What To Do About The Long-Term Implications of Automation

that is based on the premise of an ethical free market, which is not what America has.

lawful government force can discourage automation so that its people remain gainfully employed, the will of the people appear not to want a universal basic income.

 

It would be difficult to do. Governments trying to control these types of things have hardly ever worked out well. It seems governments can guide economies but as far as outright trying to control things is usually a disaster.

 

It seems to me that disasters of all kinds have happened for millennia... with or without government intervention

But doom, i am curious to know why corporate planning via the board of directors works so well, but similar government planning in your view results in nothing but inevitable disaster

 

Because corporations are held accountable via lawsuits.

 

An interesing perspective

 

Corporations and governments are not the answer. Corporations always get excessively greedy and governments get power hungry.

 

What is the answer... and for that matter, what is the question?

 

i think complacency is the solution to automation since its pragmatic, robots provide a luxury not a necessity

the impending doom or catastrophe predicted is not possible as long as we keep our military innovative with the best and brightest, automation like drones are only required there

climate change can be solved by having basic survivalist skills which will keep most people alive in a bad storm, if they choose to stay after our President brings back living wage jobs so they no longer have excuses of affordability.

 

Having a college degree wasn't always a guarantee of a "good paying job" either. It never was. There was a time when a degree in a certain field was - that was when there were significant shortages in given fields. That's still true - the average starting salary for people fresh out of college with degrees in electrical or mechanical engineering is just a bit under $60,000, not including benefits. It's really simple: if you want good compensation, get a degree that is in demand.

Manufacturing hasn't "recovered". Just look at the fundamentals - people were grossly overcompensated beyond the value of their labor, and the market could only sustain it for a time, given that there was little to no foreign competition. As foreign competition grew, such wages became untenable.

What was just temporary was the window in which unskilled factory workers could fetch higher wages than highly educated professionals in competitive fields.

It's "guessing" in the same sense that I "guess" the sun will rise tomorrow.

 

The question is what can be done about the displacement of workers with automation....I am not sure there is an answer.

 

The manufacturing recovery I pointed to was subsequent to the 2008 recession.

Manufacturing production returned to pre-recession levels within a couple years.

Manufacturing employment, on the other hand, has not yet recovered. That is, the number of employees has not reached the level seen prior to the recession.

And, I still see no evidence of a "one time phenomenon".

Other countries have caught up to us in manufacturing - we don't have an edge like we once did. And, manufacturing corporations are working hard to lower the number of employees needed. When US Steel came back to the US, they used only a fraction of the manpower required previously, due to modern methods.

 

It seems to me that you have started out with a foundational conviction that the government can do nothing but make the situation worse. Maybe true, maybe not.... but if the government can and should do nothing... then I am pretty sure there is no ANSWER except to hope for a fluke unanticipated good outcome. It is a strategy that is not known for generating good outcomes

 

Just like banning the steam engine and automobiles. That was a paradigm shift. You can't stop it.

Good thing my job is automation.

 

The point I see in this is not that college might guarantee a job. It's that the jobs available, including in manufacturing, are moving toward those who have more education and training.

US policy toward education, training and labor needs to take that as an important message.

If we want to be competitive with other nations, it's not likely to be in manufacturing.

And, attempting to take America back to some era where education and training weren't so important, where manufacturing was our competitive edge, where we burned coal for energy, etc., is a loser idea.

The past is not a good choice for our future.

 

Well, sometimes society needs to suffer to bring it back to reality. US culture is extremely out of touch today.

I saw an interview with Alan Greenspan, I think that is who it was, and he said the corporate model today is not working. Having stock holders who pay CEOs huge amounts of money for profit has led to a business model that is doomed to fail. He suggested companies where the employees are the stockholders is a much better model because everyone has "skin in the game". It makes sense. If everyone in society would realize we all have a vested interest in the betterment of society, everything would be better off.

 

"we" is such an interesting pronoun, don't you think? "We" elected Trump, and "we" got us to where we are, yet you still think "we" are going to do something that is somehow not something that "we" have done.

Sorry, but maybe if you want something, then you might want to consider a singular pronoun.

"We" obviously don't want what you want.

 

You grabbed one phrase I emphasized, but your response seems to have otherwise been divorced from my post. My driving point is that changes that have happened before have always resulted in improvements, and there is no reason yet given to expect this to be any different. When you examine what actually went on in previous such changes, we are not fundamentally looking at anything different.

You seem to be trying to discuss something I wasn't discussing, by taking one phrase I used and going off basically on that phrase alone. I'm talking about creative destruction - we don't need the state to mitigate that destruction, and any historical attempts to do so have only made the problem worse. But to address what you wish to take it to: no, we don't need central planning of the economy. It has never worked for the better. It failed miserably wherever tried - trying to do just some won't yield good results, either. Any public enterprise lacks the natural incentives that make the free market work as it does.

