Over the years I've heard many people connect the decline in the U.S middle class to jobs going overseas through globalization and to tax policies that hurt the middle class in favor of the rich. But it seems that many Americans are overlooking the effects that computers & robots are playing in shrinking middle class jobs.
I saw a clip of how they're trying to use robots in Japanese hospitals to do some nursing tasks. I guess they will need fewer nurses if those robots are able to do those task well.
b.s. How about blaming the mischpuka that make the 50 USD in your wallet worth 40USD in a year? THAT's what shrinks the 'middle class', well, it hurts everyone who thinks it's money.. Robots INCREASE productivity, not decrease it. If only 5% of the people have to work full-time to do all necessary work in a truly effective group using basic technological improvements, it seems that would increase the middle-class... ah but then you've got crooks and pederasts waging economic war against anyone who isn't 'Chosen (TM)'..
But if robots are improving productivity then doesn't that mean you need fewer human workers to do the job?
I never check out my own groceries--I want a person with a job checking them out. I take it most people have seen the robots on auto assembly lines occasionally shown in commercials---used to be people doing those jobs--I know--I was one of them. They were always putting some little suck-ass motherfucker in our places to prove that we could each take on a portion of someone elses job to try and eliminate a job at a time. They had no respect for any of us workers and would sneak the line up faster and faster 'till you were hard pressed to keep up. That's when a call to the union man would put a stop to it. We had our ways of fighting back,which I won't go into here. Walter Reuther ,head of the united auto workers back some years,when shown some of the robot-type machines by H. Ford,replied--"How many cars will they buy?"
but as labour jobs are disappearing, the service sector is only getting larger - this is thanks to technology and globalisation alike. the western world has long forgotten it's days of industrialisation.
its not just shrinking the middle class jobs, but the lower class ones too. this reality needs to inspire people to change in society. politics looks to get rid of unemployment, but the fact is that it'll only generally rise with some fluctuations. but to fix unemployment would be to reverse our technological progress by getting rid of automated factories and supply systems. technology, along with science, is supposed to be a relief to man, not only in physical material sense, but also in an economic and political sense. the cost of the products we make do not reflect what it truly costs to make the factory/capital/employees. what should be happening because of this technological reliance is that products should be getting cheaper and cheaper until things are pretty much free, and only when a service becomes completely accessible that it becomes abundant is when it can become free, but peoples' ideals of morals, ethics and political priorities are construed to a belief that we need money. technology completely opposes what the monetary system is about.
IT, Robotics and General Automation = "To Aid + Assist - and not to Replace” I've often been of the belief that the gradual but methodical drive towards advancement will leave behind that which is our heritage of individuality. Whilst not an altogether committed Luddite, I feel the aim of mechanism is to complete tasks and chores that allows the time for creativity and in with the human factor to flourish - Remember the Terminator! Computers are Black, White, binary and clinical – Only the expansion of the mind will see the human race (with all its flaws) develop eace:
No it hasn't The US despite the rise of Japan in the 70's and rise of China in the 90's has held about 20% of the world's industrial output for over the past 20 years. The jobs are gone, the industry itself isn't gone. It's hard to say how much something like robots effects the middle class. Yes they make people lose jobs, but on the flip side the huge increase in productivity is what makes things cheap enough to be considered middle class items.
i'm talking about the job market, read the sentence posted above it basically saying as one has declined, another has grown. i wasn't ever talking about the industry as a whole - that has nothing to do with the threads topic. and anyways, we all know how well japan got on thereafter. good luck china.
huh?? and i dont agree that the service sector of the workforce is growing, even that is slowly being replaced also with machines like ATM's. I think i read an article how theres a machine inside a Mcdonalds somewhere that you can order your food from and your order will come up momentarily. also in the U.S., most businesses would rather have a few employees that work more hours rather than multiple people to share a schedule, i guess cuz it saves the business time, effort and money. I heard that in the UK, companies do the more-employees-to-share-a-schedule way, while each person has more vacation days in the year. that reflects more properly a transition we need to aim for where the ratio of people to jobs reflects how much a person must work to be able to "make a living." the service sector isn't growing its just becoming more and more important cuz thats where most jobs will be in the near future.
If you operate a forklift this may be of interest. I saw these on a TV commercial. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo-fqkyO9kQ
In the 80's I read an article in Discover mag that said something along the following lines: In the future we'll all work less and have more leisure time w/ no negative effect on personal wealth. This would happen because automation would make companies more efficient and increase their profit margins. They won't need as large a work force but they will not forget the masses. Corporations would help support the public. How wrong they were.
