How “progressives” become anti-progress.
I’m a lifelong nerd and no man can call me a Luddite but to simply sit on our thumbs while people are permanently unemployed by robotics - not merely displaced like in the 1800’s - it’s going to lead to severe social chaos if not outright violence. As other Freepers have pointed out, you cannot leave a significant portion of Americans without any real possibility of employment because they got ‘bot-sourced’. Either a Socialist savior will rise up or people will eventually explode in frustration. This isn’t some 4th world dungpit where people just quietly starve.
That being said, I am CERTAIN that the liberal enclave’s ‘solution’ will absolutely suck pig balls.
And this is how the Butlerian Jihad begins...
“How can we put that money in our pockets?”
...The First Law of progressive governance.
“Nobody talks about the First Law.”
The Second Law of progressive governance.
So the machine that makes me a cup of coffee in the lunchroom is a job thief?
Who knew.
Honestly, automation isn’t really an issue.
It only gets blamed for job loss because people forget about the other side of the equation: output.
Think of it like this: if productivity improves by 5% a year because of automation, you’ll need 5% fewer workers to make the same output, right?
All things being equal, you’ll lose jobs. This is what people think is happening.
But, if output also increase by the same amount, there’s no net loss of jobs. In other words, if the economy grows at the rate of technology, or faster, automation won’t cause a loss of jobs.
That’s why, in the long run, automation hasn’t caused mass unemployment (and it’s been going on non-stop for the last 1000 years). All that’s changed is our prosperity.
That brings us back to the present: automation is being blamed right now because our output isn’t increasing as fast as our productivity. Why? Offshoring.
When we build our new factories in China or Mexico, they get the output, and the jobs, and the jobs we have are subject to erosion caused by automation.
So it’s not really about automation, it’s about offshoring & economic globalization.
@1’st century luddites
FIGHT FOR $15! FIGHT FOR $15!!
Liberals would tax the air you breathe if they could. Tax robots? Double taxation on the company producing goods which are taxed when sold. Why not another tax? All so liberal politicians can give away the taxed monies to non-working freeloaders. Yay, isn’t liberal life wonderful.
The tech industry collectively face-palmed when Trump’s treasury secretary said earlier this year that the threat of robots taking human jobs was “not even on our radar screen.”
...
That’s probably because Trump is so focused on creating new jobs.
Robots are replacing illegals in SF.
Tax them.
A robot tax.
That should work out great.
But what about computers?
They are evil too.