OT: Battle Ground Zero: Murrieta: Invasion of America

[CA renter]

I’ll give you yet another head start, Pri. Let’s see if you can use this as a springboard to do more research on your own.

See if you can notice a pattern here. It might be a bit difficult at first, but if you think really hard, you might get it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more professions that have been outsourced to cheap, exploitable foreign labor — whether the jobs are shipped to countries with desperate workers, or the desperate workers are shipped to these jobs locally, the result is the same, it’s just two sides of the same coin. U.S. workers are being displaced by lower-wage, desperate, exploitable foreign workers.

———–

“Of the largest occupations in the lowest-wage quintile, the two occupations with the greatest wage declines between 2009 and 2014 were both in the restaurant sector. As Table 1 shows, cooks and food preparation workers experienced wage declines of 8.9 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively. Wage declines were also especially pronounced for janitors and cleaners, personal care aides, home health aides, and maids and housekeeping cleaners.”

http://www.nelp.org/content/uploads/Occupational-Wage-Declines-Since-the-Great-Recession.pdf

[CA renter]

Here’s some more for you. Even the factors that don’t immediately seem to be tied to “globalization” are actually a result of the ability of employers to exploit those who either do not know their rights, or are too afraid to stand up for them.

“Other factors behind stagnating American wages

This paper provides a brief overview of some of the causes of wage stagnation and inequality. Sources in the references section provide a more complete analysis. Excessive unemployment, not only during and after the Great Recession but over most years since 1979, has suppressed wage growth, adversely affecting low-wage workers more than middle-wage workers but having little impact on high-wage workers. Global integration with low-wage countries, accelerated by particular trade policies (e.g., admission of China to the World Trade Organization in the late 1990s) has adversely affected wages of non–college educated workers. The erosion of labor standards (beyond the decline in the real value of the minimum wage) and weak enforcement have also put downward pressure on wages. Extensive wage theft, worker misclassification, weakened prevailing wage laws and overtime protections, and the failure to modernize our labor standards to provide sick leave, family leave, or minimum vacation schedules all hurt wage growth. The increased presence of undocumented workers who are vulnerable to employer exploitation also undercuts not only the wages of these workers but also those in similar fields.”

Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts

[CA renter]

More:

“Low-wage Americans are not the only workers affected by stagnant wages and rising inequality. The middle class has also experienced stagnating hourly wages over the last generation, and even those with college degrees have seen no pay growth over the last 10 years. Since the late 1970s, wages for the bottom 70 percent of earners have been essentially stagnant, and between 2009 and 2013, real wages fell for the entire bottom 90 percent of the wage distribution. Even wages for the bottom 70 percent of four-year college graduates have been flat since 2000, and wages in most STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations have grown anemically over the past decade.

This dismal wage growth is the result of intentional policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and political power. As explained below, these choices fall into five broad categories: the abandonment of full employment as a main objective of economic policymaking, declining union density, various labor market policies and business practices, policies that have allowed CEOs and finance executives to capture ever larger shares of economic growth, and globalization policies. Collectively, these policy decisions have shifted economic power away from low- and middle-wage workers and toward corporate owners and managers.”

Causes of Wage Stagnation

[Coronita]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/scarce-skills-not-scarce-jobs/390789/

Scarce Skills, Not Scarce Jobs
The “real” challenge technology presents isn’t that it replaces workers, but rather displaces them.

The distribution center, run by Quiet Logistics—a company that fills orders for sellers of premium-branded apparel, is featured in the 60 Minutes episode “Are Robots Hurting Job Growth?” In the segment, Steve Kroft poses the following question to Bruce Welty, the CEO of Quiet Logistics: “If you had to replace the robots with people, how many people would you have to hire?” Welty estimates that he would have to hire one and a half people for every robot, and that the robots are saving him a lot of money.

Why deal with H1-B visas, and illegals, when you don’t have to?

[Coronita]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robot-job-replacement_us_569cf3b3e4b0778f46f9f9b3

Robots Will Replace 5 Million Workers By 2020: Report
Automation promises to make many administrative tasks redundant — which could hurt women most of all.

