Australian Politics Forum - Robots creating a wages and employment death spira

Sir lastnail

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Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
May 23^rd, 2018 at 9:37am

Donlt worry. Mal will create another 1 million jobs making cups of coffee.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/we-should-fear-robots-says-imf/9786460

Quote:

Robots creating a wages and employment 'death spiral' warns IMF

The future of work run by robots appears to be a dystopian march to rising inequality, falling wages and higher unemployment according to a International Monetary Fund research paper.

In all cases, "automation is good for growth and bad for equality," the study found.

IMF economists Andrew Berg, Edward Buffie, and Luis-Felipe Zanna said currently the debate between the pessimists and the optimists is still unsettled.

However, they make it clear which side they fall on, right from the report's first quote appropriated from management consultant, Warren Bennis.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

"In scenarios where the traditional technology disappears and robots take over the automatable sector, the economy either ascends to a virtuous circle of ongoing endogenous growth or descends into a death spiral of perpetual contraction," the IMF report said.

"Unfortunately, the odds strongly favour the death spiral."

Low wages for an entire working life

While the research does not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, the work is influential in the framing of the Washington-based organisation's policies in its work to promote employment and sustainable economic growth.

The paper found it does not take a big increase in automation to stimulate growth, but in all scenarios workers find the transition difficult and inevitably fall behind in terms of wealth creation.

While real wage growth can materialise in "little as twelve years", the low wage phase can extend past 50 years."

"The 'short run' can consume an entire working life," the paper argued.

"Although the real wage increases in the long run, labour's share in income decreases most when real output increases most. The bigger the increase in the GDP pie, the less equitable the distribution of the pie."

The paper concedes the basic problem is that nobody knows what the world will look like in 2035.

It notes there is considerable disagreement among economists and technology experts about whether automation will destroy low-skill jobs or those at all skill levels, whether it will penetrate all sectors or just a few and even if it will reduce the demand for workers in all jobs or decrease it in some and increase it in others.

Quote:

Key points:

Workers are facing a "death spiral" of falling wages and rising inequality according to IMF report

Skilled wage could rise by 160pc and unskilled wages fall by 60 pc in worst case scenario

Conventional education and tax policies would have a limited impact in solving the problems

The research looked at a variety of scenarios ranging from modest substitution of labour by robots and artificial intelligence to a world where they take over all traditional technologies......

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DonDeeHippy Gold Member Offline Cool Stuff Posts: 2782 Australia Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #1 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 11:54am could goverments force companies to pay extra tax for every person replaced with a robot, if they cant find that person work, or maybe pay the person till work is found.
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lee Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 16400 Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #2 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:08pm DonDeeHippy wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 11:54am: could goverments force companies to pay extra tax for every person replaced with a robot, if they cant find that person work, or maybe pay the person till work is found. Ah the utopian dream.
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DonDeeHippy

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #3 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:37pm

lee wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:08pm:

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 11:54am:

could goverments force companies to pay extra tax for every person replaced with a robot, if they cant find that person work, or maybe pay the person till work is found. Wink

Ah the utopian dream.

yes corporate responsibility the endless dream. Wink

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lee Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 16400 Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #4 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:43pm DonDeeHippy wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:37pm: yes corporate responsibility the endless dream. Yes. responsibility for those not working.
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miketrees Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 6488 Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #5 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 1:14pm Globalization is creating equal wages across the world, so Australia is going to have wage reductions, low wage countries will have wage increases. Automation is Australia's answer to meeting strong business competition from overseas.
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Sir lastnail Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 29705 Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #6 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 4:24pm lee wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:43pm: DonDeeHippy wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 12:37pm: yes corporate responsibility the endless dream. Yes. responsibility for those not working. who will pay for their sh.t if no one is working ? Maybe more credit cards LOL
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Unforgiven Gold Member Offline I have sinned Posts: 8879 Gender:	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #7 - May 23^rd, 2018 at 5:12pm Never mind robots. Bobby was replaced by a hat stand. It was more productive because a hat stand doesn't make mistakes.
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longweekend58

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #8 - May 25^th, 2018 at 10:49pm

Sir lastnail wrote on May 23^rd, 2018 at 9:37am:

Donlt worry. Mal will create another 1 million jobs making cups of coffee.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/we-should-fear-robots-says-imf/9786460

Quote:

Robots creating a wages and employment 'death spiral' warns IMF

The future of work run by robots appears to be a dystopian march to rising inequality, falling wages and higher unemployment according to a International Monetary Fund research paper.

In all cases, "automation is good for growth and bad for equality," the study found.

IMF economists Andrew Berg, Edward Buffie, and Luis-Felipe Zanna said currently the debate between the pessimists and the optimists is still unsettled.

