Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Robots Are Taking Our Jobs, Says Krugman. Next They'll be NYT Columnists!

According to Paul Krugman, the nineteenth century is the new black. Robber barons, David Ricardo, Das Kapital--it's all very now. Except then all the robots are going to steal our jobs. 
 "...there’s no question that in some high-profile industries, technology is displacing workers of all, or almost all, kinds. For example, one of the reasons some high-technology manufacturing has lately been moving back to the United States is that these days the most valuable piece of a computer, the motherboard, is basically made by robots, so cheap Asian labor is no longer a reason to produce them abroad." 
But the robots won't be satisfied with only manufacturing jobs! They want to perform highly-skilled labor.
"[snip] Many of the jobs being displaced are high-skill and high-wage; the downside of technology isn’t limited to menial workers."
Technology is putting labor at a disadvantage, and growing monopoly power enriches plutocrats. The result is an increasingly classist, two-tiered society.
And suddenly we live in a horrible dystopia predicted in the classic Weimar sci-fi expressionist film!

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