A sobering read - something to consider for your paper, and maybe your career:
In a recent “60 Minutes” piece, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos proudly displayed his company’s next delivery vehicles: drones. It’s only a matter of time, according to Bezos, before Amazon’s faux-pelicans will be dropping packages at your door (and hopefully not on your head), speeding up deliveries and bringing instant gratification one step closer. No one thought to ask the obvious – what happens to all those redundant delivery folks?
The constant replacement of humans by machines presents policy makers with a looming crisis — not enough jobs to go around. It also destroys the easy confidence with which many on the left argue for higher minimum wages. Incomes aren’t stuck because employers are hard-hearted so-and-sos, which is the recurring accusation of those who, like Paul Krugman, have never actually had to compete in the real world. Wages are stuck because so many individuals can be replaced by competitors overseas who earn far less or by machines, which earn nothing.. . . . The retail industry is just one in which workers are at risk. It’s hard to find many jobs that are not threatened by automation, by Internet expansion or by overseas competition. That includes people working in the fast food industry — where union organizers are currently pushing for a big jump in minimum pay. They should not assume that burger joints won’t eventually automate. Last year, Momentum Machines in San Francisco previewed an apparatus that created 360 burgers an hour. Noting that the fast food industry spends $9 billion a year on wages, the company predicted a lively reception for its space- and cost-saving machine.
Companies and workers successfully competing against all these forces must rely on the right combination of productivity and price. Purposefully jeopardizing workers’ livelihoods by driving wage costs higher is risky and in the end unproductive. Add to the mix uber-low interest rates, which tilts investment towards capital and away from labor, and those urging a higher minimum wage are not on the side of workers.
