Tag: robot

Oilfield automation may slow job growth — but it doesn’t have to

Oilfield automation may slow job growth — but it doesn't have to

More competitive companies could expand faster and hire more people.

Last week, I wrote about the race to create a digital platform to help drillers deploy and track trucks and other equipment to service their wells in the most efficient possible way, with shorter trips and seamless billing — an Uber for the oilfield, if you will.

Efficiency, of course, means making things cost less. Cost comes in two varieties: Capital and labor. So which one is being cut?In the case of software programs for running oilfield operations, the answer is theoretically both. Service providers will need fewer trucks […]

Robots and tax: paying the freight

Robots and tax: paying the freight

Adrian Turner: It is time for a serious national conversation about automation … Australia does not need a robot tax – but it should take automation and the erosion of traditional jobs a whole lot more seriously.

CSIRO’s Data61 chief executive Adrian Turner has weighed into the discussion about whether companies replacing human workers with robots should be forced to pay a tax for the privilege, arguing that it is neither sensible nor feasible.

It’s a position at odds with that of Microsoft founder and technology advisor Bill Gates, who in a recent interview with the online site Quartz, said that […]

Trade, Automation, Cheap Wages Abroad Conspire to Alter U.S. Economic Landscape

Trade, Automation, Cheap Wages Abroad Conspire to Alter U.S. Economic Landscape

President Trump has blamed countries such as China and Mexico for the erosion of U.S. manufacturing jobs, but the industry has been steadily declining for decades. Photo: Tama66 / Pixabay

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump struck a protectionist, populist tone that appealed to Rust Belt blue-collar workers but instilled fear among multinational companies, foreign governments and free trade advocates. Those fears were apparently well founded.

Since assuming office, Trump has wasted no time railing against the perils of globalization. He’s threatened to slap punitive tariffs on key economic partners such as Mexico and China, named and shamed companies that outsource […]

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now

Part One

It is in this serious light that we have to look at the question of the growing army of the unemployed. We have to stop looking for solutions in pump-priming, featherbedding, public works, war contracts, and all the other gimmicks that are always being proposed by labor leaders and well-meaning liberals.

– James Boggs, The American Revolution In 1963, James Boggs, a black autoworker employed for over two decades at a Chrysler plant in Detroit, published a short book focused on the nefarious effects of automation on class struggle in the United States. The story told in The American […]

Sorry, But Amazon Isn’t Actually Annihilating Retail Jobs

Sorry, But Amazon Isn’t Actually Annihilating Retail Jobs

Noah Berger/Reuters Beware the lurking variable. Even if you didn’t suffer through a semester of college statistics, you’re probably familiar with the adage “correlation doesn’t imply causation.” But if you haven’t had the pleasure, it’s a fairly easy concept to grasp.

Take a classic example: When ice cream sales rise significantly, the number of shark attacks escalates as well. But ice cream probably doesn’t cause shark attacks. The two things are correlated because they tend to occur at the same time of year but the relationship is not causal: Summer, in this case, is what’s called a lurking variable . […]

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

Trump is selling snake oil to the Rust Belt

President Trump speaks during a meeting with manufacturing executives at the White House. (Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg) President Trump boasts that his “America First” trade and economic policies are bringing well-paid manufacturing jobs back to America. That’s probably his biggest “deliverable” to Trump voters. But is this claim true?

Trump won the presidency partly because he voiced the anger of American workers about lost jobs and stagnant wages. But in the process, he fundamentally misled the country by claiming that trade is the major cause of job losses, and that renegotiating trade agreements would save the middle class.

What Trump is offering is […]

C.E.O. Who Trump Thanked for Creating Jobs Says Robots Will Take Over by 2050

C.E.O. Who Trump Thanked for Creating Jobs Says Robots Will Take Over by 2050

By Spencer Platt/Getty Images. Late last year, Donald Trump met with Japanese billionaire and Softbank C.E.O. Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower to discuss what the president-elect misleadingly heralded as a new investment. “Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs,” he tweeted . “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!”

Trump’s victory lap was problematic on several levels. For one, the $50 billion that Son had agreed to invest came from a previously announced $100 billion investment fund, with much of the […]

The Rise of Automation: Why Coding Is Becoming a Job for Everyone

Automation and computerization are rapidly becoming hot-button issues, both journalistically and politically. As many workers are all too aware, the pace of technological advancement is dramatically impacting the jobs market, as much of the work previously performed by human laborers can now be completed by relatively inexpensive robots and computerized systems.

Many global thinkers, scientists, and business leaders are debating the long-term impact and immediate ramifications of this automation explosion in recent years. Industries hit the hardest tend to be those in manufacturing, where core job tasks tend to follow well-defined, repetitive procedures, which can invariably be codified in computer […]

Wisconsin Is a Global Trade Winner

Wisconsin Is a Global Trade Winner

Mining Equipment staged to go out to the Netherlands, April 2015. Photo by Peter Hirthe. Anyone who read a Monmouth College Poll from back in 2011 might have predicted the unexpected rise of Donald Trump . The poll found Midwestern residents — by huge margins — saw themselves as losers from global trade , just as Trump would insist in his campaign.

Some of the poll’s key findings:
-64 percent felt the Midwest lost more from global trade and just 20 percent felt it gained.
-64 percent said it cost the Midwest jobs; only 19 percent said it created jobs. […]

Dutch anger is about robots, and immigrants

Dutch anger is about robots, and immigrants

“Robotization is taking our jobs,’’ says Niek Stam, leader of the FNV Havens labor union that represents the stevedores loading and unloading cargo at Rotterdam’s port. “Dockers won’t vote for [Geert] Wilders because they’re racist — they aren’t. They’ll vote for him because they’re angry.” Stam is shown in his Rotterdam office on. MUST CREDIT: Jasper Juinen — Bloomberg Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, speaks during a Europe of Nations and Freedom meeting in Koblenz, Germany, on. MUST CREDIT: Martin Leissl — Bloomberg

From the towering offices of Rotterdam’s port authority, you can watch the never-ending stream […]