Automation Threatens 1.5 Million Workers In Britain, Says ONS (theguardian.com) 125
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected. Supermarket checkout assistants have already borne the brunt of the phenomenon, the Office for National Statistics found, with 25.3% of jobs disappearing between 2011 and 2017. Other jobs where automation has taken its toll include laundry workers, farm workers and tyre fitters, among which numbers have dropped by 15% or more, said the ONS, as machines have replaced labor.
Women are most likely to lose out, said the ONS. "The analysis showed a higher proportion of roles currently filled by women are at risk of automation; in 2017, 70.2% of high-risk jobs were held by women." It named Tamworth, Rutland and South Holland in Lincolnshire as the areas most exposed to automation -- partly reflecting a relatively high level of farm workers -- while Camden in north London has the workers least at risk. But the ONS analysis also found many workers -- especially those in their mid to late 30s and who work in London and the south-east -- have little to fear from the rise of the robots. Those with higher levels of education appear to be better protected. "The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university," the report says.
Women are most likely to lose out, said the ONS. "The analysis showed a higher proportion of roles currently filled by women are at risk of automation; in 2017, 70.2% of high-risk jobs were held by women." It named Tamworth, Rutland and South Holland in Lincolnshire as the areas most exposed to automation -- partly reflecting a relatively high level of farm workers -- while Camden in north London has the workers least at risk. But the ONS analysis also found many workers -- especially those in their mid to late 30s and who work in London and the south-east -- have little to fear from the rise of the robots. Those with higher levels of education appear to be better protected. "The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university," the report says.
Wow this story changed in 5 minutes (Score:1)
It went from pro automation and don't worry people are smart enough to pick better careers to ALL MY GOD THE BOTS ARE COMING!!!
WTH slashdot editors... WTH...
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Yes; we would not want to be subjected to a diversity of opinion. Slashdot is already myopic enough; if you want perfect echo chamber you can have that at facebook. Just mute everyone you disagree with.
What to do with all the people? (Score:1)
Learn to code and hope their low IQ can keep up?
No need to bring more people into the UK with no and low skills?
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No worries. We'll employ them writing articles about how robots are going to take all our jobs away.
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No extra need for years of education on robot repair/installing/testing?
Robot design ethics.
Make robot production line laws to have to use no skilled humans for maintenance?
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No worries. We'll employ them writing articles about how robots are going to take all our jobs away.
Half can do that, and the other half can write about economic fallacies [wikipedia.org].
If automation really caused job losses and impoverishment, Western Civilization would have collapsed in the 1800s, and countries like Ethiopia and Afghanistan that wisely avoided the "productivity catastrophe" would dominate the world.
Re:What to do with all the people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem isn't so much about the total economic output, but rather the distribution of the wealth. Those without a job would also like a piece of the pie.
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Problem isn't so much about the total economic output, but rather the distribution of the wealth.
Most of the gains in the global economy are going to those at the bottom. Ask a garment worker in Bangladesh how globalization is working out. They have seen their incomes soar.
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Ah yes, the rest of us should learn how we should capitulate from those populations that are already broken and submissive. Only then can we properly beg for scraps. Look at how much their lives improve through the song and dance of globalization! That extra dollar a month is a boon to their families! Never mind that it doesn't keep pace with inflation, they aren't educated enough to know that and as long as the globalists have their way they never will be. Their standard of living is almost not considered
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Those without a job would also like a piece of the pie.
Fuck the pie! People want to eat!
Rich people: Those fuckers want some of my luxuries. Fuck 'em if they can't figure it out on their own!
Poor people: I want to eat tonight! Is that so much to ask for?
The rest of us: The rich and the poor are BOTH greedy!
Re: What to do with all the people? (Score:1)
I know you probably think your comment is not as funny as the other ones but it is
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Oddly enough the low skill jobs are proving harder to automate. Finding humans to reliably weld auto or aircraft frames everytime - is difficult as it requires both talent and practice. On the other hand we have successfully created robots that can it; at least for scale production.
