Re:American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots
by coldtea on Sunday August 07, 2016 @06:18PM
(#12244011)
The idea of decreased shipping costs might not pan out at all (at least at first).
First, the initial (expensive) investment in the self-driving trucks will offset the wage gains from not hiring truckers ----, so shipping costs will remain where they are mostly for the first few years at least until this is balanced.
Second, the "increased spending"/"creation of new jobs" effect might only be relevant if the shipping costs are a significant part of the final price of a product. From what I've seen, it's at most 10% (at most), and less for the average item. That's why we can have $1 stuff that comes all the way from China.
But, let's accept that this (reduced retail prices) will happen, there are other things I don't see working with this idea:
>Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
Which, more likely than not, wont involve people with trucking skills.
And most likely wont involve domestic labor either, most things are made abroad (China, etc) anyway.
>It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
That's because your whole job sector hasn't been deprecated when you're forty (or approaching)...
>Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors
That was in a time those other endeavours had a huge boom and needed tons of hands (and even so, millions of ex-farmers ended up getting the short stick).
We don't have an industrial revolution expanding the need for workers now, we have a software/automation revolution slowly decreasing workers demands sector by sector.
In fact we haven't had a need for more workers for quite a few decades -- what we did is inflate, as much as we can, the services sector to compensate for it instead. But there's only so many service type jobs really viable, plus automation also begins to eat into them, and with the squeezed middle classes pinching pennies its even bleaker for them (being non essential et al), even if decreased shipping costs turn out to mean a (huge and unrealistic) 10% more income.
First, the initial (expensive) investment in the self-driving trucks will offset the wage gains from not hiring truckers ----, so shipping costs will remain where they are mostly for the first few years at least until this is balanced.
Second, the "increased spending"/"creation of new jobs" effect might only be relevant if the shipping costs are a significant part of the final price of a product. From what I've seen, it's at most 10% (at most), and less for the average item. That's why we can have $1 stuff that comes all the way from China.
But, let's accept that this (reduced retail prices) will happen, there are other things I don't see working with this idea:
>Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
Which, more likely than not, wont involve people with trucking skills.
And most likely wont involve domestic labor either, most things are made abroad (China, etc) anyway.
>It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
That's because your whole job sector hasn't been deprecated when you're forty (or approaching)...
>Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors
That was in a time those other endeavours had a huge boom and needed tons of hands (and even so, millions of ex-farmers ended up getting the short stick).
We don't have an industrial revolution expanding the need for workers now, we have a software/automation revolution slowly decreasing workers demands sector by sector.
In fact we haven't had a need for more workers for quite a few decades -- what we did is inflate, as much as we can, the services sector to compensate for it instead. But there's only so many service type jobs really viable, plus automation also begins to eat into them, and with the squeezed middle classes pinching pennies its even bleaker for them (being non essential et al), even if decreased shipping costs turn out to mean a (huge and unrealistic) 10% more income.