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That's one alternative, but it also skews the incentive of the workforce to become non-skilled e.g. why spend X years studying at university to be a lawyer, eng
by imron 11y ago
That's one alternative, but it also skews the incentive of the workforce to become non-skilled e.g. why spend X years studying at university to be a lawyer, engineer, programmer, or whatever if you can do unskilled work for a similar/higher wage.
It's not a problem initially, but will become so once you have a generation or two of a largely unskilled workforce, especially if the work then dries up.
- darawk 11y agoThat's not really how economics works. If you raise the wages of unskilled laborers, then indeed the effect you describe happens. However, the marketplace still demands engineers, and so any drop in the supply will lead to an increase in wages until some equilibrium point is reached.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- klipt 11y agoAnd within 20 years engineers will be building robots to replace most unskilled laborers anyway. The real issue is, what happens when robots can replace engineers?
- darawk 11y agoYes, your first point is the true argument against raising unskilled laborer's wages. The higher their wages are, the more cost-effective it becomes to replace them with robots. I'd argue that this is probably ultimately a good thing, but many people see it as a reason to avoid raising minimum wages. As for what happens when robots replace engineers, that is essentially the singularity you're talking about. And what happens then is presumably some form of post-scarcity economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy), though its hard to say exactly what form that will take.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoFreedom for all mankind, hopefully. Or death and bloodshed as more and more people get excluded from the economy and are left to starve. It's up to us to pick a direction, and the time for it is starting now.
- gnaritas 11y agoYup, and it looks to be going the death and bloodshed route, but that's no surprise, it's what we do.
- rkho 11y agoI'd rather build things as an engineer than be paid the same amount or higher for any sort of unskilled labor or customer facing job. The intellectual challenge just isn't there.
- jxramos 11y agoYou're probably right. I remember hearing about how much manufacturing expertise was lost to rust belt cities when globalization shifted factories overseas. I remember a story on the PBS Newshour about how some cities were bringing some of that expertise back, especially with a lot of CAD modeling and what not to streamline things.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoNot only that, but say in Australia, you can skip college and go into mining (until the last bust happened), make a lot of money, and compete for housing (and other more limited resources) that normally only professionals would consider. This makes fields like IT a lot less appealing in those countries (and then making them even more natural resource dependent).
- BurningFrog 11y agoIf society needs unskilled labor more, the wages for that should rise, so more people go into those careers. It's weird to call that "skew". Extrapolating the current trend to decades is assuming a lot.
- tw04 11y agoBecause you can make MORE money. Some people actually ENJOY the challenge of work. I hate this constant demonization of paying people that just want "good enough" a living wage. If all they want is their new car every 10 years, a small house, and enough money to put food on the table every night, why not give it to them? Someone that REALLY wants to become a lawyer isn't going to go into stamping metal for a living just because it pays a decent wage...