Now show me a robot that is good at entering houses and scrubing toilets and bath tubs..
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I'd highly recommend at least reading the summary before commenting. It might help you to not be 100% wrong.
The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below...
You're barking up the wrong tree regardless.
The trend has not been to make specialized robots to do exactly what humans have been doing. The trend has been to redesign tasks so that robots can do them, or re-engineer things so that they don't need to be done.
Scrubbing toilets and tubs: Replaced by hydrophobic coatings.
Welding: No longer needed due to 3D printing
Have you ever seen one of the burger mac
Sex Bots? (Score:2)
Imagine the numbers of 'workers' who would be put out of 'work' by sex bots and at the highest levels of fake elitism, especially at 'the establishment' levels;D.
bully balls (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:bully balls (Score:5, Informative)
Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.
Before Woolworths opened the first "department store" in the 1880s, customers would enter the store, hand their list to a clerk, who would then go back into the "store" and retrieve the items. It was quite a revolution to allow the customers to go into the "store" area and select their own items.
So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?
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So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?
One of the reasons that people like online shopping is that it eliminates the need to do the clerk's job yourself. No need to push the trolley round when you order online.
Re:bully balls (Score:5, Funny)
Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.
Before Woolworths opened the first "department store" in the 1880s, customers would enter the store, hand their list to a clerk, who would then go back into the "store" and retrieve the items. It was quite a revolution to allow the customers to go into the "store" area and select their own items.
So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?
I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store and every time I buy a heavy duty cleaning chemical an energy drink or a packet of pipe tobacco for my dad the damn things call for a store employee to verify that I'm older than 16. I'm almost 7 feet tall, I'm built like Shrek the Ogre and I have a long black beard all the way down to my chest, a supermarket teller does not mistake me for a 16 year old and finishes the check-out procedure much faster.
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I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store
Reminds me of my great joy with shopping recently where it freezes and says "Help is on the way" and I look around, seeing 5 other people looking around for the attendant to come over, swipe their card, and type their number in so that the transaction can continue. Ends up taking me 10 minutes to check out because it takes 9 for the customer service person to walk over and not even look at the machine (it was bitching that I didn't put the meat in the bag / on the scale, something it didn't complain about
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I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store
Reminds me of my great joy with shopping recently where it freezes and says "Help is on the way" and I look around, seeing 5 other people looking around for the attendant to come over, swipe their card, and type their number in so that the transaction can continue. Ends up taking me 10 minutes to check out because it takes 9 for the customer service person to walk over and not even look at the machine (it was bitching that I didn't put the meat in the bag / on the scale, something it didn't complain about until the second the meat was in the bag on the scale). This is also made better when the reason you are waiting is that the person is nowhere near their station, or is just talking to a fellow coworker and ignoring the line.
Yeah, that is also annoying too, Even so, I'd consider using a self checkout if they could iron that out and build a version that can tell a medium sized hairy Scandinavian cave troll form a pimple faced 10 year old.
Re:bully balls (Score:4, Informative)
Yes; and thankfully Amazon.com has brought that model back. I essentially go make them a list; someone or some robot fetches the items for me and other people deliver them. Its great for commodity items.
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Relax, once they can track all items with cheap cameras and cheaper processing they'll just automatically tally your items and send you a bill as you walk out the door. It's at TRL 8 or 9. It's coming soon and will replace the concept of checking out. [Amazon's workign on it](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/21/inside-amazons-surveillance-powered-no-checkout-convenience-store)
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Every single modern economy needs loads of foreign workers to function. Why? Too many jobs, not enough willing workers.
Fixed that for you. There's plenty of people to do the work but no one is willing to pick the veggies or sew garments for the wages it takes to make it affordable for everyone to eat and clothe themselves.
Oh look, more FUD! (Score:5, Insightful)
For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit, and it's always temporary.
