4 ms·

Robots cost money to build and maintain. Eventually if enough people are displaced from their jobs by their use, the cost of labor will drop. At some point it

by rrmm 12y ago

Robots cost money to build and maintain. Eventually if enough people are displaced from their jobs by their use, the cost of labor will drop. At some point it will make it cheaper to employ people, than use robots for a given task. (That assumes that these people aren't used for something else considered to be useful for society: Consider the people who were displaced by using the computer to automate calculation or telephone operators. Basically, if robots cause mass unemployment in the long term people will become cheap).

msandford 12y ago
I get really riled up when people are simultaneously cheering the low interest rate environment that we have and lamenting the decline of employment here in the US. At 1% interest a $1mm robot costs about $4.5k/mo on a 20 year note. At 6% it's $7k and at 10% it's nearly $10k. When interest costs are so negligible it's very hard to justify hiring people and having to deal with all the regulations regarding employment. That might be another $500/mo or more and then there are benefits on top of that. I'm not necessarily anti-regulation but I think a better statement would be pro-simplification. Don't eliminate protections for workers but do make it easy to comply by systematically refactoring the laws to get say 90% of the desired effect with substantially less words, statutes and loopholes. Further, get the interest rate up to something approaching reasonable. Yeah housing prices will go down and people will be under-water in houses but at least the labor market can get reasonable again. Better that people have to declare bankruptcy but have jobs to continue to live and eat than to have a great priced house and no jobs to speak of. The idea that the Fed is doing a great job of managing the economy should start to look more and more like a joke if you pay attention.

by rrmm 12y ago

msandford 12y ago

I get really riled up when people are simultaneously cheering the low interest rate environment that we have and lamenting the decline of employment here in the US. At 1% interest a $1mm robot costs about $4.5k/mo on a 20 year note. At 6% it's $7k and at 10% it's nearly $10k. When interest costs are so negligible it's very hard to justify hiring people and having to deal with all the regulations regarding employment. That might be another $500/mo or more and then there are benefits on top of that. I'm not necessarily anti-regulation but I think a better statement would be pro-simplification. Don't eliminate protections for workers but do make it easy to comply by systematically refactoring the laws to get say 90% of the desired effect with substantially less words, statutes and loopholes. Further, get the interest rate up to something approaching reasonable. Yeah housing prices will go down and people will be under-water in houses but at least the labor market can get reasonable again. Better that people have to declare bankruptcy but have jobs to continue to live and eat than to have a great priced house and no jobs to speak of. The idea that the Fed is doing a great job of managing the economy should start to look more and more like a joke if you pay attention.