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> The study does suggest, however, that robots have a direct influence on income inequality. The manufacturing jobs they replace come from parts of the workforc
by partingshots 6y ago
> The study does suggest, however, that robots have a direct influence on income inequality. The manufacturing jobs they replace come from parts of the workforce without many other good employment options; as a result, there is a direct connection between automation in robot-using industries and sagging incomes among blue-collar workers.
Jobs will never fully disappear, but at some point, the vast majority of the human race will be classed out of work. Net wealth will continue to increase but will be increasingly concentrated into a smaller group of people (i.e. the people who own the automation and the people with PhDs who make the automation). I believe at a certain point, some kind of universal basic income will become necessary to support the people that will fall outside this small group.
- jmeister 6y agoAlternatively, this out-of-work group becomes artisans, creating hand-crafted work with a human touch (think Etsy) that commands a premium over the factory-produced stuff. Tyler Cowen has some good articles on this.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoDoubtful there is enough demand for such hand crafted work. Else we wouldn't have starving artists
- jmeister 6y ago“Artisanal” is very broad here: the opposite of anything mass-manufactured, impersonal, “soulless”. Artisanal beer, cheese are already part of big-city hipster culture. It can apply to clothes, food, restored/modded/customized vehicles, custom furniture(vs. ikea), etc.
- valuearb 6y agoAutomation eliminated 90% of farm jobs over the last 200 years, and the American middle class became immensely wealthier directly because of this. Automation creates better jobs and it’s benefits lifts up everyone over time.
- aiscapehumanity 6y agoContrasting 200 years with the 4th industrial revolution(s) seems erroneous.
- valuearb 6y agoIt’s not 200 years, it’s the entire history of the human race. Automation produces wealthier societies by improving their productivity. Every single time automation has done this it’s eliminated jobs, yet replaced them with better ones. If you demonstrated the personal computer with a spreadsheet to bankers and accountants in the late 70s, they could easily see the jobs that these terrible new automation tools would destroy, but few could predict the jobs they’d create. When plows, combines, tractors came to farming, each time it was easy to see what jobs were no longer necessary. But it was impossible to know what jobs would be created. Each of these tools made food cheaper and more plentiful, freeing more disposable income to be spent on new products and inventions that created better jobs than the ones we lost. It’s arrogant to think that after this has happened thousands of times, that our time is any different. Or to pretend that the clarity we see the jobs we will lose to robots is something new, and that our inability to forsee new jobs to replace them somehow means that this time there won’t be any. We’ve never been able to foresee them but they always will come. If robots make things cheaper and better, those savings will create new products, markets and jobs. And if they don’t, robots won’t steal anyone’s job.
- partingshots 6y agoFirst, our muscles were replaced. But that was alright because we could still use our minds. What happens though when our minds become obsolete as well? There’s nothing left to transition to.
- Joof 6y agoIf the economy recovers from the Coronavirus before everyone goes back to work -- did we really need everyone?