Now that the jobs are gone

[I Think]

Most of the agriculture and industrial jobs are already phased out by machines. Over 70% of jobs and labor is currently to be found in the service sector, but also this sector is being phased out and replaced by automation which means decreased purchasing power of the general public.

What exactly happens when people get automated by machines? They lose their jobs and need welfare to support themselves until they get a new job, if they ever do. But, where does welfare come from? It comes from tax payers. And do people on welfare pay taxes? They don't. So, what happens when everybody is on welfare due to automation and nobody pays taxes? This example is the reality in Michigan and the government there have been on the brink of shutting down due this exact issue. And we are beginning to see this never-ending spiral go out of control in the rest of the world. The trends are definitely there, but where's the solutions?

[Lady tehMa]

Did you just watch this TED talk?

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn

[I Think]

Did not watch the ted talk.
The text I posted was from a Ted talks intro.
My awareness of the situation began in the seventies, it became apparent to me that workers were being replaced by machinery at a rapidly accelerating rate, and that in a relatively short time human labor was going to become largely redundant.

In my own working life, whenever I or an employee was doing a repetetive job I looked for ways to make tools and machines to cut as much of the labor time as possible. Some of my early equipment used electro/mechanical methods, as I have no background in electronics.
My one patent is for a product which I made to speed up a very boring repetetive job, the little machine I designed is sold world around but, unfortunately, in very small numbers.

[Static]

Interesting. I wonder how much of an effect this has had on the U.S. labor participation rate which hit a 50 year low. There are benefits, mainly lower labor costs which are passed onto the consumer in lower pricing.

[Captain Awesome]

What exactly happens when people get automated by machines?

Build machines, operate machines, sell machines to other countries, upgrade machines...basically, same thing people were doing ever since industrialization hit most developed nations.

Just because people who used to walk around and manually light up street lights with candles no longer do their work doesn't mean they're sitting at home and sucking thumbs. They're probably working for electrical company and lighting up street lights remotely.

[I Think]

Automotive assembly lines used to be people dense, now those jobs are gone. If a machine can do the work of a person, and a person can run a bank of machines, what kind of jobs are there for the dozens of displaced workers?
No company will install machines that take the same number of people to get the job done. Simple math shows that jobs are disappearing. Something like 70% of all jobs in NA are now service jobs, waiters, police, accountants, sales people etc.

[Static]

We are moving to a service economy. I see nothing wrong with it, as long as we can maintain our standard of living.

[Captain Awesome]

Something like 70% of all jobs in NA are now service jobs, waiters, police, accountants, sales people etc.

Yeah, so?

In the beginning of the century most jobs were agricultural because it took an immense number of people to produce food for our country. Then people came up with tractors and machines to do sorting and food processing. So, number of people farming went down, but a new industry was created out of nowhere - to build, service, and operate tractors and other machines.

Car manufacturers used to employ a lot of people to build cars, now thanks to machines less people are needed for this specific industry. But more and more people need to be designing and programming machines. Once again, another industry was created out of nowhere to service it. More people are employed there than before.

More cars are needed today than ever. That put a pressure on resource industry to produce more and more energy. Guess what? More people are needed in that industry.

Things change. New industries are created every day. People move from labor intensive jobs into service and intellectual positions. That's a GOOD thing. Why, you want to go back to the times when everything was done by hand? Sure everybody will have jobs - crappy, intensive manual labor jobs. Just like in the Stone Age.

Good god, how can anybody be against progress.

[FreeRights]

Exactly, the employment industry evolves like everything else. Yes, a lot of the jobs that existed 50 - 100 years ago (assembly lines, etc) have been replaced by machinery, but just off the top of my head, look at how the internet and computers completely changed the workforce. Now there's a huge industry for everything from IT to marketing and shipping/receiving with an internet-based specialization. We lost some, but gained some. The services industries also are still very strong, and they are things that it would take a very, very long time to develop a robot that's mass produced to take those positions, and quite unlikely that they would.

[I Think]

Cap'n wrote

how can anybody be against progress

Progress is reaching a lifestyle for all that ensures a good living without the need for 40 hours of drudgery per week for life.

Service jobs are kinda like welfare, you can only use a waiter if you have the money.
You can only get welfare if the state has the money.

