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Should we believe headlines claiming nearly half of all jobs will be lost to robots and artificial intelligence? We think not, and in a newly released study we explain why.
Headlines trumpeting massive job losses have been in abundance for five or so years. Even The Conversation has had its had its share.
Most come from a common source. It is a single study, conducted in 2013 by Oxford University's Carl Benedict Frey and Michael Osborne. This study lies behind the claim that 47% of jobs in the United States were at "high risk" of automation over the next ten or so years. Google Scholar says it has been cited more than 4,300 times, a figure that doesn't count newspaper headlines.
The major predictions of job losses due to automation in Australia are based directly on its findings. Commentaries about the future of work in Australia have also drawn extensively on the study.
In Australia and elsewhere the study's predictions have led to calls for a Universal Basic Income and for a "work guarantee" that would allocate the smaller number of jobs fairly.
Our new research paper concludes the former study's predictions are not well-founded.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday November 02 2019, @07:44AM (7 children)
That's not true. Look at about a hundred plus years back when a big wave of automation happened, you had various ways that the labour force was reduced due to not enough jobs. The hours worked were cut back, instead of working 6 and a half long days (12 hours), people went to an 8 hour day. Children were taken out of the workforce, and then sent to school to keep them out of mischief. Suddenly all the 5-15 year olds were out of the labour force. For the first time since agriculture, lower middle class women were also taken out of the workforce, the idea of a stay at home Mom became common, stay at home Mom's who weren't taking in laundry or whatever to help support the family.
One difference is the fear of communism etc saw the benefits of automation being shared so a family only needed one bread winner instead of even the 4 year old having to work to help pay the rent.
Eventually the good times ended, then there was a world war which created a lot of broken windows to be fixed and employment rose.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:54AM (6 children)
Erm... that is not why those labor practices changed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday November 03 2019, @04:20AM (5 children)
It is why the ownership class allowed the labour practices to change. Child labour laws, for example, were heavily fought against until the owners realized they no longer needed child labourers due to automation.
The most of history of the industrial revolution has seen the percentage of labourers dropping from close to 100% at the beginning to today where between retirees, students, the disabled and those just choosing not to work results in a labour force much lower then 100% and continuing to drop. Hard to find good numbers but it seems to be about 2/3rds of 15-64 year olds with those underage and overage people not even counted anymore. Pressure is still being applied on the youth end by jobs requiring more and more education, laws designed to remove liberty and lock up millions of people, enforced retirement and much ease in getting considered disabled. No longer does a population of 350 million translate into well over 300 million labourers as lack of automation would require.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @11:22AM (4 children)
The ownership class allowed those changes to happen because they had a choice between that and torches and pitchforks, automation had nothing to do with it except after the fact.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:00PM (3 children)
Been lots of times when the choice was between pitchforks and torches or giving into the people resulted in slaughter of those holding the pitchforks and torches. Just reading about the German peasant uprising, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants'_War [wikipedia.org], 100,000 out of 300,000 peasants slaughtered. There's enough cases in 19th century N. America as well to show that the owners don't easily back down unless their bean counters make a case for it, which they did with automation reducing the need for labour.
Another slightly different example was one of the biggest strikes in Canadian history, asbestos workers struck for a few simple things, showers, a car wash and 2 sets of lockers so they didn't have to mix their street clothes with their work clothes as it seems the asbestos workers didn't want to bring any of their work home and kill their families. The strike lasted a few years IIRC as the owners weren't going to back down or give in.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday November 03 2019, @08:26PM (2 children)
They can not back down all they like, it still isn't going to do shit when it's a federal law.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 04 2019, @03:47AM (1 child)
That's strangely naive for you, Mr Buzzard. Who do you think writes federal laws ?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 04 2019, @04:11AM
Depends on how much pressure the congress critters have on their necks from the electorate. Usually it's lobbyists but only usually.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.