2016 US Presidential Election Thread - VIII

[BVS]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

If pushing labor towards automation is an inevitable product of technology, shouldn't we just jump on board and start planning now on how to offset the unemployment setback?

Yes, like years ago... Automation will not take over human beings though. The service industry will realize customers will want human interaction, with automation will come new coding and maintenance jobs, so all is not lost, but yes we have to plan for it.


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[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by BVS

Yes, like years ago... Automation will not take over human beings though. The service industry will realize customers will want human interaction, with automation will come new coding and maintenance jobs, so all is not lost, but yes we have to plan for it.


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At a McDonald's, nobody gives a shit.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by LuckyNumber7

If pushing labor towards automation is an inevitable product of technology, shouldn't we just jump on board and start planning now on how to offset the unemployment setback?

A universal minimum income is on the horizon.

[nbelcik]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

A universal minimum income is on the horizon.

One of the reasons why I support a universal basic income is because of automation. There simply aren't enough jobs that pay well enough to provide a living anymore. Our economy will continue to be more stratified with more low paying jobs and less middle class jobs. We've been seeing this trend for a while now and it's going to continue to accelerate.


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[anitram]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

A universal minimum income is on the horizon.

Speaking of absolutely terrible ideas, this is infinitely worse than a $15 minimum wage.

If you have a problem with supporting Sanders because you feel personally persecuted vis-a-vis your taxes going up then this would be a real doozy.

[Axver]

Originally Posted by anitram

Speaking of absolutely terrible ideas, this is infinitely worse than a $15 minimum wage.

If you have a problem with supporting Sanders because you feel personally persecuted vis-a-vis your taxes going up then this would be a real doozy.

So what's your solution to the increasing unemployment that seems to be an inevitable consequence of automation? New technology is not yet creating nearly as many jobs as it replaces, and the jobs of designing, implementing, and maintaining these technologies require skills and qualifications well out of the reach of many of the people they replace.

I'm not saying I'm a universal minimum income advocate, since I haven't seriously dug into the issue and have some questions about the economic consequences, but your post seems rather hastily dismissive given that we're going to need to respond to automation somehow.

[Bluer White]

Originally Posted by anitram

Speaking of absolutely terrible ideas, this is infinitely worse than a $15 minimum wage.

If you have a problem with supporting Sanders because you feel personally persecuted vis-a-vis your taxes going up then this would be a real doozy.

Taxes need to go up. UP !

For the bracket or three above ME.

[Oregoropa]

They overshot at 15 dollars. I'm all for an incremental bump each year depending on coast of living and locality.


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[LuckyNumber7]

Originally Posted by Oregoropa

They overshot at 15 dollars. I'm all for an incremental bump each year depending on coast of living and locality.


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If they were to enact $15/hr it would be incremental. Not abrupt. The complaint is that we are not keeping up with the needs. I don't think such a change would be so ignorant as to forget that the change (or lack thereof) is critical.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by Axver

So what's your solution to the increasing unemployment that seems to be an inevitable consequence of automation? New technology is not yet creating nearly as many jobs as it replaces, and the jobs of designing, implementing, and maintaining these technologies require skills and qualifications well out of the reach of many of the people they replace.

People have been making the argument that automation will put vast majorities of people out of work for decades if not a couple of centuries now. But we have adapted, people have redeployed, education systems have changed, etc. We can invest in skills and qualifications, it's a better solution than diminishing the labour force and incentivizing people not to work through what would essentially amount to a massive transfer of wealth.

As a woman, I also think that this would primarily disincentivize women from joining the labour force and/or would incentivize them to remove themselves from the labour force which is not a positive outcome.

Raising the minimum wage is a very, very complex economic issue, and the article posted does a pretty great disservice to it as it focuses on a single cost (while ignoring other costs and entirely ignoring benefits). YES, raising the minimum wage would result in some job losses, whether that be through incentivizing, or more accurately, accelerating, automation or through businesses deciding to downsize. Proponents of a $15 minimum wage should honestly declare this as a cost. But just because something has a negative consequence doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. For example, you would also have plenty of businesses retain employees and those employees would now have significantly more $ to spend, thus providing a boost to the economy. That boost must be weighed against the unemployment consequences, rather than ignored. This is but one example, there are many others.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by anitram

Speaking of absolutely terrible ideas, this is infinitely worse than a $15 minimum wage.



If you have a problem with supporting Sanders because you feel personally persecuted vis-a-vis your taxes going up then this would be a real doozy.

I didn't say it was a good idea or not. I simply said it was on the horizon.

That's quite a distortion of my thoughts on Sanders as well.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by BVS

Yes, like years ago... Automation will not take over human beings though. The service industry will realize customers will want human interaction, with automation will come new coding and maintenance jobs, so all is not lost, but yes we have to plan for it.


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When I'm given the option of a cashier vs self check out, self check out wins every time.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

When I'm given the option of a cashier vs self check out, self check out wins every time.

Sure I do too, but the elderly don't, the mother with 3 children in tow usually don't(in fact women in general use them less than men), and the disabled or temporarily disabled usually avoid them.


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[deep]

Women use them just fine here in California, they use ATMS and drive cars, too.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by deep

Women use them just fine here in California, they use ATMS and drive cars, too.

What does Trump have to say about that?




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[anitram]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

When I'm given the option of a cashier vs self check out, self check out wins every time.

Maybe the machines where you are better but unless I have very few items I don't bother when doing groceries. Particularly when I have a lot of fruit/veg or other things you have to enter in manually. It takes forever. If I'm picking up 3-4 things, then for sure, self check out every time.

But you can't automate every job, much as we see futuristic movies about robots being nannies, etc.

[digitize]

There's a 200+ year history of scares about automation wrecking the economy and creating astronomical inequality being bogus. I'm still hopeful that this is the case, and that things like investment in education are enough to handle the technological changes.

I really really hope that this isn't the start of a change in that pattern.


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[Salome]

I reckon the next 2 decades we'll actually have to work harder to keep up with all the extra information coming our way from automated processes.
Who knows what will be after that.

I don't see many reasons to be pessimistic.
While I believe machines will (at some point) be able to do 99.5% of the things humans are doing (including programming other machines and checking other machines), it will take a bit longer than some seem to think for the investments in these machines to be low enough to compete with human labour in a globalised society.
And even then humans will make sure they have a role in verifying 'the robots' are working as we intend them to.

[Axver]

Originally Posted by digitize

There's a 200+ year history of scares about automation wrecking the economy and creating astronomical inequality being bogus. I'm still hopeful that this is the case, and that things like investment in education are enough to handle the technological changes.

I really really hope that this isn't the start of a change in that pattern.

It seems to me that much of that historic paranoia was really the inevitable unrest when a new sector overtakes another. I'm sure that from the perspective of those on the land, industrialisation appeared to constitute a rapid loss of jobs and livelihoods, but it was really a labour (and geographic) transfer, with many of the new jobs not requiring a significant increase in skill - just a change.

Hopefully that's the case now too, and yes we want to believe we live in special times, but I suspect that in this regard there may be more legitimate reasons for pessimism today. A peasant 200 years ago could move to the city and gain employment on a factory floor; I'm not so sure many of today's poor are going to as easily make the shift, even with greater investment in education.

As for the cashier tangent, my observation in Melbourne is that the only people not using the self-check machines are old people, and they're going to die soon. Oh, and people who want to buy cigarettes. You still have to go to the counter for those.

[Kieran McConville]

It's different now, and everything is fucked. Also, I don't use self-check machines and I'm not old, so there.