Jobs, The Economy or "What's Wrong With These Robots?"

[Silhouette]

What's wrong with these robots?

1. They don't pay taxes.

2. They don't buy houses.

3. They don't buy the bread or cars they are making.

Back in the late 1960s & 1970s when we saw automation make its hated/unwanted debut, we all knew where it would lead. Many heated protests sprang up back then asserting that jobs would be lost and good men would sit idle or not be able to put food on the table. Then came "made in China"...and finally NAFTA as the final death blow to our economy.

It's been a long slow death as old-school companies who had loyalty to their workers began more and more to be replaced in ownership as the old guard died off at the top ranks. The new group of the "me" generation wanted more and more and more wealth for themselves. So they figured if they replaced all their workers with robots, they'd make more money!!

For sure they did. Until now. Now companies are struggling to understand where all the customers are? Where's our old profit margins??

In Oregon, it is illegal for you to pump your own gas. An attendant must do it for you. Apparently in Oregon, they figured out who buys bread, cars....and gas...

When you replace jobs with automation and cheap foreign labor [that is made that way because they have socialized medicine], the rains of your former profits dry up and become a thing of the past in the economic desert you have created. Get used to it...

All the people in the photo below bought cars, bread, gas, clothing, homes, paid income taxes etc...

 

[Silhouette]

But the unskilled workers, many of them foreign born, didn't enjoy their work, earning a mediocre $2.38 for a nine-hour day. Indeed, the simplification of the jobs created a treacherous backlash: high turnover. Over the course of 1913, the company had to hire 963 workers for every 100 it needed to maintain on the payroll. To keep a workforce of 13,600 employees in the factory, Ford continually spent money on short-term training. Even though the company introduced a program of bonuses and generous benefits, including a medical clinic, athletic fields, and playgrounds for the families of workers, the problem persisted. The rest of the industry reluctantly accepted high turnover as part of the assembly-line system and passed the increasing labor costs into the prices of their cars. Henry Ford, however, did not want anything in the price of a Model T except good value. His solution was a bold stroke that reverberated through the entire nation.

On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford announced a new minimum wage of five dollars per eight-hour day, in addition to a profit-sharing plan. It was the talk of towns across the country; Ford was hailed as the friend of the worker, as an outright socialist, or as a madman bent on bankrupting his company. Many businessmen -- including most of the remaining stockholders in the Ford Motor Company -- regarded his solution as reckless. But he shrugged off all the criticism: "Well, you know when you pay men well you can talk to them," he said. Recognizing the human element in mass production, Ford knew that retaining more employees would lower costs, and that a happier work force would inevitably lead to greater productivity. The numbers bore him out. Between 1914 and 1916, the company's profits doubled from $30 million to $60 million. "The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made," he later said.

There were other ramifications, as well. A budding effort to unionize the Ford factory dissolved in the face of the Five-Dollar Day. Most cunning of all, Ford's new wage scale turned autoworkers into auto customers. The purchases they made returned at least some of those five dollars to Henry Ford, and helped raise production, which invariably helped to lower per-car costs.

Henry Ford and the Model T

Casinos do a simliar thing. They pay their employees knowing full well many of them will go out and play the tables when their shift is over. That way, the casinos pay far less per hour maybe even than minimum wage, depending on the "consumer".

 

[The Rabbi]

So your solution is to outlaw technology? Help me out here.

 

[Erand7899]

When machines take over the jobs of men, it is time for men to learn how to design, build, control, and repair the machines. Robotics is the future, and no amount of howling or gnashing of teeth will alter that future.

Robots are expensive to purchase, install, and maintain. Businesses only seek to transform to robots, when wage rates reach the point that robots are the cheaper alternative. In speaking of wage rates, I mean the total cost of employing humans to do that work.

 

[Bombur]

What's wrong with these robots?

1. They don't pay taxes.

2. They don't buy houses.

3. They don't buy the bread or cars they are making.

Back in the late 1960s & 1970s when we saw automation make its hated/unwanted debut, we all knew where it would lead. Many heated protests sprang up back then asserting that jobs would be lost and good men would sit idle or not be able to put food on the table. Then came "made in China"...and finally NAFTA as the final death blow to our economy.