Humans by definition cannot become obsolete we are the tool makers and tool users the tools do not make us obsolete we make the TOOLS obsolete.
Seriously people need to get a grip, and the FUD spreaders need to have their shit slapped until they learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Re:Oh look, more FUD! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do these 'reports' in these 'newspapers' actually have any real credibility, or are they as full of shit as I think they are?
The latter. They are spewing economic nonsense.
Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.
For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit
Quick rule of thumb:
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
The is what the public has believed for at least three centuries.
Re:Oh look, more FUD! (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
So exactly like it was in the past? "we" ight be more productive now, but that's in aggregate not for individuals.
How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?
Social Welfare (Score:3)
For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.
...in a society that completely lacked any form of social welfare, social assistance to help you transition, unemployment benefits to make the end meets until you find yourself some other source of income, etc.
Where basically if you didn't have education and some economies in the bank (i.e.: was rich enough to even *have* a bank account to begin with), Society's only opinion was "sucks to be with you".
Yes, this time, this is exactly going to go the exact same way as the dystopian past of Dickens' time.
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If I'm not mistaken, that was only the beginning of their 'opinion'. Then there was Debtors' Prisons, indentured servitude (a slightly sanitized way of saying 'slavery'), no minimum wage, and so on -- and that was just if you stayed on the right side of The Law; if you didn't, then your life was more-or-less over as anything resembling a human being, because you'd go to prison and maybe never leave there alive. People think prison can be hard on people n
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Only it was so woefully inadequate that it might just as well not have existed.
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How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?
Was that a mistake though or was it the market doing allocation efficiency. Arguably it was focusing resources on those who were most productive. It just happens to suck if that isn't you.
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How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?
Was that a mistake though or was it the market doing allocation efficiency. Arguably it was focusing resources on those who were most productive. It just happens to suck if that isn't you.
There have been some really interesting times after large numbers of humans were put out of work. Some of them gave rise to very scary times, and even in the 1940's, a brief blip in the world's population. While Post WW1 Germany's unemployment and inflation gave rise to eventual full employment and a lot of competitive employment around the world in response, the technological advances that donnybrook brought about makes further total war economic stimulus a little scary.
Anyhow, the point is that perha
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Exactly; you get it.
Ironic that we're talking about 'automation' and 'robots' allegedly taking people's jobs, when corporations all-too-often treat humans like robots -- and as you say, 'throw them in the trash' like some broken or obsolete robots. Humans cannot become obsolete. You might even consider the concept to be an extre
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If you really need me to discuss how it is that leaving people to starve and die isn't good for your society and
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Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.
There is an example of that in many small towns in the USA. Middle aged people of a limited skill set have lost their jobs, typically in things like clothing factories for the ladies, and the mines for men. The factories and the mines close, the mines especially become more automated. So you have people in their 50's with approximately 0 chance of being hired, between their skillset and age.
If they move to find work, it will be minimum wage work, but they are still not likely to find any.
So you have
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There is an example of that in many small towns in the USA. Middle aged people of a limited skill set have lost their jobs, typically in things like clothing factories for the ladies, and the mines for men. The factories and the mines close, the mines especially become more automated. So you have people in their 50's with approximately 0 chance of being hired, between their skillset and age..... Social Security Disability pretty much filled the gap and kept them from living under bridges.
I've lived through this in a couple of states in the US now, and you're half-way there, but not all the way there.
What ultimately happens is that the small towns die, and these folks are the last people living there. In towns like these, people own their homes, often outright. They're often not much, but they generally own them. When they hit 50 and lose their jobs, their kids move to the larger towns or to the nearby city to find work. The parents stay in the little town and scrape by, using social service
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Mod this up somebody! I have never lived in such a place, but I can see how it happens well from your description. I'm lucky some of my relatives in small towns had solid government retirement plans, otherwise they'd be in trouble just due to rising cost of living and healthcare. I can only imagine what those isolated towns have to deal with.
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For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.
