Tag: manufactur

Here’s new evidence minimum wage hikes result in workers being replaced by robots

Here's new evidence minimum wage hikes result in workers being replaced by robots

There is new evidence that raising the minimum wage pushes business owners to replace low-skilled workers with automation. And it shows that old, young, female and black low-skilled workers face the highest levels of unemployment after a minimum wage increase.

Economists Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of UC Irvine studied 35 years of government census data for their working paper, which was released in August, titled " People Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs ."

"Based on [current population survey] data from 1980-2015, we find that increasing the minimum wage decreases […]

If you don’t want to lose your job to a robot, don’t think like one

If you don’t want to lose your job to a robot, don’t think like one

Don’t be this guy The American job market holds few guarantees, and its future might hold even fewer. But in making critical career decisions, here’s a question you might ask yourself:

Am I a Roomba?

Chris Adami, a theoretical physicist and Michigan State University professor with a knack for breaking down artificial intelligence into simple terms, explains.A Roomba – the robotic floor sweeper – he said, is a familiar and easily understood example of how artificial intelligence works: “It senses the environment it’s in. It moves around, using an intelligent algorithm. Its reaction is appropriate given the sensory input it has.”This, […]

Everyone thinks that automation will take our jobs. The evidence disagrees.

Everyone thinks that automation will take our jobs. The evidence disagrees.

Last year, the Japanese company SoftBank opened a cell phone store in Tokyo and staffed it entirely with sales associates named Pepper. This wasn’t as hard as it sounds, since all the Peppers were robots.

Humanoid robots, to be more precise, which SoftBank describes as "kindly, endearing, and surprising." Each Pepper is equipped with three multidirectional wheels, an anticollision system, multiple sensors, a pair of arms, and a chest-mounted tablet that allows customers to enter information. Pepper can "express his own emotions" and use a 3-D camera and two HD cameras "to identify movements and recognize the emotions on the […]

Study: In the end, the machine will win

Study: In the end, the machine will win

If you’ve been following the ongoing debate over the “Fight for 15” and steep increases in the minimum wage, you’ll want to check out this article from James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s examining the new NBER working paper , “ People Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs ” by Grace Lordan and David Neumark. In case you haven’t guessed from the title, it’s an analysis of the effect of higher minimum wages on the rate at which business shift from hiring lower skill, minimum wage workers to implementing automated / robotic solutions.

Here’s […]

End of the checkout line: the looming crisis for American cashiers

End of the checkout line: the looming crisis for American cashiers

he day before a fully automated grocery store opened its doors in 1939, the inventor Clarence Saunders took out a full page advertisement in the Memphis Press-Scimitar warning “old duds” with “cobwebby brains” to keep away. The Keedoozle , with its glass cases of merchandise and high-tech system of circuitry and conveyer belts, was cutting edge for the era and only those “of spirit, of understanding” should dare enter.

Inside the gleaming Tennessee store, shoppers inserted a key into a slot below their chosen items, producing a ticker tape list that, when fed into a machine, sent the goods traveling […]

Rhetoric over: Drive to ease NAFTA impact on workers begins

Rhetoric over: Drive to ease NAFTA impact on workers begins

WASHINGTON (AP) — Of all the trade deals he lambasted on the campaign trail as threats to American workers, President Donald Trump reserved particular scorn for one: The North American Free Trade Agreement.

The NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada was "the worst trade deal in history," candidate Trump declared. He accused NAFTA of having swollen America’s trade deficit with Mexico, pulled factories south of the border and killed jobs across the United States.

Trump promised to renegotiate the 23-year-old deal — or walk away from it. Now the time has come. Five days of talks aimed at overhauling NAFTA […]

Study Shows That Minimum Wage Hikes Put More Jobs at Risk of Automation

Study Shows That Minimum Wage Hikes Put More Jobs at Risk of Automation

Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research have published a paper noting a relationship between automation and the minimum wage. From 1980 to 2015, a $1 increase in the minimum wage resulted in a 0.43 percent decline in automatable jobs. Benefiting Whom, Exactly?

The desire for a higher wage is pretty self explanatory. However, the impact a minimum wage increase could have on society is not so clear.

In an effort to shed light on this subject, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conducted a study , and they’ve concluded that a minimum wage hike might […]

Governments Destroy Jobs, Not Automation

Governments Destroy Jobs, Not Automation

A few weeks ago, road and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said that driverless cars would be banned in India in order to “protect jobs.” This kind of fallacious argument is nothing new. For the past year or so, newspapers have frequently published articles arguing that automation is to blame for job losses. Even seemingly intelligent people like Bill Gates have made outlandish suggestions, such as taxing robots , to compensate workers who might lose their jobs as a result.

Bad government policies are the root cause for unemployment.

By doing a superficial analysis, one may indeed say that automation causes job […]

So many good U.S. jobs, so few qualified workers

So many good U.S. jobs, so few qualified workers

NORWOOD, Ohio – Herbie Mays is 3M proud, and it shows — in the 3M shirt he wears, in the 3M ring he earned after three decades at the company’s plant in suburban Cincinnati, in the way he shows off a card from a 3M supervisor, praising Mays as "a GREAT employee."

But it’s all nostalgia.

Mays’ last day at 3M ( MMM ) was in March. Bent on cutting costs and refocusing its portfolio, the company decided to close the plant that made bandages, knee braces and other health care supplies and move work to its plant in Mexico.At 62, […]

As the laid-off struggle, high-tech US plants offer jobs

As the laid-off struggle, high-tech US plants offer jobs

Herbie Mays is 3M proud, and it shows — in the 3M shirt he wears; in the 3M ring he earned after three decades at the company’s plant in suburban Cincinnati; in the way he shows off a card from a 3M supervisor, praising Mays as "a GREAT employee."

But it’s all nostalgia.

Mays’ last day at 3M was in March. Bent on cutting costs and refocusing its portfolio, the company decided to close the plant that made bandages, knee braces and other health care supplies and move work to its plant in Mexico.At 62, Mays is unemployed and wants to […]