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What will happen when all the low skill jobs are gone?

eeguy

So Enda Kenny came under fire for calling the people of Castlebar whiners when they said there was no recovery in the west of Ireland.
Castlebar has had a series of factory closures since 2008 and the service industry has suffered too as a result.
Up and down Ireland (and the UK), factories in small towns are closing and will never be replaced. Any factories that have opened in recent years are in or around cities and are heavily automated, having only a small core staff to maintain production.
In the next 2 decades automation is going to really take off replacing traditional low skill jobs in manufacturing, transport and retail.

So what happens when thousands are made redundant through automation?
What happens when anyone who drives or does any repetitive task is made unemployable as it's cheaper and more efficient to automate the process?
Is it the end of civilisation as we know it?

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Maximus Alexander

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Building and maintaining railways worldwide since the invention of steam was labour intensive giving millions of jobs for a over a century

But not nearly as labour intensive as the tasks that the trains made redundant. The same applies to robotics and computers. Designing, building and maintaining automated systems is labour intensive, but less so than the tasks it replaces.

Otherwise you wouldn't bother building trains or robots.

diomed

When there was no more need for farm horses they stopped breeding them.
When there is a surplus of workers ....
Be careful when you visit your doctor. :pac:

mahoganygas

diomed wrote:

When there was no more need for farm horses they stopped breeding them. When there is a surplus of workers .... Be careful when you visit your doctor.

Early communism was born out of the aftermath of the plague in the 1500's. Europe's population plummeted and all of a sudden a farm labourer could threaten to work at the farm down the road unless he got a pay rise. Labour was scarce!

Sh1tbag OToole

I wonder how many dolebashing threads there will be in AH when this day arrives

beach_walker

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

I wonder how many dolebashing threads there will be in AH when this day arrives

It'll all be automated, no human boardsies will be needed.

Paramite Pie

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Nope. People will adapt as they've always done. Those who can't or won't adapt will suffer.

But technology may very well advance faster than peoples ability to adapt. It's like saying people who are on the dole must all be lazy - in the future it'll be "oh they just can't adapt -- it's their fault".

Of course there will be new jobs created but a lot more lost. I know a guy who works for a multinational and he alone is the entire European Office. He's only paid so he'll be there if something goes wrong. If everything runs smooth (and it often doesn't because of human error - not the computer/servers!) he has nothing to do. If he wasnt there company could loose millions for every minute there's a problem. The current model wont work - we need more start-ups and less monopolies.

Cheaper tech could boost start-ups so we might see to return to more localised economies just like those Craft Beers. "Craft food" or even an equivalent "Craft Phones" will be the hipster trend, due to 3d printing.

The low skill jobs will include HTML/CSS (web design) and easy programming like Javascript/Python. Digital labour will be cheap but hardware maintenence could get more expensive, more specialised.

The obstacle to all this will be large Corporations and their patents; smaller companies or individuals may struggle to challenge legal claims against them - even if they're in the right.

Like the microchip - the future is of businesses is smaller.

ScumLord

Paramite Pie wrote: »

Of course there will be new jobs created but a lot more lost. I know a guy who works for a multinational and he alone is the entire European Office. He's only paid so he'll be there if something goes wrong. If everything runs smooth (and it often doesn't because of human error - not the computer/servers!) he has nothing to do. If he wasnt there company could loose millions for every minute there's a problem. The current model wont work - we need more start-ups and less monopolies.

But I wonder how many jobs this guy has created by making whatever service he's maintaining cheap enough that more people/companies can afford a service that may have been out of their reach when it took hundreds of people to do the same job?

It's all swings and roundabouts. A company makes a more efficient process that requires less human labour so reduces their cost, which means their product is more accessible to more people/companies, creating new jobs/industries that end up employing more people than were lost in the original company. It could even be that it created more satisfying jobs than the ones lost too.

The obstacle to all this will be large Corporations and their patents; smaller companies or individuals may struggle to challenge legal claims against them - even if they're in the right.

I think patents and copyrights are becoming utterly pointless as time goes on. Even look at music, there's a huge restriction on what a person can do thanks to copyrights saying this particular sentence or harmony is owned by a corporation. It's the same for all industries. There is a right way to do something but you can't do it that way because the people who discovered that method first own the right to use it. It's going to have to be something the human race abandons in time.

