As if the Great Recession and the unending export of American jobs were not troubles enough --- the jobless figures anticipated today will probably reflect a tenacious 9.2% unemployment rate --- robots are taking more and more jobs away.
Journalist Dan Lyons writes in the July 25th Newsweek Magazine (p. 28) that the recession "permanently wiped out 2.5 million jobs." GDP has risen to post-recession levels, but the nation, he says, is producing the same levels of goods and services with 6% fewer workers.
He quotes a UCLA management prof-cum-forecaster to the effect that "Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white collar jobs are under attack by microprocessors."
Lyons notes that librarians, bartenders, taxi drivers, call girls, and soldiers may all be replaced by robots in the years ahead.
If this technology revolution is relentless, is there a solution? Well, how about if people who would have been working, and now can't, owned the robots? Might this not be a sort of Utopia? Think about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment