I've become concerned over the past 5-10 years. Current innovations are not analogous to those in the past.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/ups...ep-up.html

Quote:A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.

Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.

And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise. Even with the economy’s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago — and lower than any point in the 1990s.

Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.

Doing more with less has been the goal and ambition of businesses and people every where. I've even read that robots can now perform heart bypas surgery.

If we think welfare is bad now, just wait until those who barely strive to get up and work everyday are forced out. I wonder if we'll have a corrupt virus sent to the robots like that movie, iRobot... And how ironic, Apple calls all their product i(something), and iRobot came out before all of that. Creepy

(12-17-2014 04:31 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  I've become concerned over the past 5-10 years. Current innovations are not analogous to those in the past.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/ups...ep-up.html

Quote:A machine that administers sedatives recently began treating patients at a Seattle hospital. At a Silicon Valley hotel, a bellhop robot delivers items to people’s rooms. Last spring, a software algorithm wrote a breaking news article about an earthquake that The Los Angeles Times published.

Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work.

And over the same 15-year period that digital technology has inserted itself into nearly every aspect of life, the job market has fallen into a long malaise. Even with the economy’s recent improvement, the share of working-age adults who are working is substantially lower than a decade ago — and lower than any point in the 1990s.

Economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology would create as many jobs as it destroyed. Now many are not so sure.

No , you're right. This time it is different. We are heading towards a functional post scarcity world. The big issue we face is how to manage the transition. Because even with unlimited stuff, there will still be a decent portion of any society that will covet power.

In my white collar industry, we are actively and aggressively building proprietary operations software to replace certain human roles and functions. We won't necessarily lose jobs because the new operations software will allow us to increase our sales, but we probably won't grow people wise unless we have to open a few new offices.

However, artificially boosting the minimum wage to worker of zero economic value will only hasten this reckoning by subsidizing low skilled job replacement by intelligent machines. It's inevitable.