Life sucked because they were poor, not because they were getting poorer, because they weren't.
People moved to the city and took factory jobs because it was an improvement over the crushing rural poverty that they left behind.
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It was also a time of enclosing the commons. The rich discovered they could pass laws making common areas private, and they did this in a large way, forcing many farmers off the land, removing the little wealth they had and forcing them into the city where there was basically no work available.
6.8 million acres enclosed between 1604 and 1914 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Losing your livelihood, even if it was subsistence farming, was getting poorer and one of the reasons that the industrial
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Sure, we can do that. All we have to do is rein in Corporatism and out-of-control Capitalism. Let me know how that's working for you.
Sarcasm aside at least we have some controls on corporations now, more than we used to, workers have some rights and something of a voice. But it can still be very far from fair because corporations have the money and workers don't, so they can still be overrun
Ob Douglas Adams quote (Score:4, Funny)
Quick rule of thumb:
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
The is what the public has believed for at least three centuries.
To quote Douglas Adams [douglasadams.com]:
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The latter. They are spewing economic nonsense.
Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.
Okay, so your argument is that because something happened before, that it will always happen. I do know some folks who believe that because Malthus was wrong, that Malthus will always be wrong. Apparently the earth can support an infinite number of people, as a technological breakthrough will always happen that allows population to increase.
So I'm not even going to argue that point, because I want to ask a different question, with the assumption that you are correct, and that every automation will create
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The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them, and we've never been able to, so just trust that they will happen. Who could have predicted 100 years ago that voice actor for GPS would be a job? That web design would be a job?"
To some extent I agree. If you'd asked me even a decade ago if "Social Media Personality" could be a viable career, I would have said no. Yet hundreds or thousands (maybe more? IDK) are making millions of dollars doing that now, with an order or magnitude more making enou
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The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them
Actually, we can predict exactly where the new jobs will be.
Grocery stores spend 14% of their sales on labor, and those with self-checkout have reduced their labor costs by 25%, or 3.5% of sales.
Since the grocery business is very competitive, much of those savings has gone into lower food price inflation. The rest has gone into dividends for shareholders. Either way, that extra money goes into someone's pocket.
What do they spend that extra money on? That is where the new jobs are.
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The answer they always give is that, "We can't predict them
Actually, we can predict exactly where the new jobs will be.
Grocery stores spend 14% of their sales on labor, and those with self-checkout have reduced their labor costs by 25%, or 3.5% of sales.
Since the grocery business is very competitive, much of those savings has gone into lower food price inflation. The rest has gone into dividends for shareholders. Either way, that extra money goes into someone's pocket.
What do they spend that extra money on? That is where the new jobs are.
Not where, but what employment? Your concept of the Job Creators and Trickle Down Theory as the driving engine of more jobs being created than destroyed is interesting.
My last 35 plus years in the workforce has shown me that the employee is considered the enemy, a parasite that is stealing money from the pockets of the stockholders. Supervisors can make extra money by eliminating employees. One I worked for for a short time bragged about it.
This isn't trying to make money by inventing new gewgaws usi
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Not where, but what employment?
Since self-checkouts were introduced, every American family has an extra $10 per month through lower than expected food-price inflation.
How do you spend that marginal $10? That is where the new jobs were created.
Different families likely spend the extra money differently. Some go out to a restaurant more often, some buy an extra book on Amazon, some save for a cave diving excursion, etc. The jobs are diffused through the economy. But that does not make them any less real.
Your concept of the Job Creators and Trickle Down Theory as the driving engine of more jobs being created than destroyed is interesting.
Cheaper groceries are not "trick
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That, sadly, is not as true as you think it is. If you account for the people who have given up looking for work entirely and others that can't be counted, the unemployment figures are much much higher than they report them as.
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Maybe not. (Score:2)
What some experts are saying is that this round of tools is special in that they are better and finding new tools than us humans.
So this time might be different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit, and it's always temporary.
