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US: Half of US jobs will vanish
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  • "This is that energy almighty can do :-) Nothing to do with gods and devils."

    Well, it certainly isn't up to chance, either. We have (or once had) the power as a self-governed populace to enact policies to enhance and empower the individual to spur self-actualization and find self worth through work of their preference (i.e., entrepreneurial small business formation encouraged by incentivized creativity and innovation).

    Is that to suggest these capitalistic, "power to the people" policies would be a panacea for everyone? Certainly not. But I would suggest that consistent enactment of these individual-empowering policies would have over time led to more individual prosperity and less dependency (a very good thing, in my humble opinion).

    Instead, we have turned freedom and opportunity on its head in favor of an over-regulated and politicized system of designed dependency largely because it empowers the politicians in a perverse pyramid scheme. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and the politicians love showering in it. Now we have a dependent populace by nefarious political design and resultant social unrest and upheaval will be the standard moving forward.

    JFK in 1960 ran the entire federal government on $105 billion dollars. That's around $850 billion in today's currency. Instead, we have a federal government spending many times that amount with no end in sight. This enslaves the entire nation.

    Nice job, Washington. Keep pounding nails into our collective coffin!

  • Well, it certainly isn't up to chance, either. We have (or once had) the power as a self-governed populace to enact policies to enhance and empower the individual to spur self-actualization and find self worth through work of their preference (i.e., entrepreneurial small business formation encouraged by incentivized creativity and innovation).

    You mean that in childhood you believed in Santa and now his place is taken by "power as a self-governed populace" tales? :-)

    Thing that you wrote is idealistic and wrong view, unfortunately. Fully ignoring fundamental things.

    It is same as blaming tribe leaders for famine if it was three drought years. It is always best to get off idealistic glasses and look at materialistic reality around you.

  • Well sir, detrimental political philosophies put into practice can have real and dramatic consequences. To suggest otherwise is to play the ostrich. Have fun in collectivist paradise.

  • Well sir, detrimental political philosophies put into practice can have real and dramatic consequences. To suggest otherwise is to play the ostrich. Have fun in collectivist paradise.

    It is not about collectivist or individualist. It is about idealistic view on reality. Idealistic view sometimes is very attractive and providing easy "solutions" and personalized blame. Such view also rejects nature and society laws and reality - providing instead good looking mirages. Austrian guys are one of the good example of idealists who always state that we need "free market", "honest small business" and "individualism" and this will lead to prosperity. Something like abstract 2 meter size spherical apple risen without any apple tree in absolute vacuum without any possible illness. Sounds attractive but if you think - it is joke, and of course this people are paid, same as religion proponents to keep things exactly as they are - offering instead of real solutions abstract fantasies.

  • And the men who hold high places / Must be the ones who start / To mold a new reality / Closer to the heart (sounds cooler when he's singing with electric guitars)

  • IDC forecasts global spending on robotics and related services to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% from more than US$71 billion in 2015 to US$135.4 billion in 2019. The new spending guide measures purchases of robotic systems, system hardware, software, robotics-related services, and after-market robotics hardware on a regional level across thirteen key industries and fifty-two use cases.

    Not surprisingly, worldwide robotics spending is dominated by the discrete and process manufacturing industries, which represented 33.2% and 30.2% of total spending in 2015, respectively. Resource, healthcare, and the transportation industries are the next three largest commercial industries in terms of overall robotics spending. Process manufacturing and healthcare are two of the fastest growing industries, with worldwide spending in each forecast to nearly double by 2019.

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  • Best small cap robo stock, anyone?

  • CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour

    As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture.

    http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/05/24/fmr-mcdonalds-usa-ceo-35k-robots-cheaper-than-hiring-at-15-per-hour.html

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    Prison Labor USA

    Prison labor in the states

    Minimum wage in the United States, in dollars per hour : $5.15 Average hourly rate paid at a prison camp in Nevada : $0.13 Maximum wage paid to prisoner workers in dollars per day in Georgia and Texas : $0

    http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html

  • Kurt Vonnegut Jnr. predicted all this in his first novel, 'Player Piano'. Published 1959!

  • @jleo

    Just exclude money from equation so they won't cloud things.

    Good robot consumes around 5-10 times less energy and resources during work. And most also work perfectly 25/7.

  • Foxconn has reduced its workforce by a whopping 60,000 people thanks to the introduction of robots. Foxconn's headcount went from 110,000 down to 50,000.

  • I think it is naive to believe we can find new jobs for everyone that will potentially be displaced by automation. This is one of the reasons discussions are beginning on national minimum salaries. As automation flourishes it is reasonable to expect there will be many left with no opportunities. As those numbers increase it becomes obvious some other form of living must be presented or there will be rioting. Of course on the bright side there will be jobs keeping the rioters in check but that's a short term solution. So incarcerate costly, kill them don't think we are there yet as a society or alternative minimum national salaries. Of course many of us will be dead before it is a real issue but it won't be for our children so best to think about it. I suppose if you don't think this is reasonable even in the US we are heading that way Food Stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid, earned income credit, etc. If you put them altogether a national salary is not inconceivable.

  • I think it is naive to believe we can find new jobs for everyone that will potentially be displaced by automation.

    Such thinking come from few wrong premises.

    As you implement robots you get some energy and resources freed (this is whole point to do it). And economy will still produce same amount of goods, but now this freed resources can be used for something.

    Yet, whole issue is that if you want to use it efficiently you can not just offer people another similar job, and under similar I mean one that require same energy/resources expenses as previous.

    You now see most horrible problem of capitalism - each new automation step bring more short term profits for less and less remaining capitalists, but same step also bring them closer to socialism that they fear so much.

  • Poor newspapers

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  • Poor tech positions

    I run a job board that caters to tech jobs, primarily web professionals. We’ve been around since 2005. This year has been pretty bonkers compared to previous years.

    • Roughly 40% fewer jobs were posted to our site in January 2016 compared to the average volume of every January since 2012.
    • Job volume for April 2016 was nearly half the volume of April 2015.
    • Currently our annual posting volume is trending at 63% compared to 2015 and 59% compared to 2014.

    https://medium.com/@cameronmoll/tech-hiring-is-down-40-and-nobodys-talking-about-it-3d6f658d9faf#.3i70xmx6o

  • More robot charts

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    The increased use of robots in developed countries risks eroding the traditional labour cost advantage of developing countries. If robots are considered a form of capital that is a close substitute for low-skilled workers, then their growing use reduces the share of human labour in total production costs.

    http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pdf

    It is always fun to read greedy capitalists papers. Only in capitalism improvements in science and means of production can cause depressions and lot of poor starving people.

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  • Worldwide spending on robotics and related services will more than double by 2020, growing from US$91.5 billion in 2016 to more than US$188 billion in 2020, according to the newly updated Worldwide Commercial Robotics Spending Guide from IDC.

  • I think this will lead rapidly to unfathomable questions like; will labor class robots revolt against elite class robots? and what will elite robots do with massive amounts of unemployed robots? and what will be the outcome of robot wars? and will robots also want to go to Mars? and would Beyoncé get album of the year if her fans were robots?

  • I think this will lead rapidly to unfathomable questions like; will labor class robots revolt against elite class robots?

    Such questions always arise if you do not understand meaning of words and terms :-)

    First mass textile machines actually reduced number of people required to make same amount of textile no less than robots.

  • Kuka has been expanding its capacity worldwide since 2016 and is expected to increase its overall capacity by 40% by the end of 2017. The company is also aiming to double its capacity in Shanghai, China and increase its capacity in Augsburg, Germany by 30%. Kuka said that demand for universal robots has been rising as clients are looking to simplify control over their robots. Kuka has been working to improve the system to satisfy demand.