CDZ White Collar Jobs at Risk in Robotics Revolution NOW!

[JimBowie1958]

This is karma coming back to bite the hand that bred it fer sher.

Hey, you managers that exported jobs all over the globe; your day is coming too!

The robots set to disrupt white collar work

The jobs most likely to be disrupted by automation will be roles in customer service, office and administration, but other kinds of work will be created.

"The cognitive era will create new jobs, such as robot monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists, and content curators," the report said.

"But the transformation of existing jobs resulting from reengineering a process to use cognitive support — such as turning low-value data entry work to higher-level analyst or customer-oriented roles — will be even more dramatic."

The reason clerical roles will be replaced is because they are highly repetitive and involve processes which are easy to replicate by machine, according to Neil Kinson, chief of staff at robotics firm Redwood Software, which automates back office and administrative processes in finance, supply chain and human resources.

"There was a very well publicized report by Oxford University that ranks your job relative to its likelihood to be automated by 2020," he told CNBC in a phone interview. "Top of the list of those jobs was highly repetitive clerical-type activities.

"Anything that is highly repetitive, that follows a repetitive role and uses some kind of technology, can be automated," he added.

 

[320 Years of History]

So what's the point? White collar folks, assuming they want to work, need to do the same things blue collar folks do: read the "job market" writing on the wall and develop/revise their skills in accordance with the coming changes.

 

[william the wie]

good find.

 

[Fishlore]

Lawyers doing research are being replaced by sophisticated search algorhthms. We are on the verge of robotic surgery done via the Internet. This is just the beginning. What does it mean?

In simple terms, production/wealth is produced by the action of labor on capital invested in tools and materials. The new information technology has increasing the role played by capital invested in its tools and decreasing the amount of skilled labor in the mix. The dynamic isn't all that much different from similar changes in industry over a century ago.

The problem is that more and more companies need fewer and fewer workers to make a profit. That is fine for the company, bad for the workers, their families, their communities. What to do?

There is no point in trying to prevent progress. That has never worked. There is only one answer: socialism.

 

[320 Years of History]

Lawyers doing research are being replaced by sophisticated search algorhthms. We are on the verge of robotic surgery done via the Internet. This is just the beginning. What does it mean?

In simple terms, production/wealth is produced by the action of labor on capital invested in tools and materials. The new information technology has increasing the role played by capital invested in its tools and decreasing the amount of skilled labor in the mix. The dynamic isn't all that much different from similar changes in industry over a century ago.

The problem is that more and more companies need fewer and fewer workers to make a profit. That is fine for the company, bad for the workers, their families, their communities. What to do?

There is no point in trying to prevent progress. That has never worked. There is only one answer: socialism.

Red:
I basically agree with the whole post.

I think, however, that the problem is not that companies need fewer human workers. That is not a problem at all, but merely a reality, and for producers/employers, it's a good thing. The problem is that too many workers refrain from -- for whatever reason -- or don't obtain/have the skills that employers demand.

Regardless of what job I want or will accept, I can't work at that job if the job simply doesn't exist. If the skills I have are what's needed for jobs that do exist, I have a couple options:

• In general, if I want to work, I must have the skills an employer requires for the job they have to offer.
• In general, if I want a specific job, I must have or obtain the skills an employer requires for that specific job. Lacking those specific skills for that specific job, I may yet be able to work, but I may find that I must take a job that requires the skills I have.

The above is how I see the matter because my labor (physical or mental) is the thing I have to sell in the job market. My success at selling my labor derives directly from what labor I have to offer. If I have no labor to sell that employers want to buy, I will be unemployed. That is the problem, and it is my problem, not the employers' or anyone else's. Because it's my problem, it is my responsibility to solve it; it is not anyone else's responsibility to solve it. It might be different were the state of things such that there are no jobs available, but that's not the case in the U.S.

 

[JimBowie1958]

So what's the point? White collar folks, assuming they want to work, need to do the same things blue collar folks do: read the "job market" writing on the wall and develop/revise their skills in accordance with the coming changes.

The point is that nobody is going to shed a frigging tear when white collar manager types get their crown jewels caught in the blender because they have done the same damned thing to everybody else for so long.

The only thing they will hear over the whine of the blender will be' Karma, bubba!'

 

[JimBowie1958]

Lawyers doing research are being replaced by sophisticated search algorhthms. We are on the verge of robotic surgery done via the Internet. This is just the beginning. What does it mean?

