There has been a debate going about whether an entitlement culture is being created by ObamaCare and other liberal programs of freebies. One such discussion occurred on Fox News, asking whether the healthcare law was a “disincentive to work.”
Certainly the current regime is engaged in behavioral training to encourage dependence on government, a liberal value. But the larger picture over decades is one of the economic system being less friendly to the needs of average folks. Perhaps they are hedging their bets by taking whatever is available.
In the seventies and eighties, when entire American industries were shipped abroad for to take advantage of lower wages, elites said not to worry, service and tech jobs would be fine replacements for manufacturing. However, service work paid considerably less and much of tech has been outsourced via the internet. More quietly, businesses that couldn’t be offshored, like meatpacking (once a provider of middle-class wages), actively recruited cheap exploitable foreigners as labor.
The latest blow to American hopes for economic survival has been the rapid rise of smart machines, from office automation to actual robots, which now can perform complex tasks formerly done only by humans. Who needs a secretary to take dictation when software can turn speech into written words on a computer?
There has been some incidence of manufacturing returning to the US, but the small print reveals that the new plants will be increasingly automated, with far fewer humans being needed than in the previous era.
Foxconn’s plans to open a high-tech plant in the US may be part of the larger revival of US manufacturing. But don’t expect American jobs to come with the boom in business. [. . .]
What does that do for US jobs? Not much. A new study by McKinsey argues that manufacturers will increasingly turn to ”next-shoring,” or locating production closer to where their customers are located to satisfy local tastes and eliminate potentially damaging supply shortages. In theory, this should play well to the US economy, the mothership of global consumerism. But workers will still lose out to advanced robotics, which can perform increasingly sophisticated manufacturing operations, and 3D printers, which will be able to replace component suppliers. ”Cheaper, more proficient robots that can substitute for a wider variety of human tasks are another reason companies may locate more manufacturing closer to major demand markets, even where wage rates are higher,” the report says.
A more upbeat report came from CBS, touting a robot that is “helping” the human workers by doing repetitive boring tasks. But a machine that cost only $22,000 and can work 24/7 has got to be very appealing to CEOs, who would probably like lots more like that.
[. . .] Meet Baxter, a robot. Just seven months on the line, he’s the newest member of the team at Pennsylvania manufacturer Rodon.
Factory VP Lowell Allen has put Baxter to work at what he’s best at: boring, repetitive jobs.
“Our people have really taken to Baxter,” said Allen. “He’s non-threatening. He’s helping them do their job.” [. . .]
Slow but steady, Baxter toils on 24/7 without breaks or benefits. He costs only $22,000. And even with power and programming costs, Baxter is a $3-an-hour worker. [. . .]
Americans should look around and take stock of all the places where a smart machine is performing a task formerly done by a human: ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines), ticket kiosks in airports and self-checkout in grocery stores. Plus there are other examples that exist out of the public eye, including automated warehouses, robots for harvesting crops and manufacturing.
The latest incursion of smart machines is fast food restaurants like Chilis and Chevys introducing an Ipad-style device on tables for customers to order food.
The increasing use of smart machines everywhere is one reason for the jobless recovery.
More clever automation is yet another reason that doubling legal immigration is a terrible idea. We don’t need to import excess workers when 20 million citizens cannot find work.
American workers are now facing major employment destruction from three fronts: immigration, outsourcing and smart machines. Of the three, immigration is the issue over which citizens have the most influence.
Back to more automated restaurants, which may become more so if employees insist on substantially higher wages: a robotic burger flipper is ready to replace humans.
Minimum wage hikes are accelerating the trend toward automation—and fewer workers—in services.
Ten years ago it might have seemed far-fetched that a customer could order food in a restaurant without speaking to anyone. But it’s a reality now as service employers across the country—including Chili’s, Chevys Fresh Mex and California Pizza Kitchen—introduce tabletop ordering devices. A few clicks on an iPad-like device and the food is on its way.
Technology has made these changes possible, but that’s not what’s driving their implementation. Steady federal and state increases to the minimum wage have forced employers in retail and service industries to rely on technology as the government makes entry-level labor more expensive. Now Democrats are pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25 at the behest of President Obama, who argued in his State of the Union address that the increase would “help families.” Lawmakers should consider the technology trend a warning.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made the connection in a recent interview on MSNBC. Asked if he supported a higher minimum wage, Mr. Gates urged caution and said the policy would create an incentive for employers to “buy machines and automate things.”
