knowledge of research, basic knowledge of logic, etc. are in my eyes more important than having studied most of Shakespeare.

Problem solving, analytic abilities, etc. are useful making a living and in living.

[Wesley Mouch]

I've said the same thing countless times.

I'm increasingly using voice dictation which I now find at 98% accuracy.

Soon, the most valuable skill will be 'speaking'.

Then next, the most valuable skill will be 'thinking'.

---

Onto the political angle...

Trump is President because we didn't manage the transition from the Industrial Revolution to the Internet age. We should have figured out how to help people either make the transition, or to socialize their post-work lives.

Strengthening Unions to fight progress won't help. The 'we' in the above paragraph includes Unions, who as far as I can tell, have done just about as little as management in dealing with workplace changes. Probably less -- because they fought change to work rules in the interest of current employment -- not future viability.

I'm sure others will disagree, and say that Unions protect people, and it was all an evil plot -- but I think everyone is to blame.

There's gonna be future changes, including robots. The USA will be best if we work to manage that change, and not to try and roll things back to 1950 -- and give those darned foreigners a leg up.

[ABetterDetroit]

The 'if comes' are not the problem around here.

The reality is other states have been kicking our ass for decades.

Michigans jobs have been moving to other states at a high rate. The jobs that go over seas are tough to stop but the ones jumping to South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Arizona are just caused by the stupidity of Michigans polititions for a while now.

Its long overdue to wake up to that simple fact and get in the game and compete.

[Canadian Visitor]

Undoubtedly automation has consumed, is consuming and will consume many classes of jobs.

Unto itself, this is nothing to fear.

As with past automation.

The industrial revolution and first-wave automation brought us the 40 hour work week where once we had 60.

The automation produced new types of jobs AND the social benefits/profits of automation were used to labour-share by shortening the work week, as well as invest in more affordable and wide-spread education so more people could take on the jobs of the then future.

This cycle need not be different; but comparable policy measures have to occur.

First, in one fashion or another, we need to reduce hours worked per person, so that we can share the residual labour more evenly.

This might take the form of a shorter work week, or measures that reduce overtime; or they might take the form of greater paid vacation.

For simplicity's sake, one extra week vacation allows for a 2% shift downward in unemployment, while a reduction of 5 hours in the work week would achieve a 12.5% shift.

Giving parents more generous paid family leave has a similar effect.

To be clear, it isn't about some enormous shift on all these fronts, all at once, but a shift over time, just as was done in previous generations.

Likewise, one has to make other adjustments, such as broadening access to higher education [[more spots, more affordably) so that younger generation can augment their training to take on new jobs of the future.

Retirement ages also need to climb to keep pensions viable.

The US has particular room on these fronts as you have the least mandated paid vacation/parental leave in the developed world. So there's room for a shift w/o losing competitive ground.

While nothing is confirmed, government leaks here in Ontario suggest minimum paid vacation will rise to 3 weeks [[from 2) in the near future. We'll have to see. But that would be good public policy in my opinion.

***

Finally, to shift to more automation, you need to raise the minimum wage. That incents the move to productivity. Only when the A.I is cheaper than human over a 5-year period do businesses start make the switch on massive scale.

You then have to recover the net benefit in the form of higher taxation [[not necessarily rates, could be fewer deductions) from those who profit from the change. So that you have the money to make the required social investments.

[O3H]

People need to read more about automation and economics

http://fortune.com/2017/02/18/bill-g...es-automation/

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/22/sa...ts-from-taxes/

[3WC]

Canadian Visitor: Spoken like a true Canadian Visitor.

Your suggestions are right in line with our own Bernie Sanders. On the slippery slope to Socialism.

You appear to be cognizant of the astronomical costs of implementing the changes you propose and your solution -- surprise, surprise....is more taxation.

Tax and spend. Where has that worked for long?

Canada is a great country in so many ways. But, thank God for the abundance of oil in your western provinces or it would be broke like so many other Socialist-leaning countries.

[oladub]

Robots are just the next phase of technical and computer related technologies expanding the field of jobs being lost to innovation. Gasoline station attendants, bank tellers, grocery store cash registers are gone or going. Drivers of taxis and trucks will be gone. Machines will build houses on site with less labor input. Courses will be taught more and more by computer.

Meanwhile our politicians have compounded the problem by sending our jobs abroad and importing cheaper foreign labor. These policies have destroyed unions and put a lid on wages. We haven't figured out how to get our own unemployed workers back on their feet and now we will have to figure out what to do with all the foreign workers who have displaced US workers who will be replaced by technology along with more US workers. We continue to expand free trade treaties meanwhile.

Bill Gates solution of taxing robots is nonsense. It makes no more sense than taxing consumer operated gas pumps or electricity for replacing whale oil. Still, there has to be some mechanism for redistributing income as the 1% have been raking in far more than their share of profits from technological innovation and financial policies. It would make more sense to tax Bill Gates more. Besides, if only the US taxed robots, it would discourage robotization here while China, Japan, and the EU raced ahead with it and became more competitive because of higher productivity.

[Hermod]

'Real world' skills is the exact wrong thing to teach. Everything that would be taught will be outdated a year or two later. Rather, we should be emphasizing liberal arts, humanities, analytical thinking, design thinking, critical problem solving, and so on. These are the 'skills' of the future.

SI am 78 years old and the fuzziest and crappiest thinkers and problem solvers that i knew were the "liberal artists". Math teaches your to think. Physics teaches you to think. Solving problems teaches you to think. Engineering teaches you to think. Liberal arts teaches you to examine your navel.

[Canadian Visitor]

Canadian Visitor: Spoken like a true Canadian Visitor.

Your suggestions are right in line with our own Bernie Sanders. On the slippery slope to Socialism.

You appear to be cognizant of the astronomical costs of implementing the changes you propose and your solution -- surprise, surprise....is more taxation.

Tax and spend. Where has that worked for long?

Canada is a great country in so many ways. But, thank God for the abundance of oil in your western provinces or it would be broke like so many other Socialist-leaning countries.

Your knowledge of Canada overwhelms [[yes, that was sarcastic)

Aside from the fact Canada is the most right-wing leaning nation in the developed world outside of the United States.....and maybe Japan.....

Canada's oil industry represents a whopping 3% of our total GDP.

Perhaps you might care to read up on things you don't understand before blathering on making a fool of yourself.

****

Canada's total taxation revenue as a % of GDP is well below global norms.

Its also only modestly higher than the U.S.

We just have different spending priorities............