In simple terms, production/wealth is produced by the action of labor on capital invested in tools and materials. The new information technology has increasing the role played by capital invested in its tools and decreasing the amount of skilled labor in the mix. The dynamic isn't all that much different from similar changes in industry over a century ago.

The problem is that more and more companies need fewer and fewer workers to make a profit. That is fine for the company, bad for the workers, their families, their communities. What to do?

There is no point in trying to prevent progress. That has never worked. There is only one answer: socialism.

The one thing that is completely different is the rate of change and capitalization.

It took about 600 years for gun powder technology to become so well capitalized and the knowledge on how to make it so widespread that it went from a thing only specialists hired by monarchs could make (thereby enabling them to crush the provincial nobility) and wound up being so easily available that every black smith could make a fire arm and frontiersmen could compose their own powder from a mixture of 3 parts charcoal, 2 parts sulfur and 15 parts old dry batshit filtered through a water filter to get the crystals.

Mass transportation went from shipping canals to railroads to over road mule trains to personal trucks in about 300 years. Computers went from vacuum tube main frames to desk tops to laptops in about 50 years, and smart phone apps went from Apple restricted code to public Android code in about 5 years.

Soon, new products will roll out of the lab directly to a modularized fully automated and self maintaining factory with 100% capitalization, self installation and correction, with no need for engineers, salesmen, truckers, or workers of any kind blue or white collar.

The point is, we human beings are all in this together and the economic lines of class and economics are about to largely dissolve completely.

Jobs will be the Uranium of tomorrow.

 

[william the wie]

gangs, prostitution and gambling have been the refuge of the uinemployables for millenia. and decent jobs in the military, rent-a cops and so on will be available but will go begging. There is a chronic shortage of butlers for example and there has been for over a century. The list goes on and on.

 

[320 Years of History]

So what's the point? White collar folks, assuming they want to work, need to do the same things blue collar folks do: read the "job market" writing on the wall and develop/revise their skills in accordance with the coming changes.

The point is that nobody is going to shed a frigging tear when white collar manager types get their crown jewels caught in the blender because they have done the same damned thing to everybody else for so long.

The only thing they will hear over the whine of the blender will be' Karma, bubba!'

Well, okay. I'm not shedding a tear about folks who've currently demonstrated their reticence or failing to have read the writing on the wall some 20 years or more ago. Why would I shed one when the same thing happens to others?

Other:
There seems to be a recurring subtext, even sometimes more a context than subtext, that leads me to think you may have "something" against folks who find financial success in their lives. Am I correct about that?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Well, okay. I'm not shedding a tear about folks who've currently demonstrated their reticence or failing to have read the writing on the wall some 20 years or more ago. Why would I shed one when the same thing happens to others?

Well because most people are not sharp enough or interested enough to rad the tea leaves and that is what the elder leadership is for. But instead of leading and warning the public, the leaders of our society have chosen instead to exploit their advantage and engage in theft on a truly unprecedented massive scale.

The average Joe working at a mill who is now laid off and will lose his kids home and they will have to move back to his parents until he can find other work, while he has lost EVERYTHING he has worked and saved, that guy is a victim, though he will certainly deny it, not a culprit like the false leadership.

There seems to be a recurring subtext, even sometimes more a context than subtext, that leads me to think you may have "something" against folks who find financial success in their lives. Am I correct about that?

Yes, I do hate the financial parasites at the top of that particular food chain, as they got their without a doubt using insider trading and manipulating the markets, laws and financial system to favor themselves and rob those outside of their little clique of thieves.

I had developed an automated trading program that was successful, doubled my starting money after many ups and downs over a year, but the FOREX company I was getting access through was a bucket shop and I withdrew after a setback caused by their servers failure to execute a triggered order that cost me money. They finally paid me back and a partner as well, but I started researching the market more and found out the moral rot that is in the financial industry was just appalling and worse the higher you go up. IT isnt just Wall Street, but the rot extends into the COMEX and the Federal Reserve Banking System that engages in insider trading on a recurring basis through various means.

I think a good start to reforming our financial industry would be to take the top executives at Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo and hang them from the lamp posts based on the 99.99% probability that they are thieves of millions of USD from trusting, hard working clients across America. Then we can work further from there.

