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What are these 'wages' of which you speak? Robots do not have hourly wages: "Auto component maker Piolax, will also raise the hourly wage at its Mexican plant
by gwern 6y ago
What are these 'wages' of which you speak? Robots do not have hourly wages:
"Auto component maker Piolax, will also raise the hourly wage at its Mexican plant to $16 within the year. The company is also installing robots to mitigate rising labor costs, President Yukihiko Shimazu said."
- awakeasleep 6y agoAnyone else a 'robotic automation takeover of all jobs' skeptic? There are obviously places where it makes sense, but a $15/hr human is preeeetty cheap compared to the price, programming, and maintenance of a robot. Seeing the quote from Yukihiko, I feel it reads like PR or a soothing word to stockholders who hate to hear about employees and wages
- wolfgke 6y ago> There are obviously places where it makes sense, but a $15/hr human is preeeetty cheap compared to the price, programming, and maintenance of a robot. But such a robot is a good insurance against further increases of minimum wages.
- throw_away 6y agoCynically: you don't even need a real, working robot in-hand in order to threaten minimum wages. Even cheaper.
- gwern 6y agoIt also is great if the tariffs get dropped, since you were going to invest in robots anyway and this just moves your R&D forward in time. Which is better, relocating your entire factory & supply chain permanently only for the tariffs to disappear and render the entire exercise moot, or prioritize robots (even more than you were before, given coronavirus) and then regardless of what happens, you still enjoy the benefits of the robots? This and coronavirus and the recession are playing their usual role of shocking entities out of local optima... in this case, towards more automation & remote working. It is deeply ironic that Trump is essentially gouging Americans' welfare by forcing jacked-up prices which will subsidize the very automation & trade dynamics the Rust Belt blames their woes on.
- mbrodersen 6y agoToyota and Tesla (among many companies) found out the hard way that robots are still very dumb and not a substitute for all jobs.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoBut then somebody has to make and maintain the robots. If this is only the equivalent in cost to the existing jobs, it's still going to labor. If it's less then prices decline unless the manufacturer is a monopolist, and lower prices are about as good as higher wages. (If the manufacturer is a monopolist we've got trouble, but that's always the case.)