Mr. Gates is right, but the transition toward self-service began long before tabletop computers were a viable option. Self-service soda machines, available at fast-food restaurants since at least the late 1970s, were a labor-saving device. Even coffee carafes left on the table for customers to serve themselves allowed restaurants to reduce the staff needed to fill cups. More recently, major restaurant chains such as Bob Evans and Chili’s have updated their service model to eliminate bus boys, relying on servers to clear tables themselves. Continue reading this article
The good news: a group of pro-sovereignty GOPers signed a letter to the President condemning immigration policies that would admit millions more foreign workers when unacceptable levels of American unemployment persist.
The bad news: only 16 members signed the letter: Mo Brooks (R-AL), Lou Barletta (R-PA), Kerry Bentivolio (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Walter Jones (R-NC), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), John Fleming (R-LA), Steve King (R-IA), Ted Yoho (R-FL), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Steve Stockman (R-TX), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Steven Palazzo (R-MS), Mike Rogers (R-AL), and Jeff Duncan (R-SC). These individuals are excellent representatives of voter concerns, but one might wish there were more signers.
The January 8 letter was sent before the terrible job numbers for December came out: only 74,000 jobs were added to the economy, the lowest number since January 2011. The total for the year was just 2.2 million, similar to 2012.
Below, jobs added to the economy by month in 2013.
The dismal report is a strong indication that a jobless recovery is indeed the new normal, and structural changes caused by industry outsourcing and increasing automation/robotics show that the bleats of billionaires that they need more foreign workers are based on simple greed.
Rep. Mo Brooks appeared on the Cavuto business show on Friday and made a clear case for protecting the American worker from open-borders globalists. Brooks quoted Sen. Harry Reid who mentioned that there are three competitors for every available job (arguing emergency unemployment insurance should be extended) — yes, Brooks agreed, jobs are scarce, so why import more foreigners to compete against citizens? He estimated that the Senate bill would create 40 million additional workers over a decade, an unsustainable increase given the level of anemic job creation.
Brooks also voiced his fear that Speaker Boehner would “cave” to the amnesty side.
We write to you today on behalf of the 21 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. We write to you on behalf of the 6 million young Americans who are neither working nor in school. We write on behalf of the countless American workers whose wages today are lower than they were more than a decade ago. We write on behalf of the 90 million Americans over 16 – including early retirees, college grads living at home, and those living on welfare – who are not part of our nation’s workforce.
That is why we reject your call for the House to get an immigration bill to your desk that would permanently displace American workers. The Senate immigration bill, which the White House helped craft and which you personally endorse, would double the number of guest workers brought into this country at a time of crippling joblessness and falling incomes. On top of that, the Senate immigration bill would also add millions more permanent immigrant workers through green cards – handing out permanent residency to more than 30 million immigrants over the next decade. This represents a tripling of the normal green card rate. Continue reading this article
When the brilliant futurist, biochemistry professor and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov visited the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, he was inspired by the array of new technology to prognosticate about how American society would look five decades hence.
He was concerned about automation’s effect on society, with one problem being that of widespread boredom: “The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction.”
In 2014, we are beginning to see the effects of automation and robots on jobs of all sorts. Schools don’t train many machine tenders per se; instead numerous human jobs are quietly disappearing due to smart machines.
Asimov saw explosive population growth as dangerous to social order, as shown by his observation (not from the NYTimes article): “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive [overpopulation]. Convenience and decency cannot survive [overpopulation]. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears.”
[. . .] As I stood in line waiting to get into the General Electric exhibit at the 1964 fair, I found myself staring at Equitable Life’s grim sign blinking out the population of the United States, with the number (over 191,000,000) increasing by 1 every 11 seconds. During the interval which I spent inside the G.E. pavilion, the American population had increased by nearly 300 and the world’s population by 6,000.
In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000. Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. Continue reading this article
Now that long-term unemployment benefits for over a million workers are about to end, the press is full of stories about Americans who cannot find jobs. It’s a fine opportunity for the liberal media to bash hard-hearted Republicans who don’t want to extend the program (which would require still more insane borrowing).
MSNBC went so far as to peg the issue to racism, that whitey needs to fork over the cash because of high black unemployment.
But the important billionaires who donate to Congressional campaigns want a guaranteed firehose of cheap foreign labor, and that’s what counts in the capitol city.
Meanwhile, Americans endure long-term unemployment caused largely by elites who run the country for their own benefit alone.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Michelle Marshall is one of the 1.3 million long-term unemployed Americans who will lose jobless benefits Saturday.