 

[Fair&Balanced]

Yep, as I said in a thread about this the other day. Computer advances keep moving the jobs computers and robots can do up the chain of production. Today we have computer algorithms that can replace paralegals, in ten years a robot will show up to defend his client in court.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Yep, as I said in a thread about this the other day. Computer advances keep moving the jobs computers and robots can do up the chain of production. Today we have computer algorithms that can replace paralegals, in ten years a robot will show up to defend his client in court.

What I have been calling for for about a year now, is for some thinking about what we can do about this coming crisis, and it will be a crisis shortly.

There is not just the matter of income, but also the psychological need people have to have a purpose in life and for a great many of the Middle Class that has always been their careers.

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money be renting out robots, making crafted objects that are unique and creative, etc. Returning to a system of barter to replace loss of income.

And what happens to government revenues as the jobs market contracts? How does it replace that revenue and still perform its needful functions?

This thing is a tidal wave coming and we are only just now observing the water recede and thinking we are past the problem.

 

[Fair&Balanced]

Yep, as I said in a thread about this the other day. Computer advances keep moving the jobs computers and robots can do up the chain of production. Today we have computer algorithms that can replace paralegals, in ten years a robot will show up to defend his client in court.

What I have been calling for for about a year now, is for some thinking about what we can do about this coming crisis, and it will be a crisis shortly.

There is not just the matter of income, but also the psychological need people have to have a purpose in life and for a great many of the Middle Class that has always been their careers.

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money be renting out robots, making crafted objects that are unique and creative, etc. Returning to a system of barter to replace loss of income.

And what happens to government revenues as the jobs market contracts? How does it replace that revenue and still perform its needful functions?

This thing is a tidal wave coming and we are only just now observing the water recede and thinking we are past the problem.

The answer is actually rather obvious.

We need to end all welfare and enact a UBI. Of course said UBI must be restricted to citizens ONLY, and a removal of the anchor baby clause would probably be in order.

And if you then switch to a sales tax of some form or another rather than an income tax you don't lose government income .

Of course this will never happen, I mean our do nothing Congress can't even pass something as simple and obviously necessary as Kate's Law.

 

[jasonnfree]

Yep, as I said in a thread about this the other day. Computer advances keep moving the jobs computers and robots can do up the chain of production. Today we have computer algorithms that can replace paralegals, in ten years a robot will show up to defend his client in court.

What I have been calling for for about a year now, is for some thinking about what we can do about this coming crisis, and it will be a crisis shortly.

There is not just the matter of income, but also the psychological need people have to have a purpose in life and for a great many of the Middle Class that has always been their careers.

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money be renting out robots, making crafted objects that are unique and creative, etc. Returning to a system of barter to replace loss of income.

And what happens to government revenues as the jobs market contracts? How does it replace that revenue and still perform its needful functions?

This thing is a tidal wave coming and we are only just now observing the water recede and thinking we are past the problem.

As far as revenue lost, owners of robots should pay an income tax much like workers have to do. Tariffs were used in this country as a tool to protect and grow industries and subsidize misplaced workers, and it should be done now. Problem is the internationalists like obama and hillary who serve the money masters.
A pretty good read on the subject is "player piano" by Voneggut. The unemployed workers who were replaced by robots were given a stipend by the government so they could survive. Also, someone had to by the products made by the robots. Sounds socialistic I know, but the banks and big business aren't against socialism whenever they're in trouble and get government bailouts.

 

[jasonnfree]

Yep, as I said in a thread about this the other day. Computer advances keep moving the jobs computers and robots can do up the chain of production. Today we have computer algorithms that can replace paralegals, in ten years a robot will show up to defend his client in court.

What I have been calling for for about a year now, is for some thinking about what we can do about this coming crisis, and it will be a crisis shortly.

There is not just the matter of income, but also the psychological need people have to have a purpose in life and for a great many of the Middle Class that has always been their careers.

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money be renting out robots, making crafted objects that are unique and creative, etc. Returning to a system of barter to replace loss of income.

And what happens to government revenues as the jobs market contracts? How does it replace that revenue and still perform its needful functions?

This thing is a tidal wave coming and we are only just now observing the water recede and thinking we are past the problem.

The answer is actually rather obvious.

We need to end all welfare and enact a UBI. Of course said UBI must be restricted to citizens ONLY, and a removal of the anchor baby clause would probably be in order.

And if you then switch to a sales tax of some form or another rather than an income tax you don't lose government income .

Of course this will never happen, I mean our do nothing Congress can't even pass something as simple and obviously necessary as Kate's Law.