YEAH! Last time it was only three generations that the previously middle class weave guilders suffered soul-crushing 50% unemployment. Quite temporary.
Thank GOD the rustbelt isn't a thing. And I'm sure the decades-long trend of people moving away rural farms is just a temporary shift. I'm sure.
1.5M ... is that more or less than... (Score:2)
For a scarier headline (Score:2)
Remove the “i” from the first word.
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What's threatening about one automaton?
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What's threatening about one automaton?
I'm guessing it's a really big one.
This is an opportunity. Not a problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
But it should replace people. After 200 years of automation, I'm still working an 8 hour day. why? Why can't we cut our hours down. Split every job in two, and let people do a 20 hour week. We have the technology. Why are we still selling hours of our lives to faceless corporations?
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It increases productivity and displaces workers from jobs. It's good for society on the whole but a REAL kick in the pants for the worker that used to have a job. The young can retrain (and hopefully had enough time seeing it coming to avoid the industry), some of the old can take an early retirement and tighten their belt, the ones in the middle are fucked.
You are correct that it's not all a zero-sum game. The economy can grow and shrink. If the economy grows, half of that is the fact that more people are
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But really, you have to ask yourself - (Score:3)
Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?
Humans need food, water, shelter and energy. Everything else is extra; non-essential. If you are producing essentials and doing it in a way that machines can't easily duplicate- no worries! If you are producing pretty fashion items, mindless amusements, sexy sports cars, or kitchen appliances that produce an exotic coffee product using proprietary supplies ... well you might be expendable.
The first world economy requires ever increasing consumer consumption to survive and provide jobs for us and profits for the wealthy. It's a delicate balance. If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.
Fishing & farming are the essential activities. Building skills for homes and watercraft. Repair skills for tractors & irrigation systems. Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.
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If you want to make bank, learn a skill that not many other people have.
Lots of people can farm and fish. That's great if you want to earn minimum wage. Your "apocalypse" is theoretical, and preparing for that non-event will damage your chances of being successful in the real world.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large?
Yes, otherwise they wouldn't have a business model and wouldn't be in business and wouldn't pay me.
Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?
For this price-point and manufacturing capabilities at time of contract, sure. Otherwise the client would have gone elsewhere.
"Unique" isn't all that essential. A banana is a banana no matter how many are on the shelf. It doesn't have to be "Essenetial", it just has to be "Worth it".
Humans need food, water, shelter and energy.
Humans need a lot. See Maslow's heirarchy of needs.
Everything else is extra; non-essential
What is the purpose of civilization if not for recreation and art? What's t
Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the olden days (the 1970's) I actually wrote an essay about this phenomena. It was a huge fear among typesetters back then that computers were making them obsolete, and sure enough - that profession is all but gone today. The fear was that all jobs would be automated, making everybody unemployed.
It's easy to generalize from typesetters to everybody, but then - as now - people didn't (or couldn't) think on. Because we're not all unemployed today. Quite the opposite! - Here in Denmark we're at the highest employment level ever. Never before in history there was this many people with jobs, both in numbers and in percentage of the population. There are still people without jobs, but fewer and fewer.
What happened? - Exactly what I said back then: Automation generates a lot of new jobs because somebody has to invent, design, build and maintain the machines. The machines also create new needs and new opportunities. A lot of other new stuff gets invented all the time, and things change. Nobody in the 1970's could have predicted that 'influencers' (on social media) would be a thing, or even that there would be 'social media' with all that entails (servers, data centers, power supply, cooling, support, monitoring, security etc.). The funny thing is that this constant change has always been there. There were no mechanics until the combustion engine was invented. There were no librarians until the printed book was invented. There were no carpenters until we leaned to work with wood. At the same time most blacksmiths went out of business when horses were replaced with horsepower in engines, and video rental went out of business when streaming came along. Times change but so far we've always been able to fill the void with new jobs serving a new era. I don't see any reason that this will ever stop.