 

nonanswer (plural nonanswers): The lack of an answer. An answer that is so vague or noncommittal as to be worthless.
https://www.google.com/search?q=non.....69i57j0l5.1655j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Automation is fundamentally just a way of increasing production efficiency - yet you said, "that is not progress but more of the same for those left behind." I asked how improving production efficiency has ever left people worse off - you were unable to answer, and that is because it never has. Every. Single. Such. Improvement. in history has resulted in significantly improved quality of life, including for the lower classes.

You're positively wrong. Automation will improve production efficiency - which will mean that producers can offer goods for lower prices. If consumer goods cost less per unit, then consumer can purchase more. That includes both goods and services.

Lowering prices obviously improves on the human condition. VCRs and cassette players were once things of luxury that only the rich could afford - now they, and their successors, are dirt cheap. The cost of such goods, measured as a percent of the median gdp/capita, have practically been in skyfall. Improving production efficiencies has led to such luxuries once reserved for the wealthy something that even those in supposed "poverty" usually have.

And why do you lament this?

Now you're talking about inequality? I'm not sure you understood what you responded to - it sounds now like your response was just a kneejerk with parroted lines.

You're essentially complaining that improving production efficiencies will raise the quality of life of all classes, but saying it's bad because it will raise the quality of life for some more than others. That's some half-baked nonsense.

 

You can't fix stupid.

While this is true, the jobs that could be learned in a work/study program are the ones most likely to be eliminated by automation. Jobs that will survive automation are not likely to be ones that can be learned at the high school level.

I'm skeptical that teachers aren't also going to be hit hard by automation, replaced by videos of the most exceptional teachers and computerized learning and testing.

Better still, stop guaranteeing student loans at the federal level, period. Then only those that can afford college or can get scholarships will go. Colleges will have to cut down on tuition rates and extravagant campuses, too.

Dead and buried, hopefully permanently. When Al Gore admitted that cutting taxes would grow the economy, I did a dance on Keynes's grave, figuratively speaking.

Why should the government subsidize women leaving their kids in daycare to go to work??? We want women to stay home and take care of their kids! It results in the best possible outcomes for the kids. Furthermore, paying for anything means you get more of it, so if you pay for women to go to work by subsidizing daycare, you'll get more kids in daycare! That is not something we want to see. As for religion, their job should be to encourage the traditional core family, not provide daycare services.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lydia-lovric/working-mothers-childcare_b_7835022.html

Every study that I have seen has shown that public works projects actually take money out of the economy, not pump money into the economy. They divert money from the private market and shift it to public expenditures without creating any new wealth or profit.

"MYTH #4: Public works projects stimulate the economy by creating new jobs.

Fact: In the short run, public works projects have no real effect on overall unemployment. They simply displace resources that could be used to create jobs in the private sector and move those resources to the government payroll."

http://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/the-economy-hits-home-what-makes-the-economy-grow

Agreed. If we would limit and control immigration, wage rates in the US would shoot up dramatically. Some companies would relocate overseas or over the border, but most wouldn't.

Disagreed. Importing cheap goods from all over the world makes Americans richer, not poorer. And we have to send something to those places in exchange for what we buy from them, and according to Milton Friedman, the cheapest possible thing we could give in exchange for cheap foreign goods is paper currency. He made the point that us buying computer chips made overseas with potato chips made in America meant we were getting one hell of a good deal.

Keynesianism is a dead dodo bird, stop trying to revive it. The only vestige of Keynesianism left in American society is the minimum wage. If we could get rid of that, Keynesianism would be well and truly gone. Taxing imports only hurts Americans, it doesn't hurt foreigners.

Thanks for the thoughtful post, it gave me something more meaty to chew on than most of the left-wing nonsense that gets posted around here.

 

did you read what you were responding to? Here, let me ask you about this - in 1790 90% of the labor force was in agriculture. Today less than 1%. Do you also lament that?

Because what you're saying sounds to me like just that. Changes in the market, as well as changes in production efficiencies, has meant that we don't need nearly as many farmers to produce the same amount of food. You're lamenting that we now need fewer laborers to produce the same amount of manufactured goods - why? Why is that a bad thing?

I don't think you've understood, or even responded to, the point I've been making: 1. automation is fundamentally just another step in improving production efficiencies, 2. improving production efficiencies results in higher quality of life for the average American and yes, even for the lower classes, 3. this is called creative destruction, and 4. the manufacturing jobs you keep harping on have drained more because the "good paying jobs" you were talking about have long been vastly overcompensated.

Basic economics stuff.

It's creative destruction. It isn't a one time phenomenon. It happens all the time. And its f***ing fantastic, and leads to significant improvements in the quality of life.

OK. We USE to be dominant in manufacturing, at a time when the rest of the industrialized world had been blown into oblivion during ww2, and we enjoyed a significant edge for a time - you know, since we had no real competition for a time. Other countries can now produce goods like we can, and some can do it more efficiently... So what? Let me stop you right there - we dominated manufacturing for about four decades after the end of the second world war, but we don't have as many employed in manufacturing now... Do you think the quality of life for the lower classes has improved, decreased, or stayed about the same since 1990? Quite obviously they have greatly improved - and woah! Even while losing manufacturing jobs!