If we end all welfare, then goodbye federal reserve, and the US Military providing protection to corporations operating offshore.

 

[320 Years of History]

What I have been calling for for about a year now, is for some thinking about what we can do about this coming crisis, and it will be a crisis shortly.

So long as our economy is to any material extent a capitalist one, what needs to be done is people embrace the fact that they, not someone else, are responsible for and acting to effect their own success. It's not until an economy becomes nearly 100% a command economy does one's need to invest that kind of effort cease to exist.

I happen to think that if reading The Economist, or any of a swam of scholarly journal about economics, were a more important pursuit in the minds of most folks than is watching TMZ or whatever other drivel comes on television, people would know that the nature of economies change and that technology is a prime catalyst of the changes. Knowing that, they'd see new technologies, recognize their merit, and "put two and two together" and see that "now is not too soon" to begin to "retool" themselves for the coming changes. I mean really. Look at what were the top serially watched television programs in 2014-2015. What good is watching any of that going to do one?

Now don't get me wrong. I have no problem with folks entertaining themselves. I have problem with the prioritization of personal entertainment over personal development. Looking at that list, one sees that 60 Minutes just barely makes it into the top 20 most viewed programs and nothing on "geek TV" even appears in the top 100, perhaps not on the list at all. Nevermind that for all the importance macroeconomic policy holds for everyone, I've not once seen offered on "geek TV" programs that expressly discuss economics, economic history, etc. That said, there's often stuff about history and science. There was briefly a program that addressed one social science -- psychology -- but only in the entertainment context of "why folks do stupid things," and that was presented without much hard theory (science sense of the word). (Heck, just take the word "theory." How many folks do you think are aware that "theory" in science/social science has a very different meaning than it does in the "lay" world?)

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money be renting out robots

Perhaps so. I think there are other things with which people need to become comfortable, forget about whether that comfort level is "more." Foremost among those things in my mind is entrepreneurial spirit and drive. Why it is that, in a society as imbued with capitalist principles as the U.S.', so many folks think in terms of working for someone other than themselves is beyond me.

The answer is actually rather obvious.

We need to end all welfare and enact a UBI.

While that is an answer, it's hardly the only one. Heck, it's not even the only one that has a chance of working.

 

[Fishlore]

Lawyers doing research are being replaced by sophisticated search algorhthms. We are on the verge of robotic surgery done via the Internet. This is just the beginning. What does it mean?

In simple terms, production/wealth is produced by the action of labor on capital invested in tools and materials. The new information technology has increasing the role played by capital invested in its tools and decreasing the amount of skilled labor in the mix. The dynamic isn't all that much different from similar changes in industry over a century ago.

The problem is that more and more companies need fewer and fewer workers to make a profit. That is fine for the company, bad for the workers, their families, their communities. What to do?

There is no point in trying to prevent progress. That has never worked. There is only one answer: socialism.

The one thing that is completely different is the rate of change and capitalization.

It took about 600 years for gun powder technology to become so well capitalized and the knowledge on how to make it so widespread that it went from a thing only specialists hired by monarchs could make (thereby enabling them to crush the provincial nobility) and wound up being so easily available that every black smith could make a fire arm and frontiersmen could compose their own powder from a mixture of 3 parts charcoal, 2 parts sulfur and 15 parts old dry batshit filtered through a water filter to get the crystals.

Mass transportation went from shipping canals to railroads to over road mule trains to personal trucks in about 300 years. Computers went from vacuum tube main frames to desk tops to laptops in about 50 years, and smart phone apps went from Apple restricted code to public Android code in about 5 years.

Soon, new products will roll out of the lab directly to a modularized fully automated and self maintaining factory with 100% capitalization, self installation and correction, with no need for engineers, salesmen, truckers, or workers of any kind blue or white collar.

The point is, we human beings are all in this together and the economic lines of class and economics are about to largely dissolve completely.

Jobs will be the Uranium of tomorrow.

I quite agree with you about the accelerating rate of technological change. Jobs won't be as scarce as uranium because society will collapse in violent revolution before that extreme point is reached, What will happen, I think, is that the basis of job creation will shift from profit making to societal needs.

We need fewer and fewer worker-hours to make anything, including a profit, but society has lots and lots of jobs that it needs done even though they don't make much money. We will pay for those jobs in areas like the environment, education, healthcare and the arts, with money made by robots, It could be a golden age for the human race.

