60 Minutes: Are Robots Hurting Job Growth?

60 minutesIn case you missed last night’s 60 Minutes.   Take the 13 minutes to view this fascinating piece about how technological advances, especially robotics, are changing the workplace and is causing unemployment.

We’ve wrtitten and posted many times on how technology is contributing to structural unemployment,

…as many as 10% of U.S. service sector workers — roughly 12 million people — could be laid off in the next five years as a result of mobile efficiencies.
Michael Saylor,  The Mobile Wave

Also see here, here, and here.

“Tech companies are creating plenty of jobs for robots.” Daniel Honan,  The Robot Hiring Boom Has Arrived

After viewing the piece think about a monetary policy tied to an unemployment rate that may be impacted more by structural forces and less by cyclical demand factors than policymakers currently estimate.

..in the not too long term…we are going to transition into an economy that is very productive but just doesn’t need a lot of human workers.
Andrew McAfee,  MIT

Could it be that financial repression, which lowers the cost of capital,  may be resulting in an unintended consequence of quickening the replacement of human labor by robots?  Just sayin’.

Click here to view the full 60 minutes piece. 

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(click here if picture is not observable)

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2 Responses to 60 Minutes: Are Robots Hurting Job Growth?

  1. Mike says:

    Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
    How labor is being displaced by technological innovation, in this case, robots. Nonetheless, we still see the Big Government planners handing their friends and cronies special tax credits and breaks for additional capital investment. In this cases, we’re paying the businesses to replace us! Such nonsense.

  2. The profits from increased productivity gained through roboticization need to be equitably distributed among the population; otherwise those profits just go to capital and don’t benefit society as a whole.

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