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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: 1) by khallow on Monday June 11 2018, @10:59PM (5 children)
In your logical universe, does Seattle and California have the power to decide what the minimum wage should be for any group larger in scope than those political entities?
And once again, the vast majority of these minimum wage laws don't operate based on the local cost of living.
Why again is there a federal minimum wage which is fixed across the entire US without regard for the local cost of living?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 12 2018, @12:47AM (4 children)
No. Are they actually doing this in your universe? I can see how they might make a case for political change outside their jurisdiction, just as do-good social assistance agencies attempt to "bring up the standard of living" in countries around the globe, but jurisdiction has meaning, outside jurisdiction it's just noise.
Imperfect, room to improve, but better than a uniform level for the whole country, right?
Because there's nowhere in the entire US with a local cost of living of zero? And, possibly, the federal government does not trust itself to accurately, fairly, efficiently and effectively determine cost of living across the entire country for purposes of minimum wage determination, so they set it uniformly a little high for some places (which can probably utilize the extra income to stay integrated with the rest of the country and not spiral down into a pit of poverty), low for most, and leave it up to the local governments to raise it where needed?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @04:10AM
Exactly my point. It's yet another point of dishonesty (in addition to your habit of routinely mischaracterizing my arguments) that you equate variation of policy with policy that scales to the actual alleged needs of regions. One-size-fits-all is still the norm for minimum wage policy despite your many assertions to the contrary, it's just that the parties implementing these policies don't have the power to implement them on a larger scale.
There are two consequences of this that are particularly troublesome. First, that regions that are low cost of living are massively screwed. Puerto Rico being a good example (I believe Fresno, California will be another, should California fully implement its $15 per hour minimum wage in 2022 and inflation not eat up the difference).
Second, that businesses have to contend with massive variation in minimum wage and abrupt changes in minimum wage depending on the whims of all these governments interacting together. My second suggested approach doesn't eliminate the problem, but it at least makes it based on reasonably predictable economic parameters that can be forecast out several years rather than whatever some city or state government cooks up.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @10:55AM (2 children)
Sorry, that's nonsense. There are huge differences in cost of living - and we already have the example of Puerto Rico which is getting screwed by the current "little high" minimum wage. Anyway, I looked at state level [pewresearch.org] minimum wage. Every one of them does a fixed rate for the entire state. It's a typical feature of minimum wage law. They just don't care. Now, if there actually is a de facto living wage-dependent minimum wage by region (which I don't grant is true), it's merely by coincidence, not because someone tried.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 12 2018, @01:11PM (1 child)
And that's wrong, so vote in people who care about all the people (voters) instead of just the ones with money. Oh, but the Republican fantasy vote for the benefit of the people they wish they were rather than the people they actually are will never allow this. I guess that's a defect in the system that we're stuck with.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 12 2018, @02:22PM
That's ok. You can vote for the other Republican Party, you know, the donkey one rather than the elephant one, and they'll promise to do something about it. That's assuming very generously that you ever cared in the first place. I have yet to see anyone who actually did.
I myself vote for where I want my society to be in the future rather than what I personally want. That's why I traditionally vote Libertarian.