Posted on 04/29/2017 3:29:24 PM PDT by Thalean
CNN says automation is to blame for America’s manufacturing job losses; and what’s worse, there’s more to come—and no, it has absolutely nothing to do with bad trade deals like NAFTA, nor China’s predatory trading strategy.
Nope. Nothing to see here people. Move along.
Automation is bad, and your jobs are never coming back. This view was echoed recently by the Guardian too.
Of course, this is all just fake news—CNN has to earn its reputation somehow.
In reality, automation is only half the story: if you look at its impact relative to output, you’ll see that automation doesn’t really impact employment rates—unless things are woefully out of balance (they are, which explains the media hysteria, but I’ll get to that later).
In fact, automation, and better technology, is the only way to grow the economy in the long run.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaleconomicseditorial.com ...
This is just a myth perpetrated by the global elites to ensure people remain complacent when their jobs dry up. If it's inevitable, how can you be mad?
All a scam.
Taxation, offshoring, poor morals, a lack of education or poor educations.
Highly automated plants will still have hundreds of employees, both operators, maintenance people, construction people doing modifications, engineering people sorting out all the myriad problems that go with manufacturing in general and highly automated manufacturing in particular.
Then there are all the droves of front office people that make the facility run.
The idea that robots and automation just runs itself is a myth.
Do you have any links to back that up? I'd love to use it in arguments if it's substantiated.
Exactly my friend. Automation is how we’ve advanced out of the stone age.
And yet the MSM perpetuates the myth that automation’s costing us jobs, so that the elites can:
1) Justify continued offshoring, which pads their wallets, while weakening American workers & our nation. Basically, it enriches the rich, and places like China, while America becomes dependent on foreign imports.
2) It gives them grounds to push for universal basic income, which is pretty much communism: pay people to be idle, while the rich maintain their power structure.
Having worked in a Tier I automotive stamping plant for over 30 years I can say from experience that automation did indeed account for most of the job losses......
Our production levels remained the same and increased as automation replaced manpower but it also called for more skilled workers with the ability to fix the the equipment.
As far as profit making, the increased automation and subsequent loss of actual production workers were what kept my plant viable as opposed to profitable.........
The Big 3 is the giant that makes or breaks the suppliers and if you can't meet their demands then kiss your company good bye........
Well, that’s obviously hyperbole, but the logic is more or less true.
Economic history itself is your evidence: just consider how long run employment hasn’t changed in the last 1000 years, and yet people are more prosperous than ever.
It’s because we can do more with less time: ie. automation.
I post this question on all of these threads just to get the perspectives of other folks here on FR:
In 1990, U.S. exports to Mexico were $30 billion, and imports from Mexico were $28 billion. We had a trade surplus of $2 billion with Mexico.
In 2016, U.S. exports to Mexico were $231 billion, and imports from Mexico were $294 billion. We had a trade deficit of $63 billion with Mexico.
In terms of our trade with Mexico, was the U.S. better off in 1990 or 2016?
What concerns me most is not simply the loss of jobs in off-shoring, but the technology transfer that takes place where the manufacturing takes place. The learning curve is constant for everyone concerned, and if its happening there, it isn’t happening here.
Americans are famously “can-do” people, famously practical, pragmatic, and inventive, but that’s because Americans were doing things, building things, fixing things, inventing things. When they are no longer doing things, the very thing that made them what they were will no longer be true of them. If you no longer know how to do anything, you aren’t going to be inventing the next generation of technology or anything else. If you don’t know how things work, you will fall into passivity and superstition. Which is where we are headed right now.
My apologies: this is the article I meant to link, not that one.
Sorry guys.
http://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/04/21/automation-job-loss/
Do you have any links to back that up? I'd love to use it in arguments if it's substantiated.”
Don't hold your breath - because it is essentially both true and untrue.
Of course automation kills jobs. Every time something begins being done by a machine that used to be done by a human, a job has been killed. But what is another description for automation - how about ‘time and progress.’
The history of this planet is about time, and the progress that occurs during time. Horses took away the jobs of slaves that used to pull wagons. Cars took away the jobs of horses. Steam-shovels took away the jobs of hundreds of men using shovels. And of course shovels took away the jobs of thousands of men using spoons.
The whole process involves time, and the progress of time. As technology advances, the human race is supposed to get smarter and stay ahead. And there lies the rub.
Between the planned disintegration of to the family, school systems being turned into propaganda factories, and the sense of entitlement/unionism - the human race has stopped making progress - and technology hasn’t.
The resulting head on collision will be spectacular - and violent beyond belief.
I linked a different article by mistake, so no, the article doesn’t match what I excerpted. My mistake, sorry.