Marshall, 56, has been out of work for a year, since she lost an administrative assistant job that paid her $44,000 per year.
She started collecting $624 each week in New Jersey unemployment benefits, but the state benefits ran out after 26 weeks. When federal benefits kicked in, she collected $521.
But Marshall will stop getting these checks next week.
That’s because Congress failed to extend the recession-era program when it passed a budget deal last week.
Federal benefits kick in after state benefits run out, and range between 14 to 47 weeks, depending on the state where a person lives.
According to government figures, the average weekly benefit check is $300.
Even the cut from the larger state check to the federal benefits was hard for Marshall. She had to consolidate her $12,000 worth of credit card debt and enroll in a mortgage assistance program.
When the benefits stop entirely, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.
“I imagine I will go apply for food stamps,” she said. “Depending how long this goes on, I might lose my car, which will impact my ability to get a job. I won’t be able to drive to interviews.” Continue reading this article
Monday’s Fox News report on a new “crime prevention” robot was mostly upbeat and tech-friendly, with the only concern being that of privacy. The robot is a essentially a surveillance camera on wheels that also collects personal data.
Tech reporter Peter Pachal noted in the interview that the robot “eliminates that night watchman duty.”
Company co-founder William Santana Li said the mass murder of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was the inspiration for building the machine. “You are never going to have an armed officer in every school,” he remarked.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail delved into my concern about the robot — the growing loss of American jobs. Over a million private security jobs are at risk from automation.
Workers are now facing employment destruction from three fronts: immigration, outsourcing and automation.
William Li said “We want to give the humans the ability to do the strategic work,” but what about the half of the population who are below average? Don’t the non-rocket scientists get to have jobs?
A Silicon Valley startup is poised to replace the everyday security guard with high tech robots the company plans to introduce to the world on Thursday.
The 300 pound R5 Autonomous Data Machine looks like a hybrid of R2-D2 and the robot from Lost in Space.
More than just yelling ‘danger,’ manufacturer Knightscope hopes the machines will actually help predict crimes and even cut current rates in half.
And its inventors say it was a recent school shooting that actually inspired them to create the R5.
‘We founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook,’ Knightscope co-founder William Santana Li told the New York Times.
According to Li, the idea was to put the R5, not just where guards already exist, but where they haven’t yet or may never go.
‘You are never going to have an armed officer in every school,’ he explained.
Knightscope sees the mobile robot as a security tool that will also one day be placed in businesses and even act as a neighborhood watch in residential areas.
The company appears to understand that successfully gaining a foothold in the market could mean the elimination of many of the 1.3 million private security jobs in the United States.
They note the savings companies could gain from firing the already low-paid, largely non-union workers in favor of even cheaper—at least in the long run—robotic guards.
With minimum wages hovering around $8 per hour, the creators of R5 hope the costs of the robot will be closer to $6.25 per hour according to the New York Times.
But they say the role of the guards who keep their jobs will become more like an analyst.
‘We want to give the humans the ability to do the strategic work,’ Li told the Times.
I heard on the radio today that a new gizmo in the growing automation marketplace is a coffee-making robot.
Below, the auto-brew coffee kiosk is a little plain compared to hip cafe baristas we now see in Starbucks and elsewhere.
Actually I wouldn’t mind an auto-brewer like the personable Bender (pictured), the beer-swilling robot on Futurama.
But what will the recent liberal arts graduates do for jobs if coffee shops go the way of the factory floor? A recent survey found that a third were working at jobs that don’t require a college degree, and that doesn’t count young grads living in their old bedroom at Mom’s house.
The topic of automation-fueled unemployment is curiously missing from the current debate on amnesty and doubling legal immigration, favored by Republican budget wonk Paul Ryan:
REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WIS.): Not now, but in the future we’re going to have labor shortages. We have 10,000 people retiring each and everyday in America when the Baby Boomers retire. We are not like Europe, we’re not like Japan in that our birthrates are really low, but they’re not high enough. Immigration, in a decade or so, can help us. That means we need to get an immigration system that works. We need an immigration system that works to bring people to this country who want to contribute. (The Laura Ingraham Show, June 19, 2013)
Could someone please tell these oblivious Republicans that America’s need for more workers in coming decades will be substantially reduced by automation and robotics? We don’t need tens of millions of additional workers imported from abroad.
