Millions of jobs to dissapear as robotics advance

Well, in theory the jobs aren't going anywhere because people have to manufacture the robots and the components used to manufacture them.. Of course that doesn't help the typical American if the robots are being manufactured in Japan or China or outside of the US.

But yes, indeed companies will be looking to go automated on anything they can and I really can't blame them with crazy labor unions and $15 an hour demands for remedial unskilled work... People price themselves out of a job... Let the market dictate what a job is worth.

 

The value of human beings is on the downfall these times. Abortions, automatization, non-useful humans will soon be regarded as bags of meat, literally and despised by the elite.

 

While a lack of opportunity is one factor, as are racial prejudice and misogyny, there is a deeper underlying cause behind poverty and it's "market forces" that affect compensation. Market competition, regardless of whether it's addressing a product, a service, or labor compensation always strives to force the price to the lowest possible level but there is an inherent difference between the "enterprise" providing a product and/or service and a worker.

The "market forces" cannot logical reduce the cost of a product or service to below what it costs the enterprise to provide it. Sustained operating at a loss eventually drives the enterprise out of existance which eliminates the "supply" side of the supply and demand market forces. The cost of operation imposes a constraint upon how low a price can go based upon market forces.

That same constraint doesn't exist for labor because the worker cannot simply "go out of existance" if they're forced to operate at a loss (i.e. not earning enough to meet mandatory necessary minimum expenditures). The only way the "worker" can go out of existance is to commit suicide.

Enterprise must always operate at a profit (or without loss) based upon market forces while a person can literally be forced to operate at a loss (i.e. income below the mandatory necessary minimum cost of livijng)

If all of the person's needs are met then it's reference to relative wealth and not poverty. While poverty can have varying degress there is a simple criteria for understanding what is and what is not poverty.

For years the "mandatory necessary minimum cost of livijng" was subjective and not quantified leading many to argue that it didn't exist at all. That changed in recent years. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), home of some of America's best analytical minds, rose to the challenge and addressed the mandatory necessary minimum monthy and annual costs of living (operating costs) of households of varying size and composition throughout the United States. Everyone can access the MIT Living Wage Calculator online by State and County.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

Because the expenditures are mandatory a person/household that doesn't have enough income to fund the mandatory expenditures imposes a financial burder on society that must be met because the expenditure must be funded from somewhere. A mandatory expenditure must be funded and it can be from the person, the family, a charity, local government, state government and/or the federal government but the expenditure must be funded.

Poverty is the "income below the mandatory necessary minimum cost of living" for the household because it imposes a financial obligation for funding from a source other than the person that is incapable of fully funding the expenditure..

 

The minimum wage addresses a pragmatic issue. A person/household has mandatory necessary minimum expenditures that must be funded. Ideally the person fully funds these expenditures but if they don't have the financial resources (income) to fully fund the expenditures the balance must be funded from an external source. It can be from family, charity, and/or by the taxpayer through local, state or federal taxation and spending because those expenditures are mandatory and not discretionary.

It's the financial obligation of "society" that's created by under compensation that the minimum wage addresses. The owner of an enterprise that provides under compensation is imposing a financial burden on others and they don't have a right to do that.

Of course the "wealthy" don't pay the minimum wage and it doesn't adversely affect their wealth or income. It's paid for by the consumers,

Like all expenditures employee compensation is merely one of the many costs of operating a business and is accounted for by the business plan. The business plan determines the revenues and profits from the enterprise and not the different individual costs of operation for the enterprise. In point of fact if the profit is based upon a percentage margin relative to costs in the business plan then the higher minimum wage actually increases the profits for the owner.

Finally the minimum wage does not disadvantage the enterprise because it's applied across the board for all enterprises so there's no competitive advantage or disadvantage related to it.

 

Technology is always based upon a cost/benefit analysis and only when the technology reduces the costs is it employed. It always results in a net loss for the workers that are displaced by the technology so while new jobs are created the total "compensation" for employment is reduced. If that wasn't the case then there would never be technological advancements by enterprise.

For example ATM's are wonderful but the only way they became viable is because they replaced more bank tellers (costs) than the costs associated with manufacturing and servicing the ATM's. Some jobs were created, including some that paid more than the individual bank teller jobs, but the total costs of the jobs created was less than the total costs of the bank teller jobs that were eliminated.

