Absolutely no fear about the economy

S

Son_of_Perdition

Senior Member
With Elon Musk's claim that robots will take over your job, the government will have to enact a guaranteed income paycheck, so we have more leisure time, auto repos are soaring, CNBC claims there's no housing bubble, wages have stagnated, there is now 96 months financing for new autos, even for sub-prime borrowers, we have full employment because of the influx of minimum wage jobs,,,etc, I can't fathom that new Ford's & Chevs are selling for $60K - 80K depending on the accessories. Never fear I get a warm fuzzy feeling that we are OK & have no need to worry.
 

"Elon Musk's claim that robots will take over your job"

Elon Musk ls a really bright guy but he doesn't live in the real world. His new auto factory uses robots extensively but he did have to hire employees to do the engineering and install all of the robotics and control systems. He will have people troubleshooting systems and repairing them. What we will see is fewer mind-numbing assembly-line jobs and more cerebral jobs, engineers, scientists, analysts, repair technicians, etc. We do have some distinct advantages over robots, we self-repair, we think, and we innovate.
 
Human muscles get sick, have kids, get old and continually want more money. Computerized muscles do get "sick", but they don't have kids, and can work for decades till they're scraped. They don't know what money is. So, is human muscle going to earn enough to feed a family, get a home, car etc? The answer is no. No longer will a H.S. education be enough. The next great wave of industrialization will not be in making stuff, but making information. What I know is going to cost you to find out. I have no idea how this will work, but I bet somebody in East Flemingsburg, Someplace, is going figure it out, and start the new wave.
 

True we will have the maintenance people for the robots, the simple math as I look at it is - one robot will do the work of 10 - one man/woman will control/maintain the robot. The pay for the original 10 @ $10 per hour equals $100 - pay the one to control $25 per hour. A win win for the company/investors & the one control person. 9 losers.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Human muscles get sick, have kids, get old and continually want more money. Computerized muscles do get "sick", but they don't have kids, and can work for decades till they're scraped. They don't know what money is. So, is human muscle going to earn enough to feed a family, get a home, car etc? The answer is no. No longer will a H.S. education be enough. The next great wave of industrialization will not be in making stuff, but making information. What I know is going to cost you to find out. I have no idea how this will work, but I bet somebody in East Flemingsburg, Someplace, is going figure it out, and start the new wave.
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Trump has talked about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. He's used the term "bringing jobs back", but that is just another of his guises in order to convince the working class to vote for him. He wants to initiate government subsidies/incentives to make it beneficial to corporations bottom line to move facility stateside. This will be accomplished by the use of robotics, here, vs. human labor in other countries. If we give large enough tax advantages for the corporations to install robotics at almost no cost, the bottom line improves without anywhere near the jobs one would imagine. The CEO's and stockholders get wealthy while more and more fall into poverty.
As with most all of Trump's "plans"... he won't divulge them. He makes these broad-brush promises that sound good to the ears of those who won't look beyond his talking points.
 
Timetrvlr said:
"Elon Musk's claim that robots will take over your job"

Elon Musk ls a really bright guy but he doesn't live in the real world. His new auto factory uses robots extensively but he did have to hire employees to do the engineering and install all of the robotics and control systems. He will have people troubleshooting systems and repairing them. What we will see is fewer mind-numbing assembly-line jobs and more cerebral jobs, engineers, scientists, analysts, repair technicians, etc. We do have some distinct advantages over robots, we self-repair, we think, and we innovate.
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But how many of those "cerebral" jobs will there really be? How many engineers, scientists, etc., can it possibly take to manage robots? They way I see it, there won't be jobs for those who don't qualify for these "cerebral" jobs. What about the huge number of people for whom those "mind-numbing jobs" used to put food on the table?

Not everyone can be an engineer. Sounds to me like something out of a futuristic book where you have the elite engineers and so on, and the "others," with an ever widening class difference, i.e., H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Not a good outcome.
 
I think that over the years the economy will continue to evolve and be fine. The problem is and has been that as the economy evolves some groups of people are harmed and some groups of people are helped. When I started working many, many years ago we had people that were elevator operators, gas station attendants, milkmen, etc... Those jobs and many others disappeared along with many factory jobs that paid a solid living wage. IMO people need to throw out the idea of one job for life and manage their working life as if it were a small business. People need to take inventory of their skills, continue investing in themselves, be ready to seize opportunities and embrace change. I also think we need to drop the idea of class warfare, the rigged system, haves and havenots, etc... We need to teach young people in school and at home how to acquire their share of the American dream through education, work, savings and investment.
 
