4 ms·

And despite all of these concerns, the NYT frequently and consistently advocates for increases in low-skill immigrants, the very people who will the government

And despite all of these concerns, the NYT frequently and consistently advocates for increases in low-skill immigrants, the very people who will the government will need to support when the 'robots come for [their] jobs'. The question is which of those 2 arguments are disingenuous?

kickopotomus 8y ago
I don't think either are disingenuous. It's more so short-term vs long-term thinking. The influx of low-skilled immigrant labor is a "right now" issue whereas The level of automation needed to make them obsolete is optimistically 10-15 years away.
awakeasleep 8y ago
Do you think it's possible that the NYT has authors with different perspectives and that every article written may not come from a consistent viewpoint?
EastLondonCoder 8y ago
The strongest argument for increased immigration is that most if not all of the western world has a declining population. Also its also not yet clear what types of jobs will be easy to automate. For example I think an assistant nurse would be very for a robot to do. A radiologist less so.
meritt 8y ago
That's not the case at all. It's very cost-ineffective to automate low-skill jobs because the human capital has historically been extremely cheap. There's a reason we don't broadly have robots cleaning our houses, landscaping our yards, providing in-home care, picking fresh produce, or providing general construction labor. It's the precisely the lack of these low-skill workers that will drive the necessity of automation, because the cost of hiring people will become too expensive. Quartz published a well-research article last year on the same topic: "Low-skill workers aren’t actually the ones most threatened by robots" https://qz.com/1010831/the-middle-skill-job-is-disappearing-in-rich-countries/ https://qz.com/1010831/the-middle-skill-job-is-disappearing-...

kickopotomus 8y ago

I don't think either are disingenuous. It's more so short-term vs long-term thinking. The influx of low-skilled immigrant labor is a "right now" issue whereas The level of automation needed to make them obsolete is optimistically 10-15 years away.

awakeasleep 8y ago

Do you think it's possible that the NYT has authors with different perspectives and that every article written may not come from a consistent viewpoint?

EastLondonCoder 8y ago

The strongest argument for increased immigration is that most if not all of the western world has a declining population. Also its also not yet clear what types of jobs will be easy to automate. For example I think an assistant nurse would be very for a robot to do. A radiologist less so.

meritt 8y ago

That's not the case at all. It's very cost-ineffective to automate low-skill jobs because the human capital has historically been extremely cheap. There's a reason we don't broadly have robots cleaning our houses, landscaping our yards, providing in-home care, picking fresh produce, or providing general construction labor. It's the precisely the lack of these low-skill workers that will drive the necessity of automation, because the cost of hiring people will become too expensive. Quartz published a well-research article last year on the same topic: "Low-skill workers aren’t actually the ones most threatened by robots" https://qz.com/1010831/the-middle-skill-job-is-disappearing-in-rich-countries/ https://qz.com/1010831/the-middle-skill-job-is-disappearing-...