One of Trump’s big initiatives is moving Manufacturing back to the United States – especially in the Auto Industry:
But will that lead to more jobs given the automation revolution we are now seeing across most industries:
- CNBC – The real reason for disappearing jobs isn’t trade—it’s robots
- Yahoo – This graphic shows how vulnerable every type of job is to automation
- Geek Wire – Obama: Amazon is ‘killing traditional retail,’ and ‘relentless’ automation is the real threat to jobs
- Bloomberg – Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs
Update: New article from NYT today – America needs to focus on building new and better robots. (nytimes.com)
This automation problem leads to a lot of talk about Government’s providing a Basic Income to folks whose jobs are lost:
- Business Insider – Basic income experts say Trump could be the radical change America needs
- CNBC – Elon Musk: Robots will take your jobs, government will have to pay …
Most of the Basic Income discussion / action is in Western Europe right now – but Bernie Sanders got a lot of traction during the Presidential Election Cycle talking about it.
Not sure America is ready for this – but if you look at a chart of the participation rate in the labor market in the US – it is hard not to see that a radical solution is needed, and soon:
Simply put – we have too many folks in this country with no job skills, who are not participating in the economy in any meaningful way.
Not sure building Factories for Robots is going to fix this problem – unless we also include an education program to support training of American Citizens for the new – higher skill jobs required to be included.
Extra: Heavy subject – need to end with something light. I must admit – watching this video, I was hoping the Robot would take out one of the cats!
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