 

Trains replaced carriages, cars replaced trains, cassettes replaced 8 tracks, cd's, ipod's, Pandora, blockbuster, redbox, netflix, hulu, on demand, land line phones, long distance, magic jack, cell phones, books, newspapers, google, nook, check out lines, self scan, internet shopping, postal service, snail mail, stamps, internet banking...
The population is much larger globally than it was 50 years ago.
Essentially, is your argument, don't invent because it may cause job loss?? If that is European mentality, no wonder Europeans are a techno epic fail.

 

Four times the standard deviation

 

My argument isn't against technology at all because I highly embrace it but I also recognize that it's a two-edge sword. It allows more productivity but it comes with a loss of jobs and income for the workers. The technology allows us to produce far more than we need but because of the resulting loss of compensation the people can't afford the goods and services the technology is capable of producing.

We need to increase the technology but also increase the compensation for the remaining employment to fully benefit from the technology. The equation must balance for us to fully benefit from the technological advancements but today it doesn't.

 

Strives to force price to the lowest level?
How off the mark you are.
Ray Bans, Coach, Cadillac, Gucci, Tommy, Mercedes, Rolex, Ritz Carlton, Bose... These are very expensive brand names hell bent on keeping their price high. They are status symbols. People want to have them for the name.
You can live in the US on just about anything. How you live, that's different.
Your links and definitions are super swell, but illustrate you don't work, live independently, pay bills, and manage the finances of a household in the US.
You also talk about race in the US blindly.
Racism...whatever. Black Americans have had money thrown at them for decades. It hasn't helped. Illegal Mexicans without ID, resources, citizenship, they come to the US and excel. Their children assimilate remarkably and their children and US born offspring care just fine.
Asians succeed, Indians succeed, black immigrants succeed. American blacks as a whole have an internal problem. No one can fix it but black Americans.

 

Ok, I live in Coweta County, Georgia, USA.
Can you give me an annual income for a household of four in my county that meets your criteria for rich? Google and Wikipedia should have enough county income info to ball park a number.

 

Likely the modern equivalent of the Luddite movement will develop.

 

You miss the whole point.
If you feel compelled to be charitable, feel free to do so with YOUR resources.
Don't pontificate about government redistribution of wealth as if it has or ever will fix anything.

 

If done in moderation, they provide a boost to lowest wage workers.

Nobody owes the rich anything. Oh wait, their bribed politicians do.

What's your point? Since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution, the bottom 90% have seen their share of the nation's income fall from 65% to 50%. The richest 1% are now getting about 20% of the nation's income and have about 40% of the nation's wealth, doubled since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution. Isn't that enough for you? How much more do you want the richest to get from the middle class?

For some, or many, more is never enough.

 

Of course the luddites were swimming against an inexorable tide.
Never the less, they existed because these changes produced an extraordinary disruption of the labor market. Lots of People lost Their secure jobs... And employers used the oversupply of labor to squeeze those who remained employed.

All of this is on the way, like it or not. There will be fewer good traditional jobs and careers. And it is not particularly anyones fault... Not from flawed policies of a given political party or administration. The world is simply changing. Not always in ways that are comfortable for us.

 

In 30-40 years America will be vastly different than it is today.
Maybe then the world will be a better place.

 

You were talking about solving problems in the US with wealth redistribution and legislation. That never works. Never.
Fulton County (Atlanta) schools are funded better than any in Georgia. The students still overwhelmingly fail. Detroit fed bailouts, failed.

 

Idle hands are the devil's workshop, and all that jazz.

 

As a thought experiment, lets extend the principle to its extreme
Each and every job is eliminated by automation
How does society adapt?

, that is the same problem workers face with smaller scale automation
Chunks of good jobs disappear, or never emerge even in an expanding economy
In general labor becomes less valuable as it is in over supply and faces competion from machines and off shore workers, and hungry immigrants in this country

 

The end of WWII and spending cuts helped end it...Along with restructuring-as has happened after the housing crash...lending has dramatically changed.
I wasn't alive then though. I can much more knowledgeably discuss the past 20 years in American politics and finance.

 

Shiva is correct.....

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...t-do-digging-ditches-for-Verizon-for-11-hour#