Millions of jobs to dissapear as robotics advance

Does that issue have anything to do with Walmart and unions?

 

In a free society people should have the right to organize. If not, it isn't a free society.

 

And others have the right to close down their business.

 

Yep...

 

and in a free society owners should have a right to organize too??? Owners are people too-right??

 

Not when it comes to price fixing or monopolies.

 

no idea what your point is?? are you saying that labor people should be allowed to organize but not owner people??

 

Yes, but neither have anything to do with robotics and trade. Walmart doesn't produce anything.

 

In fact many companies in the service industry are going robotic. Walmart will probably move further in that direction as well.

Walmart has produced a lot of jobs and made many goods available to low income families.

 

Walmart is moving toward smaller stores.

 

unions are corrupt and communist, they use artificial force to raise wages instead of allowing the free market's natural high wages from competition.

tariffs would make walmart have all their products made in countries that don't use slave labor, and that will naturally bring wages up without the government force of a rigged political system by the crony rich.

unions do nothing when robots take jobs, tariffs bring jobs back home to replace those jobs robots replaced.

 

tariffs start trade wars and possibly real wars. When Republicans converted China to capitalism is did more to create peace on earth than anything in all of human history.Tariffs should be made illegal to preserve world peace.

 

What about the Hoards of uneducated unemployable contemptible Rabble Rousers in slums stand-in around, babbling and drinking Beer and smoking Medical Marijuana by the bushels, selling it too, financing their Freeloading lifestyle selling their EBT funds for Crack, pimping out Prostitots, what about them ?

And if Drugs are legalized, what then ?

Thousands of out of work Drug Dealers ?
What then ?

 

A corporation speaks as one and there is no reason to suggest that employees should be prohibited from doing that.

One of the largest impacts on labor today is the crushing of unions, resulting in worse conditions, lower wages, shorter term employment, gutted retirement, etc.

And, yes, automation is a serious impact as well.

The idea that tariffs (or "better" trade deals) are a solution is ridiculous. We need open markets for the stuff we manufacture. Many US corporations sell more product outside the US than they do inside - which makes total sense given that we are 5% of the world population. And, tariffs end up being a two way street.

 

Crushed is hardly descriptive. In fact, lazy violent liberal thug unions made high priced junk, and consumers killed unions off. We should follow through and make unions illegal again.

 

Capitalists do have choices here. And ironically the one that they won't discuss is the one that was bantered about in the 1960s. It was then predicted that one day computerized robots would do a large percentage of work that was being done by workers, and the introduction of such automation would mean Americans would have a new, unprecedented increase in leisure time while receiving the same income as before automation. We would be working 15-20 hour work weeks.

Now we know, however, that the greed of corporations would dictate that they would instead use automation to enrich themselves and even impoverish workers further.

But they always have a choice. They are free to recognize their wealth and to therefore cut work days and spread the existing work load to all employees in a short week for the same pay. And if we shift our economy to socialism, this is exactly what would be done. It is what is being done right now in some European countries.

 

wrong of course!!! capitalism prevents greed. If you don't pay your workers the most possible they quit and go to those who will and your company goes bankrupt. 1+1=2

 

LOL! Ever hear of "huge and growing income inequality"? 1-1=0

 

sure and?????????????????????????

 

Teddy bear, you might as well save your typing fingers. I still have you on "ignore".

 

BIG MOUTH PRESIDENT ELECT

If we tried that our competitive-trade position would go down the plughole. We would price American products out of the global market-place, and the consequence to American workers would be terrible.

So, I suggest we put our efforts into training these workers to the upper-end skills that jobs in the US are now demanding in order to compete in what has become a Services-economy in the US. (Manufacturing is barely 12% of GDP-value)

The EU has hundreds of thousands of people who would agree with you. But, since they actually live in a Social Democracy they don't go overboard in condemning the Right for its excesses - which are very well known. They try to correct them because they have a political-following of their voting fellow-citizens.

Which, after this last election, we have seen is an attitude that simply does not exist sufficiently in the US. (And, given the extreme particularity of a country that elects presidents who fail to obtain a plurality of the popular vote, is an aberration that most other countries cannot and will not understand.)

BIG DIFFERENCE

There is something else going in the US - very different from what happened in Europe. After all, in Europe, the bedrock definitions of socialism and communism not only were made here (I live in Europe) but governments were formed around them. Most of those initial efforts came to naught. Communism has died its well-deserved death, having subsisted far too long.

But they did leave in the minds of people and politicians one Indelible Fact: We live in a capitalist system (no not capitalized, please) where the medium of exchange in a market-economy is cash/money/capital.

That is the foundational essence of any market-economy, regardless of how it is run.

