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Are store cashiers the next disappearing job?

Are store cashiers the next disappearing job?

I don’t usually use the self-service checkout at the hardware or grocery stores and it’s not because I don’t know how. It’s because I want people to have jobs.

Today’s video from Amazon is a little frightening, suggesting that the checkout people will be the latest group to be phased out by technology. The Amazon Go store is being tested in Seattle. Walk in, take what you need, and pay automatically. Who needs humans?

No doubt there are plenty of reasons why this is a great idea. And yet, the future is scary.Many of the jobs that “left” the United States […]

AI, Automation, Lack Of Jobs =Basic Income

Mtwildman
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Loc: S.C. Missouri http://www.businessinsider.com/bernstein…nations-2016-12 BERNSTEIN: China’s insane spending on robotics is fundamentally changing capitalismWorkers exchange spools of thread as a robot picks up thread made from recycled plastic bottles at the Repreve Bottle Processing Center, part of the Unifi textile company in Yadkinville, N.C., Friday, Oct. 21, 2016. America has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Yet American factory production, minus raw materials and some other costs, more than doubled over the same span to $1.91 trillion last year, according to the Commerce Department, which uses 2009 […]

The end of grocery checkers? Amazon’s high-tech convenience store points to future of physical retail

The end of grocery checkers? Amazon’s high-tech convenience store points to future of physical retail

The checkout-less shopping experience envisioned for the Amazon Go store is part of a long-term trend in retail automation. (Bigstock Photo) First there were supermarket shelves. Then barcode scanners, then self-checkout lines, then online shopping. Amazon’s move to take the grocery checkout counter completely out of the loop is the latest disappearing act for the brick-and-mortar retail experience.

But it’s not unexpected: Walmart and Whole Foods also have been working on ways to streamline grocery shopping, using automation and robotics. And the competition could heat up quickly.

“Retailers will be looking to understand what percentage of their current customers are utilizing […]

Amazon rolls out a store with no checkout lines

Amazon rolls out a store with no checkout lines

Death Toll in California Warehouse Fire Rises to 30 – vouxmagazine.com The future of grocery shopping has already started to arrive with some supermarkets rolling out home delivery services. Now, Amazon has unveiled a new kind of food store where there are no checkout lines. Instead you check in on a smartphone. The internet of things network tracks the items you take off and put back on the shelves. Then, when you leave the store with your cloth bag full of items, the software automatically bills you to your # Amazon account.

As Hot Air suggests, this technology presents quite […]

What the Robots are Doing to the Middle Class

What the Robots are Doing to the Middle Class

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT (Photo: FANUC 6-axis welding robots) The simplistic response to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on employment is that we’ve experienced this before, during the Industrial Revolution and beyond, and that the "market" will eventually provide plenty of jobs. The reality is that tens of millions of Americans will have to accept food service and retail and personal care jobs that don’t pay a living wage.

The Deniers: The Middle Class Has Nothing to Worry About

Optimism is the feeling derived from sources like The Economist , which assures us that "AI will […]

Supply Chain News: Distribution Center Jobs Still Growing, but Automation and Robots having Increasing Impact

Supply Chain News: Distribution Center Jobs Still Growing, but Automation and Robots having Increasing Impact

All told, warehouse and distribution employment remains a bright spot on the US jobs front. For example, warehousing operators added 3,100 jobs from October to November, and have boosted payrolls by 47,400 jobs over the past 12 months, according to statistics from the US Dept. of Labor. All told there are about 880,000 warehouse workers in the US, with 103,00 of them in California.
While Amazon still has tens of thousands of DC workers doing very manual and repetitive labor, depending on the specifics of each facility, its hiring profile is also starting to change. But those numbers, which […]

Best job for your child? Leave them to figure out the future

Best job for your child? Leave them to figure out the future

Parents should look beyond their own life choices when thinking about their offspring

“I am not convinced everyone can or should be a coder. As Martin Ford, author of The Rise of the Robots, pointed out, routine software development is being automated everywhere.” I once met a consultant whose job was to find places for affluent children in the best nurseries and schools. One client on her list had mapped out his son’s life with precision. The boy would attend Cambridge university before embarking on a career in investment banking at Deutsche Bank . The child was six […]

What Donald Trump Can Learn From China and Robots When It Comes to Jobs

What Donald Trump Can Learn From China and Robots When It Comes to Jobs

President-elect Donald Trump. President-elect Donald Trump may be taking on China’s apparent mercantilism via his Twitter account , but both the U.S. and China are embroiled in a dangerous experiment that could crimp their prospects for employment: investment in automation.

Over the past 70 years, China has had the advantage when it came to manufacturing. The cost of labor, in relative terms, was low while policy makers further boosted the competitiveness of the country’s export structure through the specialization of production, in a nod to Adam Smith’s capitalist treatise "The Wealth of Nations".

But manufacturing jobs in China are massively under […]

They Took Our Jobs! Is Globalization Really to Blame for Job Losses?

They Took Our Jobs! Is Globalization Really to Blame for Job Losses?

There has been a long running debate about the loss of American manufacturing jobs over the last decade. Blame for job losses is largely laid at the door of globalization, specifically China.

The rhetoric was ramped up in the recent presidential election campaign when both candidates came out firmly against more globalization but Donald Trump in particular, strongly criticized China for stealing American jobs and vowed to return those jobs to the U.S., has placed the issue even more sharply under the spotlight. Is globalization really the culprit for moving jobs from the U.S. to elsewhere? Or is it merely […]

Why I’m against Universal Basic Income

Why I’m against Universal Basic Income

Acvitists from "Generation Grundeinkommen" (Generation Basic Income) dump 8 million Swiss 5-cent coins in the main square in Bern, Switzerland, to celebrate a successful petition for a referendum to incorporate Basic Income in the Swiss constitution. However, it was later rejected in a referendum. Recently the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has gained a lot of traction in Left circles in the UK, with calls for Jeremy Corbyn to adopt it and try and make it Labour party policy. This morning, I saw an article on Medium by Frances Coppola, Why the changing nature of work means […]