Posted on 05/03/2015 7:52:03 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Report: Robots replacing human workers at faster pace
Robots aren't just for corporate Goliaths -- now even the little guy on Main Street is adopting them. The goal: to boost sales and productivity. But at what cost?
Take Sam Kraus, a Hungarian immigrant who founded what became Skyline Windows in 1921. In the early days, the tinsmith traveled around with a small cart to do his roofing and waterproofing work by hand.
Fast-forward to today, and the fourth-generation business based in New York City's South Bronx has left the pushcart era far behind. Skyline, which has evolved into a custom window manufacturer and installer, now relies on robots to do some of its work. In the factory in Woodridge, New Jersey, where it makes its windows, Skyline uses a $150,000 computer-operated machine to automate tasks like cutting holes in the metal and two $20,000 robots to install its windows, which sometimes weigh 600 pounds.
"It allows us to be more efficient—and our plan is to buy more of these robots when we can," said senior vice president Matt Kraus, whose profitable firm brings in about $70 million in annual revenue and employs about 350 people.
The future of jobs
"Businesses will need to hire no people or fewer people," he said. "You can literally have one person start a manufacturing business."
A decline in traditional jobs could lead to shrinking markets for small businesses, said Ford. "We need consumers out there who will buy what is created by the economy," he said
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
With 50% of the population on some level of welfare I don’t think one needs work to have meaning in their life. I know that’s not where my meaning comes from. Work is what I do to have the money to get meaning at home with the wife. And of course people who want to do stuff will find stuff to do, hobbies that used to be something you found time to do around work will now be what people do.
We’ll all be teachers, cops, and social workers...Young people today see the writing on the wall, and are trying to jump on the government job bandwagon en masse - but the disappearing middle class has no money to pay them, so a bunch of young people with criminal justice, sociology and education degrees are working at Wal-Mart.
They will just sell their products (as they already manufacture them) where the majority of consumers are: Asia.
This article indicates it is unusual that small businesses are looking at automating; it is probably most urgent for them (with less leeway to run inefficiently before shutting down).
Amen. Same here about Jesus.
They will have to acquire new skills.
I like to work, even if its just in the yard or cooking. Feels good like exercise.
I guess there are 2 kinds of work. The kind you do for the money but don't really like and the kind you do because you love it and the money is a cherry on top.
Yep.
In the past a person could have one skill or job for an entire career.
In the near future, we will have to continually retrain for existing jobs (changing) and new positions.
due to vagaries of work rules and acquisitions I spent 1 year where I took a week off every other month (not over running accrual) followed by a year where I took a week off every month (use it all). I learned then I could retire in a minute. I spent my days reading books, relaxing at the pool, riding the bike trail, watching movie. It was wonderful. It was a great time to explore me, and the world around me.
I like my job just fine. Love the people, enjoy the work. But I don’t live to work, and I’m glad I don’t. In our modern “version-centric” capitalism most of the work most of us do is rendering what we did last year obsolete. If I drew my life meaning from that I’d kill myself, because there’s only sad life meanings there. Even when I have fully and truly loved my job I’ve always loved away from job more, that’s where life gets interesting.
My wife doesn’t take a lot of time off work. She says it’s because she doesn’t “do nothing” well. And it’s true, half the time she takes off work she gets sick, the other times she’s stacked up a massive to-do list so there’s no time for nothing. I “do nothing” very well, because I can always find something to fill that nothing.
I wish I were more like you. But I am goal oriented whether I like it or not.
Oh I’ve got goals. I just have unimportant goals like “read that book series”.
Ah, so someone else has also discovered how capitalism works.
Viva Socialism!
Nice.
A world with “no money” need not be a dystopia. After all, money and prices are simply the most efficient method we’ve found for distributing scarce resources.
Scarcity is and of itself not a good thing, but a bad thing. The problem is that humanity has of necessity been organized since it began to develop organization essentially to divide up scarce resources.
When scarcity disappears, at least for many things, then how do we organize ourselves?
As the most obvious example, gaining access to the world’s knowledge used to be very difficult and expensive. Today it is utterly free. Doesn’t mean we use it any more wisely.
I know the sentiment, but I don't believe that is true. I think we have always had to face change throughout our lives. My father-in-law was planning on being a musician, then WWII came around and made him a sailor, then through his post-war education he became an accountant, and now he's back to being a musician.
My grandfather was raised to be a farmer. The depression forced him into a position to abandon farming for a job with the Rail Road. When he went back to farming, in the few years he was gone, most folks had mechanized and he had to hop on that bandwagon to produce enough to feed the family.
Everyone I know had to make adjustments to keep their careers going. I don't see why this should be any different.
There will be people who will do something useful in the future economy. And then there will be those who produce nothing of use, and who will want to spawn offspring who will also produce nothing of use.
The only way for the first category to survive will be to minimize the numbers of the second category. Hopefully it won't need to be accomplished by the violent extermination of the unproductive.
Incorrect. A lot of people are not employable because (1) they are not worth the current minimum wage, and (2) the value of the benefits they are eligible for, exceeds the pay they are likely to get in the job market so they have no incentive to acquire marketable skills.
Remove the Welfare State, put people into a "work or die" environment, and unemployment will go down.
Like you I have many new "opportunities" and actually like change. That said, the future is going to require much change (and rapidly) for everyone.
“The pace of change is much more rapid now.”
We probably think that because we’re closer to it in time. But the industrial revolution of the 1800s and the mechanization of the early 1900s were even more of an upheaval with huge migrations from country to cities and workers having to adapt to the change from the natural cylce of farm work to regimented factory work, and nothing to fall back on. I don’t see that same level of upheaval going on today.
Regarding robots and increased automation, we’ve already undergone a massive version of that through outsourcing. The chinese and now vietnamese, cambodian bangladeshans, etc. have essentially acted as “human robots”. In terms of impact on our labor market, they’ve have the same effect as robots would have. Further actual automation, won’t cause any more dislocation than the “human robot” kind.
Regarding jobs... Humans have an infinite number of needs and desires. If you told someone back one hundred years ago that there would be tens of thousand of people working in nail salons, they would laugh at you. And there are many similar products and service that people didn’t envision 100 years ago. We extrapolate a future that is limited by each of our narrow knowledge, imagination, creativity. I have a tremendous amount of faith in humans’ ingenuity, resourcefulness and inventiveness. The guy that said that necessity is the mother of invention is absolutely right. And I would add to that desires.
Jobs are created by entrepreneurs - risk takers with imagination, initiative and courage driven by the profit motive who see unmet needs and desires and are willing to take a chance and try out their ideas. So, it’s very easy to create jobs - create a societal climate that unleashes and applauds entrepreneurship and profits and the optimism that that engenders.
We know how to do that - we used to be that. All it takes to get it back is a leader that believes in that vision and that can boldly paint it so the rest of us will believe it as well.
Another Reagan would do. Cruz is the closest we have.
Are they human?
If someone temporarily extends their bodies for convenience are they cyborgs? (Do you drive a car? Ride a bicycle?)
Here's a fun, thought-provoking book:
Money is just a medium of exchange and there will always some kind of medium of exchange for goods and services and other assets.
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