Like the microchip - the future is of businesses is smaller.

I think so too, the problem is we're eating up resources faster and faster. Localised production and design may become the norm for a while but we'll probably start eating through resources rapidly because there won't be the same level of efficiency when your average Joe makes something compared to a corporation trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency and money out of everything.

Boskowski

tomwaterford wrote: »

Robot/automatic driving will never take off to a large extent...as too many risk and differevt factors to account for

Oh it will. The risk assessors will tell us that automated vehicles are statistically safer (and cheaper) and then it will be done.

eeguy

Boskowski wrote: »

Oh it will. The risk assessors will tell us that automated vehicles are statistically safer (and cheaper) and then it will be done.

In the next 30 years it looks like every taxi, bus HGV train and road sweeper will be automated to a high degree.

Online shopping and self service have already reduced the requirement for retail workers and that trend will continue.

Most processed food is never touched by a person and I would predict that in 20 years, an item of clothing could go from raw cotton to your door without a single human involved in the manufacturing and delivery chain save for the fashion designer.

LionelNashe

eeguy wrote: »

So Enda Kenny came under fire for calling the people of Castlebar whiners when they said there was no recovery in the west of Ireland.
Castlebar has had a series of factory closures since 2008 and the service industry has suffered too as a result.
Up and down Ireland (and the UK), factories in small towns are closing and will never be replaced. Any factories that have opened in recent years are in or around cities and are heavily automated, having only a small core staff to maintain production.
In the next 2 decades automation is going to really take off replacing traditional low skill jobs in manufacturing, transport and retail.

So what happens when thousands are made redundant through automation?
What happens when anyone who drives or does any repetitive task is made unemployable as it's cheaper and more efficient to automate the process?
Is it the end of civilisation as we know it?

I'd say that the old Marxist idea might become more important: that the owners of the means of production will get richer. The workers will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs, so the price of labour will go down.

Tele-working and interconnectivity will also push down the price of labour. We've already seen a lot of call-centre jobs outsourced to Ireland from the US in the last few decades, and to India from the west as well.

Even some so-called high-skilled jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence sooner than people realize. It may seem like science fiction but there's a lot going on in this area.

So the rich will get richer and income inequality will grow. What happens then will depend on whether we have governments who impose tax systems that redistribute wealth for the benefit of all, or whether the wealthy end up running the governments, which already happens to an extent in some countries. I think that Marx said that the workers would revolt at this point, and that capitalism would fail. I don't think so. I think it's more likely that some kind of status quo would be reached where the rich were ridiculously rich and everyone else had just enough from the state to barely survive.

Boskowski

LionelNashe wrote: »

I'd say that the old Marxist idea might become more important: that the owners of the means of production will get richer. The workers will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs, so the price of labour will go down.

Tele-working and interconnectivity will also push down the price of labour. We've already seen a lot of call-centre jobs outsourced to Ireland from the US in the last few decades, and to India from the west as well.

Even some so-called high-skilled jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence sooner than people realize. It may seem like science fiction but there's a lot going on in this area.

So the rich will get richer and income inequality will grow. What happens then will depend on whether we have governments who impose tax systems that redistribute wealth for the benefit of all, or whether the wealthy end up running the governments, which already happens to an extent in some countries. I think that Marx said that the workers would revolt at this point, and that capitalism would fail. I don't think so. I think it's more likely that some kind of status quo would be reached where the rich were ridiculously rich and everyone else had just enough from the state to barely survive.

I agree partially. But the thing is they can automate and make redundant as much as they like they still need someone to buy all that stuff that is being produced. No good to any producer if everyones is sitting on their arse on some minimum dole and can't afford to consume anything.

flas

Corporations need customers,without them they make no money,if people can't work due to automation then no money to buy corporations products/services,so something will be worked out...

And from most stories on this future automation, accountants are the first to go,which is not a low paid unskilled job...