A new trend is brewing in the coffee world: coffee prepared by a robot, able to be preordered via cellphone and picked up at an unmanned kiosk, perfectly adjusted to your taste and ready to go.
To some, this might seem lamentable: the beginning of the end of coffee shops as we know them. No more huddling around warm cups of coffee with friends or sipping a refreshing iced latte while reading.
But to others, this might be just what they’ve waited for: no lines when you’re in a rush, and coffee prepared by a machine that is programmed to make it perfectly time and time again.
The latest company to present such a coffee kiosk is Austin-based Briggo. As Quartz recently reported, Briggo opened its first kiosk on the University of Texas’ Austin campus in July of this year. The kiosk — dubbed “The Coffee Haus” — takes up about 50 square feet of space, has a nice exterior wood design, and accepts orders either on-site or across campus via a website, informing the customer precisely when the drink will be ready. Continue reading this article
When the Sixty Minutes segment “Are robots hurting job growth?” showed last January, it made clear that automation was replacing human workers at an increasing rate with smart machines doing a variety of complex tasks.
Yet business complains with big crocodile tears that there is a labor shortage, despite over 20 million Americans being jobless, and many of the pre-recession jobs are not coming back.
For all of 2012, the economy added an average of 153,000 per month for a total of about 1.8 million jobs, almost exactly the number created in 2011.
Wait, the country is producing just 1.8 million jobs per year and the Senate plans to import an average of 2.3 million annually for 20 years out — where do American citizens fit into this scheme?
Economic growth is pathetically slow for a recovery, only 2.2 percent for 2012, based on a number of factors, such as increased regulations under the current administration and business fears about the approaching ObamaCare. Plus, the twin globalization effects of outsourcing and immigration have been gradually accumulating to the current destructive point for decades. Add increasingly sophisticated automation into the work environment, and we have today’s terrible new normal.
Now more than ever, given the new automated workplace and all the other assaults upon the American worker, the correct number of immigrants should be ZERO, not the massive increase envisioned by the Senate.
One of the hallmarks of the 21st century is that we are all having more and more interactions with machines and fewer with human beings. If you’ve lost your white collar job to downsizing, or to a worker in India or China you’re most likely a victim of what economists have called technological unemployment. There is a lot of it going around with more to come.
As we reported earlier this year, at the vanguard of this new wave of automation is the field of robotics. Everyone has a different idea of what a robot is and what they look like but the broad universal definition is a machine that can perform the job of a human. They can be mobile or stationary, hardware or software, and they are marching out of the realm of science fiction and into the mainstream.
The age of robots has been anticipated since the beginning of the last century. Fritz Lang fantasized about it in his 1927 film “Metropolis.” In the 1940s and 50s, robots were often portrayed as household help.
And by the time “Star Wars” trilogy arrived, robots with their computerized brains and nerve systems had been fully integrated into our imagination. Now they’re finally here, but instead of serving us, we found that they are competing for our jobs. And according to MIT professors, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, one of the reasons for the jobless recovery.
Andrew McAfee: Our economy is bigger than it was before the start of the Great Recession. Corporate profits are back. Business investment in hardware and software is back higher than it’s ever been. What’s not back is the jobs.
Steve Kroft: And you think technology and increased automation is a factor in that?
Erik Brynjolfsson: Absolutely.
The percentage of Americans with jobs is at a 20-year low. Just a few years ago if you traveled by air you would have interacted with a human ticket agent. Today, those jobs are being replaced by robotic kiosks. Bank tellers have given way to ATMs, sales clerks are surrendering to e-commerce and switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology.
Erik Brynjolfsson: There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest. Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them. They could be software robots, they could be physical robots.
Steve Kroft: What is there out there that people would be surprised to learn about? In the robotics area, let’s say.
Andrew McAfee: There are heavily automated warehouses where there are either very few or no people around. That absolutely took me by surprise. Continue reading this article
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The latest blow to American hopes for economic survival has been the rapid rise of smart machines, from office automation to actual robots, which now can perform complex tasks formerly done only by humans. Who needs a secretary to take dictation when software can turn speech into written words on a computer?
Now that long-term unemployment benefits for over a million workers are about to end, the press is full of stories about Americans who cannot find jobs. It’s a fine opportunity for the liberal media to bash hard-hearted Republicans who don’t want to extend the program (which would require still more insane borrowing).
Actually I wouldn’t mind an auto-brewer like the personable Bender (pictured), the beer-swilling robot on 