However, they make it clear which side they fall on, right from the report's first quote appropriated from management consultant, Warren Bennis.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

"In scenarios where the traditional technology disappears and robots take over the automatable sector, the economy either ascends to a virtuous circle of ongoing endogenous growth or descends into a death spiral of perpetual contraction," the IMF report said.

"Unfortunately, the odds strongly favour the death spiral."

Low wages for an entire working life

While the research does not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, the work is influential in the framing of the Washington-based organisation's policies in its work to promote employment and sustainable economic growth.

The paper found it does not take a big increase in automation to stimulate growth, but in all scenarios workers find the transition difficult and inevitably fall behind in terms of wealth creation.

While real wage growth can materialise in "little as twelve years", the low wage phase can extend past 50 years."

"The 'short run' can consume an entire working life," the paper argued.

"Although the real wage increases in the long run, labour's share in income decreases most when real output increases most. The bigger the increase in the GDP pie, the less equitable the distribution of the pie."

The paper concedes the basic problem is that nobody knows what the world will look like in 2035.

It notes there is considerable disagreement among economists and technology experts about whether automation will destroy low-skill jobs or those at all skill levels, whether it will penetrate all sectors or just a few and even if it will reduce the demand for workers in all jobs or decrease it in some and increase it in others.

Quote:

Key points:

Workers are facing a "death spiral" of falling wages and rising inequality according to IMF report

Skilled wage could rise by 160pc and unskilled wages fall by 60 pc in worst case scenario

Conventional education and tax policies would have a limited impact in solving the problems

The research looked at a variety of scenarios ranging from modest substitution of labour by robots and artificial intelligence to a world where they take over all traditional technologies......

morons like you said the same thing about the typewriter and the sewing machine, not to mention computers.

They were wrong then, too.

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Amadd

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #9 - May 26^th, 2018 at 2:49am

When I was young...so young, I envisaged that technology would someday allow the masses more leisure time and higher wages for hours worked.

The technology has advanced as I had expected, however, the money seems to have disappeared somewhat. Somebody is taking the profits, and it ain't the plebeian.

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longweekend58

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #10 - May 26^th, 2018 at 9:12am

Amadd wrote on May 26^th, 2018 at 2:49am:

When I was young...so young, I envisaged that technology would someday allow the masses more leisure time and higher wages for hours worked.

The technology has advanced as I had expected, however, the money seems to have disappeared somewhat. Somebody is taking the profits, and it ain't the plebeian.

Wrong... we do work considerably less hours and for much of the post-war period, wages have exceeded inflation by a considerable margin ergo we ARE making more money.

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AUSSIE: "Speaking for myself, I could not care less about 298 human beings having their life snuffed out in a nano-second, or what impact that loss has on Members of their family, their parents..."

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Gordon

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #11 - May 26^th, 2018 at 9:20am

Amadd wrote on May 26^th, 2018 at 2:49am:

When I was young...so young, I envisaged that technology would someday allow the masses more leisure time and higher wages for hours worked.

The technology has advanced as I had expected, however, the money seems to have disappeared somewhat. Somebody is taking the profits, and it ain't the plebeian.

Yet we all have way more consumables, live in bigger house and take an overseas holiday every second year.

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IBI

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freediver

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Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira
Reply #12 - May 26^th, 2018 at 10:32am

This has been going on for a few centuries now. The impact on wages has been all good. Those robots don't build and maintain themselves. The critics make an implicit assumption that with robots, we will create the same amount of goods with less human labour. The reality is that we use the same amount of human labour (whatever is available) to create an ever expanding array of goods - more of what we already had, and new products that could not have existed without the robots. These products are all for our benefit. They only exist because we can afford to buy them, and the robots make them affordable.

In the past, for one man to have an extravagant display of wealth (eg a yacht or mansion), it required many people living on the poverty line to build and maintain it. But by historical standards, we all live in mansions today, because there is far less human labour required to build one.

In the past, the majority of the populace was kept busy growing enough food. Today, only a few percent of the population is needed to keep everyone fed, thanks to robots.

Every time this happens, there are doom and gloom predictions that the people who lose their jobs to robots will be discarded as no longer necessary. But this is merely a reflection of the lack of imagination of the pessimist who can not see any way for the spare labour to be put to good use improving the human condition. What actually happens is that the lost jobs are replaced by new, easier, better paying, more fulfilling jobs.

Robots do not do our thinking for us. They do the dangerous jobs, the boring and highly repetitive jobs, the heavy lifting jobs, etc.

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Sir Spot of Borg Gold Member Offline WE ARE BORG Posts: 26460 Australia	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #13 - May 26^th, 2018 at 10:44am Lots of robots: 1 programmer Spot
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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 47364 At my desk.	Re: Robots creating a wages and employment death spira Reply #14 - May 26^th, 2018 at 11:23am There is no limit to the amount of robots, and the amount of code, we can make. We have only just cracked a robot that can walk on two legs. There is a large team of programmers behind it.
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