Collie D

Most HR departments in large companies have always been automated.

screamer

Same thing will happen as has always happened, low skilled workers will find themselves on welfare and sadly in many cases so will future generations. It's all well and good to bring high skilled jobs but there are people who do not have high ability they are manual workers. Without jobs being created to target that pool of workers it's the dole queue for them unfirtunately whilst we continue to import workers to fill the high skilled jobs that nett nett has zero impact on unemployment figures. It's about time the heads that run the country put their heads to work. Look at the huge manufacturing industries in Germany. Yet we close then down and ship them out as if theyre something we don't want here.

crossmolinalad

It,s about time for a robot tax so people can get a basic income and start ending the dole

c montgomery

crossmolinalad wrote: »

It,s about time for a robot tax so people can get a basic income and start ending the dole

The dole is as basic an income as there is.

[Deleted User]

c montgomery wrote: »

The dole is as basic an income as there is.

The difference is that the dole is paid because you "can't" find a job, whereas a basic income is paid whether you have a job or not.

Technically speaking, for employees, it's the tax free part of your wages as in the first $XXX (depends on circumstances) that you're paid before you start to pay tax.

In the future, I suspect that "Limits to growth" will kick in as fossil fuels & many of the rarer elements that support modern electronics become scarce, we could see a reverse of certain automated systems because it'll be cheaper to employ a human drone than a robot.

Capt'n Midnight

One aspect of the large corporations is they can undercut local businesses. But in a lot of cases it's because they are better at tax avoidance. For areas with slim margins it's practically the only competitive advantage they have.

Offshoring jobs to cheaper places could be reduced if you did two simple things.

First have import tariffs on places that don't follow EU health and safety legislation. So if the only way you can make it cheaper is by putting workers at risk then we don't want it.

Second. Since we have unemployment closing a centre here means people on the dole so government tenders and sub-contracts jobs to be offshored they must cost at least the dole less than than having them here. Otherwise we are paying extra for the dole.

TTIP is interesting in that it would allow multinationals to sue governments publicly again a subsidy for corporates that smaller business can't match. AFAIK it doesn't allow us to apply US laws and so execute US CEOs for actions that that cause deaths. I'm thinking of multiple pharma price rises not just that venture capitalist goul .

Capt'n Midnight

Deleted User wrote: »

In the future, I suspect that "Limits to growth" will kick in as fossil fuels & many of the rarer elements that support modern electronics become scarce, we could see a reverse of certain automated systems because it'll be cheaper to employ a human drone than a robot.

Limits to growth ?

Insulation, public transport, telecommuting and renewables will make a big dent in our minimum energy needs. The CO2 problem could be dented by exposing more rocks to the air. Really. It would cost a lot but it's technically feasible. Mountain weathering by the uplift of the Himalayas took a lot of it out before.

Rare Earths aren't.
The earths crust is mostly Oxygen and Silicon. Iron and Aluminium are also high. Some materials are rare, but recycling of old electronics may be a good source especially since the trend is towards smaller features or thinner wafers. Energy usage during fabrication is also dropping.

Amazon uses Humans in it's warehouse because for now they are cheaper but they will be replaced.

Unfortunately call centres look to be here for the foreseeable future. And worse they'll be for the stuff that can't be easily done on line which means more of the calls will be from problem, difficult or angry customers.

Elemonator

The howiyas will have more to moan about

All joking aside though, some doors may close but others will open. We'll adapt to the situation.

gctest50

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

..................

Amazon uses Humans in it's warehouse because for now they are cheaper but they will be replaced.
......

Seems they've quite a few already, 15,000 in this :

[Deleted User]

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Limits to growth ?

Just how many mobile phones can you "consume" in a year, or clothes can you wear or just about any other consumerable that you can think of?

The point is that our economy is built on people increasing consumption of stuff for infinity, that simply can't happen!

The availability of fossil fuels & raw materials aren’t the only things to consider. But i do agree that the remaining jobs are the ones that are too expensive to automate or require personal interaction, like call centre staff or carers.
Most jobs in the hospitality & retail sectors can never be replaced either, but they can be done away with when there is an economic downturn.

Capt'n Midnight

Deleted User wrote: »

The point is that our economy is built on people increasing consumption of stuff for infinity, that simply can't happen!

consumer society is very recent. During WWII most of Europe recycled everything. So really wasn't until the 60's that it started and not until the 80's that mass consumerism took off.

Pay by weight comes in here in a few months, even for recyclables.

Son Of A Vidic

eeguy wrote: »

What will happen when all the low skill jobs are gone?