Damn, a liberal leaning article…Immediately discrete the validity of this by 200 points…

Here’s more (older article)
Technology Displacing Jobs: The European Case

Technology Displacing Jobs: The European Case

[Coronita]

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/social-affairs/20160521/automation-displacing-more-workers-in-the-fast-food-industry

Automation displacing more workers in the fast-food industry

The move toward increased automation at fast-food restaurants is ramping up fast.

Wendy’s revealed last week that it plans to begin installing self-service kiosks at its restaurants by the end of the year — a move aimed at reducing labor costs linked to minimum wage hikes. The end result will be fewer employees.

The trend isn’t likely to end anytime soon, according to Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association.

Harold Miller, vice president of franchise development for Persona Wood Fired Pizzeria, who also consults for other restaurant chains, put it more bluntly.

“Restaurant profit-and-loss statements simply don’t work when the labor rate is increased to an astronomical number,” he said. “It would be wonderful if the balance sheet worked … but it doesn’t.”

Under newly approved requirements, California’s minimum wage will rise to $15 an hour by 2022. That pay rate might not seem “astronomical,” but it does represent a 50 percent increase over the state’s current minimum wage of $10 an hour.

Last year, 14 cities, counties and states approved a $15 minimum wage through local laws, executive orders and other means, and more pay hikes are in the works.

In the case of Wendy’s, franchisees will decide whether they install automated technology at their restaurants.

In an interview with Investor’s Daily, Wendy’s President Todd Penegor said some franchise locations have already boosted their prices to offset wage increases. The company also plans to introduce a mobile order-and-pay system that’s intended to reduce employees’ work and responsibilities. Additional behind-the-scenes technology could likewise reduce the time it takes for employees to do things such as schedule shifts.

Wendy’s isn’t the only fast-food chain that’s embracing technology to shave costs.

McDonald’s is rolling out “Create Your Taste” touchscreen kiosks that will allow diners to custom-build their own burgers and order anything else on the menu. And about half of Panera Bread’s company-owned stores already have kiosks in place.

The Panera kiosks have iPad-style tablets with a full list of food items. Customers simply swipe their credit card, place their order and grab a seat. When their order is ready it will be brought to their table.

[Coronita]

Sigh…You folks are really barking at the wrong tree…

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21700758-will-smarter-machines-cause-mass-unemployment-automation-and-anxiety

So which jobs are most vulnerable? In a widely noted study published in 2013, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne examined the probability of computerisation for 702 occupations and found that 47% of workers in America had jobs at high risk of potential automation. In particular, they warned that most workers in transport and logistics (such as taxi and delivery drivers) and office support (such as receptionists and security guards) “are likely to be substituted by computer capital”, and that many workers in sales and services (such as cashiers, counter and rental clerks, telemarketers and accountants) also faced a high risk of computerisation. They concluded that “recent developments in machine learning will put a substantial share of employment, across a wide range of occupations, at risk in the near future.” Subsequent studies put the equivalent figure at 35% of the workforce for Britain (where more people work in creative fields less susceptible to automation) and 49% for Japan.

What determines vulnerability to automation is not so much whether the work concerned is manual or white-collar but whether or not it is routine
Economists are already worrying about “job polarisation”, where middle-skill jobs (such as those in manufacturing) are declining but both low-skill and high-skill jobs are expanding. In effect, the workforce bifurcates into two groups doing non-routine work: highly paid, skilled workers (such as architects and senior managers) on the one hand and low-paid, unskilled workers (such as cleaners and burger-flippers) on the other. The stagnation of median wages in many Western countries is cited as evidence that automation is already having an effect—though it is hard to disentangle the impact of offshoring, which has also moved many routine jobs (including manufacturing and call-centre work) to low-wage countries in the developing world. Figures published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis show that in America, employment in non-routine cognitive and non-routine manual jobs has grown steadily since the 1980s, whereas employment in routine jobs has been broadly flat (see chart). As more jobs are automated, this trend seems likely to continue.

[Coronita]

In today’s world take Uber for example. Do you still need to bend over and pay an arm and a leg for regular yellow cab? What do you think Uber has done to the traditional cab business model? And now let’s suppose Lyft or Uber is interested creating a autonomous ride sharing service that requires no driver. Then what? What do you think naturally happens to the the folks that were cab drivers. Lyft and Uber might need to hire more R&D engineers to build this.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on

Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month
The autonomous cars, launching this summer, are custom Volvo XC90s, supervised by humans in the driver’s seat.

Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. Sebastian Thrun, the creator of Google’s self-driving car project, spent seven years researching autonomous robots at CMU, and the project’s former director, Chris Urmson, was a CMU grad student.

“Travis had an idea that he wanted to do self-driving,” says John Bares, who had run CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center for 13 years before founding Carnegie Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based company that makes components for self-driving industrial robots used in mining, farming, and the military. “I turned him down three times. But the case was pretty compelling.” Bares joined Uber in January 2015 and by early 2016 had recruited hundreds of engineers, robotics experts, and even a few car mechanics to join the venture. The goal: to replace Uber’s more than 1 million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.

The plan seemed audacious, even reckless. And according to most analysts, true self-driving cars are years or decades away. Kalanick begs to differ. “We are going commercial,” he says in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “This can’t just be about science.”

[Coronita]

And finance related….My favorite.

http://www.consumerreports.org/personal-investing/rise-of-the-robo-adviser/

The Rise of the Robo-Adviser
New digital platforms can manage your portfolio for a fraction of the price of a human financial adviser. Is it time to make a switch?

Shortly after Jared Franklin started working in 2007, he also began saving. But the now-29-year-old product manager at a Baltimore financial services start-up wasn’t sure how to create a balanced, diversified portfolio. On the recommendation of his parents, he opened an account with a financial adviser. But when his quarterly statements started coming in, he wondered what he was getting for the fees he paid. “I couldn’t understand why I was paying outrageous amounts when my balances weren’t growing much,” Franklin says.

Then, three years ago, he decided to try Wealthfront, one of a new breed of online advisers that use computer algorithms to recommend diversified, low-cost portfolios. Because Franklin has referred several of his friends to Wealthfront, he’s paying no adviser fees, but he will eventually pay 0.25 percent per year. “The strategy is simple, and at the end of the day I think the return on my investment will be better than the return I’d get on my own or with an adviser,” says Franklin. “So far I’m pleased.”

The frustration with fees that led Franklin to move his money is one that millions of individual investors share. The fact is, human financial advisers tend to be costly, usually charging around 1 percent of assets per year, regardless of whether the investments they manage gain or lose money. On an initial portfolio of $500,000, that would cost you almost $750,000 over a 30-year period, assuming average investment returns of 6 percent. Other advisers use a commission-based fee structure, lopping 3 to 6 percent off the top on any fund or annuity you buy.

[Coronita]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/foxconn-replaces-60000-humans-with-robots-in-china-2016-05-25

Apple supplier says automation has freed up its employees for higher value-added roles, such as in R&D

Read between the lines: manufacturing jobs go away, R&D jobs go up. The problem? The people who have manufacturing jobs probably aren’t going to be the same ones that have R&D jobs, because of a different skills gap.

Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.17% supplier Foxconn Technology Co. 2354, +0.22% has replaced 60,000 human workers with robots in a single factory, according to a report in the South China Morning Post, initially published over the weekend.

This is part of a massive reduction in headcount across the entire Kunshan region in China’s Jiangsu province, in which many Taiwanese manufacturers base their Chinese operations.

In a statement to MarketWatch, Foxconn Technology Group confirmed that it has been automating its manufacturing facilities throughout China, including Kunshan, for “many years,” which it says has freed up its employees to focus on higher value-added elements of the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control.

”Across all of our facilities today, we are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees,” Foxconn said. “As our manufacturing processes and the products we produce become more technologically advanced, automation is playing an increasingly important role in our operations and we have plans to automate more of our manufacturing operations over the coming years.”

Roughly 600 companies in the Kunshan region are reportedly looking to reduce headcount with robots, as part of an effort to accelerate growth and reduce costs, according to the South China Morning Post, which cited data from the Kunshan government. Last year, 35 Taiwanese companies, including Foxconn, spent a total of 4 billion yuan ($610 million) on artificial intelligence as part of this initiative, according to the report.

Many of us are saying what many of you not actively in the tech world understand….

Why do you guys think there is a huge rift between folks who lose their job in manufacturing and can’t find comparable work, versus others that have no problem finding a comparable of better position in R&D in tech and cutting edge develop, where one gets routinely poached from competitors?

