Robotics and the End of Work

[Citrus Dad]

The impact of increasing use of robotics on future employment has gained increasing interest recently.

Here's a Brookings Institute paper (http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/10/26-emerging-tech-employment-public-policy-west).

Here's a recent article (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/) in a series by the Atlantic.

[Gdeaver]

Absolutely.
My son who was in First for 4 years went on to get a degree in Mechanical engineering. He now works for a manufacture. His main focus for the past few years has been automating production lines. The number of good well paying jobs he has eliminated is substantial. While the displaced workers are a problem, the gains in productivity have kept the plant in the US. In fact the gains were such that a global conglomerate recently bought the company. This is the future.

[IKE]

I am just going to throw this interesting interactive info-graphic in:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state

Now, if many secretaries were replaced with Voicemail, Email, and the general ability to type your own stuff... I Imagine there are several trucking industries drooling over self driving trucks... Assuming a semi truck gets about 6 miles per gallon and is driven at 60 mph then it is using 10 gallons per hour or about $40 of fuel. Now if a truck driver makes about $20/hour.. then you are paying $60/hr shipping, but with a computer controlled driver, you could erduce the cost to your driving system which might be $20K, but would be good for 2 years would reduce it to $5/hr.... If refresh only costs $10K then you would reduce down to $2.5/hr Hmmmm. From a cost perspective, that would require getting truck from 6 mpg to 10-12 mpg to get an equivalent savings... Something tells me the most popular job for many states has an expiration date in the not too distant future.

[Tim Sharp]

Robots eliminate jobs, not work, and that is a very good thing.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-robots-eliminate-jobs-humans-will-find-better-things-to-do/

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/jobs-672022-new-robots.html?fb_ref=Default

The economics is pretty straightforward. If you can create more production with fewer resources, everybody wins.