Wonder why there are no jobs......

[Guest The Itis]

Funny how you managed to survive working those 30some years. Government workplace standards had nothing to do with it. Nope. Not at all.

[TMF]

Tmf, don't you know you can't disagree with the all knowing Itis! If you do your just "ridiculing" him and he has to use  "very simple language" because your just to dumb to see that he is always right! He just can't figure out the fact, that government regulations and greedy unions killed the "American Dream". Of course the fact that I worked in manufacturing for over 30 years, and I saw first hand what NAFTA, OSHA, UAW, & AFL-CIO did to drive the American jobs off shore will carry no credibility compared to the BS he is being feed from our leaders in Washington.

So lets just have another round of :koolaid:

 

I was gonna finally drink the Kool Aid but there was none left.  It looks like someone drank it all.

[crossfire]

Funny how you managed to survive working those 30some years. Government workplace standards had nothing to do with it. Nope. Not at all.

So please tell us what jobs you have had that makes you so all knowing. 

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Technology that displaces human labor does just that- displaces human labor, takes money that would've gone to the working class and puts it into the company's higher-ups.

 

Replacing human labor with technology sadly does not mean people can live more leisurely lifestyles as hoped, it has mostly lead to people pining for their old jobs back because they are the types who are too stubborn to retrain.

 

It would've been great if the working class could've largely enjoyed the benefits of labor being done by robots, but just think- how is the argument any different if you replaced the word "robots" with "foreign labor"?

"Didn't you know everything is going to made and run by foreign labor (robots). No need for American (human) labor at all. All us Americans humans can just sit back and drink Margaritas made by foreign labor (robots).

That fiction is about the become reality :)  There are a ton of middle income blue and white collar jobs that will be gone in the next 25 years, completely replaced by robots and computers...  

 

I wouldn't want to be 21 and a truck driver, or under 30 and an airplane pilot right now....  Those 2 jobs are about to get insourced to computers/robots.

We've already seen this trend with IT and such, but looks like the jobs that need to be worked by humans are the ones involved in robot maintenance.

 

That is, until we make self-repairing robots :squint:

 

Well, to take a contrarian position-- In 1955 both fusion power and artificial intelligence was about a decade away, and today both of those things remain at least a decade away. Am guessing it will remain somewhere "in the near future" for decades to come.

 

Of course many kinds of automation do not require artificial intelligence, but there are liability issues. For instance, self-driving automobiles-- If a human screws up and kills people with his auto-- Happens all the time and can result in damaging liability costs, but they are limited because "it happens all the time" and is expected. But the first time a google automated car kills little Johnny Kettle, then shortly thereafter Ma and Pa Kettle will own Google. Same deal with automated planes. Even though many aspects of plane traffic are already automated and might do a better job than the pilot, the first time a couple hundred passengers die in a pilotless plane, there will be hell to pay. So I'm guessing there will always be pilots on the payroll even if they don't do much except sit in the cockpit and take the blame when a plane falls from the sky.

 

Automation currently replaces most jobs in "big mass manufacturing" but it is possible that eventually big centralized will be replaced by small local manufacturing more and more. If such trend pans out, then automation would benefit zillions of mom&pop proprietors rather than a few giant Apples or Nissans. Currently automation is a threat to people who want to work for da man, but in the past most people were proprietors, blacksmith shops, farms, barber, shop keepers, cobblers, etc. I'd hate to work for da man and just refused to do it since the mid 1970's. Maybe in the "good old days" the security and benefits were better working for da man (sometimes), but the beauty of self-employment is that nobody can fire you and if the boss is an idiot then it is your own fault. Maybe future tech will enable more sole proprietors and fewer giant corps. Come on in, the water's fine! :)

 

Sociological attitudes may have contributed to loss of USA manufacturing. That and an "every man for himself" attitude by captains of industry, that see an easier way to make a buck letting folks elsewhere to the hard work of industrial management, personnel management, and hands-on manufacturing.

 

Old dad grew up in a small AL town in the 1930's and 1940's. The main economic activity was farming, a big cotton mill, a pulp mill, railroad jobs, store jobs, and the typical handful working in the professions-- doctor, lawyer, cops, teachers, real estate shysters, bankers, carpenters,etc. Dad said that though farmers, mill workers, railroad workers typically made as much or more money than the "clean hands" city jobs, that people selling shoes or dimestore items for a pittance, considered themselves "better" than people who made a living getting their hands dirty. They would rather have a "high class" clean hands job selling dime-store crap, than make more money getting their hands dirty and getting all tired and sweaty.

 

I think maybe this predjudice against getting one's hands dirty may have led to disrespect of the utility and honorableness, and basic necessity of actually making stuff and keeping the wheels turning. Thereby making too many people too-willing to "give up" the dishonorable dirty-hands industries. Who in the world would WANT such a degrading job as getting all tired and sweaty actually making something? No big loss shipping that off for somebody far away to do it.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Lester Weevils