The government didn't mitigate the problems but organized labor did during the 1950's and 1960's. The problem has been anti-union legislation that's reduced the power of organized labor since the late 1960's. It's also a myth that US manufacturing jobs were "outsourced" to foreign countries. The US has seen a decline in the per capita number of manufacturing jobs but worldwide the loss per capita of manufacturing jobs has been greater than in the US. The jobs weren't outsourced but instead eliminated due to Artificial Intelligence and Technology. The US has actually retained more manufacturing jobs per capita when compared to the rest of the world.
*shrug* Some people may lack ambition. But ambition, and therefore demand for better solutions, will exist.
Companies are not making money by firing people. You can walk around town all day and tell folks " you're fired," and no one will pay you a dime for it. (There's a guy in Berkeley who does that.) Businesses are making money by providing products and services, solutions, to people who have needs and wants. That they do not need and are not employing laborers to accomplish this isn't a temporary thing and it doesn't need fixing. Redistributing the money a company is paid to solve peoples needs and wants, giving that money to folks who are contributing nothing to those solutions... that's about as fair and reasonable as redistributing your paycheck to a guy who does nothing to help you earn it. Me for example. And the transition that needs to occur is not people going from being one kind of employee to another, it's for them to find another way to contribute. Because being an employee, asking someone else to figure out how to turn your labor into value, is a luxury that is going away.
No it doesn't. They are no taxing the inventing of things, only the commercial purchase and use of things invented.
Their profits must be taken away if it means putting unskilled workers on the street. Automation is making business move faster than the worker can keep up. The corporation can assist by paying for the training of unskilled workers into skilled workers, it can participate in the human aspect that automation threatens. There is no organized labor or unions today that there were in the 1960's, the labor movement has weakened and cannot defend itself against automation so the government must assume this role. It is not the fault of organized labor for a living wage, that outsourced manufacturing to countries that allow modern day slave labor. Businesses took this upon themselves for more money, so automation does solve this crisis to humanity. There is no union presence today, government or socialism must bridge the gap through redistribution until unions regain a foothold. The unions that exist today are bloated and saturated in government institutions, and almost corrupt as we see in many of the police forces around the country. What we need are more private sector unions to address automation. Favoritism for the capitalist is what ended most organized labor in the private sector, government through socialism is the only check and balance left.
Ambition exists in every individual, but some are too ambitious for their own good, as well as for the good of others.
Automation is the future of business because firing the burger flipper is cheaper than paying him a living wage. Fast food makes a lot of money paying them minimum wage, imagine how much money they will make when they wouldn't have to pay burger flippers anymore, because robots took their jobs. Businesses make money by however way they like, but if they are not employing laborers whose going to buy their products and services. An economy is give and take, if businesses take on a bigger role as takers then there will be less consumers. Automation will position businesses as takers before the unskilled laborers can be retrained into skilled labor, and have the opportunity to participate in the newer innovative economy as givers. The government paying a poor unskilled millenial or elder senior citizen who can't afford retirement, part of the paycheck of a billion dollar companies profits, is not unreasonable in the slightest. The wealth redistribution not only saves the individual person who needs it at the time, but also the economy as a whole, since they will become consumers until they are retrained to participate in a more innovative and automated driven market. Now if you judge poor individuals as not having ambitions, and will be takers as opposed to rich individuals or businesses, that is true as laziness and greed is apart of human nature. However the scale is tilted toward showing the rich not taking responsibility for the economy today, as they are not offering paid training to the unskilled labor force who will be replaced by automation. This causes unskilled workers to go on welfare and then be judged for not having any marketable skills, as if that is their fault to begin with.. If they are fired and can't pay their bills, how can they ever have the opportunity to make themselves marketable? To add insult to injury, the rich or companies they work for, suggest taking away their welfare which will cause an even greater eradication of humans than already exists with the bad safety net in place now. The numbers are proof that it is not the poor who are lazy, as they are dying and humans have a natural instinct of survival. So the rich have to take responsibility either with force by government redistribution, or by choice through their own paid training efforts. It is not a luxury that is going away, or Donald Trump would have a good chance of winning. The people will decide what the businesses do in response to automation, not the other way around.
