President Trump ran and was elected on
jobs. If you listen to democrats, there are more jobs than people,
which means labor must be Imported. Since the beginning of the
industrial age people have been worrying that machines would replace
humans, which is the main topic of this writing.
A friend and I were discussing
economics when he asked me what I thought about
minimum incomes and wages. I told him that in the USA the economy is regional and not
national. For that reason any minimum wage should be regional or
restricted to the state.
Minimum income is something we rarely
hear about. It is when the government pays every citizen a set
minimum wage. This would replace welfare and any other entitlement.
This would dramatically decrease the cost of such programs. Instead
of a dozen government agencies, there would be only the one sending
out payments.
Jeff, my friend, said, “Milton
(Friedman) knew in the 80's that automation would eventually consume
labor.”
He is correct that automation does
replace labor, but I disagree that it does in the long term. Every
since the industrial age began, people have been screaming that
machines would replace humans and that it could only end in disaster.
History tells us that hasn't been the
case. The country is more automated than it's ever been and some
suggest we have full or near full employment. Many of the jobs today
are in the service sector which tend to be low paying. This is
in-part due to automation, but it's also due to many other problems.
We have factories that are moving
offshore due to the cost of regulations, taxes, and labor. Other
factories are importing labor from south of the border because they
are willing to work for lower wages. Labor is a commodity which means
the more you have the less its value.
To fairly judge automation we must
remove all outside factors. We must remove illegal labor and we must
stop manufacturing from leaving the country. I contend it's far
better for the country if a manufacturing plant fully automates, yet
remains in the country.
Automation is efficient, which means
products can be produced much cheaper. Automation means you must
have high skilled workers to maintain the plant and its machinery.
High skilled workers make much more than low skilled labor.
There are other reasons we should do
whatever it takes to keep manufacturing in the country. People don't
often point this out, but it's a national security issue. Imagine if
the US went to war with the country that made 90% of our steel? That
would be disastrous. That and other such industries should remain in
the country even if it could be made fully automated.
Have you seen the movie Wall-e? It's
about the future when everything is done by machines and humans have
become too fat and lazy to even stand. This could very well be our
future. Machines may someday do all the jobs humans do today, but I
don't see the future of Wall-e. I see a future where people have the
time to be creative. There will be the entrepreneurs who will look
for ways to do things no one has thought of, or to make new products.
There will be those writing novels or
creating the music of the 23rd century. I don't believe
humans will leave it to robots to explore the stars. Humans will
always use automation to assist in all the new endeavors, but I don't
see them taking over.
As the people of 1900 couldn't see the
needs of today, we can't see the needs of people in 2117. By that
time we'll see farms growing human replacement body parts. Yes, there
will be a lot of automation to the process, but imagine the tech jobs
needed to sustain such an operation.
Jeff said, “I have seen automation
cut manufacturing department jobs by 75%.”
I have personally witnessed the same
thing. In my area we lost about 5,000 jobs because a company moved much of its operations to Mexico. Unemployment in the area hit the
high teens. A few years later the unemployment numbers were back to
normal. Some people took early retirement, some started their own
business or took their part-time business full time, while others
found employment elsewhere.
I had been told many times by people in
management a decade before those closings that labor intensive
manufacturing would be forced out of the country. 10% of those
workers could have kept their jobs had the facility been able to
fully automate. If those 10% could have kept their jobs, there would
have been far less impact on the local economy.
Elon Musk predicted that driving jobs
would be eliminated by automation. I have no doubt that will happen.
That would likely remove the need for trains since it's much cheaper
to build highways than railroads. We might see trains on wheels in
selected lanes or roads. Vehicle automation could end traffic
accidents and deaths.
We should embrace the future. The left
has always fought for communism or economic justice. Automation could
bring them that future where most needs are provided by machines.
Machines have already saved millions of lives. Automation is the
greatest thing to ever happen to humans, and as long as we use it
wisely, they will do unimaginable things.
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