Automation is coming no matter what. We're heading for a future where there won't be enough jobs available and more people will have to drop out of the work force. I'd rather rip off the band-aid now than try to artificially delay it by paying people absurdly low wages.

Or, companies can blur the lines between worker and manager, thereby employing people to do more work for less money and cutting out the higher paid, management-only types. Or, at least one or more lower levels of them.

As I have phrased it for quite a while now: we have a population that is surplus to need

Just look at the banking industry. Banks all around me have been closing their drive-thrus. Couple PNC branches closed. People just don't need to actually go to a bank that often. Wonder how many teller jobs have been lost in that industry.

I was in my local Sam's Club recently. They've semi-recently introduced a "Scan & Go" app that allows the customer to use their phone to scan the bar code of an item to purchase and then pay for the purchase when done, completely eliminating the checkout process for those who use it. As I was walking toward an empty checkout line to go past it and out, the cashier asked if I was ready to check out. I told her no, that I had used Scan & Go. She responded, "Yeah, I LOVE that app!!!"



Uhhhhhh.....

It's not really basic economics. The "higher wages for our employees will cause inflation" is just dumb stuff CEOs trot out to scare the public into thinking they should make less.


I'd love to see a breakdown of how much Amazon benefits from our infrastructure, economic system, and technology. Then compare it to the $0 they pay in taxes each year.

I agree automation is coming, but I'm not sure there won't be other jobs created. We've gone from an economy that grew things, to one that made things, to one that sells things, each transition rough for some but overall improving the economy (and unfortunately for Jon, increasing standard of living and population). I imagine there will be an increase in health and climate industries.

In a perfect world teens would be the only ones working retail. Both the employer and employee see each other as something they have to tolerate to get what they really want- $.

I think Amazon/Wholefoods, and fast foods are already making the transition (social engineering) to using our phones to buy and order. That New York Amazon store is amazing and scary. Cashiers in a few years are going to be as rare as travel agents today. Add self driving/delivering vehicles and all of a sudden the largest company in the world has just eliminated most of its overhead.

It sounds like we need to blame our politicians and tax policy rather than Amazon.

Also WTF is happening with the stock market today?

Actually, travel agents do still exist (I know at least 4 personally, odd thought that may be) ... they're simply used by the upper single-digit incomes

Service would simply become something that only the economic elite get.

edit to add: make that 5 travel agents, now that I think about it (and if you're generous with the phrase I "know"). 2 exclusively corporate, 3 consumer.

Good morning, Mr. Tyler. Going... down?

Reaction to interest rates going up, supposedly

The travel agency business is actually growing a little bit right now. Organizations like state governments use them. And they can save individuals a ton of time at zero or minimal added expense.

That's going to be the big one. There are a LOT of truck driving jobs out there currently. (not to minimize the loss of cashiers, but those big box stores, at least, are going to need people to do around the store jobs at the least)

The Supreme Court denied a stay in a case where ND has implemented voter ID. The ID must have physical address and thousands of Natives use P.O. boxes. The law was passed shortly after Heitkamp won six years ago with strong support of Natives.

In GA, the Sec. of State is blocking 53,000 registration applications, 70% of them from black residents.

The GOP is working hard to make sure only the right people get to vote.

Truck drivers will never go away though.
The thought is that automation can improve fuel economy and safety. But I cant imagine a time in our lifetime where 80,000lb machines are going to be on the road with passenger vehicles without a human in place at the very minimum for emergency input.


Heck locomotives have been automated for at least 30 years ad there is still an engineer on board everyone.

I think you'll see it. They want pilotless planes in our lifetime and they are much further along in development with trucks. The US interstate system lends itself perfectly for the kind of non stop cruising is what they want to use them for.

So more dollars chasing the same amount of goods does not lead to inflation?

It's that raising the minimum wage does not lead to more dollars. It just redistributes them. Every dollar that goes to an employee comes from somewhere else. The government can cause more dollars by printing more of them.

I think that it's more that our current system does a really bad job of maximizing the human potential out there. I'm not saying that I have a solution, but we haven't really changed our thoughts on how to allocate human labor since the industrial revolution. It is due for an update.

