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Great article. Interesting that simply pulling the contribution of the computer sector out of the numbers makes things look terrible for American manufacturing.
by xt00 8y ago
Great article. Interesting that simply pulling the contribution of the computer sector out of the numbers makes things look terrible for American manufacturing. Currently China is working hard on being more relevant in the semiconductor sector and likely they will succeed. So be prepared for a long term trade war with China is my thinking.. but ultimately automation will become a bigger thing in China and then their employment will also stagnate, so will be interesting to see how they deal with finding enough jobs for everybody as well..
- MrBuddyCasino 8y ago> automation will become a bigger thing in China Only if the party allows that to happen. They've got strong incentives to keep people employed.
- Matt3o12_ 8y agoUntil it becomes cheaper for Apple and other big companies to produce in other countries once again because shipping becomes more expensive then land + electricity + robots + maintenance staff then it costs to do the same in China without automation (or only with the automation allowed by the Party). China's best bet is to have a very strong local economy before this happens and not really heavily on the west -- but they are already on the fast track to do that.
- MrBuddyCasino 8y agoGood point. That may also partly explain China's shopping spree - if they control foreign businesses, they control where to manufacture stuff.
- nraynaud 8y agoYes they are bound to be the biggest economy in the world by the sheer size of their internal market. Same for India.
- crdoconnor 8y agoAutomation was never really a macro-level job killing force anywhere. It both created and destroyed jobs. It was mainly a useful scapegoat. The reality was that highly automated factories were more visible (because they were the ones that didn't close and move abroad) and there was no shortage of anecdotes about jobs eliminated. If you're trying to protect profitable trade deals and austerian government budgets, a scapegoat is necessary. The most automated profession in the US has suffered no macro level disemployment effects: https://qz.com/962427/what-its-like-to-be-a-modern-engraver-the-most-automated-job-in-the-united-states/ https://qz.com/962427/what-its-like-to-be-a-modern-engraver-...
- maxerickson 8y agoPeople not going into the field (because someone else is working 5x faster) sure seems like a macro effect. Or are you explicitly dismissing jobs that are never created?
- crdoconnor 8y agoI'm saying that when 90% of all jobs were in farming and those jobs were automated it didn't mean 90% unemployment. New kinds of job appeared to employ those people who would have gone to work in the fields. The whole "oh but this time it's different because AI" argument is a load of bullshit. The disemployment effect is actually about 10x milder than it was when we came in off the fields and new kinds of job are created all the time.
- maxerickson 8y agoLaborers left farms for better jobs in factories. They weren't pushed out.
- crdoconnor 8y agoSmall landholders were pushed out by the enclosure movement.
- 8y ago
- entee 8y agoGiven the population dynamics (one child/two parents) I think it's not going to be a "finding enough jobs for everyone" kind of problem. Eventually their population is going to start shrinking, at which point I really don't know how the economy is going to react. The example of Japan's long stagnation in the face of population decline is sobering, particularly since China isn't anywhere near as wealthy as Japan was (and is unlikely to get there) when its population started to decline. That said: http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-ab...