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Nah. When Bob starts running the robot, he gets a raise to $60,000, and the guy who owns the robot keeps the $140k. And by the way, there tends to be significa
by agjacobson 10y ago
Nah. When Bob starts running the robot, he gets a raise to $60,000, and the guy who owns the robot keeps the $140k.
And by the way, there tends to be significant wage deflation of automation workers with time. I can show you an advertisement for a part time machinist who is expected to work without much supervision, use sophisticated CAM software to program parts, and run them on a CNC mill. For $14.25 an hour.
- bigiain 10y agoAnd, since Bob's productivity has gone up, two of Bob's cow orkers get fired... Output for the three man team now reduced to one man and a robot remains the same. Employer is now paying $60k instead of $150k in wages, tax revenue generated is now $6k instead of $15k. So long at the robot's maintenance and finance (after capital investment and operations cost tax rebates) is under $90/year - then the employer wins big, Bob wins a little bit, Bob's two ex-colleagues lose their jobs, and society loses 9k/year in tax revenue. (The numbers for the employer work out even better when they re-engage Bob's two ex-colleagues through a contracting company at $38k to work the 4pm-midnight and midnight-8am shifts (without benefits or shift loading, since 'independent contractors'...), and they keep the robot running 24hrs a day... At which point their fire another 6 of Bob's friends... And now Bob's salary gets renegotiated down, since there's now 8 other guys prepared to do his job for way less than $60k...) And it's not like this hasn't already happened. Compare car manufacturing today with 50 years ago.