It's been a long slow death as old-school companies who had loyalty to their workers began more and more to be replaced in ownership as the old guard died off at the top ranks. The new group of the "me" generation wanted more and more and more wealth for themselves. So they figured if they replaced all their workers with robots, they'd make more money!!

For sure they did. Until now. Now companies are struggling to understand where all the customers are? Where's our old profit margins??

In Oregon, it is illegal for you to pump your own gas. An attendant must do it for you. Apparently in Oregon, they figured out who buys bread, cars....and gas...

When you replace jobs with automation and cheap foreign labor [that is made that way because they have socialized medicine], the rains of your former profits dry up and become a thing of the past in the economic desert you have created. Get used to it...

All the people in the photo below bought cars, bread, gas, clothing, homes, paid income taxes etc...

Back in ancient egypt they had so much labor that they didn't bother using the technology they had. The fear was that without the ancient version of "full employment" there would be revolt. Ultimately other nations beat them because they stagnated.

Technology growth is extremely important as is any increase in production. For example the massive increases in productivity of the Chinese people. The key is to balance these increases with increases in demand or consumption. Our economy has largely maintained consumption levels to meet demand by borrowing money. A lot of what went wrong in our economy is that eventually there has to be real growth in wages to feed consumption as opposed to debt.

The US has been extremely important to other economies because trade imbalances with the US have allowed foreign companies to increase productivity and not pay their employees more while still maintaining a high amount of demand. Of course this is also a dead end.

The enemy is not increases in productivity but stagnant wages or even wages that are not keeping up with productivity increases. The US in the post WW2 era did well because the supply of labor was artificially low for a couple of decades. Sounds horrible but it worked.

 

[Silhouette]

I see the problems discussed by The Rabbi, Erand & Bombur. Yet we have a problem with pathetically few manufacturing jobs. So there must be some kind of compromise that can be reached where technology can augment but more humans are needed.

I watch those shows on the tube occasionally about manufacturing, "How it's Made" and the like. One of them seems to be a Canandian show. I noticed in the Canadian manufacturing, they still keep jobs open for humans that easily could have been replaced by automation.

Maybe the Canadians, like Oregon, have figured out that a person who is self-sustaining is less of the drag on the capitalist system? This is why I've always advocated for hybrid capitalist socialist governments with more heavy of a lean towards capitalism. I think it's the perfect blend so that both systems can flourish where the two, isolated on their own, will always languish and die from their imperfections.

You have to understand though, that if we replace some automation with more workers, the company's heads will make less money each year. They won't be anxious to do that. Yet if you look at the second post in this thread, Henry Ford stripped himself of profits like this "so he could look his workers in the face". That type of concern for one's fellow men, especially the spine/backbone that makes up your company...the actual sweat labor...is an icon that American industry needs to revitalize. Incentives to do this need to be enacted as a matter of law, since today's religion of individuals amassing insane wealth they will never spend in their lifetimes is too deeply entrenched. As it turns out, Henry Ford raising the wages of his workers to nearly double, providing medical clinics, playgrounds and other perks turned out to attract skilled and happy workers. As a result, his profits went up up up up. And, the workers turned around and bought his cars. If every mogul figured out that appreciating and sharing wealth with his workers bolstered himself and the country he does business in, we would not be in the pickle we are in today.

I think there needs to be maybe a mandatory clinic, maybe some sort of government certification program for CEOs to get a license to do business that teaches them the economics of profit sharing, how creating more jobs with better conditions means more profits in a better economy for them? I think people that head up many companies are just ignorant of this connection in economics and it may just be a simple matter of teaching them. Like the DMV, you don't get your license there without learning the rules of the road and how your driving interacts with others to bring about smooth traffic flow that isn't dangerous to anyone. The way we do business in the US really is like a form of reckless driving with few if any rules of the road except "me first" always..

 

[Bombur]

I see the problems discussed by The Rabbi, Erand & Bombur. Yet we have a problem with pathetically few manufacturing jobs. So there must be some kind of compromise that can be reached where technology can augment but more humans are needed.

I watch those shows on the tube occasionally about manufacturing, "How it's Made" and the like. One of them seems to be a Canandian show. I noticed in the Canadian manufacturing, they still keep jobs open for humans that easily could have been replaced by automation.

