Andrew Yang: Yes, Robots Are Stealing Your Job

[redqueen]

Self-driving trucks will be great for the G.D.P. They’ll be terrible for millions of truck drivers.

By Andrew Yang
Mr. Yang is a Democratic candidate for president.

Nov. 14, 2019

During the last Democratic debate, in Ohio, there was a moment that stood out. Elizabeth Warren and I got into a debate over the impact of automation versus trade on the elimination of manufacturing jobs. Joe Biden also chimed in, agreeing that the fourth industrial revolution is costing jobs, so it’s important to deal with the root causes.

Immediately, fact checkers were quick to point to a study showing that 88 percent of factory job losses from 2000 to 2010 were caused by automation. Yet, in the days following that debate, some prominent media figures asserted that the threat of automation is not real. The Times columnist Paul Krugman even called it “a sort of escapist fantasy for centrists who don’t want to confront truly hard questions.”

It’s easy to cite incomplete statistics that ignore the full picture and the situation on the ground, but I’ve done the math while spending time in struggling communities. Venture for America, the nonprofit I founded, sent me across this country, to Detroit, St. Louis, Birmingham, Ala., and other communities, where we attempted to spur entrepreneurship and create jobs. It was during this time when I spoke with workers who had lost their jobs to automation and couldn’t find more work. My organization was helping to create jobs, but automation was displacing tens of thousands of workers in these states. We were pouring water into a bathtub with a giant hole ripped in the bottom.

...

Our economic numbers need to measure what matters. We know stock market prices don’t mean much to the 78 percent of workers in this country who are living paycheck to paycheck or the 40 percent of workers who are a $400 bill away from financial crisis.

...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/andrew-yang-jobs.html

It's those 78% and 40% of Americans I'm most concerned about. As of 2018, less than 3% of Americans working hourly jobs were paid minimum wage or less.

The reason I prefer the Freedom Dividend to a $15MW is because I think it's a better idea to give 100% of Americans an economic boost, than 3% of Americans.

Ever since the 80's I have thought that what would help people and the economy the most is a 'bubble up' economy, instead of the trickle down version republicans implemented. I still think it is the best way to help and I hope democrats get behind this idea.

People can sneer and mock and laugh, but I will support Yang unless and until he drops out.

[Mr.Bill]

1. I've never gone to Mr. Yang's website and read much about

his ideas, but what is his answer to if the government sends me $1,000 a month, what keeps my landlord from raising my rent by $1,000? Assuming I have no lease and there's no rent control, of course.

[redqueen]

2. That's a really common response

And the answer is the same as it is when this same argument is used about minimum wage increases.

Competition keeps prices low for most consumer goods, despite raises in the minimum wage. And for the same reason, prices would follow the same pressures up or down whether or not there is a UBI. People won't suddenly not care about getting good value for money just because of UBI.

[Mr.Bill]

3. Thanks for your response.

I don't see how it will not lead to some degree of inflation, though.

[Amishman]

22. It won't be inflationary as it will have to be financed, money supply remains the same

Like M4A, it ends up not as an increase in the money supply, but instead a redistribution of wealth away from the top

[The Mouth]

4. And a common sense response, too.

Highly intelligent friends of mine have the same reaction.

To be honest, I think it one of the weakest parts of his platform, and one I care about the least.

I like Andrew because he has the best sense of how rapidly, in what direction, and WHY things are changing.

I refuse to throw shade at any of the democrats running, I'll vote blue, no matter who; but Andrew, like Bernie, is really more about ideas- important ideas, inevitable ideas every bit as salient to our lives as climate change - and getting these ideas into the national discussion.

I like Bernie, but he must know his odds, like Andrew's, of getting elected POTUS in 2020 are infinitesimal, but getting ideas out there that the nation as a whole needs to think and deal with is more important than any individual ego. The concepts Yang is talking about are actually bloody obvious, but painful for entire segments of the population nonetheless; the job that I worked summers in high school and JC at the warehouse is done better, cheaper, and faster by a robot. A logical extension of capitalism is that, unfettered, corporations will harvest and utilize every byte of data about you, from the porn you like to your genes to what you bought on Amazon yesterday. Like climate change,. it doesn't matter in the slightest what someone thinks about this trend, it simply is.

Bernie got people talking about economic inequality. Andrew is going to get, and is getting, people talking about the Future Shock that is going to hit us just as inevitably as rising sea levels.

[redqueen]

5. Are they economists?

Link to tweet

[The Mouth]

15. Nope

Most all of my friends are blue-collar working stiffs. I'm not saying UBI is a bad idea at all, beyond my expertise; I just think it merely one of Andrew's good ideas and one that really doesn't directly affect me too much. as I said, I'm glad the idea is out there, because going forward, a lot of those jobs of the kind I worked when younger just ain't there anymore, or soon won't be.

[redqueen]

16. Right, that's what I really wish was on more people's radar.

I work for a huge IT company so I'm seeing it close up.

[The Mouth]

17. My last position before this one was completely eliminated

due to automation. Boom, 26 people in this state: "So long, thanks for your service". They called the software'dispatcher', it dispatched our jobs.

[Amishman]

23. Yup, it will have a huge impact. I work in IT creating these systems

I work on creating and configuring origination systems within the finance and insurance industries. My last two projects have eliminated about 500 clerical and processing jobs, replacing them with about a dozen IT positions to maintain the systems

[redqueen]

24. Biden sees this for the threat it is

Which is why as of today he's moved up on my list, and Warren has gone down.

