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Good news! Automation capable of erasing white collar jobs is coming, but not for a decade or more. And that’s also the bad news because interest in automation accelerates during economic downturns, so once tech that can take your job arrives you’ll already have lived through another period of economic turmoil that may already have cost you your job.
That lovely scenario was advanced yesterday by professor Mirko Draca of The London School of Economics, who yesterday told Huawei’s 2018 Asia-Pacific Innovation Day 2018 that the world is currently in “an era of investment and experimentation” with technology. The effects of such eras, he said, generally emerge ten to fifteen years in the future.
Innovation in the 1980s therefore sparked the PC and internet booms of the mid-to-late 1990s, and we’re still surfing [SIC - suffering?] the changes they unleashed. “Our current era of mobile tech doesn’t measure up to the radical 1990s,” he said, as shown by the fact that productivity gains appear to have stalled for a decade or more.
[...] “We predict that AI and robotics will lead to some sort of productivity surge in ten to fifteen years,” he said, adding that there is “no clear evidence” that a new wave of technologies that threaten jobs has started.
But he also said that it will once businesses see the need to control costs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday June 11 2018, @04:06PM (16 children)
That assumes that, during the good times, they're being paid enough to save significant amounts of money.
Imagine this scenario as an alternative:
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You're from a poor family, but you manage to work hard in school, develop a talent for writing, and get admitted to college, the first person in your family ever to do so. You get some scholarship help, but most of your degree is paid via loans. You graduate with a degree in marketing and communications, which seems like a reasonable option based on your strongest skills while not being as "fluffy" as creative writing or English literature or journalism. Times are good, so you manage to land an entry-level job and a firm making $35K a year + benefits, with the likelihood of a raise to $50K soon if you do well (this is making your parents proud, because you on your own will soon be making what they both together can make even with their 20 years on the job). On that, you manage to rent a small apartment, pay your bills on time, eat reasonably well, buy a car to get to work (with a car loan, but you're clearly able to pay it down), make your student loan payments, occasionally go out for drinks, and even save a few hundred bucks each year for emergencies. Your net worth is now approximately -$100K, but you're at least functional in the short-term and everyone is telling you that you'll be better off in the long run if you work hard at your job.
2 years later, because some rich people on Wall Street were extremely irresponsible, your company goes through a round of layoffs, and instead of that $15K raise for quality work you get a pink slip due to your lack of seniority. So you hit the job market, now with a couple years' experience, and find that you're competing with people who are just as desperate as those with 7-8 years' experience and thus just as willing to work as cheaply as you. You are screwed, solely because there aren't enough jobs out there in your field to get employers far enough down the list of potential hires to even consider you. So you do what you can do, namely lower your standards and accept the job in retail or fast food that makes closer to $20K a year and no benefits, you move back in with your parents to say $8K a year in rent, lose the car due to non-payment of that loan, and you also can't pay your student loans right now so you use every deferment option you can come by to buy some time. Your net worth is now approximately -$108K: You paid back $10K back when you were working, but lost $18K due to the student loan deferments.
5 years later, times are good enough again that your old job is available. But since you've been out of that line of work for 5 years, you're considered "entry-level" by HR drones, and you're competing with all the kids right out of school. Because of those factors, you're back to the $35K, but it's only for a little while, you hope to get to the $50K level faster than you did the last time. And this time, you stay living with your parents, so you are able to pay back a bit more of your student loans and after a few years are at -$80K. And then the economy crashes again ...
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Explain to me where this (admittedly hypothetical but entirely plausible) person was irresponsible. They were reasonably smart. They worked hard. They were employed to the best of their ability the entire time. And the only thing they've managed to accomplish was lowering their student loan debt by 20% in 7 years. At their current rate, assuming that absolutely no disaster befalls them or one of their family members, they'll be in their 50's before their net worth is 0.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:25PM (2 children)
It isn't hypothetical, it happens to a lot of people. I'm sure you knew that, but when you use "hypothetical" you give people a way to pretend reality is different than it is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:42PM
I didn't really get that sense from reading it. I figured it was a sarcastic jab at the whole notion of "personal responsibility" when compared to the real economic conditions the working class faces. (Especially consider the advantage somebody in his scenario would have if, instead of getting loans for education and transportation, they had been super-duper responsible and born into wealth that would enable them to pay cash for education and transportation. The moral of the story comes through loud and clear: be responsible next time you're up for reincarnation and pick a couple who's loaded (maybe not superwealthy, but consider that middle class really is 500k maybe in the bank and 100k incomes thanks to inflation) for your parents.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday June 11 2018, @05:53PM
I was using the "hypothetical" here to make it clear that while that story certainly could and probably did happen to lots of people, I didn't have anyone in particular to hold up as an example. Pre-empting an obvious challenge to my point, in other words.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @04:48PM
Some rich people from Wall Street: "We were just taking risks, as we were supposed to, you know, to advance in the world!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @05:09PM (6 children)
Sorry, not an American, who is the issuer of student loans, and what is the collateral? From the story it seems like you can never default on the student loan, is that right?
Is such an arrangement you can' get out of even legal, constitutional?
What happens to you if you just never pay anything back and just spend the every last penny you earn, without ever buying any real estate property or more valuable goods (e.g. rent place you live in, lease car instead of buying one, ...)?
Will they come for a pound of meat or what?