I still think the driverless vehicles is a long ways away. I know some companies have circumvented cities they have well-mapped routes out beforehand. But there are still a ton of things to work out.

First, Level 4 is considered highly automated. It can do what a human can do. But it requires an extremely well-mapped area. It requires good weather. This limits it a great deal to cities. Also to only specific routes that don't provide issues (lot of human traffic, confusing intersections, etc). So a city like Boston would be much more difficult than one like Chicago due to it's grid. This technology is still likely a decade away at best from becoming a consumer staple in cars. And that's assuming we've hashed out all the legal issues.

Level 5 is where you'd need to be for truck drivers. Where you can fill up a truck and send it cross country without a driver. No one is even remotely close to this. People working on this say it's still just science fiction at this point. They're probably 20 years away or more.

By then who knows where the world will be. I still think drone technology is the sneaky technology that will surpass the need for a lot of the self-driving technology. Sure it can't transport everything, but a lot of smaller goods can be shipped from city to city without the hassles of the issues the road offers. Imagine Amazon filling up a small plane with goods to be sent from Kentucky to Illinois and having a machine fly the whole thing from one warehouse to the next. Imagine you moving your home and instead of filling up a moving truck you fill up a container that gets put in a drone and flown to around your new destination in a fraction of the time. It would require an overhaul of flight patterns and such (to not interfere with traditional air travel), but it would work.

To start, it would be nice if more families could get by as single-income households. Or if you didn't have to work until 75 to be able to survive as a senior.

There aren't more dollars in the economy. Inflation is caused by excess money in the system (usually by printing too much or providing easy access to it at low interest rates).

There's an argument that raising minimum wage causes prices to go up. But in Amazon and many other businesses cases, that's malarkey scare tactics. So many factors go into price of a product or service.

I heard the most likely first use will be at ports and factories . A huge number of drivers, within a closed system. Plus, the air health risks to the drivers has been devastating.

I recently discovered my bank's app. After physically going to the bank at least every other week for ~25 years or so, I haven't been in one in 2 months. Feels liberating.

If we get to the point where national or worldwide goods delivery can be done automatically - we really don't need jobs. Bring on the robot slaves!

You are actually still paying it, just that you are paying it to Medicaid and SNAP through your taxes. Most of these hourly employees at McDonalds qualify for food stamps and medicaid. So McDonalds right now keeps their prices low by having you subsidize their benefits (or lack thereof) through taxes.

Also, not everything is a good. I pay a goodly amount (probably too much, really) for internet, cell service, satellite.

This is spot-on.

To add to this, the false argument that gets trotted out is that McDonalds now has to raise their prices to compensate. It's a simplistic view of economics and people making it likely know that going in. There are other factors at play.

If McDonalds raises their rate to $15/hour, they may get a better employee. Someone who is more efficient and better at their job. Someone who provides more value than the $8/hour employee.

There are other areas the company can cut. For instance, McDonalds made over $5 billion in profits last year. This isn't a company that is hurting financially and couldn't sustain it. In fact, it would be such a tiny percent of their profits in the first place. You can look at executive compensation. Their CEO made over $21 million last year. He's not really worth that to the company and I doubt would quit if it was cut a bit.

And for those who say they wouldn't do either and just raise the prices, they can't. They have competition. If McDonalds decides to sell their burger for $2 instead of $1, Burger King and Wendy's can jump in and undercut them.

To see a raise in prices you'd have to see one of two things. 1) The company unable to maintain profitability with the higher wage. 2) A company being a monopoly or forming a cartel with their competitors. Both of which are illegal.

Not quite spot on. About a 1/3 of McDonald’s workers are teens, another 1/3 is under 25-20. The over 25 group includes many of the managers and up. But yes, there are a lot, too many in the over 25 (especially single moms) that are being exploited by the corporate evil mongers.

Also, with 25 and under crowd the business model is actually attrition. They do not want employees to work more than 6 months. After that an employee is earning too much for a job they can get cheaper- thus the dummy proof kitchen. Often to get rid of these “good” workers they give them an awful management job, that usually gets them out.

In a way, it’s all more social Darwinist than we care to admit.

Nobody ever complains about inflation when rich people take more money.

How much of a raise do you think an employee gets after 6 months? They're pretty much making the same as when they started and that 6 months of experience is very important.

