Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both promising to bring good-paying jobs back to America, but analysts say neither of them has addressed one of the biggest challenges looming ahead: the impact of automation and the rise of artificial intelligence. Some argue that the challenge will soon become impossible to ignore. According to Moshe Vardi, an expert on artificial intelligence at Rice University, job losses due to automation and robotics are often overlooked in discussions about the unexpected rise of outside political candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders. Vardi pointed out that manufacturing employment has been falling for more than 30 years, and yet U.S. manufacturing output is near its all-time high. The transportation sector is likely to be next, as autonomous vehicles start moving products and people. The automation of transportation could eliminate millions of jobs in the United States. http://www.geekwire.com/2016/trump-clinton-jobs-automation/
That seems to overlook the same factors the predictions of flying cars overlooked. How are they measuring that output, I wonder. I suspect it's in dollars.
?? This has been an issue that has been going on for the past 100 years. We don't have many telephone operators, machinists, typists or scriveners any more. And we've almost completely eliminated weavers, spinners, stablehands and blacksmiths because of advances in technology. We've also created more jobs - IT professionals, social media managers, computer designers and app developers. So this is nothing new - and at least Clinton had addressed it. From the Washington Examiner: ========================== Clinton worries over automation and the threat of driverless cars By Ryan Lovelace (@LovelaceRyanD) • 6/28/16 12:55 PM Hillary Clinton said she believes the United States is not prepared for the "advanced technological economy" looming on the horizon, and thinks the government will therefore need to address the acceleration of automation's impact on workers. "You know, driverless cars may be an exciting new step in transportation, but that means a lot of trucks and cabbies and Uber drivers and a lot of other people may well lose jobs. So how do we think about that?" Clinton told LinkedIn. "You see, I believe that people should have work with purpose and dignity. I think it's so much a part of the human DNA." Clinton argued that technological advances need to become "more of an ally as opposed to an adversary" for workers and that government has a role in making that happen. ============================
Nor will they. This is the biggest challenge we face. It's not something you can adequately address in a soundbite and the solutions cut against the grain of major economic powers. The whole Republican ideology is ill equipped to deal with this issue. It's based upon and dependent upon a labor based economy. In order to address it, Republicans would need to reverse their core positions on a number of issues. It would mean the end of libertarianism and other right wing ideologies. Those ideologies won't die easily. The transition from a labor based economy to an ownership based economy won't be easy. But it's coming and people are ill-equipped to deal with it. This isn't the kind of discussion you begin before an election. It's the kind of discussion you bring up as late as possible e.g. the waning years of 2nd administration. It will scare people. Now if I were of a conspiracy mindset, I could see folks like the Kochs engineering some catastrophe to rid the world of unneeded labor. Perhaps that is one reason why they refuse to recognize the science climate change. You cannot have all these unemployed people running around causing mischief if you are the Boss Hogg. Maybe some form of mind control will suffice. We are entering a strange new world. Throughout the history of mankind our economies have been based on labor. Unfortunately we aren't equipped to deal with what comes next, and that concerns me.
Too bad the American people are so down on unions. I mean, it's the twenty-first century and still we cannot seem to catch up to the Luddites. That ought to be significant. The problem of automation and jobs is that the displacement is left to business executives, managers, and investors to address according to company prerogative. In other words, workers are out in the cold. Unions could help ease the transition; there is a long and fundamental discord between the vital importance of labor and corporate disdain toward laborers. And in the end, that is what it is; company prerogative attends the bottom line. Meanwhile, we need to put these generations of talk about how American capitalism promises prosperity in the ditch, where such empty promises belong. Once upon a time I can imagine the earnest businessman taking part without understanding the long-term implications, but much like corruption and police departments, there comes a point where that just doesn't work, anymore. Foresight and planning, however, cut into the bottom line. The one thing American ingenuity can't seem to accomplish is the fulfillment of its own promises, seemingly a mass example of the classic juxtaposition between willing spirit and frailty of flesh. Technological innovation will always disrupt the labor force; what we, as a society, do about that is entirely up to us. Revitalizing organized labor would be a start.
I love automation. It's exactly the promise of bringing high tech jobs to America. It doesn't pollute, it pays well for the technicians trained to operate it. It promises mass customization and conserves resources. It promotes entrepreneurship. We need a greater effort in this area, to teach kids computer skills and design.
It doesn't pollute? That's carrying it a bit far. A combustion engine still pollutes whither it's controlled by a computer or a human. Overall, technology may reduce pollution. But that's not readily apparent. Pollution is more a function of processes used rather than technology. That said, the benefits of automation are enormous, but so are the risks.
Unions are both a benefit and a problem when it comes to dealing with a changing labor demand. On the plus side, unions can take an active role in retraining people to meet the needs of the new labor demand; they can retrain machinists on NC milling machines, retrain dock workers in how to use QR and RFID tools and train electrical workers to deal with solar power systems. On the minus side, their first response is often to simply oppose new technology. In LA, the electrical union (IBEW) did not like that contractors could install solar power systems, so whenever a non-union company installed a new power system, they would go by the house after the installation and "lock out" the solar inverter, preventing generation until a union worker went out and got some money from the homeowner. Had they spent all that effort getting their members NABCEP training, then the union workers would have been the ones installing the solar power systems instead. Here in San Diego, a huge grocery worker strike in 2003-2004 had two effect - first, the share of the market that the affected stores (Ralphs, Albertsons and Vons) had went from 60% to less than 35%, and second, almost all the remaining stores installed automated checkout lanes. This had the effect of greatly reducing employment opportunities for grocery workers within the union. Again, had they spent all that effort retraining their workers to deal with automated-checkout maintenance, then not only would those stores still be open and employing union members, other nearby stores would have been employing them as well.
Automation diverts productivity gains to capital and externalizes process costs, unless prevented by societal market intervention. This, in the long run, impedes economic growth by draining markets of demand and burdening non-beneficiaries with costs. It also stratifies society, if inheritance is enforced - capital can be inherited, labor cannot. Given societal market framing and rule, most automation is much to be desired. Automating the removal of human waste from the interior of dwellings, for example, is a technological innovation much appreciated to this day. But the benefits hinged on the societal provision of a destination for it, and governance of its handling. Either that, or they would have paid to train people for jobs that never came to be, because cutting wages was a better choice than expensive automation.
That's certainly possible; the odds are lessened by having intelligent and well-informed union leaders. But it is better to put your effort into improving worker skill than striking and causing the very problem you are trying to avoid, IMO.
In re Billvon: It probably is not insignificant that the one union American conservatives seem to regularly back is also one of the most disruptive. Police guilds are the epitome of the conservative complaint about organized labor, between filing frivolous lawsuits and working to undermine law and order. Meanwhile, amid what we now recognize as wage stagnation we heard myriad conservative complaints about the opulence of unions compared to the average working American. Generally speaking, most Americans could have had what, say, public employees in general have, if they hadn't worked so hard to wreck unions. Again, it seems somewhat significant that, at least in my area, the genuinely opulent union contract went to law enforcement. In truth, I would rather not complain that a cop got a plush insurance package; instead, it would be better if everyone had access to a publicly financed health plan that bought them new cars when they got sick.