Well I suppose the bankers will have to sign on then. Or maybe just learn some skills of actual value...:pac:

ScumLord

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

First have import tariffs on places that don't follow EU health and safety legislation. So if the only way you can make it cheaper is by putting workers at risk then we don't want it.

This a thousand times. It makes no sense to bring in worker protection here and then for us to end up buying from abroad because we're not willing to pay for the measures we insisted be brought in to protect us in the work place.

Living in space solves all our problems. Resources are never ending, there are no land issues, just build as much as you need.

donegaLroad

when all the low skilled jobs are gone, there will only be high skilled jobs available = knowledge economy

Speedwell

When all the low-skilled jobs are gone, they won't really be gone; they'll be reassigned to specialists and professionals, and the low-skilled way of doing the low-skilled jobs will become the substandard, possibly legally impermissible, way of doing them. Think of it as similar to letting the government come into your kitchen at home and marking all of the possible health and nutrition violations that it would mark if you were running a restaurant out of that kitchen. Hell, the way my mother raised her three children 40 years ago would be considered child neglect, if not abuse, these days (and based on what we know about children these days, it might in truth have been neglectful and abusive). I know someone who sold his office-cleaning services based on being an informed professional armed with the latest health and safety data. If that model takes hold, you won't even be able to be a low-skilled toilet wiper.

eeguy

I'd be incredibly fearful of the societal impact that automation will make in the next 20 years.

Are we going to see riots and protests similar to the Luddite movement when transport workers find themselves out of work with zero market for all their skills and experience?

What about low wage workers around the world who can't find work because a machine can now make clothing and shoes faster than a human possibly could?

What about electronics manufacturers who's entire assembly is now automated in a clean room environment with no place for human assembly line?

What about retailers who move entirely online and operate out of automated warehouses?
Or b&m retailers, who have automating checkouts and help screens instead of staff?

It worries me that all the sh*te jobs that put me and millions like me through college will be gone and the only jobs left are those which require creative thinking, artistic flair, complex movements and co-ordination and the jobs that people won't accept being automated (hospitality work etc).

ScumLord

eeguy wrote: »

What about low wage workers around the world who can't find work because a machine can now make clothing and shoes faster than a human possibly could?

Clothing in particular may be one thing that can create a much more diverse market for itself. When clothing machines become cheap enough every town could have it's own locally produced clothes. Cities could have loads of shops popping up, trending for a while until the next in fashion designer comes along. Maybe someone in a small town with a clothes producing machine can sell licensed copies of the designs from cities. Improved clothing producing machines could bring high end Haute couture to more people as you don't have to pay for the one off made by one highly skilled designer. Instead you're buying the design and a machine puts it together in the same way it would have been done by hand.

What about retailers who move entirely online and operate out of automated warehouses?

Everyone moves into sales and customer support. It would be great if instead of just pocketing the difference companies would reinvest some of the cash saved into proper after sales support.

Or b&m retailers, who have automating checkouts and help screens instead of staff?

Still need people to oversee the whole process. The automated checkout isn't going to do anything to make sure anyone pays. Even packing shelfs is something that's probably beyond AI for a while due to the shelfs changing so often. I could actually see shelf stacking becoming a more professional job in the future.

It worries me that all the sh*te jobs that put me and millions like me through college will be gone and the only jobs left are those which require creative thinking, artistic flair, complex movements and co-ordination and the jobs that people won't accept being automated (hospitality work etc).

Artistic jobs are already over supplied.

The way businesses work are changing too, they're trying to work around having to have geniuses/experts, departments are getting larger with people specialised more into smaller parts of the process. So rather than have one guy that's absolutely fantastic they have a team of people that only need to be decent at their part. In the scenario of depending on the fantastic guy, if something happens to him everything grinds to a halt. In the second scenario if something happens to one or more people just replace them, the training won't even be too elaborate.

So we are generating more jobs through the process of building intelligence redundancy into our endeavours.

B.A._Baracus

It is a very serious issue.
Oddly enough my dad was recently talking about jobs that were around in the 60s and 70s that are completely gone today. I couldn't help but think if more of these jobs were still around they would have helped out more with people in the recession.

But one thing for sure is that more and more people will be born and another boom will happen followed by a recession. It's rinse and repeat. I can't help but see it getting worse in future recessions.