The added colouring essential to a Social Democracy is the fact that the fruit-of-our-labor, when taxed, is then employed to "level the playing field" but not flatten it. We cannot all be millionaires, but neither should we all be living below the Poverty Threshold - and the gamut between the two is vast.

And Social-Democracy governance therefore is simply a matter of achieving a "suitable balance".

What happened to that "suitable balance" in America? The phenomenon is not so difficult to understand, given that the last time America even had an inkling of the notion of Social Democracy was when Teddy Roosevelt founded the Progressive Party in 1912.

Yes, a tried-'n-true Republican founded the Progressive Party, and in 1913 ran against Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, and lost. That was the only time in history that America ever came even close to a "progressive PotUS" who displayed his colours as such.

THE "CAUCUS"

There is, of course, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. (Caucus is an interesting word because its origin is not Roman but wholly American - it is Algonquin in origin. It means "to talk together".) And who is the ONLY Senate member of that Congressional "Progressive-Caucus"? Bernie Sanders. Bernie tried to become the Second Progressive Candidate for the presidency - but the Dem-party was having none of it.

The CPC barely constitutes 15% of the HofR seats, so it is no great-force for change in Congress.

This certainly is not-the-moment for Bernie to stop trying, because the road is long and hard in a country of people who expect "overnight miracles" - which the Dork promised and likely will never ever deliver.

The economic variables are not on his side*, and he is more of a BigMouth than a magician ...

*Just ask me to prove that remark, because I am prepared to do so.

 

Whitehouse, Senate, House, SCOTUS, Governors and State legislatures are all Republican capitalist now so it would be a good time for the open communist treasonous Sanders to stop trying and go to Cuba.

 

LOWERING LABOR-COSTS

Be careful of the exaggerated commentary here. And there is a lot going on about "automation".

Automation has been with us since the end of WW2 and accelerated even in the 1950s/60s. I sold computers to large industrial organisations in the 1990s. And, believe me, in the late 1990s, as something called the Internet was coming into existence, nobody saw its true significance in lowering labor-costs.

The accelerated usage of the interconnect ability brought economies-of-scale that many had thought impossible. It brought down or kept down the cost of building cars such that customers would buy them more regularly than every 10 years - and this is only one example.

Moreover, automation is not only an American phenomenon. The construction of cars in both India and China have employed automated and ever robotic devices. The simple introduction of Automated Tellers gutted the need from human-tellers in banks.

Of course, keeping total costs down (particularly labor-costs) is a favorite bug-bear in this forum. The fact of the matter is that it's been going on for quite some time and did not start happening yesterday. Employment in the US "fell-off-a-cliff" in 2009/10 with the Great Recession, itself due to Wall Street lending fraud that sold worthless mortgage securities to a great many investors world-wide.

It wasn't automation that caused that economic contraction of 2009/10 (aka the Great Recession), and thus boosted unemployment levels up to 10% not seen historically since the 1930s.

The present economy is indeed once again building jobs since 2014, and that has nothing to do whatsoever with the Dork.. Yet, what most Americans do not understand - particularly those who voted for the Dork - is that there is not much he will be able to do about it.

He is no magician and the only device he has to stimulate job-creation is the same one that Obama had, but the Replicant HofR would not allow him. That is, "stimulus spending". Which, under this new-PotUS will suddenly become new and exciting - with large expenditures coming once again for DoD.

The DoD is the typical "economic booster" that Replicants employ - because those who seek DoD-contracts are BigDonors to the Replicant Party. Will that "solve the lack of jobs problem". Not as much as necessary but it cannot hurt either.

The fact of the matter is that stimulus-spending can only go so far. Moreover, when spending enhances consumer-demand, it is not at the bottom of the labor-pyramid where jobs are most needed.

What we fail to realize is that yes, automation is taking a toll on jobs, so typical job-requirements are going upmarket to higher skill/competency levels (and better pay). But that does not much for those without those skills/competencies.

Today, only 50% of American youths are graduating from a post-secondary schooling that offers the qualifications necessary to find a job. What do we do with the other 50%?

MY POINT?

Hillary had the solution - which she had taken from Bernie. We subsidize post-secondary education for all families with a combined income of $110K (the average salary being $54K per parent), and get more of both adults and high-school graduates with the qualifications that commerce and industry requires.

But, no, we can't have any of that, can we. Because we need more guns, apparently.

Stoopid is as stoopid does (Forrest Gump) ...

 

we subsidize?? You mean as a typical lilb Nazi you use a gun to redistribute? Why are liberal solutions always based on violence? America did best in human history because we had fewer libNazis than anyone, less govt violence, and now you want to copy what has never worked?