[JonLP24]

30. Supply & demand

That is what determines most pricing.

[Prosper]

6. Prosperity comes from making and selling goods and

services. Poverty comes from derivatives, futures, short selling, degregulation. Commodities Futures Modernization Act .... It is no mystery what had to be done. Give poor people higher paying jobs and prosperity follows. Force the trillions of dollars tied up in stagnating fee paying instruments back into building manufacturing plants to make products to sell. Spending money is good, Made in USA used to be sought and fought for. Invest in factories and problems are solved.

[redqueen]

7. Those days are over

Factory jobs are changing forever. We can invest and create jobs here, but there will never be plentiful, good paying jobs like there once was.

[Prosper]

11. That is only because laws have been passed to accumulate

large fortunes by paper trading. Tax non working money at a rate high enough that money will flow to brick and mortar factories producing Made In USA goods that used to be the desire of the world. Poverty is a choice imposed on half the population by financiers with no sense of the National Interest. Laws were passed that produced staggering fortunes that mesmerized the working poor. Consumerism is the economy of prosperity. The National Interest is a safe healthy happy citizenry that can take their families to Disney Word.

[redqueen]

13. Factories are being automated. They need 1/4 of the people

to run them. Machines need people to maintain them but again, the numbers of jobs just aren't there. And the skill level is mich higher.

The landscape of labor is changing.

[The Mouth]

18. "Changing"?

I'm thinking more along the lines what happened to Regula in Star Trek III

[redqueen]

19. Well some jobs can't be automated

Things involving teamwork or face-to-face communication, a lot of manual labor (plumbers, hairdressers, florists). But yeah, far far fewer jobs.

What's wild is I was posting about this on this very website years ago. I'm glad to have finally found a candidate who agrees with me that we should do something sooner rather than later

[The Mouth]

20. + 1000

I'm pretty fortunate, in a lot of ways. I'm 58, only 4.7 years to retirement (also in IT) government union job. I've worked lots of warehouse, construction, and agricultural type jobs, pretty much all of which I could easily see being automated even 30 years ago. As you point out, it's not that there won't be jobs, but there won't be that huge base of jobs that have been the backbone of the working class. The jobs that will be will require one or all of three things:

-Technical knowledge that one HAS to keep constantly updated
-Being physically on site to deal with a non-automatable issue (plumbers, mechanics, nurses)
-people skills utilizing emotional intelligence.

grabbing stuff from shelves, putting it into boxes and shipping it, picking fruit, making the same item over and over in a controlled environment are going the way of hunting down woolly mammoths with spears

[LanternWaste]

21. You seem focused on one cause at the expense of all other causes.

You inherently flaw your argument by using the qualifier "only" when other factors, just as critical in effect are also in play.

I'd suggest reading 'Rise and Fall of the Great Powers' by Paul Kennedy for a less linear form of cause and effect as it affects the nation-state and its economy.

[Prosper]

28. Make something desirable attractive and good and it

will sell. Trouble here is 50 years of stagnated wages eliminated consumers. Prosperity is a function of consumers. No money, no prosperity.

[redqueen]

29. Exactly. A UBI is a raise for everyone

Even unemployed / retired / disabled people

[Lucky Luciano]

8. Imagine the kinds of bubbles that would occur without short selling!

It does serve a purpose to put a check on prices.

[Prosper]

12. Short selling encourages actions to thwart success and

Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2019, 08:32 PM - Edit history (1)

create unemployment. The success of spectator sports is totally reliant on regulations guaranteeing equal competition. Time to go back to strict regulating , a comprehensive accelerating increasing tax code. Put money in the hands of people that will spend it. The right abhors legislated regulations because they stand in the way of tyrannical run businesses .

[Dopers_Greed]

10. There isn't enough work for everyone

I work in the media industry, and with modern software, one video person can do the work that used to require an reasonably-sized team.

What are we going to do? Force companies to pay extra people to surf YouTube all day?

[myohmy2]

9. so...

...what's the answer?

" 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small business fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business. "

https://www.fundera.com/blog/what-percentage-of-small-businesses-fail
……………

" We need to move to a human-centered capitalism, where the market serves us instead of the other way around. That starts by investing $1,000 per month in every adult so that we can build a trickle-up economy, as I have proposed, with the proper measurements and incentives. "


...giving every adult a $1000 a month to throw down another capitalist rathole will not solve our problem...when

"...70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business. "

...no, we need to CONTROL AI, automation and out-sourcing...that means a strong government with resources to do the job...


...would you depend on or trust a surgeon, a lawyer, an auto mechanic, a plumber, a meat slicer at Walmart, that failed most of the time?

...I wouldn't...

[redqueen]

14. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck

I can't afford to patronize local businesses. Can you?

I know a lot of people who would love to be able to go out to eat once in a while. Or have someone else cut their hair, or groom their pet.

That bubble up $ circulating in the economy means more customers. The consumer dollar is the engine that drives the economy.

There is a reason so many economists endorse this idea.

[Skidmore]

25. And Yang is going to profit

from that worker displacement. I have a visceral reaction to Yang. He appears to me to be someone trying to assuage his conscience for carrying out his work with singular clinical focus. I am also put off by some of the supporters whose writings are tinged with 'too bad but brave new world, cope'.

[redqueen]

27. How is Yang going to profit?

Really curious what would make you think that.

[onetexan]

26. No snear from me here, i think he's a great guy with innovative ideas

And should be selected as a member of the cabinet once Dems are in power.