If jobs are “lost” because robots are doing more work, why is it a problem that the population is aging and there are fewer in “working age”? Shouldn’t the two effects sort of cancel each other out?
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> the population is aging
This isn’t happening at all uniformly. In places like Japan and Europe, it’s a much more substantial effect than in Africa, where the population is growing in younger cohorts.
It’s a problem for countries with social security. For social security to work for every person collecting a check at least one other person has to work to supply the government with money to pay that check. The mass amounts of boomers retiring in America right now is ruining social security as the government can’t support them with the current amount of workers.
The earnings from automation go into the pockets of companies, not into the pockets of the government. So the government has to fund the old population and also the newly unenmployed workers who lost their jobs due to automation.
So automation is problematic if the positive productivity gains aren’t distributed to the whole society.
All those elderly people who aren’t working, but collecting Social Security and Medicare? Current workers’ Social Security and Medicare taxes are at least partially funding that… so fewer workers funneling money into a pool that needs to serve more and more people.
The Jobs robots are good at doing, like working in factories isn’t the work that we need more people doing like Nursing, Teaching and flipping burgers.
Jobs being automated isn’t a problem; it’s wonderful. It advances productivity and frees people from unfulfilling drudgery. The problem is that we’ve set up our economy such that humans need to spend their days in menial labour in order to survive. There are simple solutions that only require willingness. Not enough menial labour to go around is a helluva backwards way of thinking that we’ve trapped ourselves in.
As has been pointed out, earnings from automation go to companies, and then to investors. But investors aren’t the big part of the population. Then, because investors have money, the things that investors want – shares and land, mostly – get crazy expensive, and so they become better investments, and you start a speculation frenzy. Meanwhile, the people who AREN’T investors can’t get onto the crazy train at all, and a big part of your population is stuck in the terrible service jobs that can’t be automated, and they can’t afford housing because investors have snapped it all up for speculation. Any of this starting to sound familiar?
As a general point, not 100% answering the question but is relevant to the idea of it.
This question has in its premise, I think, the assumption that those arguing for the corporations are arguing in good faith, and have good points to make, which is why an explanation is necessary.
But the reason it doesn’t make sense is because *they aren’t arguing in good faith.* They’re trolling, purposely muddying the water so they can continue to pay themselves while refusing to raise the minimum wage, for instance. Or blaming inflation for higher prices while they purposely raise the prices of medications so they can give themselves big bonuses.
Don’t believe them.
Because health care for an old person is expensive and we don’t have a robot that can do that job yet.
>If jobs are “lost” because robots are doing more work, why is it a problem that the population is aging and there are fewer in “working age”? Shouldn’t the two effects sort of cancel each other out?
Eh you’re painting with broad strokes here. There’s three separate ideas that don’t quite connect to each other.
1) Yes automation is eliminating certain jobs, but they are mostly lower end jobs like customer service and some assembly line jobs. This is overall not happening super quickly. McDonald’s now has ordering kiosks but they still employ a high number of workers to actually make the food. Automation hasn’t taken over a lot of jobs, yet.
2) The population aging out is a separate problem particularly in trades. There aren’t enough young people going into trades i.e. electricians, plumbers, construction etc. But there are also trades we don’t think about where the bulk of the workforce is also old and will soon age out: nuclear energy technicians, oil/drilling, air traffic control, airline pilots, etc.
3) The raw number of working age people will decline in many westernized countries due to the Baby Boomer generation retiring. The Baby Boomers are globally such a huge % of the population, that when they do retire, Gen Z won’t have big enough numbers to completely replace them in terms of raw total. This is a problem because workers pay taxes and less workers = smaller tax base. At the same time more Baby Boomers retiring means that the tax burden goes up overall as they will be entitled to Social Security and Medicare (in the US). This is a potential disaster long term as the tax base and tax burden diverge.
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