 

[JimBowie1958]

We need to end all welfare and enact a UBI. Of course said UBI must be restricted to citizens ONLY, and a removal of the anchor baby clause would probably be in order.

And if you then switch to a sales tax of some form or another rather than an income tax you don't lose government income .

While a UBI would help, I dont think a sales tax or VAT is going to do the job of replacing lost government revenues.

The only sectors of the economy that will continue to grow in profits will be the corporate sectors and financial sectors. Taxes on those sectors will have to be increased based on the size of their automated force, I think.

A tax per robotic device that is taking the place of a human job I think is truly necessary to keep the government funded.

If we lose Social Security, then the problem only gets worse, as replacing SocSec with a UBI that will be much lower is going to highten the pain of our transition to a jobless economy.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I quite agree with you about the accelerating rate of technological change. Jobs won't be as scarce as uranium because society will collapse in violent revolution before that extreme point is reached, What will happen, I think, is that the basis of job creation will shift from profit making to societal needs.

We need fewer and fewer worker-hours to make anything, including a profit, but society has lots and lots of jobs that it needs done even though they don't make much money. We will pay for those jobs in areas like the environment, education, healthcare and the arts, with money made by robots, It could be a golden age for the human race.

If society collapses in violent revolution, then whats the point of discussing what 'we' will then do. We will have a dictatorship and everything will be out of our hands.

 

[JimBowie1958]

So long as our economy is to any material extent a capitalist one, what needs to be done is people embrace the fact that they, not someone else, are responsible for and acting to effect their own success. It's not until an economy becomes nearly 100% a command economy does one's need to invest that kind of effort cease to exist.

We have to have a capitalist base with a thick layer of Nordic Socialism on top, combined with a UBI, VAT, and Robotic Labor tax to replace the lost income tax of human laborers, or so it seems to me.

I happen to think that if reading The Economist, or any of a swam of scholarly journal about economics, were a more important pursuit in the minds of most folks than is watching TMZ or whatever other drivel comes on television, people would know that the nature of economies change and that technology is a prime catalyst of the changes. Knowing that, they'd see new technologies, recognize their merit, and "put two and two together" and see that "now is not too soon" to begin to "retool" themselves for the coming changes. I mean really. Look at what were the top serially watched television programs in 2014-2015. What good is watching any of that going to do one?

About a third of the population has an IQ between 90 and 110, with 110 being the typical store manager. About a third is above that and about a third is below that.

That being said, I think your expectations in this regard of staying current on coming technology and meditating on what that implies is a bit unrealistic. We participants on this thread might do that, but Joe Sixpack and his boss will not, EVER.

Now don't get me wrong. I have no problem with folks entertaining themselves. I have problem with the prioritization of personal entertainment over personal development. Looking at that list, one sees that 60 Minutes just barely makes it into the top 20 most viewed programs and nothing on "geek TV" even appears in the top 100, perhaps not on the list at all. Nevermind that for all the importance macroeconomic policy holds for everyone, I've not once seen offered on "geek TV" programs that expressly discuss economics, economic history, etc. That said, there's often stuff about history and science. There was briefly a program that addressed one social science -- psychology -- but only in the entertainment context of "why folks do stupid things," and that was presented without much hard theory (science sense of the word). (Heck, just take the word "theory." How many folks do you think are aware that "theory" in science/social science has a very different meaning than it does in the "lay" world?)

I'm surprised we dont have death sports televised live yet.

We need to get people comfortable with the idea of making money by renting out robots

Perhaps so. I think there are other things with which people need to become comfortable, forget about whether that comfort level is "more." Foremost among those things in my mind is entrepreneurial spirit and drive. Why it is that, in a society as imbued with capitalist principles as the U.S.', so many folks think in terms of working for someone other than themselves is beyond me.

Yeah, I think much of that will come but it will be increasingly barter and less online sales or a shop at the mall.

I'm thinking people will join communities, probably built around churches, where they will have a quota to make things for and in return will have access to that groups barter system and a fixed 'hand out' from said group. All charity both ways, no tax and Uncle Sam left out of the cycle.

The answer is actually rather obvious.

We need to end all welfare and enact a UBI.

While that is an answer, it's hardly the only one. Heck, it's not even the only one that has a chance of working.

What other approaches do you see as viable realistic alternatives or supplemental activities to a UBI? Robotic Labor taxes? A jobs mongering approach to nationalist economic systems?