
The Economist: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last? - puppetmaster30
https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21731332-weaker-dollar-and-energy-boom-are-pushing-up-pay-blue-collar-wages-are-surging-can-it?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/bluecollarwagesaresurgingcanitlastcheerfortheblues
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zeristor
Much of the article seems to hinge on the dollar's decline in value, this may
be down to Mr Trump being president.

Similarly with the UK's decline in the value of the pound after Brexit making
it superficially more competitive.

Dare I say it, devaluation is overvalued.

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bob_theslob646
Hard paywall.

Was not able to read the full article in full, but title is an interesting
question.

High wages in blue collar fields will be a thing of the past in an world where
automation will thrust massive amounts of people whose jobs were automated
onto the unemployment line. These people will have to make a choice :Either
get re-educated or do simple blue collar jobs.

The good thing is the price per hour for plumbing and other Blue Collar jobs
will be a lot cheaper than it is now because of an increase in Labor Supply.

Again I could be totally wrong, but as of today that is the direction we're
headed.

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orcasauce
The guy who puts the toothpaste cap on the tube will come back to repair the
robots that replace him. If you think automation won't create new types of
blue collar work then you're only looking at a narrow strip of the problem.
Consider the ice delivery man: refrigeration destroyed his industry, but
created so many more possibilities that there was a net gain in blue collar
work. If you think we're on the precipice of AI/automation being able to solve
complex problems without human aid I think you're overestimating the capacity
of the capabilities of current generation tech. More specifically the blue
collar work will be replaced by the blue collar work of tomorrow, it will be
different, but it will still need humans at some level of the chain.
Additionally there will be steep switching costs; I don't automation is going
to replace ALL needs of current blue collar work as quickly as you think.

TL;DR Automation will...

* replace some current blue collar work over time

* create new blue collar work over time

* take a protracted period of time to fully supplant all labor needs

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horsecaptin
How many seamstresses do you need to create 100 t-shirts per hour?

How many techs do you need to repair one seamstress bot that pumps out 100
t-shirts per hour?

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toomuchtodo
How many bots can do plumbing, carpentry, or electrical work? Zero.

If we ever get to that point, we’ll just start churning out bots and giving
them away for free to do the work.

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autogn0me
How many plumbers, carpenters and electricians do we need?

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bob_theslob646
The information by then will be so common, that it will be a question of not
how to fix, but whether or not it is convenient/one is willing to fix

