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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They want our taxes to further prop up the shitty boomers who didn’t plan ahead for retirement while simultaneously stealing their children’s chance at the American dream away from them. Robots don’t pay taxes just increase corporate profits…God forbid corporations pay their share back into society.
The issue is that productivity will go up, and actually jobs will not decrease, they’ll likely increase over time. They were just talking about this on NPR, and for over a century there has been fear that machines will make our jobs obsolete. They will, but new jobs are always created, and if you ever have general AI that can work better than any human and perform specific tasks only humans can better and cheaper, sure all jobs will likely go away. But then you’ll either get robot apocalypse or utopia.
The kind of jobs being automated out are not the kind ageing workers are doing. Seniors are more likely to be higher up on the work life ladder due to sheer amount of experience. The jobs being lost nowadays are middle class white collar jobs. Industry has been automated to almost full extend already since the 90’s. The next jobs to go are going to be service industry and logistics. Drivers, cooks, cashiers. AI is replacing professionals like lawyers, analysis, management…
And the added value and wealth from this automation goes upwards and accumulates among fewer people.
Then add on top the fact that no society yet has figured out how to ensure that the lower rungs of the society dont starve or just “barely manage it”.
There are no more good jobs that add value and wealth, which then can be taxed to ensure society functions. Most western societies don’t even produce anything anymore really, they primarily run on financial services and service industry – which don’t actually make anything real.
Robots don’t buy the products they produce. Our economy is built on continuous growth. If the pool of consumers declines, fewer products will be in demand, cost will go down, less money will spent, and growth stagnates. The only ways to combat that is to increase demand and population growth is the easiest way in increase demand without significantly changing your product or marketing strategy.
Automation only positively affects Socialism. Capitalism will waiver with automation. As the workers don’t own the means of production in capitalism, any automation created only serves the bourgeois and funnels that excess “labor value” into their pockets, while at the same time they STILL have you the employees work, usually for the same or less money, just in different roles. Most people 50 years ago assumed that we would be working less today due to technology, robots, and computers. But yet were working just as much if not more (as now more of the population is working, women) working 40, 50, 60, 70 hours.
In a socialist version of the economy, we COULD work less. Any increase in efficiency created by robots would be celebrated. A socialist economy would accelerate development of AI/robotics/automation, as less would need to work.
You’re right, that is how it should work, but we sadly live in a reality where capitalism has won almost worldwide for the time being. Even so called social democracies, as they are still functionally capitalist in a capitalist world, still rely on large working populations even in this century. Robots SHOULD counterbalance retirees and a decrease in population. But nope.
Because capitalism ensures that your value is tied to your ability to work and the work available. Unless UBI is passed, those robots will fill the available jobs, leaving the jobs that the elderly normally do (service jobs typically) without work. Now they’ve got no income because there’s no chance UBI comes to be in our lifetime and those that own the bots keep profiting.
It is a myth that jobs are just due to automation. People have been saying this for hundreds of years, yet we have more jobs than ever.
What does happen is that *certain specific* jobs are lost. This is a problem for people with those skills. If they are unskilled and struggle to learn, this may mean they will have difficulty in the future. So while automation benefits society and raises everyone’s standard of living, certain people are harmed, and a compassionate society should deal with that problem.
Should? Absolutely!
In fact, the dream since a century or two ago has been that increases in productivity through mechanisation, then automation, then informational improvements will allow people to work less while society still had more. It’s true too! We produce vastly more per person than we ever have at any point in the past. As I expect has been pointed out countless times elsewhere in this thread though, the trouble is distributing that wealth in a ‘fair’ manner.
Still, the myth that a decreasing population or even just a decreasing working-age population ratio is an economic catastrophe is ridiculous. Japan is the usual posterchild for all the bad things that can happen and yet, their economic activity *per person* is clicking along just fine. Their GDP as a whole is growing less quickly than some countries with population growth but who cares? Less but happy people is not a bad thing.
It’s worth nothing we’ve been doing this for centuries. The UK started industrialisation in the 18th century and since then we’ve been removing Jobs.
It’s still a problem but nothing we haven’t handled before.
This is a bad prompt because it’s a good excuse for everyone to bring out all their pet ideologies. Anyway, here’s mine:
Automation has resulted in an unprecedented increase in productivity over the past few generations, and that has led to an increase in the standard of living. 100 years ago we didn’t expect consistent electricity, or accurate climate controls, or year-round fruits, or a home for your family larger than 1,000 square feet. Because all that wasn’t practical for the common worker 100 years ago. It takes more resources to keep a 21st century citizen happy than a 20th century citizen, and that’s because we all have access to the benefits of higher productivity.
The concern is that, in order to maintain our current standard of living (or a future elevated standard of living), productivity per worker has to increase faster than a country ages. If people are used to a certain lifestyle and suddenly there’s not enough workers to maintain that lifestyle, people get very angry.
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