Top 1% own 38.6% in 2016


Bottom 90% own 22.8%.


A little kick at the bottom isn't going to tip the scales when the gap looks like this.

And Thu futures are bad also, down 350 or so.

If we are going to do this, let's get to a bear market and get it over with. Trump has good cover blaming the Fed so it won't necessarily be bad for the GOP mid-terms.

No stopping automation for sure. New jobs will be created and many will be left behind in the transition.

I'm ready for self driving technology to go mainstream and do think Uber, truck etc. drivers are going to be endangered sometime in next 20 years.

All-in-all, a net positive for the economy and the US. If we don't lead the way, another country (e.g. China) will and definitely prefer to be in the fore-front.

TBH, I am looking forward to how she answers the questions.

Melania Trump Addresses 'the Jacket' and Husband's Alleged Infidelity in No-Holds-Barred Interview | Inside Edition

Benefits often kick in. But the most devious part is this is one of the fast foods most successful strategies at preventing unions. They know after 6 months workers can get uppity, so creating an environment where most leave is worth it. And again, promoting to management stems the unionization.

Yes, and already happening. Saw a study that said America is basically the only country where people like and prefer to drive and don’t want that freedom taken away. Whereas most other Asian countries can’t wait to rid themselves of driving.

I must not be the typical American. Driving to work and home every day is the single most unpleasant aspect of my life.

Would you rather take public transportation?

So they create an environment where the workers want to leave, but they also give them benefits? Exactly what is this changing work environment you speak of?

Can you imagine the freakout if Obama hosted a rapper in the WH and he said motherfucker to the press pool?

We do some work at the Charleston port and at the two remote intermodals. They already have automated "jockey trucks" at two of these three locations. Essentially its a big rig that backs up to a line of under carriages then moves itself over to the craning zone, the containers are set on the unders, the jockey truck drives over and back that carrier and container into a parking spot. The craziest thing is to watch at each end a human is required to set the hitch pin and pull it out to drop the trailer. Here is a truck driving itself around a yard, backing up perfectly....but we need bubba and a crow bar to pull a pin and win a landing gear down.

The guys you talk to there tell you stories of regular breakdowns, either component failures, loss of communications, signal interruptions. Whatever. The solution in that closed environment is when anything malfunctions the unit abruptly stops, a human can climb in and pilot the truck.


Ive got an employee with a Tesla Model S with the autopilot technology. Its insane. At 60 mph you can whip the wheel and it will self correct. She has demonstrated this....much to my undershorts dismay. I get that the tech is feasible. I just think you need a driver on board on stand by for when it breaks down.

:banghead:

Depends on the public transportation. I love taking the train in to work because I can sit back and read a book the whole time. Then again I get impatient and stressed driving in gridlock. Not a big fan of the bus though.

I have to admit that I look forward to the day that a self-driving car can take me to work while I read a book, play video games, or take a nap along the way.

Yes. Without a doubt. The only reason I don't is I currently work in a metro Atlanta area that refuses to allow MARTA expansion. I will soon be going back to school to get my Masters and will take public transit every day.

The threshold tipping point to where public transportation really takes off in a city is when it's faster and cheaper than driving. But what % of Americans live in a place, like New York or Boston, where that's true?

I live in a metro area of 750k where you can drive and park pretty easily wherever you want. So it's really tough to get people on the buses. Consequently, the buses only have very inconvenient hours, and they increase commuting time and greatly decrease flexibility of when you want to leave and where you might need or want to go along the way.

To be fair, the metro area votes no because 1) the current system is poorly run and no one expects that to improve as complexity increases and 2) the plan is largely tax the entire metro area (if not state) and improve very little for those outside city limits. Oh, and call anyone that doesn’t want to pay more taxes racist.

Snob County?

And GSU or Tech? Both are easily reachable from MARTA. I live a half mile from a MARTA station and work right next to another one. It's fantastic, I read tons of a books a year on the train.

1 is decidedly not true. It's ontime stats are comparable, if not better, than most mass transit systems in the country. 2 - if you want MARTA lines to your county, why the fuck shouldn't you pay for it? And 2.5 - if you don't want MARTA lines because it brings 'crime', you may just be using a dog whistle for black people.