Maybe the Canadians, like Oregon, have figured out that a person who is self-sustaining is less of the drag on the capitalist system? This is why I've always advocated for hybrid capitalist socialist governments with more heavy of a lean towards capitalism. I think it's the perfect blend so that both systems can flourish where the two, isolated on their own, will always languish and die from their imperfections.

Building in inefficiencies isn't really the best solution IMO.

Labor is a resource. Making inefficient use of it would be like throwing away 1 out of every 10 trees you cut down.

 

[Silhouette]

Building in inefficiencies isn't really the best solution IMO.

Labor is a resource. Making inefficient use of it would be like throwing away 1 out of every 10 trees you cut down.

You're missing the point friend. The point is that when you complain consumers aren't at your door buying the product you made with all your robots, you are really complaining about the way you do business and manufacturing. I'm not saying throw out all the robots. Just some of them. Maybe there could be tax breaks to incentivize those CEOs not into patriotism but only into profiteering insanely for themselves to reduce automation and increase human jobs...whatever it takes to get people back to work, earning enough money to walk into your store and buy the stuff you make.

I think people are really quite ignorant of the intricate interplay between human labor and economic health of a country.

 

[The Rabbi]

Building in inefficiencies isn't really the best solution IMO.

Labor is a resource. Making inefficient use of it would be like throwing away 1 out of every 10 trees you cut down.

You're missing the point friend. The point is that when you complain consumers aren't at your door buying the product you made with all your robots, you are really complaining about the way you do business and manufacturing. I'm not saying throw out all the robots. Just some of them. Maybe there could be tax breaks to incentivize those CEOs not into patriotism but only into profiteering insanely for themselves to reduce automation and increase human jobs...whatever it takes to get people back to work, earning enough money to walk into your store and buy the stuff you make.

I think people are really quite ignorant of the intricate interplay between human labor and economic health of a country.

If we outlawed jackhammers and earth movers and allowed only tablespoons to be used on road construction we'd have far more employment. Amiright?

 

[Silhouette]

If we outlawed jackhammers and earth movers and allowed only tablespoons to be used on road construction we'd have far more employment. Amiright?

No, you are being absurd. Rememeber I said "compromise"? Read back a bit of all my posts. Then repost what you just said, altered with the facts instead...

 

[The Rabbi]

If we outlawed jackhammers and earth movers and allowed only tablespoons to be used on road construction we'd have far more employment. Amiright?

No, you are being absurd. Rememeber I said "compromise"? Read back a bit of all my posts. Then repost what you just said, altered with the facts instead...

It's the same principle, whether big or small.
Perhaps we should have outlawed mechanical combines in farming so farmers would have to have more field hands. That would sure increase employment!
This goes along with "job rationing" ideas, like cutting the work week to 30 hours so employers have to have more temp workers. What an idea!!

 

[HenryBHough]

And here we have a mindset that would gleefully advocate every motorcar having to be preceded by a person on foot waving a red flag in order to create full employment.

There is no constitutional reason any state could make that law. I suspect California will be first. Though Vermont seems to be a close second.

 

[Silhouette]

And here we have a mindset that would gleefully advocate every motorcar having to be preceded by a person on foot waving a red flag in order to create full employment.

There is no constitutional reason any state could make that law. I suspect California will be first. Though Vermont seems to be a close second.

And here we have a person who believes you can automate every single job and still have cutomers clogging your doors to buy the stuff you manufacture....

Somewhere in the middle there has to be a compromise. There has to be. Our economy doesn't make it a luxury choice anymore.. And THIS is my point. At which point does the dragon of American greed eat the last scale on its own tail it is devouring?

 

[ScienceRocks]

It's time to rethink economics and use the robots to our advantage.

Of course the republicans want to do away with them as they love holding the lower classes as slaves. Why not use them to provide cheap food and maybe move away from a purely profit economy?

 

[Silhouette]

It's time to rethink economics and use the robots to our advantage.

Of course the republicans want to do away with them as they love holding the lower classes as slaves. Why not use them to provide cheap food and maybe move away from a purely profit economy?