Aritficial Intelligence and Techology (AI&T) targeted the high-skilled and high-paying jobs first because of the high cost of the techology at the time. For example about 80% of the work formerly done by highly educated, skilled, and paid mechanical engineers is done by computers today. With the dramatically reducing costs of AI&T it targets lower and lower skilled and paying jobs today. Even the computer programmers, typically well educated and skilled are being replaced by computer programs to create the new programs for computers. You want enterprise to train people for the jobs that are disappearing the fastest and that makes no sense at all. AI&T creates a need for people with less education and skills and not for people with more education and skills. Union-busting legislation from Republicans that back corporations instead of workers destroyed the power of organized labor. If we reversed that with pro-union legislation the power of the unions could be restored. It wasn't the AI&T that destroyed the unions, it was Republican politicians.
It is also cheaper not to pay an elevator operator, a milkman or a gas pump attendant. Zero labor solutions are the future of business, automation is just one competing implementation. The people will not decide what businesses can do. They can decide whether those businesses may do it in America and at what cost. As America is no longer the number one economy in the world, those people should be careful what they decide.
Why are businesses contributing to the dumbing down of the population? Why aren't they creating a demand for higher skilled jobs that require education, unless they are not reaching their potential for innovation. On a side note, a less educated and less skilled population will not be smart enough to vote in their interests. Automation appears to be a drive to the bottom, so unless businesses are complacent they should be creating more jobs that require higher skills and education, and pay for the training to do those jobs. Big corporations and I won't single out the one you're referencing out of respect to its integrity, are who pay for the Republican party and its policies. The corporations lobby the Republican party, and even the Democratic party to a lesser degree, to support policies that are against unions in the private sector. It is against their economic interests to pay a living wage.
Well it appears from Shiva's post, that if Businesses create a demand for uneducated and unskilled workers, those workers will not be smart enough to empower themselves against big business bullying through government. America has the potential to be the number one economy in the world, it just needs businesses who are compassionate rather than predatory in nature. It looks like they are supporting a drive to the bottom with automation, instead of using automation as a stepping stone to create more innovative jobs that require higher skills and education, and fill the demand of unemployed Americans who want the opportunity of respectable good paying jobs with paid training.
Few people have a goal of creating jobs, most have the goal of creating and selling solutions. If you can create more or better solutions without hiring someone, than when you hire that someone ... why would you? Why get less done just to keep someone else busy? We don't have the potential to be the number one economy again, if we divert valuable resources to just making busy work.
It's not intentional but instead is driven by the cost/benefit analysis. For example a $50,000/yr job that can be replaced by a $50,000 investment in technology allows the enterprise to reduce costs to it's customers. Because the enterprise can reduce the cost of the product/service it increases market share generating more profit for the owners of the enterprise. It doesn't make sense for the owners to create another job that costs $50,000/yr because the enterprise would lose the benefit of spending the $50,000 to add the technology that replaced the other worker. It's all driven by the "bottom line" where the owner receives more profit by employing the technology so they can reduce the cost thereby increasing "production" and market share. Of course this also argues against wealth redistribution because the "costs" have been reduced and therefore the money necessary for the redistribution no longer exists. What the owner receives in "additional profit" is only a percentage of the loss because of lower pricing of the goods and services provided. As we're also aware the "cost of technology" is dropping rapidly with time. Before the higher skilled $50,000/yr was targeted because the techology cost $50,000 (or more likely $100,000 or more amoratized over several years) but with lower costs the jobs targeted have much lower compensation. Bank tellers were replaced with ATM's reducing the number of bank tellers per capita on the workforce. Today we refer to the "burger-flipper" as a low-paid employee while the low cost technology already exists to replace the "burger-flipper" with a machine that custom makes hamburgers and packages ready for delivery to the customer. Your expressed concern that less informed and knowledgeable voters will be less able to vote for their interests ignored the fact that the general electoriate has never voted based upon the facts. People are motivated to vote based upon political propaganda that's based upon half-truths and that has been the case forever in America (and elsewhere). While those elected to positions of power are supposed to be informed, and have the resources to be informed, for political reasons they resort to propaganda based upon half-turths to support their nefarious agendas. It's always been that way, This really highlights the problem of "money" that funds political propaganda (half-truths) in support of a political (and economic) agenda. There's a huge difference, IMO, between "freedom of speech" where a person can only influence a few people and paid political advertising that can influence millions. There are numerous problems in addressing this but I believe the most significant problem is the ability of a political donor to hide their identity by the use of 501(c)(4) political activism. As I understand it when Prop 8 was introduced in California there were only five very wealthy people (and non-Californians) basically supporting it with funding. While I don't know that I'd oppose the propaganda campaign that supported Prop 8 the fact that basically only five people were financially behind it should have been public knowledge. I don't know if it would have made a difference but at least the voters would have known the truth behind the campaign. The same has been true related to "union-busting" by the Republican Party. Originally it was the association with organized crime that lead to legislation against the unions but that connection ended by the late 1960's. Even when organized crime was involved the workers still benefited from the unions and many ignore that fact. The benefits went beyond just the "union" shops because the "non-union" shops had to match the benefits secured by the union workers. The Republicans continued to attack the unions even after the corruption was gone by misleading people with propaganda. Even today we often hear about "corruption" in the union leadership but that corruption basically ended over 40 years ago. The propaganda continues but today it's basically a lie (based upon information from the distant past) still being perpetuated by Republicans that oppose equality between the workers and the owners of enterprise.
