A study says that by 2025 the cost of a robot that does welding will be less than $2 an hour. That’ll keep Union Shop Stewards awake at night. Australia’s Dept. of Industry predicts that 500,000 high skilled jobs like accounting and finance will be replaced by robots and automation! That’s a lot of competition for a job.
…all when its time to: Buckle Up – Interest Rates Are Heading Higher (From 5000 Year Low)
I am old enough to remember a display for the press and the Auto workers union at one of Fords production lines.
Mr Ford was gloating and asked the head of the Auto workers Union if he could sign up the shiny new robot for a Union card.
The auto worker guy didn’t skip a beat, he asked Ford if he could sell the robot a car.
History did not record Fords answer.
I have worked with and around robotic welders at Nicholson Mfg. building barkers and various sawmill machinery.
Coupled with rotating positioners turning and welding massive frames and assemblies it is an intricate and exacting exercise in precise control.
Without them you are not competitive, with them there are fewer jobs, yes, but without them what you are making will sit because the guy down the street has more competitive pricing.
A race for the bottom line my friends, from humans at the beginning of the industrial revolution as cogs in a big machine, to watching an animated object eat your lunch.
Don’t be stupid … Ford is selling more cars to Mexicans, Chinese, and Indonesians. Ford could care less about the Fast Food industrialized American middle class. Ford economists know where their market resides.
“Australia’s Dept. of Industry predicts that 500,000 high skilled jobs like accounting and finance will be replaced by robots ”
Bean counters replaced by machines! Oh the horror.
Automation is fine, as a matter of fact, it’s a good thing.
If we’re so determined to displace workers with machines,why have we not looked into the most obvious profession; teaching?
With today’s technology,why are we busing kids for miles to huge propaganda factories staffed by highly-paid and well pensioned left-wing extremists only to have them not prepared for life after school?
Is it that our precious snowflakes need a parental substitute all the way through high school and college,or is it just that politicians are terrified of losing the votes of a well organized and very vocal group of cultists?
I remember the bean counters were written off 30 years ago. I remember hearing – “It’s on computer. There’s nothing for you to do. You don’t even have to type it.” From bean counters everywhere – bullshit.
“I remember the bean counters were written off 30 years ago. I remember hearing – “It’s on computer. There’s nothing for you to do. You don’t even have to type it.” From bean counters everywhere – bullshit.”
Agreed.
Has all the accounting software replaced accountants? It takes some degree of skill and creativity to decide between asset and liability, despite the fact that banks consider loans to welfare recipients assets rather than liabilities. 😉
and bullshit to you, Bubba nailed it. Automation will eventually decimate the “customer base” if politicians are too stupid to realize this, and take action. I’v preached this for some time, in real life. Dimbulbs like you don’t think deep enough to grasp this.
And Yeahwell, there is a shift coming in the financial arena, and it’s called “cashless society. When that happens there will be a large segment of the financial realm that will be fully automated, to the detriment of the tax payer.
Nevertheless, there will be epochal changes coming to the labor market during the next couple of decades. An industry spokesman recently speculated that 5 million truck drivers would lose their job due to automation. Robotic trucks are on the road right now. Fast food, same thing. What’s going to happen to all these people? What will they do for income? And why do we keep importing millions of unskilled workers at the same time? Big changes coming, folks, that we are not prepared to deal with.
Interest rates up. Why do I get the feeling that the US economy is due for a major takeoff. The US has the first truly pro-business president since Ronald Reagan – a 28 year drought. It has 8 years of anti-business government. Step back when the shackles are loose.
I disagree.
Folk said much the same about assembly lines.
The free market is part of nature. It cannot be successfully supplanted.
Assembly lines took the skills of the master locksmith, gunsmith, blacksmith and replaced them with a process, and displaced entire economic sectors.
Automation will replace the process workers with machines. Lower capital investment in the delivery of products to the people will turn more products into mere commodities. Lighters and pens used to be expensive, now they are almost free; available for very slightly more than the cost of the materials that went into making them. When this happens to cars, guns, planes and so forth, it will be a sea-change, like the sea-change industrialization brought in. 3-d printing and groups like def-cad will help.
The only danger is its use by the unscrupulous warlords who rule us, and in the end, they, as always, won’t be able to stop the hand of God. Half full and half empty are the same.
I might add that textiles are commodities now, thanks to automation, or near-automation.
Want clothes to keep you warm? They’re almost free.
Want clothes to look good in our status-driven world? Pay up.
I will also add that automation has yet to deliver a single ball-bearing to market without human intervention.
The simple processes that reap a financial reward, by replacing human effort Come first.
I don’t see the driverless vehicle amounting to much on the open road. Closed course yes. Too many intangibles for vehicles to be autonomous unless it’s a restricted motorway, which is coming, like a toll way.
Sweet potatoe is willing to sell out infrastructure.
Never thought I’d say it, but Harper started it.
Agreed.
Odd that the so-called capitalist on the right decry automation as the Devil’s spawn.
A couple years ago I picked up my brand new $50,000 trailer down south. Constructed of all aluminum, it had a considerable amount of welding done on it. Some by robot some by human. The stuff done by robot (friction stir welding) was flawless and needed no wire feed so there was no “extra” material. The welding done by human needed a wire feed and had a flaw in the frame that the factory fixed up. I actually met with the senior VP and the guy who designed the trailer, and he said he wanted to remove all human welding from the equation. I don’t blame him.
Two years later it cracked. But luckily I found it in time.
Thing of it is even the humble bearing is changing.
Embedded sensors tell of changing conditions long before failure, the information is transmitted wirelessly to the operator.
Yes there is still a human involved.
When the GMAW (gas metal arc welding) process arrived in my workplace people were very concerned.
Embracing the process brought us more work.
There are a host of trades that have disappeared, the world changes and we change with it or die out like the dinosaurs.
We now have virtual reality welding machines which takes all the variables fed into it from the welder operator and displays a virtual weld for his efforts with a critique telling him or her exactly what is good or bad.
A powerful and useful teaching tool which does not produce heat consume wire, electricity or rods.
You could use it on your kitchen table.
This has huge potential and points the way to an automated teaching system with minimal instructors or teachers.
The student will show up for class with a working knowledge of the process and already will have begun to imprint the “muscle memory” necessary to learning a complex skill
The welding program at VIU is the most expensive of all trades to run
I am still involved at 67 helping train young welders and fabricators my career has spanned over 50 years and isn’t over yet
I still have a contribution to make, playing it forward..
Interesting … sorta. Even when the fleet of AI robots take over … they still need factories to build things. And maintenance crews, and programmers, etc. All I was suggesting, is that the middle class customer base has simply been moved (with the factories) to countries who still see things like factories and capitalist production as good things and they don’t weigh them down with regulation upon regulation.
And if the customer base disappears, then a one-world government will emerge which will purchase all the robot-made goods and distribute them for FREE ! to everyone who wants or needs their widgets. It will be a Star Trek future where there is no need, no poverty, no money, no racism, no war, no greed, no need. Universal LOVE will rain down on everyone. Polar Bears will frolic with resurrected Unicorns singing and dancing to Disney songs. A world where the 85% of the population (that cannot do simple math) will create their “art” for all to enjoy. Didn’t you see how close Venezuela got to this beautiful world ? Sean Penn did.
In the meantime, might I suggest you would benefit from a little mood altering pharmaceutical …
Will robots replace priests , criminals,politicians, babies,hand bag designers, dogs,dentists, vocalists, etc