The future will be a 80% of the population will have zero marginal value in a robot/AI economy. They will spend their days in Virtual Reality play getting a welfare check from the gov’t every month.
If there are any jobs left, the Mexicans will get them.
Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you
Sorry, Orchard, I try to do my business with humans. I can appreciate that you want to cut costs by eliminating sales personnel. Good for you! Too bad you’ll never see me again as a customer....
How long till robots replace all politicians and govt employees?
"Zzzzt. Human! Get me a cup of bytes."
"Yes sir, Mr Roboto!"
And the really cool part is you never have to take out your wallet because your cards are scanned the second you walk into the store.
Is there a rule that says robots can’t look like Scarlett Johanssen?
HA! And what does it do if you ask it to get something off the top shelf? Call Michelle Obama?
Isn’t the death spiral in a Depression essentially that A) business is bad, so they lay off workers B) laid of workers have less money to spend, so business gets worse and then we go back to A) and so on and so on.
This being the opposite of Henry Ford paying his workers MORE than the prevailing wage for industrial workers... so that they would be able to buy cars...
Yet we have Americans laid off in manufacturing and IT because of globalism and outsourcing to China and India, and people act surprised that the economy can’t recover and think that socialism is the cure?
Lets take the last major area of employment and turn that over to robots. What can possibly go wrong?
Yes, it is a somewhat scary proposition, but if I can be free from the incessant repetitive annoying retail mantra, “Hi How are you”...I will consider it a net positive.
Article hits the nail on the head.
They cost $50,000 apiece. When you add the cost of maintenance, software upgrades, repairs, etc. I think it will be quite some time before the minimum-wage workforce has much to worry about.
I think so.
After all, someone has to work as slaves for the robots.
This is not going to end well. We have gone from a manufacture based economy to a service based one. Now service jobs are becoming automated. What do you do with a population that has an even smaller prospect for work?
In a rational free modern division of labor society, mass unemployment is always caused by lousy government policies.General prosperity is caused by economic progress which is the result of the combination of technological progress and capital accumulation. The adoption of labor saving devices and machinery may cause temporary unemployment for some,but in general and in the long run, it leads to not mass unemployment but higher standard of living for the average worker.Because it becomes possible for the same number of workers to produce a vastly increased quantity of goods and obtain the benefit of these goods in their capacity as consumers.
Improvements in machinery of the labor saving variety are an essential prerequisite of labor becoming available for increasing the production of goods previously considered luxuries and for working with improvements in machinery of the kind that make possible altogether new products.
The effect of labor saving machinery is always to increase the supply of goods relative to the supply of labor and thus to reduce prices relative to wage rates. This increases the buying power of wages and in this way the standard of living of the average wage earner.
I’ve gravitated rather quickly to the self-checkout kiosks in most of the places where I shop—I’m much more efficient than the individuals that are paid to do it; I don’t make mistakes; and I don’t stop during the process to talk to a co-worker or answer my cell phone.
Similarly, I patronize pay-at-the-pump gas stations and use my credit union’s ATM for my financial transactions (no fees for members). I don’t do fast food.
In all, anywhere I can eliminate human interaction, I do. It’s much faster and far less aggravating.
Yes, but fewer.