The actual article I wanted to link was this one:
http://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/04/21/automation-job-loss/
Although to address your question, I think it’s a red herring to look at trade volume as indicative of economic health, in any way.
Recall that the US was the fastest growing economy during 1850 and 1950, and we actually had minimal international trade.
So the volume of trade with Mexico (or any other country) is actually irrelevant. Trade follows economic growth (because you produce surpluses), it doesn’t cause it.
That being said, I think trade was healthier before NAFTA, because right now there are hundreds of thousands unemployed, whereas before this wasn’t an issue.
“No, For every job lost through invention, 10 more jobs are created. Jobs which one works less and earns more. “
No, that is a shibboleth, and not factual. The technology revolution has not done what prior eras of invention did. More jobs have been gutted due to modern technology than any new jobs it created, directly or indirectly. And it is continuing to do that, even in the economically rapidly growing countries like China.
It does not matter, all your “other jobs” in a manufacturing company. There was always those “other jobs”, yet now there is also fewer of them than their were before. The net in all areas of a manufacturing outfit is net employment, not just “manufacturing jobs” is less while the automated factory produces more.
The new jobs in technology in the manufacturing sector do not even get close to the number of jobs in manufacturing that the technology gutted.
The technology revolution has not been doing what earlier eras of invention did - creating more jobs than invention destroyed.
Meanwhile, the technologists are standing at the peaks of the top 1%’s in wage income, while all other wages have stagnated.
Looking only at bilateral trade can be very misleading.
Trading for what Mexico produces best can mean that we have a better deal with a different country.
You have to look at overall trade, in all areas.
The dollars that go to Mexico have to be spent somewhere. Maybe they are traded to Europe or China, which then spends them in the U.S.
There are many definitions that have to be taken into account. The old definitions ignore or disguise advantages and disadvantages.
It is no where as simple as this author makes it to be.
Having said that, I am not a pure free trader. Many of the “deals” we have made have resulted in the theft of intellectual property of U.S. property owners.
There are good paying jobs, as in IT.
There are low paying jobs in unskilled factory work.
Not all jobs are the same. Not all offshoring is the same.
In IT I’ve worked in 35+ big IT shops. I’ve repeatedly seen where 2 or 3 big projects are budgeted. Project managers are announced and they try to staff up the projects. Repeatedly there just are not enough qualified people to staff up the projects. Management is faced with 3 choices.
1. Kill one or more projects. Shift the half-staff of that project to the other half-staffed project so it is fully staffed.
2. Off shore one or more of the projects.
3. Hire immigrants (green card, H1b, Tourist, student visa and visa “in progress”, meaning nothing at this time.)
Now a 4th option exists for IT. Much IT work can be automated. If IT automation increases, which of the above 3 is it most likely to impact? I suggest #1. With automation fewer projects will be killed. That means the total number of projects will increase.
Malthusian-Guttmacher types see a fixed size to the pie and issues of how the pieces of the pie will be fairly cut and distributed... and who will do the cutting and distribution of those pie slices.
Adam Smith-Capitalist types see the size of the pie as variable. The total size of the pie can grow.
... and It can shrink with high taxes and government regulations ... and trade tariffs and regulations are ultimately the same as any other government stupidity.
Of course, long term, the answer is a better education system. Our lack of skilled people is a direct result of our failed government education system. We have people who hold BA, BS, MA, MS in STEM fields and they have no idea how to determine cause and effect. They have no idea of set processing, which is the basis of all relational and vertical databases. Their degree is in how to FEEL about STEM. Technology is their friend. Technology as progressive and socially responsible is their area of expertise.
Excellent insight.
Here’s the data:
US GDP 1990 8.91 trillion
US GDP 16.81 trillion
Mexico GDP 1990 262.7 billion
Mexico GDP 2016 1.5 Trillion
1990 US exports to Mexico, $30 billion, o.33% of US GDP., and 11.4% of Mexico’s GDP.
2016 US exports to Mexico, $231 billion, 1.37% of US GDP, an appreciation of 415% over 1990 from 0.33% to 1.37%.
That $231 billion was 15% of Mexico’s GDP, an appreciation of 4% over 1990 (from 11.4% to 15%).
1990 US imports from Mexico, $28 billion, 0.31% of US GDP, and 10.6% of Mexico’s GDP.
2016 US imports from Mexico’s, $294 billion, 1.7% of US GDP, an appreciation of 548% over 1990. Those exports represented 19.6% of Mexico’s GDP, an appreciation of 9% over 1990 in terms of Mexico’s GDP.
Draw your own conclusions.
The Great Shift Toward Automation and the Future of Employment
https://hubpages.com/business/The-Great-Shift-and-the-Future-of-Employment
It does mean the remaining jobs are more complex than those they replaced.
Dr. Jordan Peterson - IQ and The Job Market
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0
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