[Coronita]

BTW Glad those lexus sedans are creating lots of U.S. jobs….

Exactly 0.0%

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/MadeInAmerica/page/made-america-car-american-made-13795239

[no_such_reality]

Why your software developer will soon been replaced by a robot.

Uber drivers have five years tops. I used to work in Pharma, 95% of the High paying R&D jobs really aren’t much more secure than the uber drivers. IMHO.

Tech R&D? Think about how many junior roles have already been displaced by automation just extrapolate that out.

So far the demand for anew flappy bird has outpaced automation, but automation is gaining fast.

[Coronita]

[quote=no_such_reality]Why your software developer will soon been replaced by a robot.

Uber drivers have five years tops. I used to work in Pharma, 95% of the High paying R&D jobs really aren’t much more secure than the uber drivers. IMHO.

Tech R&D? Think about how many junior roles have already been displaced by automation just extrapolate that out.

So far the demand for anew flappy bird has outpaced automation, but automation is gaining fast.[/quote]

Most junior engineers are not really doing the R&D, they are usually being mentored by someone that is. There are exceptions…Some really brilliant people that have no formal education, but those are really the exception to the rule.

Tech R&D will never be replaced. Because there is always something else to invent.
We haven’t AI or self writing software (yet), so expecting a system to self-write is ways out. Probably another 10 years.

Software tech is cyclical, typically lasting a decade. It’s been like this for a long time, and will continue to be this way. During each cycle, there is always 1 trend that is “hot”. When a new software trend/technology happens, it takes about 5 years for the top 10% to get really good at it, and then they end up building all the plumbing, libraries, etc for next 40-50% of the reasonable developers, which then ends up building tools/libraries/etc for the majority of the not-so-talented “programmers” and IT shops. Right now in the “mobile app” decade… I’d give it about another 1-2 years before we saturate, and then you’ll have all the hourly consultants start doing it, because by that time, it will be stale technology that almost everyone can do. About the same time, there will be some other software problem to solve, and that will occupy the industry for the next 10 years. I’m thinking that tread will be wrto connectivity from low power devices..And eventually someone will end up creating a platform for such low power devices that will become the industry standard. We aren’t there yet.

So there’s always a new tech/challenge to solve and get yourself wrapped around. The only question is, if you want to. Want to be at the top of the game? Change your focus when the trend changes. I use to be a backend developer when folks were building J2EE and all this EAI/B2B integration…And when that saturated and became boring, I switched to mobile architecture. And I’m gradually switching to connectivity, again because not many people can do it right (right now)….If you’re still stuck doing J2EE on the backend and that’s all you know, your days are limited (if not already)….

Like I said, if this was really a widespread problem, you wouldn’t still have so many people in this business and still doing very well in 2016. In fact, most of the folks that are up to date with their skills , are seeing a very health demand, per market comp packages. And unless you work in the industry, you really wouldn’t understand what’s really happening. You can hear all the negatives of it from the small percentage of the population that washed out, for whatever reasons..that also tend to be the most vocal in voicing their discontent.

[Anonymous]

[quote=CA renter]As usual, your lack of reading comprehension skills rears its ugly head.[/quote]

LOL, you’ve really worn out the nagging middle-school teacher shtick. How many times are you going to repeat that?

But I take it as a compliment. I have a couple of advanced degrees from pretty good schools. Somehow I managed to pull it off without out any reading comprehension skills. Yes, all those professors and peer reviewers were duped. They are all fools, and only “CA Renter” on the some obscure web board can see my incompetence…

[quote]This thread, like many others, has changed from the original topic.[/quote]

In your mind, it probably has.

[quote]We are now on the topic of American workers being displaced.[/quote]

Which is not happening, certainly not because of immigration. So it’s a non-issue and you can take a break and not spend the entire night writing long-winded posts with the findings from your “research.”

[no_such_reality]

You just said it. Ten years. Maybe more. There aren’t a 158 million r&d jobs

If that change happens in ten years are we anywhere near ready for it?

Your article said the economy is bifurcating, it’s not 50/50. 95/5 maybe 99/1. That’s not sustainable.

H1bs. Offshore sourcing, they’re all just intermediary steps. They’ll all be replaced.

[Author]

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