Carney 15m jobs to go in UK due to automation

Noooooooo!

This process does not require revolutions. It's ongoing. And what you describe are not fortuitous coincidences but are unbreakably linked.

You don't have to plan for anything. The new businesses emerge automatically and when they do so they're hungry for people to employ.

Just leave it alone. Anything you do along the lines of "planning for it" is just going to foul it up.

Isn't planning ahead one of the main functions of government?

Your assumption that everything will turn out fine if you leave it alone is rather sweet, but hardly backed up by experience.

For the love of Darwin, please listen!

 

Why are we not all unemployed, or doing work of "low quality" already when all our jobs from 200 years ago have been taken by combine harvesters?

If you cannot explain this then your entire train of logic is complete crud.

Your train of logic is highly suspect though.

You are making this 'invisible hand of the markets' type of argument but at the same time being a Brexiter you want to nobble the biggest single market there has ever been by ending free movement of people.

Don't get me started on Carney.

 

 

I'll try again. New technology makes people more productive. A worker armed with a new machine might do the work of 2 workers without in the same time. Said worker, so armed is now twice as productive and (minus the cost of the machine) will draw up to twice as much pay, or work fewer hours, or some combination of the two.

This is how it has always been and how it always will be. It's not magic or happy chance that it's absolutely always worked this way in the past. It's completely inevitable.

Or said worker works half the hours and has his pay cut in half, or does the work of 2 workers for the same pay, and the boss pockets the difference. said worker doesn't complain because there are millions of desperate unemployed who will do the job for next to nothing if he doesn't want to.

Now baring in mind people like Sir Philip Green are in charge, which do you think is most likely?

Your train of logic is highly suspect though.

 

You are making this 'invisible hand of the markets' type of argument but at the same time being a Brexiter you want to nobble the biggest single market there has ever been by ending free movement of people.

The single market is not an engine of free trade beyond Europe.

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 10:36 ----------

Or said worker works half the hours and has his pay cut in half, or does the work of 2 workers for the same pay, and the boss pockets the difference. said worker doesn't complain because there are millions of desperate unemployed who will do the job for next to nothing if he doesn't want to.

 

Now baring in mind people like Sir Philip Green are in charge, which do you think is most likely?

Everybody gains. Why does it matter if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too?

You can't get away from the central point. The process is ongoing over centuries and if you were right we'd all be poorer that centuries ago and we'd almost all be unemployed. The wrongness of your argument is staring you in the face.

The weight of facts stacked up against you is emmense.

The single market is not an engine of free trade beyond Europe.

 

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 10:36 ----------

 

 

Everybody gains. Why does it matter if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too?

You can't get away from the central point. The process is ongoing over centuries and if you were right we'd all be poorer that centuries ago and we'd almost all be unemployed. The wrongness of your argument is staring you in the face.

The weight of facts stacked up against you is emmense.

But the poor won't get richer will they? What's better about having your pay cut in half or being unemployed? It will need legislation and corrective taxation to make sure this happens, and a government with the will to make sure it happens, in the face of opposition from greedy Corporations.

The central point is that in the past there was little Globalisation, and Mega Corporations of comparable size to today were not in control of governments. You cannot compare the past to today - we are undergoing an unprecedented shift in power and wealth which will eventually affect everyone.

At the moment the according to the OS, every household is over £3,000 a year worse off than before the 2008 crash. That is a devastating drop for the poorest and is beginning to creep up the middle class.

The single market is not an engine of free trade beyond Europe.

If you check out the number of free trade deals the EU has, and where negotiations are ongoing then it's clear you are lying about that.

There are only a handful of countries where some kind of agreement, interim agreement, or negotiation is not already in place.

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 13:42 ----------

Everybody gains. Why does it matter if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too?

You can't get away from the central point. The process is ongoing over centuries and if you were right we'd all be poorer that centuries ago and we'd almost all be unemployed. The wrongness of your argument is staring you in the face.

The weight of facts stacked up against you is emmense.

Why do you persist with this. You have argued that globalisation means that we must accept that we need to level down while other poorer countries level up. That has happened (in a patchy way that targets social groups and regions) to an extent already and in the UK and the US whole regions have voted in protest against the process. People have already lost and it seems, to me, totally ridiculous to argue that automation can make things better for them having voted for change. Automation is not the change they are looking for. Carney's recent warning is very serious.

If you check out the number of free trade deals the EU has, and where negotiations are ongoing then it's clear you are lying about that.

 

There are only a handful of countries where some kind of agreement, interim agreement, or negotiation is not already in place.

 

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 13:42 ----------

 

 

Why do you persist with this. You have argued that globalisation means that we must accept that we need to level down while other poorer countries level up. That has happened (in a patchy way that targets social groups and regions) to an extent already and in the UK and the US whole regions have voted in protest against the process. People have already lost and it seems, to me, totally ridiculous to argue that automation can make things better for them having voted for change. Automation is not the change they are looking for. Carney's recent warning is very serious.

The EU has a number of trading arrangements with other markets. I wouldn't call them free trade agreements.

I said that developing nations would level up faster than us. That's not the same thing.

My point stands and has not been countered.

Yes it has.

