Tag: productivity

Reversing Automation

Reversing Automation

Yesterday I asked what parts of NAFTA people on Ricochet would want to see renegotiated or abrogated. After reading the responses, I’m still not sure whether people here think that free trade is good, but NAFTA disadvantages the United States — that it’s not a level playing field, in other words — or whether we’ve got real support here for mercantilism.

I’m open to the idea that Adam Smith was wrong and free trade doesn’t, in fact, benefit everyone. I’ve been arguing, though, that it’s not trade that’s killed manufacturing jobs. It’s automation.

What if both are true? Here’s an interesting […]

Why Bringing Factories Back Won’t Save Manufacturing Jobs

Why Bringing Factories Back Won't Save Manufacturing Jobs

To working class Americans, President-elect Donald Trump offered an attractive vision for the country’s future — a pledge to restore factories that had been outsourced to foreign nations and, in doing so, bring back manufacturing jobs.

The issue is that, regardless of where the factories are located, they’re increasingly automated. The jobs didn’t necessarily disappear because the factories relocated or because illegal immigrants took them over; they disappeared because the jobs have largely been automated in the modern manufacturing world. This meme reveals the problem with Trump’s promise to workers in the manufacturing industry.

Though the manufacturing industry has experienced […]

Robots threaten 2/3 jobs in developing world, could save first-world economies – UN

Robots threaten 2/3 jobs in developing world, could save first-world economies – UN

Get short URL Donald Trump could realize his dream of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America if the country adopts the latest innovations in robotics. Yet the impact of “reshoring” on low-skill jobs in certain developing countries could be disastrous, the UN warned.

Citing World Bank data, a brief from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) claims that up to two-thirds of all jobs in the developing world could be replaced by automation, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in car-making and electronics. © Unctad.org Robots could put more than 1mn Brits out of work by 2030 – […]

Carl Wernicke: The Economy & Automation

Carl Wernicke: The Economy & Automation

Credit IHMC Last weekend I visited the clean energy festival downtown. I met the owner of a Tesla, the innovative electric car. He giddily described a phone app that opens his garage, starts the car and backs it out into the driveway.

But just wait, he said. Soon the car will be able to drive him to work, then head out on its own to work for Uber all day before returning to ferry him home.

That points to the economic challenge facing our new president.We are facing a rapid acceleration of a current trend: the replacement of human workers with […]

Why Agriculture Could Be Automated Before Other Industries

Why Agriculture Could Be Automated Before Other Industries

[Photo: Rasmus Landgreen via Unsplash] In 1870, agriculture was a source of employment for about half the U.S. workforce; now just 2% of the population produces food for a living, according to government figures. As large machines have increasingly done the work of ploughing and harvesting crops and tending to livestock, farms have become ever more human-free. And what of the future? They may provide barely any jobs at all. The new age of farm machines include weeding robots , self-driving tractors , and crop- spraying drones . The drivers: higher productivity, an aging human workforce (principal farmers are […]

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

The United Nations claims automation will take 2/3rds of jobs in developing nations

What a fitting time. Seeing as America just elected the least qualified party to handle the automation problem in America as well as a candidate promising the return of automatable jobs, we now know the sights and conflict are poised to wreck the fuck out of the developing world. They have it worse than many first world societies, where the concerns are one in three jobs are dissolved. All figures, assuming the worst of them pose true, are concerns for social conflict, insecurity, and instability.

Have some more darkly sobering news today . Some excerpts… Industrialization has historically been […]

Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, but robots won’t let him

Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs, but robots won’t let him

For Americans struggling with stagnant wages, under- or un-employment, one of Donald Trump’s most appealing campaign promises was to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.

Navigating the complexities of policy, tariffs and geopolitics would make that hard enough already for the president elect. But technology will make this promise nearly impossible to fulfill.

Why? Because manufacturing jobs are increasingly done by robots, not people.Robotics have already helped reduce reliance on labor overseas for manufacturers in automotive, electrical and electronics industries, according to a fresh policy report from the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development. And automation does allow manufacturers […]

It’s the one thing Trump and Clinton agree on – and it’s probably a fantasy

It’s the one thing Trump and Clinton agree on – and it’s probably a fantasy

On Sept. 8, 2010, General Motors workers cheer as the first Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan off the assembly line, at the GM factory in Lordstown, Ohio. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta) If there’s one thing Americans agree on, it’s collective nostalgia for the days when workers actually made things — when American factory workers earned good wages helping to crank out cars, refrigerators, furniture and other goods for consumers in the U.S. and around the world. So it’s no surprise that politicians are also united in pledging to bring those manufacturing jobs back to America, as both Donald Trump and Hillary […]

Elon Musk: We Need Universal Income Because Robots Will Steal All The Jobs

Elon Musk: We Need Universal Income Because Robots Will Steal All The Jobs

Image: Getty Spacentrepreneur Elon Musk thinks we’ll eventually need a basic universal income because of "automation."

"People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," he told CNBC . "Certainly more leisure time. And then we gotta figure how we integrate with a world and future with a vast AI."

"Ultimately, I think there has to be some improved symbiosis with digital super intelligence," the Tesla CEO said.What will happen if robots steal our jobs? It’s a question that’s been on the minds of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie since the advent of artificial intelligence. […]

Robots, not trade, behind many factory-job losses

Robots, not trade, behind many factory-job losses

A worker loads spools of thread at the Repreve Bottle Processing Center, part of the Unifi textile company in Yadkinville, North Carolina. WASHINGTON — Donald Trump blames Mexico and China for stealing millions of jobs from the United States.

He might want to bash the robots instead.

Despite the Republican presidential nominee’s charge "we don’t make anything anymore," manufacturing still is flourishing in America.Problem is, factories don’t need as many people as they used to because machines now do so much of the work.America has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Susan Stacy moves […]