Based on CBS 60 Minutes "Are Robots Hurting Job Growth"

[LiberalFighter]

It might be important to consider levying a robot tax that is assigned to Social Security and Medicare. A higher tax if the robots are used in another country. As long as those robots reduce availability of jobs in the USA there needs to revenue to offset the loss.

[RKP5637]

1. Eventually, one day, the entire notion of what a job is will need to be rethought, as well as

how does an economy function in the 21st century.

[Hoyt]

3. Exactly. I wonder whether we will ever approach full employment again.

Technology has, and will continue to, replace many jobs. Our economic structure has to change to maintain some reasonable quality of life for those displaced. It's one thing when jobs are available. It's another, when there just aren't reasonable jobs for those who want them.

[RKP5637]

4. Yep, and that's where the distribution of wealth needs to be rethought ... and is that

going to be some herculean task. A society for the many just can not eventually function with the wealth and buying power cornered by a few percent. It will eventually collapse.

[hay rick]

7. +++

Well stated. This is one of our core problems.

[hedgehog]

10. I think we're in a similar situation to the 20's - when mass production

made a lot of goods, but people had no cash to buy.

[RKP5637]

11. Yep!!! Agree!!! n/t

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Not sure about job growth, but I wish they'd stop eating old people's medicine...

[RKP5637]

5. LOL

[Socal31]

6. Out-sourcing is not the only culprit to loss of jobs in the "rust-belt."

Automation has also put a dent into "blue collar" human labor needs. China will eventually see the same thing.

[Mopar151]

8. I build automation.....

spent Friday making special gripper fingers for a robot.

Thing is, "robots" are not solo performers. You don't take 'em out of the box and set them to work - there is tooling to mount (the "end effector&quot , work positioning devices, something to mount the robot to, and some pretty complex programming.

Thousands of hours go into building a "cell" like this

[Marie Marie]

9. Hmmmm, when robots have taken most of the jobs from us,

who do these companies think are going to buy their products? Further erosion of the working class which happens to be the engine behind a healthy economy. Remember the Henry Ford school of thought? I want to pay my workers enough so that they can afford to buy my cars. Corporations are so ignorantly short sighted.

[sadbear]

12. Ever read "Player Piano" by Vonnegut?

60 years old and very prescient.

[WestCoastLib]

13. Automation is changing where job growth is, more than eliminating it

But, it can cut into blue collar jobs, as they were defined in the 20th century.

Of course moving forward what it means to be blue collar will change as well. Your general, run of the mill, IT/Technical Support people was thought of as a high end job in the 80's and 90's, but really fits the mold of blue collar now, in terms of relative education and pay scale. And these jobs are always in high demand and getting more so, as many industries that last century had no need to hire any "tech people" find themselves with growing computer needs.

It hurts most, those people caught in between, of course. Aging in the job market with little need to develop computer skills until recently. The kind of people that have their kids troubleshoot their computers for them at home.