Automation can equal freedom if we learn to use it wisely as a creator of wealth shared by the people.

[Captain Awesome]

Progress is reaching a lifestyle for all that ensures a good living without the need for 40 hours of drudgery per week for life.

Today people live way better lifestyles than our counterparts 100 years ago, 50 years ago, even 25 years ago without hard labor. We drive way better cars, we have huge houses, and we overall we live the life of luxury if compared to previous generations. My grandparents wouldn't even dream of having what we have and they did nothing but slaved at their jobs.

Awesome progress.

[I Think]

Cap'n wrote

Awesome progress.

You are right, the question is how to keep it going, now that demonstrably, the need for everyone to work 40 hrs/wk for life is over.
Automation is making better cars, we no longer need all the houses we can build, those of us in NA can have a yard full of toys, but every year more people are being marginalized, and what do we do about them.

There are growing numbers of demonstrations world around by people who are marginalized, OWS, Tianaman, US blacks, Mexicans tired of the corruption, what do we do to give everyone a good life?

[rekabis]

The problem that we have is that we have fallen victim to a scam, a scam perpetrated by the rich upon the poor. They have used ever-increasing automation to ensure that their pocketbooks get fatter while our wages get smaller. After inflation, the average middle-class Canadian taxpayer make about as much now as we did back in the 70s (a good 45 years now!). And yet, executive pay has only skyrocketed to levels higher than what they were just before the Great Depression. In the early 70s, the average executive made only about ten times what the average worker made. Now it is over 300 times what the average worker makes!

And the rich are using the threat of automation against the middle and lower classes like a cudgel to keep them in line and afraid of challenging the rich. By threatening to replace them with a machine, no-one in (especially) the middle class dares to step out of line -- least they be replaced by a machine. The rich point toward menial low-end jobs and say, “don’t argue and accept your lot in life, otherwise that is what is in store for you!!”. And the middle class meekly obeys, because they think they have no choice but to obey. And so the middle class continues to get hollowed out year after year, with the vast majority of them descending to the lower middle class and the working poor.

The tipping point will come soon, certainly within then next two decades and possibly even within this decade. The tipping point will come when the poor and middle class can no longer effectively support themselves with the poverty wages that are imposed on us by the rich, and the entire economy takes a nosedive. Jobs will be lost en masse as a vicious negative feedback loop of low wages trigger low consumption which induces lower employment, and without some sort of support (such as Universal Basic Income, paid for by the rich) we will have no choice but to revolt against the rich. We will eat the rich in our darkest hour, and tear down the walls that the rich have used to protect themselves. Either our country descends into an autocratic and authoritarian dictatorship controlled by the rich, or the government returns to one that is for the people, and by the people, and learns to re-implement effective progressive taxes that reach 100% of earnings above a certain amount (probably in the quarter-million range). Then, and only then, can we reach a certain minimum level of social justice, where the rapacious and sociopathic deprivations of the powerful rich are forcibly redistributed to the powerless poor.

And if the rich try to flee -- good for them. The rich are NOT job creators. They do not create any significant amount of jobs -- the small business owners do. Small businesses (where the owner makes much less than a quarter mil gross per year) accounts for nearly 90% of Canadian employment, and *these* are the people we should be giving “corporate welfare” to - not the rich!! We can seize the assets of the rich as they try to cross our borders, and leave them as destitute as the people they preyed upon all of their lives. And we should do this -- a fleeing member of the gilded class should have all their assets seized, down to the last penny, as they are committing a rape against the Canadian economy, and therefore against the Canadian people.

[Static]

And yet the consumer is at fault because we continue to give big business our disposable income.

[atenbacon]

Has the unemployment rate suddenly dramatically increased due to the jobs lost from these machines?

Country 1999 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Canada 7.6 6.8 7.6 7.8 7 6.8 6.4 6 6.2 8.3 8 7.5

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ca&v=74

Currently estimated at 6.6 for 2014 with 2013 at 7.1% and 2012 at 7.3% I think the trend is down, not up. And Kelowna in fact sits pretty good (See link under this)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/unemploy ... -1.2091348



Leaves me thinking that the progress that some fear is unfounded, jobs may phase out, but people tend to get other jobs not sit on welfare after theirs is gone. Either way, I'm working so I'm good.