WTF? Because our capitalist economy runs on people who are able to purchase goods that are manufactured. Looking for a compromise here, not some hippie utopia or maniacal and blind greedy capitalist who can't figure out why customers stopped walking through his doors..

 

[Erand7899]

Building in inefficiencies isn't really the best solution IMO.

Labor is a resource. Making inefficient use of it would be like throwing away 1 out of every 10 trees you cut down.

You're missing the point friend. The point is that when you complain consumers aren't at your door buying the product you made with all your robots, you are really complaining about the way you do business and manufacturing. I'm not saying throw out all the robots. Just some of them. Maybe there could be tax breaks to incentivize those CEOs not into patriotism but only into profiteering insanely for themselves to reduce automation and increase human jobs...whatever it takes to get people back to work, earning enough money to walk into your store and buy the stuff you make.

I think people are really quite ignorant of the intricate interplay between human labor and economic health of a country.

Yes, there are quite a few people ignorant of the intricate interplay between human labor and economic health, and you are obviously one of those. You are so locked in on the consumption effect on the economy, that you ignore the rest. Every attempt to interfere with natural market forces creates inefficiencies and distortions in the affected markets and artificially raises prices in those markets.

Labor is a market, just like any other market and is affected by the same natural market forces as any other commodity. Neither you, I, nor government can derive some magic formula that alters that fact. In a world labor market, attempting to fix labor prices in one portion of the market, handicaps that labor force in world wide competition for jobs. The major reason, along with regulations and taxes, that many of our good jobs have gone overseas.

Once one realizes that national borders means little in the current and future business world, one can start to realize that governments cannot protect workers through legislation or regulation. Too many potential competitors that will take advantage of the distortion.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Let's see, robots don't come in late, don't call in sick, don't get pregnant , don't screw off, don't make a mistake and you want company's to get rid of million dollar investment 's areb you crazy?

 

[TeaParty911]

Herpderp, what is wrong with the economy? Hey u no that ur voices dont matter until you look the president in the face and say that hey mr.president why dont u go back to the senate in Illinois and sacapuntas

 

[DennyO]

Lets not forget that robots create spin off jobs. They have to manufactured, programmed and maintained and those jobs are higher skill and higher paid. To the extent American factories can employ automation properly, they can leapfrog over the off shore producers and shift jobs back here. If you can make a washing machine or a car in America for even a small amount more than it costs to do so overseas, the manufacturer can still come out ahead by reducing the shipping costs, which are non-value added costs.

 

[Silhouette]

Yes, there are quite a few people ignorant of the intricate interplay between human labor and economic health, and you are obviously one of those. You are so locked in on the consumption effect on the economy, that you ignore the rest. Every attempt to interfere with natural market forces creates inefficiencies and distortions in the affected markets and artificially raises prices in those markets.

Labor is a market, just like any other market and is affected by the same natural market forces as any other commodity. Neither you, I, nor government can derive some magic formula that alters that fact. In a world labor market, attempting to fix labor prices in one portion of the market, handicaps that labor force in world wide competition for jobs. The major reason, along with regulations and taxes, that many of our good jobs have gone overseas.

Once one realizes that national borders means little in the current and future business world, one can start to realize that governments cannot protect workers through legislation or regulation. Too many potential competitors that will take advantage of the distortion.

OK, let's run with your premise for awhile.

What happens when sales suddenly and sharply fall off then "with no apparent explanation" [except the one in the OP here] and don't pick back up again and companies, along with the US economy as a whole, begin to do a death spiral that cannot be recovered from?

That's why those bankers are jumping to their deaths recently BTW.

When you boil it all down, refusal to see the worker/consumer as integral to the economic beast is why they are jumping to their deaths. Take a tip from Henry Ford. You pat your workers on the head and it's the same as patting yourself on the back. It worked for him and worked well.. It turns out that doing the decent thing is also good business... There will be no micro-fixes for the US economy this time. The only thing that will save it is a macro-fix. And those at the very top of the piles of gold in this country can look in a mirror and thank themselves that this is so. It's been allowed to go on for so long, to such a blind extent that now only major surgery will save the patient.

A little generosity and consideration of others goes a long way. I hope that generosity becomes a part of human decency again, so that we may all take it to the bank.