It isn't ambition that's a problem. It's greed that's the problem. It's believed by many that if something is "legal" it's "right" but often that's not the case. If a greedy person can make a lot of money "legally" then they believe that it's "right" for them to do so but that's not always the case. They ignore the fact that they might be "legally screwing" someone else by their actions motivated by their greed.
Look at Amazon trying to do drone delivery, that could move some of its unskilled, uneducated, oppressed warehouse workers, into higher paying drone operator positions? Capitalism cannot exist in a democracy if it does not have a conscience, as people do if businesses don't. What your solution does is mainly fire people without a place for them to go, as automation takes their jobs. Those solutions may meet the needs of many, but some will be forcibly taken out of the economy as there are no programs in place for them to make themselves of value to guys like Steve Jobs. Rest in Peace. The solution to automation seems to be paid training by companies, as this would solve both the human as well as the business aspect. The company would invest in retraining a worker to solve more complicated tasks that automation cannot solve presently. I'm sure a billion dollar company could reinvest some of their profits to invest in their poorly paid, and oppressed workers. They have the position with their capital to be innovative, while sustaining job growth.
Forgive my ignorance in business here, but I thought the whole point of increasing market share, bottom line, and reducing costs, is to make more money or profits. There are many billion dollar corporations that can afford to compensate for the job loss they create with automation, but choose to hold on to that money under some myth of fear of government regulation. They can be innovative and create better jobs, they have the unique position to do so with their capital.
I don't have a problem with ambition, as long as it furthers the greater good. It just appears today that those who are ambitious, are also more likely to be greedy. Not everyone follows the same moral compass, some think its perfectly fine with getting as rich as you would like, and are very ambitious in that pursuit like Donald Trump. I don't see nothing wrong with this either, as long as that wealth is going to help others. So there should at least be a balance when it comes to ambition, because in the end no one knows if their completely right or completely wrong in their ambitious pursuits.
The issue isn't whether a person is skilled enough at some labor to contribute, but whether human labor is the best way to get the job done. If I have a problem in front of me, I may be able to get it done in two ways: If I can produce more value it total with method (B), why would I choose method (A)? And if I did method (A) even though it wasn't the best method just to charitably funnel money to people I feel sorry for my competition would be more efficient that me. I'd go out of business quickly and be able to do neither Steve Jobs was asked by the president what it would take bring iPhone manufacturing back to the U.S. his response was "Those jobs aren't coming back." The numbers just don't work. It's not about being a bad guy, it's just doing the math. Instead of people complaining that million dollar enterprises are oppressing them, by not hiring them to do work that the company doesn't need them to do, those people should ask themselves what they really have to offer. It's gotta be more than labor. It needs to be more than just "what I was trained to do" ... because that often means nothing at all. What is common to both method (A) and method (B) is figuring out new solutions, new processes and managing their workflow. If folks want to contribute, that's what is needed. And as long as there are problems, that's the job waiting for anyone who wants it.
The math does work out, Donald Trump proposed a 45 percent tariff on chinese imports. I phones will be made in America if he becomes President. It's not as simple as selling big macs with robots, its about providing jobs so that there are people who can afford to buy big macs, and have good health care from their jobs after getting sick from eating those big macs. The bigger picture is the entire economy, its not about simply having a vending machine that replaces a cashier. If that cashier isn't retrained, and provided with living wage, and health care, they become the feared 'net recipient', or 'lazy moocher' or whatever characterization people in positions of power have who fail to take responsibility for them.
