Tag: manufactur

Jeffrey Scharf: Everybody’s Business: Tax on robots: A modest proposal

Everybody’s Business

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Bill Gates — co-founder of Microsoft — endorsed a “robot tax” to slow automation and fund jobs for displaced workers. The idea has been picked up by San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim.How might such a tax work? I have my own modest proposal for putting robots and people on an equal footing.Companies will no longer be able to purchase robots. They will, however, be able to rent robots. They will have to pay the rental companies a minimum fee of at least $15 per hour for such robots. The robots will be programmed to […]

Taxing robots will hurt California innovation and opportunity

Taxing robots will hurt California innovation and opportunity

Robots assembly a Tesla Model S at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., Friday, June 22, 2012. The first Model S sedan car will be rolling off the assembly line on Friday. A California governor who went on to greater things was known to say that if government sees something move, it will tax it. Ronald Reagan’s words, spoken more than 30 years ago, are being played out today by a lawmaker who wants to enact a robot tax.

Jane Kim, a Democratic San Francisco supervisor and one-time community organizer, has “launched a campaign called the Jobs of the Future […]

Automation to Transform Employment for Americans

Fears of Robots Eliminating Jobs is Overblown, Says Machine Vision Manufacturer

WOBURN, MA, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 — Job insecurity has fueled a general unease among American workers, driven not by foreign competition but by advancing technology. According to pessimists, millions of jobs will disappear in coming years because of robots, driverless vehicles and Artificial Intelligence, sparking mass social unrest and upheaval.

These fears are greatly overblown, says Donal Waide, Director of Sales for BitFlow, a manufacturer of machine vision components used in robotics, automation systems and quality control."Technology has altered the employment prospects of Americans since the automobile closed down […]

Industrial robots and the new China Syndrome

Industrial robots and the new China Syndrome

Sean Culey Last year, China bought 66,000 industrial robots. This might not seem like an extraordinary figure for a country of over a billion people, but when you consider that each of these machines can do the jobs of 15 or more full-time employees, the impact begins to look more significant: it means that 66,000 robots could potentially do the work of one million people.

China purchased one-quarter of all the industrial robots manufactured in 2016. So, using these figures, we could make a reasonable claim that manufacturing jobs alone may already be falling to the machines at a rate […]

Rise of the robots: Workers should be afraid. Very afraid.

Rise of the robots: Workers should be afraid. Very afraid.

Concerned that robots and automation are disrupting huge swaths of the U.S. economy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

For years, industrial robots have increasingly displaced human beings in manufacturing-heavy sectors such as automobiles and consumer electronics. However, a new report released by Citi and the University of Oxford predicts that as much as 80 percent of retail and related warehousing jobs are now at risk from automation. Likewise, some 63 percent of sales jobs are also at risk, the report said. VIEW SLIDESHOW 21 photos Of course, some cities and regions are more at risk than others, particularly ones in […]

Amazon Warehouse Employees Are The Most Important Workers in America

Amazon Warehouse Employees Are The Most Important Workers in America

The future is not completely unpredictable. Many of the most powerful economic and political trends in this country can be found inside an Amazon warehouse. And what happens to the workers there will say a lot about our collective future.

Our nation—as it often has throughout modern history—is experiencing a diffuse sense that our future is uncertain, that our economic prospects are unstable, and that the material success experienced by past generations may become impossible to attain for future generations. The fabled “economic anxiety” afflicting millions of us with a vague sense of dread is real enough. This, despite the […]

The Global Search for Education: Jobsolescence – A Conversation with USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson

The Global Search for Education: Jobsolescence – A Conversation with USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson

“I think the guiding principle for government should be to protect and enable/retrain the worker, not protect the job. Policy makers and educators should focus on making sure that workers are as equipped as possible to transition to new opportunities…”

— Peter Robinson

A recent OECD report finds that low and middle income earners have seen their wages stagnate and that the income share of middle-skilled jobs has fallen. Rising inequality has led to concerns that top earners are getting a disproportionate share of the gains from global “openness and interconnection”. This summer, the OECD Employment Outlook 2017 […]

High-paying energy jobs are key for Democrats in 2018

High-paying energy jobs are key for Democrats in 2018

© Thinkstock Clean-energy policies championed by Democrats over the last decade have helped create millions of high-paying energy jobs for American workers. And innovative Democratic policies going forward can help spur millions more good jobs — in energy efficiency, natural gas, nuclear energy, carbon capture, wind, solar, electric vehicles and infrastructure — in coming years.

This record of high-wage job creation stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump ’s false coal-dust promises to somehow bring back jobs using 19 th century energy strategies.

But, as Democrats look toward the mid-term elections, their candidates must talk about energy in the right way. […]

Robotics in business: Everything humans need to know

Robotics in business: Everything humans need to know

YakobchukOlena | istock.com Introduction

One kind of robot has endured for the last half-century: the hulking one-armed Goliaths that dominate industrial assembly lines.

These industrial robots have been task-specific — built to spot weld, say, or add threads to the end of a pipe. They aren’t sexy, but in the latter half of the 20th century they transformed industrial manufacturing and, with it, the low- and medium-skilled labor landscape in much of the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Is your washing machine a robot? Is a modern high-end car a robot? It’s a little like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of […]

Transportation, Sales & Retail Jobs ‘To Disappear’ As Robots Take Over

Transportation, Sales & Retail Jobs ‘To Disappear’ As Robots Take Over

Automation and e-commerce are set to phase out 80 percent of transportation and warehousing jobs and 63 percent of sales employment, says Oxford University

Roughly 80 percent of jobs in transportation, warehousing and logistics and 63 percent in sales are likely to disappear due to automation , with retail employment also at a high level of risk, according to Oxford University researchers.

In a study focusing on the impact of automation on e-commerce and the wider wholesale and retail sector, the university’s Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment found the impact of digital commerce systems was only beginning to be […]