Back in the 70's my brother was a Pi Kap brother with Nolan Bushnell @ Utah State. He offered shares of his new venture 'Atari' to his fraternity brothers. $10,000 for one share, 10 shares total. My brother tried to interest me & other friends, I was just starting out family, career & trying to save for a house, had to pass. A few years later Atari was sold for $24M. My bad! Many years later I was reading an interview with Nolan, questioned about what the future holds, he said if he was an investor he would invest in 'Robotics'. Again I missed my chance, but made sense to me, planning for retirement was foremost on my plate.
 
Butterfly said:
But how many of those "cerebral" jobs will there really be? How many engineers, scientists, etc., can it possibly take to manage robots? They way I see it, there won't be jobs for those who don't qualify for these "cerebral" jobs. What about the huge number of people for whom those "mind-numbing jobs" used to put food on the table?

Not everyone can be an engineer. Sounds to me like something out of a futuristic book where you have the elite engineers and so on, and the "others," with an ever widening class difference, i.e., H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. Not a good outcome.
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It gets even Better. Several of the scientists are predicting that "artificial intelligence" will surpass human ability to reason and think within 2 or 3 more decades....that appears to already be true for about half our population. When robots possess greater intelligence than their human masters, how long will it be before these robots begin to look upon humans the same way we think of cockroaches??? The latter half of this century is going to present problems and issues that boggle the mind. Humans are already becoming obsolete in many careers, and that trend is only going to continue to increase.
 
From Tom Friedman's column the other day, which touches on this topic.
But there is an even more important reason Trump supporters, particularly less-educated white males, should be wary of his bluster: His policies won’t help them. Trump promises to bring their jobs back. But most of their jobs didn’t go to a Mexican. They went to a microchip.
The idea that large numbers of manual factory jobs can be returned to America if we put up a wall with Mexico or renegotiate our trade deals is a fantasy. Trump ignores the fact that manufacturing is still by far the largest sector of the U.S. economy. Indeed, our factories now produce twice what they did in 1984 — but with one-third fewer workers.

Trump can’t change that. Machines and software will keep devouring, and spawning, more work of all kinds. Did you hear that IBM’s cognitive computer, Watson, helped to create a pop song, “Not Easy,” with the Grammy-winning producer Alex da Kid? The song was released on Oct. 21, IBM noted, and within 48 hours it climbed to No. 4 on iTunes’s Hot Tracks.

No one knows for certain how we deal with this new race with and against machines, but I can assure you it’s not Trump’s way — build walls, restrict trade, give huge tax cuts to the rich. The best jobs in the future are going to be what I call “STEMpathy jobs — jobs that blend STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, math) with human empathy. We don’t know what many of them will look like yet.

The smartest thing we can do now is to keep our economy as open and flexible as possible — to get the change signals first and be able to quickly adapt; create the opportunity for every American to engage in lifelong learning, because whatever jobs emerge will require more knowledge; make sure that learning stresses as much of the humanities and human interactive skills as hard sciences; make sure we have an immigration policy that continues to attract the world’s most imaginative risk-takers; and strengthen our safety nets, because this era will leave more people behind.

This is the only true path to American greatness in the 21st century. Trump wants to make America great in ways that are just not available anymore. “What do we have to lose” by trying his way? Trump asks. The answer is: everything that actually makes us great. When the world gets this fast, small errors in navigation have huge consequences.
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I guess when we began to accept pieces of this yellow metal as something of value, other than its direct uses, we entered a new era of economics. I use my debit card for everything, even an 89 cents buy. The reason-I don't want the change. What the hell do you do with them except throw then in a jar. We live in a changing world. My point is that skilled manufacturing jobs are not "there". There is nothing to bring back. It's not the 1900s-1970s. Thousands worked in steam engine factories; well, where's the demand for steam engines, today; and what happened to all those workers. I have no idea of how to re-employ those workers.

BTW. Things change. They have removed the "cents" key from keyboards.
 
As always, there will be winners and losers. The winners (who are most likely well educated Trump supporters, which is redundant) will win because they are in a position to benefit from the increased used of technology. Someone owns those machines. The losers (most likely uneducated democrats, which I know is also redundant) will have to make do with whatever scraps they can scour of the floor. As usual, losers outnumber winners. And it doesn't matter who is in the White House.

Aren't politics and name calling fun!
 

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