Castanet

JLives wrote: the majority of hard working folks to bring it home. If those at the top want more money then those doing the actual work should get a raise too.

^^^^ ^^^^

http://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4497829

"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system," said Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International's executive director.

"The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors."

In its report "Reward Work, Not Wealth," Oxfam says 82 per cent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one per cent of the global population, while the poorest half — 3.7 billion people — saw no increase in their wealth.

Canada's richest CEOs will make your entire annual salary before you have lunch today
Billionaire wealth, it added, has risen by an annual average of 13 per cent since 2010, over six times more than the wages of average workers, and the number of billionaires rose at an astonishing rate of one every two days in the year to March 2017.

Oxfam listed a series of actions that government should take, including:

Limiting returns to shareholders and top executives.
Ensuring workers receive a minimum "living wage."
Pushing through policies to eliminate the gender pay gap and protect the rights of women workers.
It also urged a clampdown on tax avoidance and other associated practices, which have been highlighted by the recent publication of the "Panama Papers" and the "Paradise Papers."

Every year the inequality gets worse. Billionaires continue to bring in more and more for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Hording and hiding wealth. Instead of paying their employees, they spend money lobbying against minimum wage increases.

I started a new thread in the WORLD heading under - AMAZON GO. I wasn't sue if the information belonged here or not but it is definitely related. Check it out, see what you think.

It’s not related. Automation will occur independently of wage increases.
We didn’t move to ATMs and debit cards because bank tellers got too expensive.

Amazon also recently opened a call center in Vancouver paying $14/hour, well above the current minimum wage.

JLives wrote:What we should be discussing in the conversation of minimum wage is instituting a maximum wage. Let's stop siphoning money to a top minority of people and figure a better way for the majority of hard working folks to bring it home. If those at the top want more money then those doing the actual work should get a raise too.

That would be a great way to kill everyones motivation.

"The equal sharing of misery." comes to mind. Awesome!

You don't think that high wages are helping to push companies to move faster to automation? You honestly don't believe that ATM's ans self checkouts are a result of trying to cut back on employees and that higher wages raise the need for such things. I agree that they are not the sole cause but I am positive they have a great deal to do with automation. Companies are in business to make money not to pay people high wages. It might not seem right but it is life and will never change.

Buckeye19 wrote:
That would be a great way to kill everyones motivation.

"The equal sharing of misery." comes to mind. Awesome!

Are you under the impression that hard working production workers are hard working because they want to be the boss someday? No. Many people like to clock in and clock out. And they are the bread and butter of a company, not the executives. This is an archaic way of viewing working.

Smurf wrote:You don't think that high wages are helping to push companies to move faster to automation? You honestly don't believe that ATM's ans self checkouts are a result of trying to cut back on employees and that higher wages raise the need for such things. I agree that they are not the sole cause but I am positive they have a great deal to do with automation. Companies are in business to make money not to pay people high wages. It might not seem right but it is life and will never change.

It's because the technology is available. Automation is going to happen no matter where wages sit. We need to rethink the social contract of employment as it steadily becomes obsolete.

JLives wrote:
It's because the technology is available. Automation is going to happen no matter where wages sit. We need to rethink the social contract of employment as it steadily becomes obsolete.

People like to counter with there will always be some jobs for people. Which isn't really part of the discussion, of course for the foreseeable future there will be jobs for people. The big problem we're facing though is will there be enough jobs for all the people? If the answer to that is going to be no, even by a small margin, we need to start working on a solution. I think we're going to be seeing a very large switch over by at least 2025 where a huge portion of the people in the service industry will be unemployable.

Just look at amazon go basically 7/11 without a cashier, the buy online pickup at the store grocery systems, and just general shopping online with 2 day shipping. There isn't going to be a magic automation bullet that eats all the jobs, but look at all the incremental progress we've made since just 2015. Two full years and we've moved from automated tellers to automated stores and never having to go inside a grocery store.

What can we be sure to see in the next two years? Dominos (and eventually others maybe) will probably start rolling out their pizza drones, the level 4 automated buses and cabs testing in various cities will likely start populating urban centers, and a whole host of AI will finish testing and move into a variety of phone support, date entry and personal assistant tasks. Thats all stuff that is basically ready and publicly disclosing their imminent release to market. In this one area we can be sure of two things, that loads of these low hanging fruit jobs will disappear virtually over night (or two years but same difference really), and there will be a whole bunch of unexpected advancements in these areas.

Most people in power, and literally every stupid Luddite around seems to think this stuff is two decades out. If they pulled their heads out and checked the fresh air though they would see that its already here and in two decades our society will be literally unrecognizable to the people today. Thats just the speed of advancement.

"What can we be sure to see in the next two years? Dominos (and eventually others maybe) will probably start rolling out their pizza drones"

Haha...after TV news tonight we would do best to wait for drone delivery! B

Catsumi wrote:"What can we be sure to see in the next two years? Dominos (and eventually others maybe) will probably start rolling out their pizza drones"

Haha...after TV news tonight we would do best to wait for drone delivery! B

I'm not sure what your referring to. I did a quick google on drone news and only turn up positive news about them. Got a link?

It's all over the news - I'll wait for a drone too:
https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#217057

Ahh I see. I read it the other way (wait for drones re bad news about drones), and skipped over the goofy pizza guy story lol. Even if they didn't catch the dumb *bleep* on camera he would have got caught out and reported after they found not a whole pizza anyway.

I would expect to see an increase in crime in the future as the low paying jobs become automated. All those people with few skills and abilities who now occupy the pizza delivery, cashier, and other low skill jobs will be out on the street without a place to earn an honest living. So a dishonest living will be the next step.

bob vernon wrote:I would expect to see an increase in crime in the future as the low paying jobs become automated. All those people with few skills and abilities who now occupy the pizza delivery, cashier, and other low skill jobs will be out on the street without a place to earn an honest living. So a dishonest living will be the next step.

Thats why theres such a big push for things like UBI, Negative income tax, or one of the other alternatives. Yep lets just give people money, because its probably better than the alternative.