Pudpop wrote:UFGN wrote:EliteKiller wrote:UFGN wrote:Brandon wrote:
Re jobs: Despite Trump saying he'll bring factory jobs back to the Rust Belt, manufacturing has already been coming back over the past few years, but not because of tariffs on imports. It's due to automation decreasing costs while increasing productivity. Robots can sew a shirt, construct a vehicle, and put together furniture more efficiently than humans. But, factory jobs aren't going to be the only ones automated; even transportation (e.g., truck drivers and public transportation employees) will be automated within the next 50 years. The problem is going to be reeducating those workers for future jobs instead of giving them false hope about jobs that are never coming back. Also because of automation, a universal basic income needs to be implemented, or there won't be many people who can purchase goods and services.
This is the elephant in the room. People need to stop worrying about immigrants taking their jobs and start worrying about the Internet and automation
Bit harder to deport software though ain't it!
I'm trying to square the circle in my head of electing a billionaire businessman who would automate your job in a heartbeat to save $1, on a job creation ticket. Nope, I can't.
Don't fall into the 'robots can do it all' trap .... robots do less than 1 in 1,000 jobs ... just think about how many robot workers you meet every day ... bet it ain't all that many ... I can't remember ever having met one ....
Companies like Foxconn still employ 10's of 1,000's of people ... sure they have a target of 30% automation by 2020 but that still leaves 70% for people .... better that was in the US than in China or Japan (they own Sharp)
So if you put the next Foxconn factory in 'back-end of nowhere' USA it will sustain a decent sized town, even if some of those jobs are as robot technicians ...
The only reason they are not already there is that it's cheaper to - shift components to China - assemble them in China - then shift finished products to the USA ... not only is that highly environmentally unfriendly it's also bloody difficult ... you have currency risk, language barriers, employment laws, customs, taxes ... just do it all in the USA ... to do that you need to change the rules on trade ... that's Trump's strategy in a nutshell ... it's what China has been doing in reverse for years ...
That will make the products a few percent more expensive but that's a price the USA population will have to pay ...
FYI - China has a list of Industries in which Foreign Investors are prohibited or restricted, it's bloody huge ....
http://www.fdi.gov.cn/1800000121_39_4830_0_7.html
I've never understood why the USA don't just have a reciprocal list banning all products from that prescribed list from entering the USA ... seems fair to me ...
The problem isn't only robots and manufacturing, but administration and software.
Thinking right now of my five or six closest friends.... Only one of them has a job that couldn't relatively easily be replaced by IT, and we're talking about pretty well paid jobs here. I think in the next 15 years we'll start to see a huge move toward intelligent software.
Anybody who doesn't think that a huge amount of jobs will be lost to automation in the next few decades is either in denial or knows nothing about technology. I'm not even an experienced coder but after listening to my uncle describe his new job to me even I could probably write code/design software to automate his job.
As a tester it's fvcking great, get to automate all the boring/repetitive shit and cocnentrate on the harder and more interesting stuff.
SQL & VBA ftw though, Java looks fun but I haven't had time to practice enough.