Our standard of living is falling. Life for many people is getting harder and shows little chance of improving any time soon. We have more people in poverty. Social mobility has slowed and in some cases come to a full stop. Dissatisfaction abounds and has resulted in the rise of right wing politics and nationalism across Europe. All this can be verified.

And this is before the process has even got into gear properly. When it truly takes hold it will not be pretty and it will be unstoppable. This is only the start, and politicians should be taking note. The warning signs are all there. Now is the time to put plans in place and avert a social disaster.

Everybody gains. Why does it matter if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too?

But the whole point is that the gap increases.

You can't get away from the central point. The process is ongoing over centuries and if you were right we'd all be poorer that centuries ago and we'd almost all be unemployed.

But as a percentage, employment has decreased since were scything in the fields - in those days, it was work or die (or steal) and the economic pyramid was a lot more compressed than today.

These days we are caught between low manpower costs nations and the more highly automated nations - we are neither, therefore to compete we eiether have to decrease our manpower costs (which we won't be able to do with the brexit-related reduction in workforce) or increase automation.

By increasing automation we put job at risk, but there is an upside, and that is that we are (and always have been) a knowledge based economy, just poor on the exploitation part of the knowledge. Tools are now becoming more available whereby we can start to benefit from the knowledge without losing the value of it overseas.

The apparent increase in employment is due to many things - massaging of the figures in what 'unemployed' means, zero-hours contacts, and the fact that the trickle-down effect from highly skilled jobs is greater.

The EU has a number of trading arrangements with other markets. I wouldn't call them free trade agreements.

 

I said that developing nations would level up faster than us. That's not the same thing.

My point stands and has not been countered.

The EU trades quite freely (there can never be pure free trade) with most of the world already or has ongoing negotiations to make that happen.

You seem to have missed the reasons for people voting in protest against the globalisation process. Towns, cities and whole regions have been damaged by the globalisation process. In effect they have levelled down already. It has happened. The rug has been pulled from under their feet and they have voted for change.

Automation does not offer that prospect. It means even less work to go round. Fewer jobs. This is not the creative destruction brought about by previous technological paradigm shifts. This is destruction of jobs with nothing on the horizon to replace them.

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 19:23 ----------

But the whole point is that the gap increases.

 

 

 

But as a percentage, employment has decreased since were scything in the fields - in those days, it was work or die (or steal) and the economic pyramid was a lot more compressed than today.

 

These days we are caught between low manpower costs nations and the more highly automated nations - we are neither, therefore to compete we eiether have to decrease our manpower costs (which we won't be able to do with the brexit-related reduction in workforce) or increase automation.

 

By increasing automation we put job at risk, but there is an upside, and that is that we are (and always have been) a knowledge based economy, just poor on the exploitation part of the knowledge. Tools are now becoming more available whereby we can start to benefit from the knowledge without losing the value of it overseas.

 

The apparent increase in employment is due to many things - massaging of the figures in what 'unemployed' means, zero-hours contacts, and the fact that the trickle-down effect from highly skilled jobs is greater.

We may have some slight advantage as a service and knowledge based economy.

Carney estimated somewhere approaching 50% of UK jobs could be under threat. A recent study put the percentage of jobs in India at risk from automation at 69%!!!!

Sad to say I'm part of an industry (data centres) which is relentlessly automating. We control sites now where we have halls full of servers and only a couple of people physically present sometimes. When I started in the business that would have been unthinkable.

The single market is not an engine of free trade beyond Europe.

 

---------- Post added 11-12-2016 at 10:36 ----------

 

 

Everybody gains. Why does it matter if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer too?

It depends how you define richer. In real terms or otherwise? If in REAL terms then you are saying that the rich-poor gap must get smaller as that's how it works. If you are saying in real terms get richer, i.e. be able to buy more stuff then yes that. Although as has been said before, countries with small rich-poor gaps have lower crime and a higher happiness index, so I'm sure I am so content with the rich getting richer even if that does mean making the poor poorer (it actually makes it more likely we'd provide the minimum for all, elevating all from absolute poverty in Britain)

---------- Post added 12-12-2016 at 09:51 ----------

But the poor won't get richer will they? What's better about having your pay cut in half or being unemployed? It will need legislation and corrective taxation to make sure this happens, and a government with the will to make sure it happens, in the face of opposition from greedy Corporations.

 

The central point is that in the past there was little Globalisation, and Mega Corporations of comparable size to today were not in control of governments. You cannot compare the past to today - we are undergoing an unprecedented shift in power and wealth which will eventually affect everyone.

 

At the moment the according to the OS, every household is over £3,000 a year worse off than before the 2008 crash. That is a devastating drop for the poorest and is beginning to creep up the middle class.

Anna has a point. The SOLE aim of a business is to make money, therefore letting businesses sort themselves out simply allows them to maximise their profits. That's all well and good in a society that deserves to be back a thousand years, but we've hopefully progressed beyond that and doffing ones cap to the masters, so businesses do need legislation to ensure that a good proportion of the extra profits they get from automation goes back to the country that allows them to generate their wealth in the first place. Clearly sensible taxation is the way to go, but companies find creative ways to dodge this, meaning that we do need to change things and quickly. In fact we have the opportunity to do just that when we leave the EU, but we will? Will we bloody ********.