Yes, it means that people will have to find new jobs in new professions when their old one goes obsolete, but then again - it has always been like that.
Re: Here we go again (Score:2)
Yes, automation in the past has created sufficient new jobs to compensate. Is it always guaranteed to do that though?
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Here in Denmark we're at the highest employment level ever. Never before in history there was this many people with jobs, both in numbers and in percentage of the population.
Before the industrial revolution, employment was pretty close to 100%. By 5 years of age, you were working, even if only on the farm. If you were crippled, you had a job begging.
Today, I bet a good chunk of Denmark's population is involved in things like getting educated instead of going to work at the age of 5.
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Yes, it means that people will have to find new jobs in new professions when their old one goes obsolete, but then again - it has always been like that.
It has been like that, but it's not going to be like that in the future.
I don't see how you can expect people to get paid to learn a new profession when they're most likely going to be the more expensive, slower, and less reliable option for doing that job.
If this was one sector that we were talking about, you might have a point. The problem is that it's all sectors, and in any scenario I can think of, any new job sector is going to be based around automation, robots, and machine learning/AI from the get-go
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Times change but so far we've always been able to fill the void with new jobs serving a new era. I don't see any reason that this will ever stop.
There are enough resources on this planet for everyone. That is not the problem. The problem is that automation changes things. Well, changing things is not really the problem. What the real problem is that things are set up that when they change, fewer and fewer people benefit from those changes and more and more people find themselves without resources. The people who have the lion's share of the resources are ensuring that more and more of the resources that are gathered, accrue to them. That leaves fewe
Self checkout (Score:2)
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What new jobs created? (Score:2)
About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected
They are at risk for losing their CURRENT job. The question they conveniently do not ask is what new jobs will be created by the automation. Automation very rarely takes jobs without creating new ones somewhere else. The computer I'm typing this on is a perfect example. It's clearly automation. We no longer have large secretarial pools working on typewriters and taking shorthand and distributing memos. But the PC clearly has been a net job creator. Vast swaths of our economy are busy doing jobs that
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Sometimes there's long periods of job shortages before those new jobs materialize such as the 3 generations (70 years) after the Luddites.
We've also shrank the labour force and continue to do so to make up for those missing jobs. Kids no longer go to work at 5 years of age, instead going to school for longer and longer chunks of their life. Lots of people on disability too.
Generally the work week has also been cut by quite a few hours with most people working closer to 40 hours then 80 hours a week.
In the p
So let's use spoons to dig holes instead of a JCB (Score:2)
They'll be happy though (Score:2)
Interesing timing, just before Brexit (Score:2)
I would pay more attention to such news if it wasn't so bloody obvious that it is trying to inflame things before Brexit.
So, what now ? Blame the f***ing immigrants yet again for the job losses ?
At the same time whining that there are fewer foreign construction workers around, and therefore those still around charge more for their services ?
Or maybe, just maybe, murder Jo Cox a second time. That will fix everythiing.
Do you WANT these jobs? (Score:2)
Seriously, does anyone really WANT to do the jobs that automation is supposedly taking? Do you want to be a supermarket checkout person, a tire-fitter, a fruit/veg picker?
Do not support while you still have a choice. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I voted for Obama and Bernie but would definitely be voting Trump just to get the arrogance wiped out of the Democratic party. It's comepletely on a witch hunt and been off its meds for a long time now. What the heck happened to them actually governing instead of being armchair lawyers? I mean it really is that horrible. I doubt anyone is under the illusion the republican party has much going for it. It is just that the Democratic party is even worse.
This hardly sounds believable, unless the main reason you voted for Obama and Bernie was because they weren't the establishment instead of actually believing in their platform. After Bush Sr. lost to Clinton, the Republican party's only significant platform agenda is doing what is in the best interest of the Republican party. This is one issue that has nothing to do with Trump but was instead put in place by Gingrich and put into overdrive by McConnell. The current Republican party is virtually defined by t