I should take the exam to get my contractor’s license.

I spend all day doing plumbing to relocate a washer/dryer into a large bathroom, European style to reclaim the laundry room.

I think if I hired someone it would have cost me $2,500. I’m really proud of my solder joints. They used to look horrible, but now they are beautiful. No robot can do plumbing.

You have heard of the quip, “robots are only one hourly payroll increase away”. My bet is the industry is waiting to see who goes first as they will be cutting jobs and become the target of much criticism. The company has to be large enough to endure for a while. This will open the floodgates as the rest will soon follow and there will be a price war among the fast foods to gain consumer confidence. Job loss will become noise at that point and the industry steps forward. All good. Of course, my cynical side says there will have to a new federal training program paid for by big burger for the displaced workers.

Robotic phlebotomy NOT coming to a place near you.
http://skepticalscalpel.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-robot-is-here-to-draw-your-blood.html?m=1
The say humans have a 83% success rate , must be using a population of noobs and interns.
The targeted 90% success rate would rate you as a human terrible by hospital standards.

Good thing there are a few things I can do.

Coming technology will likely destroy millions of jobs. Is Trump ready?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/coming-technology-will-likely-destroy-millions-of-jobs-is-trump-ready/2017/02/08/db97d8b4-ecb6-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html?utm_term=.8a204b56c8c1

[quote]
Here is a thing we hear approximately every day: The world is changing faster than ever before. Robert Gordon doesn’t buy it.

He’s an economist who has spent decades studying technological change and economic growth in America. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, the world is not changing faster than ever before. In fact, it’s not even changing as fast as it was 100 years ago.

He recently made this argument in a book called The Rise and Fall of American Growth. In the New York Times, Paul Krugman called it a “magisterial combination of deep technological history, vivid portraits of daily life… and careful economic analysis.”

On today’s show, we talk to Gordon. His argument has profound implications for everything from how the next generation will live to whether robots really are about to take our jobs.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/05/19/529178937/episode-772-small-change
[/quote]

FWIW had a chance to meet to the chair of obama’s economic advisors @ UCSD and ask him what thought of a universal basic income as a response to various trends in the market place

mentioned he does not think UBI is a good idea, and after looking in to it my self have to agree w/ his opinion

This picture from my UCSD talk of the decline in prime age men in the workforce should be a real wakeup call. https://t.co/pfcZM1ym6M pic.twitter.com/VxriSuwGFB

— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) May 2, 2017

https://qz.com/789889/a-universal-basic-income-could-wind-up-hurting-the-poor-and-helping-the-rich/

[quote=FlyerInHi]Phaster, interesting article… we shall see, but I think UBI is inevitable to drive growth.

If wealth gets concentrated at the top, growth will fall and that’s bad for rich people also. Better to have a smaller share of a bigger pie than a big share of a smaller one.

I wonder automation’s impact on malls and stores as more business moves online. I would suck to live where the density is not enough to support stores.
[/quote]

UBI is inevitable, but IMHO won’t happen in the USA because of the existing way the “banking” system and the USA fiscal policy system(s) are set up! In other words if a UBI in the USA is implemented, as I read the tea leaves it would somewhat parallel the central command economy of the USSR (which collapsed under its own weight of spending for military and various social programs)

when I talked to obama’s economic chair, he mentioned the price tag would be two trillion

so did some checking to verify for my self the figures, and of course everything I looked at verified his statement

UBI most likely will happen in to a greater extent in “small” advanced economies like in DK, NO, NZ and perhaps KSA because those areas have small “educated” homogeneous populations, that have diverse economies and/or a sovereign wealth fund.

FWIW the economist Tyler Cowen who wrote the book “The American Dream and the Complacent Class” stated he use to be in favor of a UBI but realized it isn’t a good idea, see the youtube video:

Tyler Cowen @52:34 to 54:03

and in another lecture Cowen mentions why there is a bi-modal distribution (i.e. an hourglass “economy”)

substitution effect (for 1%) >> income effect
in other words upper income people work more… (in general)

for lower income the “income effect” >> “substitution effect”
in other words people work less hours

(at play, there also seems to me to be various “feed back loops” driving the top and bottom ends)

Want to get rid of robots ?
Get rid of minimum wage.