And, why aren't Americans fleeing to study in countries from which H1-B visa carriers come and avoid needing loans? If their education is good enough for H1-Bs to get a job, it is good enough for you too, and costs of living and studying are bound to be lower. Your parents or your gigs can probably save/earn enough for that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday June 11 2018, @05:57PM (4 children)
1. The student loan is backed by the federal government, but the profits go to a private bank.
2. There is no obvious way to have collateral in these kinds of loans.
3. Under current US law, you cannot discharge a student loan by bankruptcy. The rules are, you have to pay it until the day you die. They can and will garnish wages, seize assets, whatever they think they can get to get the money back.
4. Yes, that kind of "arrangement" is considered legal in the US. Makes you wonder about all that "rah rah Freedom" talk.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @06:47PM (2 children)
Some of the "rah rah freedom contingent" (libertarians, at least) are quite against the current college loan structure. It's not an inherent contradiction, just the usual vested-interests-and-path-dependence idiocy the US usually gets up to.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @07:49PM (1 child)
libertarians [...] are quite against the current college loan structure
That would be counter to the "Privatize everything; deregulate everything" mantra of Libertarianism.
Being able to gouge a client eternally, with him having no alternatives, sounds to me exactly like Libertarianism AKA The Law of the Jungle AKA Only the Strongest Survive.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @08:31PM
Then you should be able to point to "L"ibertarians who have supported that particular system for other loan types. I'm not seeing any support for that myself, but maybe you have better sources.
There are plenty of loans out there, but only the student loans have this crazy lack of default. My impression is that once the federal government got itself on the hook for hundreds of billions in shaky student loans, suddenly a lot of students got fucked. This is the typical thrashing that government goes through every time it creates an exploitable public good (here, the subsidized student loan).
As someone who is partially libertarian, I wouldn't have supported subsidized student loans in the first place, much less set up the current crazy and oppressive system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @08:16PM
Part of the problem is that the loan counseling to get a student loan lies to people considering it. They claim that it can be discharged by bankruptcy court, but I don't know that it's true.
On top of that, the interest for a government student loan maxes out at 10.5% which is absolutely ridiculous. How on earth is somebody supposed to pay off debt when they're only marginally better off with the student loan that you can't discharge in bankruptcy than putting it on their credit card that can be discharged in bankruptcy?
The unrequested increase in DoD spending alone could knock off a huge portion of the cost of college, or at bare minimum allow most college students to receive affordable loans if they needed them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @08:01PM
Commercial banks.
The student's hide, as co-signed by the government.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @07:58PM
They chose poor parents. Furthermore, they took a risk reaching beyond their station in life and it didn't pay off. If they had spent those years working retail or other jobs more appropriate to their caste, instead of being -$100K, they could have worked up to assistant manager making $28K per year, able to afford their own car and maybe if they never went out for drinks or spent any frivolous money at all until they turned 30, they could scrape together a down payment for a house. Too bad that they're going to need to find a spouse who also makes $28K+ per year to afford a house payment, maybe they can meet a nice SO at church where they all go to forget about how rigged the system is.
Shhhhh... the plebes aren't supposed to know about that part of the plan.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @08:19PM (2 children)
As another replier noted, a big problem with this is that it is hypothetical. But let's move on:
Where did that come from? Should be able to do better than that.
So to summarize, you borrowed a huge amount of money to start with, then paid back only a little of it when you had money.
a) having a huge student loan debt and b) being out of the job market for a crazy amount of time - recessions don't last 5 years.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 12 2018, @09:04PM (1 child)
Around $25K a year for 4 years, which is based on in-state tuition, room & board at a public university, minus a few K annually in work-study and summer earnings and scholarships. Any idea that you can work yourself through college in the US is a product of 60 years ago when that was in fact possible.
You borrowed a huge amount of money to start with, because your alternative was a lifetime of working at Starbucks. You then paid back 10% of the loan over 2 years, which means approximately 15% of your income went to student loan repayment, and had you been able to maintain that you would have repaid the loan in 20 years, which is pretty typical for student loan recipients.
Also, it appears that in khallow's universe, $10K isn't a lot of money. So if, say, his car is wrecked and his insurance won't cover it, no big deal. Got it.
They have a huge student loan debt because their alternative is working for no more than $15 / hr for the rest of their adult lives. A decision that you've repeatedly criticized people for making.
Let me get this straight: You're trying to claim that this [bls.gov], or if you prefer this [shadowstats.com] didn't happen in the last decade? Plus, my hypothetical person is never out of the job market (what's technically called a "discouraged worker"): They're underemployed working retail when they're qualified for white-collar employment, not unemployed.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:16PM
And yet we still have the choice to not spend those huge sums of money.
Sorry, borrowing that much money remains the huge irresponsibility here. I find it remarkable that you spin this story as being better than not going to college at all. In the latter case, however, the person has been earning money for something like 11 years (most of it at the same or higher rate than they were earning as a college graduate!) and doesn't have 108k debt at the end of that period. And then in the college graduate case, they've been goofing around for five years in the "underemployed" position. Sure, they might still be underemployed at the end of it, but that's a long time to not attempt to better their situation.
No, but let's keep in mind that most recessions don't have a screwy job recovery like that. If we're going to have nasty recessions like that every 7 years for the foreseeable future, then very few people are going to do well. I suggest we don't do that as a society - I would suggest focusing on new business creation and business growth among small and mid-level businesses. That will help our college grad. Personal responsibility will help as I've noted in other threads.
Even in a situation like that of the last decade, one can improve their lot. It's just somewhat harder.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Tuesday June 12 2018, @01:47AM
You are an optimist. Because your last job was entry-level but you are no longer a fresh-grad, HR doesn't know what to do with you. It will be another year or two before the supply of fresh grads gets tight before HR starts to consider "stale-grads" like you. You still start at entry-level but now your are two years deeper in debt and the next crash is two years closer.