It is called a paradigm change just like the industrial revolution. Back then people were saying the very similar things. Turns out it just uncovers new avenues of jobs that never existed before so society changes it's method of education to fit the new paradigm. It is something to be feared for people stuck in the old paradigm, unwilling to learn or change.
Paying people to buy your stuff is counter productive. If I need to pay for your health care... they I guess I will. Tax me for it and collect it in the welfare line. But making me produce less so you can have the illusion of having worked for your welfare is counter productive. People who demand others to take responsibility for them are lazy moochers regardless of whether someone hands them a welfare check or hires them to ask people if they want fries ... and then hands them a welfare check while pretending it's payment. Trump is an idiot. The primary market is no longer America. If Trump makes the American market even less attractive than it already is it will just drop to an even lower priority.
Trumps plan gets people off the welfare lines, the rich companies sent American jobs to china for higher profits due to their slave labor wages. American business appears like the lazy moocher off of the American public, they replace the common worker with robots or offshore slave labor, and don't give them anything in return for it much less a handout for adequate welfare. These businesses are robbing the very same consumers whom they make money from. Automation in this fashion will only concentrate wealth at the top, further eliminating the middle class. How could they take money from the middle class of America whom they became rich from, and invest that money in another country? Why won't they be patriotic, and reinvest that money into the middle class so they can be of worth in the new economy run by robots and automation?
These are not like the toy drones you can purchase on Amazon. These drones are operated by computer and are not piloted by human pilots. There's no need for a human pilot. At best you have a human monitor that would press an "abort" button and the computer would then place the drone in a "safe-flight" mode or "return to base" mode. The computer can safely fly the drone far better than a human pilot. If we review aviation accident statistics virtually all of the accidents are caused by human error and computers don't make mistakes. While that may "seem" to be the solution it ignores the fact that it's typically the jobs that require education and training that are being replaced by the technology. The only jobs not being targeted for replacement by techology are those that are inherently based upon the human being such as the performing arts and philosophy and even there we see the creep of technology today. Singers that once relied on musicians for the music often use computer generated music today eliminating the musician from the music.
This is actually based upon mis-information. China is no longer a communist state and has made the transition to market socialism. The Chinese manufacturing workers are paid some of the highest wages in China. It's also a misconception that American manufacturing companies can't compete with Chinese manufacturing companies. I worked for Smith Aerospace that had manufacturing facilities in both China and the US and we (the US) could compete on a cost basis with the Chinese manufacturing. Finally, only about 12% (per capita) of jobs relate to manufacturing with the balance being in agriculture or service sector jobs. You can't move the land to another country so agriculture can't be outsourced and, for the most part, service sector jobs can't be outsourced. Both are inherently tied to the US and don't suffer from foreign competition.
You have your horse and cart reversed. All that money America is so urgently pressing companies to bring "back" was produced from sales ... overseas. Selling products built ... overseas. The reason the middle class is blossoming in China and withering here is because folks there are accepting a middle level of responsibility for the processes that are growing there. They are taking greater ownership of the work being done there and profiting accordingly. American innovation and hard work created a robust and efficient economy here. And then we got proud and lazy. We started telling businesses that they couldn't sell their product here, unless they paid a premium. We told them they couldn't build their product here, unless they paid a premium. Workers and consumers gave less each year and demanded more. And we got away with it because we had the number one economy in the world. The cost was America became less and less attractive to sell products to and to build products in. So the economy slowed... and while we coasted other nations dug deep and grew. They built smart industrial systems, focused education, and worked with businesses to push their economies forward. In 2012, the United States stopped being the number one economy in the world. In 2014, we got passed again. It will probably be a while before we drop to #4, but it's a different world now. We have so much less to offer now that saying take it or leave it ... well, they're leaving it before we even finish the sentence. Businesses are leaving without us even making the threat. And when Mr. Obama talks to businesses that considered his previous ultimatums and then made other plans. When he asks them "what can America offer you, to win back your attention and investment?" They look at the highest corporate tax rate in the world, arrogant & demanding consumers, crippling worker entitlements, and a poorly educated, superstitious population that seems to offer less than robots. The respectful but resigned answer he keeps getting is "Those jobs are not coming back Mr. President."
