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posted by janrinok on Monday June 11 2018, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the cheery-start-to-the-week dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @08:19PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 11 2018, @08:19PM (#691576) Journal

    Imagine this scenario

    As another replier noted, a big problem with this is that it is hypothetical. But let's move on:

    Your net worth is now approximately -$100K

    Where did that come from? Should be able to do better than that.

    2 years later, [...] 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.

    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.

    Explain to me where this (admittedly hypothetical but entirely plausible) person was irresponsible.

    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)

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday June 12 2018, @09:04PM (#692102)

    Your net worth is now approximately -$100K

    Where did that come from? Should be able to do better than that.

    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.

    2 years later, [...] 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.

    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.

    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.

    Explain to me where this (admittedly hypothetical but entirely plausible) person was irresponsible.

    a) having a huge student loan debt

    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.

    b) being out of the job market for a crazy amount of time - recessions don't last 5 years.

    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

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 13 2018, @12:16PM (#692308) Journal

      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.

      And yet we still have the choice to not spend those huge sums of money.

      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.

      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.

      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.

      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.