Posted on 05/25/2016 1:11:52 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Something from Deus Ex Human Revolution, the future is here.
Someone should ask the Communists in charge what they plan to do with a billion workers when their robots are manning the factories.
They’re sending their surplus population to America.
Pinging dayglored, ThunderSleeps, and Shadow Ace for the repercussions of tech.
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China must create 25 million jobs per year to avoid their people acting like BLM.
The few times that I have been over to China, Ningbo, Beijing, Chengdu, all of the people that are in management tell me that it is next to impossible to fire someone.
I wonder if the government has made some new “employment” rules.
And which one of the government officials is getting some cash for the robots.
Exactly. We have to have the industrial processes to be able to automate them. We are getting behind in many ways.
Hurry Trump. We need you.
DannyTN wrote: “We have to have the industrial processes to be able to automate them. We are getting behind in many ways.”
Should we put a tariff on imported Chinese robots to protect American jobs?
start looking forb a lot of violence world wide as robotic automation spreads. we are looking at a world wide melt down with in society. I have no answers on how to handle this. expect the calls for socialism to get louder as capitalism fails for a good portion of the uneducated and poor. I am not saying that socialism is a workable system. I am just saying that as we need less and less people to produce in society we will have a period of instability as we adjust to what ever the new normal is.
We should tariff everything.
We will be manufacturing our own robots soon enough.
Research ‘steam powered textile looms-—Luddite’.
DannyTN wrote: “We should tariff everything. We will be manufacturing our own robots soon enough.”
If we should place a tariff (tax) on imported Chinese robots to protect American jobs, should we also tax American made robots to protect American jobs?
No, not specifically to protect jobs. However the potential for labor dislocations due to robots is really huge.
We are going to have to figure out how to deal with that. Imagine an extreme scenario where 80 to 90% of our workforce is put out of work. And the free market is just not creating enough new jobs quick enough. How do you feed your population in that scenario?
Presumably we'd be producing more than ever. So it's not an issue of having enough goods to go around. But how do you expand the safety nets? How do you tax products or robots or income or whatever enough to meet the basic needs of our population and still maintain free market incentives?
Raising the cost of employing robots is one way to slow the market adoption of robots to give the labor market time to adjust. But I wouldn't recommend that as it's no better than make work. If the robot is more productive, I say let the robot do the work and figure out how to feed the displaced person.
Universal income is one of the ideas that have been floated around. But you still have to figure out how to pay for that, because your income taxes just took a major hit. And universal income would certainly rob people of some of the incentive to work.
DannyTN wrote: “No, not specifically to protect jobs. However the potential for labor dislocations due to robots is really huge.”
Your points are well taken. Those that think tariffs to protect American jobs are only looking at a very small portion of the problem. What about productivity increases? Suppose there is a new machine that reduces the number of workers to produce a product. Should we tax that machine to protect jobs?
Imports from low wage countries are just another former of productivity increases. Lower cost products.
Actually, in the late 40’s, the government funded research into tomato picking machinery. The research was successful and 40,000 tomato pickers lost their jobs which lead to a prohibition on federal research that could eliminate jobs.
Worked on a French/German/US program in the seventies. The US proposed numerous design changes to improve productivity and reduce the man-hours required to produce the product. All were disapproved. Ultimately, the French/Germans told us that all changes like those would be disapproved. They were given a quota persons to employ. If they improved the production line, they would have to find other jobs for these people. Meeting their employment quotas was far more important than reducing costs.
Are we headed that direction?
They will likely do what totalitarians have often done with "worthless mouths" -- kill them.
Productivity improvements are those that result in cheaper products by reducing the cost, labor or materials, necessary to make a product. You can reduce the cost of labor by employing cheaper labor. Imports from lower wage countries are just another way of reducing labor costs.
If you want to argue that we need to protect high cost American jobs from overseas sources of cheaper labor, then, to be consistent, you also need to argue that we need to protect high cost American jobs from production efficiency.
Labor unions recognize that. Why else would they fight/strike over improvements to production that reduce labor hours?
No, there is a big difference between foreign labor and foreign made goods, and production efficiency. Buying stuff from overseas even if it’s cheaper is not a production efficiency. Buying foreign made stuff is 0 productivity. It’s a drop in productivity than when we made the stuff here.
With tariffs, you are protecting your markets and wealth creation ability against economic warfare.
When protecting workers against machines, you are advocating lowering productivity to make jobs. There is no difference between what you are advocating in the second than letting robots do the work and having a make-work program like WEPA as an excuse to give them a paycheck. Better off to give them a vacation until the market can improvise and make jobs for them.
Buying foreign goods and productivity enhancements are not the same and don’t call for the same kinds of protection.
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