And a lot of automation in manufacturing doesn’t negate the need for human labor anyway. It’s still faster, more efficient, and better QA in many cases to have

And a lot of automation in manufacturing doesn’t negate the need for human labor anyway. It’s still faster, more efficient, and better QA in many cases to have humans assemble certain things than to use machines. That won’t be the case forever, but the level that people think that the automation is going to be superior or even faster than the human element is often forgotten. I agree with you that automation doesn’t necessarily lead to a loss of jobs. It can create opportunities for whole new skills and job types. The struggle has been, especially in the US, that we haven’t then properly prepared or skilled people to do the new wave of jobs that can’t be automated. I always think of this article [1] from January 2017: > When the German engineering company Siemens Energy opened a gas turbine production plant in Charlotte, N.C., some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions. But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education. So out of 10,000 applicants, less than 1500 were even qualified to interview for a job, of which they only had 800 positions. That’s a problem but the solution isn’t to shun automation. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-...