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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-better-be-able-to-argue dept.

Despite innovations that make it easier for seniors to keep living on their own rather than moving into special facilities, most elderly people eventually need a hand with chores and other everyday activities.

Friends and relatives often can't do all the work. Growing evidence indicates it's neither sustainable nor healthy for seniors or their loved ones. Yet demand for professional caregivers already far outstrips supply, and experts say this workforce shortage will only get worse.

So how will our society bridge this elder-care gap? In a word, robots.

Just as automation has begun to do jobs previously seen as uniquely suited for humans, like retrieving goods from warehouses, robots will assist your elderly relatives.

Would you entrust grandma to Johnny 5?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:04PM (4 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:04PM (#560834)

    Here's how you correct a shortage of workers in a particular field:
    1. Make it better-paying than other kinds of work.
    2. Make it possible for people who haven't done it before to get into the field.
    3. Make sure that the job is pleasant enough that those who have it stay in the field rather than burning out.

    Of course, that would put a dent in the massive profits going to home health care agencies and nursing homes, but it would solve the problem at least as well as robots can. Among other things, care-giving is one of those areas where actual human touch makes a demonstrable difference.

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  • (Score: 2) by leftover on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:05PM

    by leftover (2448) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:05PM (#560872)

    This, exactly! It is "radical" in the sense of being simple, correct, and never to be heard in B-schools or boardrooms. There is really not a shortage of kind and trustworthy people who would do this job if they could make even a modest living at it.

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  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:32PM

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:32PM (#560899)

    It's all relative. If care-giving is one of those areas where actual human touch makes a demonstrable difference then it should, logically, be one of the last occupations to be done by robots, in which case there won't _be_ any other kinds of work, so then (1) applies, (2) applies because there aren't any other fields and (3) applies because there aren't any other fields to leave this one for.

    Also not sure about the "massive profits" in care home sector, where I am it is reckoned to be the only industry sector where insolvencies have risen over the past few years (and certainly not a sector I would invest in at the moment - but then most of my investments are duds so what do I know), source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/05/social-care-crisis-record-number-of-uk-homes-declared-insolvent [theguardian.com]

  • (Score: 1) by crafoo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:46PM

    by crafoo (6639) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:46PM (#560908)

    More to the point, correcting the shortage of workers in this field is not something anyone cares about, really. Companies will go bankrupt and fold before they offer higher salaries. The entire industry will collapse and a new, more vile, even more cut-throat system will rise to take its place before wages are allowed to increase. C-levels would rather sacrifice quality of care, average life expectancy, lobby for mandatory EoL killbots, and invest in Soylent factories before increasing wages benefits.

    Increasing wages, benefits, and improving work conditions means lower quarterly profits for at least a few quarters. You might as well just ask them to cut off their own balls. Never going to happen. Never ever.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:25PM (#561041)

    That's reasonable, but the better question is what proportion of the labor force are we willing to allocate to elder care? There's a lot of boomers. If we give good care with humans to all of them, how many humans are leftover for everything else?