Fast food workers are out in front of their various emporiums demanding a doubling of their wages while inside Bender, R2D2, and C3PO are filling out job apps.
All they need are software upgrades and occasional oil changes. The sign inside says that employees are required to use FDA certified food-grade lubricants before returning to work. Periodic visits to the high intensity U.V. "tanning booth" are also required.
Keep in mind folks that even though you may place a high value on yourself, if you can be replaced with a few lines of code and a couple of servos for less than that, you will be. Free advice: So far, robots cannot write their own code and while they can replicate themselves after a fashion, they can't yet develop upgrades to the existing designs.
Major in engineering while they still can't.
4 comments:
You right-wingers can barely contain your glee at the thought of "the 47%" -- or whatever you call them nowadays -- losing their jobs to robots, so the Job Creatorz ™ can pocket more profits. It's sort of like the left-wing nutjobs praying that gas would go up to $10, in order to punish those "stupid Americans" (their words) for driving SUVs instead of their solar- and wind-powered unicornmobiles.
Your capitalist utopia can only work if humans are paid less than robots. At least the robots will be provided with some type of maintenance plan.
I miss the good old days when you right-wingers only wanted American workers to compete for lower wages with Chinese factory workers and migrant Mexican labourers, so that executives could get the bigger bonuses and golden parachutes they deserve.
Two years ago:
Foxconn, an electronics manufacturer
from Taiwan with huge factories in China,
generates about 40 percent of the global
consumer electronics revenue by creating
things like iPhones and computer components
on giant assembly lines staffed by humans.
Yesterday, Foxconn announced (at an employee
dance party of all places) that they're
planning on buying some robots to replace
their human workforce. And by some robots,
they mean one million robots over the
next three years.
I'm sure this is somehow Obama's fault, right?
The Economy's Real Problem: That Overpaid Working Class
CBS - Money Watch
July 26, 2011
The real problem facing business today?
All those overpaid line workers. That’s the
conclusion of a new report from consultants
Booz & Co., which will surely be welcome
news for the many CEOs now surviving on
food stamps.
The study is a masterpiece of rationalization.
Using a dizzying pallet of business jargon,
the authors have created an argument for
non-executive layoffs and wage cuts
hermetically sealed from what the rest of us
are inclined to call “reality.” It is a
wonderful place entirely free of people like
former GM CEO Rick Wagoner and Richard Fuld,
the last CEO of Lehmann Bros., who respectively
got $14 million and $34 million a year to
bankrupt their companies. (I don’t remember
what Fuld’s golden parachute was, but Wagoner
got $20 million for driving the world’s largest
corporation into a ditch.)
Maybe you should take a refresher course in economix.
Fraternal organizations have been around for a *lot* of years. Fraternal organizations pool resources, and help those members, and perhaps some sponsored by members, that fall into need. Most had standards, criteria for managing resources in a world fraught with both need, and bad decisions.
Many fraternal organizations have dwindled with the advent of government programs intended to help those not being helped by fraternal organizations -- and without the assessment of need vs. responsible choices.
Labor day is supposed to celebrate *organized* labor, that was the reason that the day was set aside (not to signal the end of commercial summer and beginning of the Christmas merchandising season). And it seemed a shame to me, to waste a Monday on recognizing what organized labor did to America. Labor unions, in theory, act almost like a fraternal society, except they prey, indulgently, on employers. And states, and the US government. Rather than enforcing productive behavior on their members for the benefit of the customers of the services and products that would be produced, in the interests of the employers paying for their services, unions exist to perpetuate their existence.
A couple of decades ago I recall reading an account of a labor action that hinged on management changing their practices to better serve their customers. That single incident stands out in my memory; it isn't in line with most wage and benefit demands -- and the way labor unions protect various non-productive members from the consequences of making counter-productive choices.
Which seems quite inappropriate to me. So I didn't pay much heed to yesterday's Monday wasted on a day to recall how Labor Unions, in their day, benefited America. I mean, we seldom recall the growth of slavery that established the molasses surplus that is today recalled as "Boston Baked Beans". We seldom celebrate (well, some do!) the benefits enjoyed today because the Confederate States of America rebelled (that was the Civil War, to those of us with fuzzy recall and hampered by living too far North to understand what is important).
Most of the actual event of the Civil War took a lot of lives, ruined a lot of homes, and served it's purpose within a few years. Reconstruction, the plundering of those that survived, continued an ungraciously long time. I think it is time to cry, "Enough!" to the legal but corrupt "reconstruction" style plundering of American business, and thus every taxpayer, citizen, and visitor to America, and everyone in the World that buys American services and products.
People working for a wage (in the formal economy), or as part of a family or community whether chores, exchange of help, or donated time (in the informal economy) have little to do with the organized plunderers of Labor Day. Let it go.
Me, I blame right wingers buying votes by increasing the minimum wage (notice how much increasing the minimum wage tends to push minorities into poverty, reduce the number of jobs available, and harms most the politicians woo?) and labor unions, for increasing the cost of producing products -- to the point that expensive automation makes more sense. What *really* bugs labor unions is that robots won't organize, go on strike to lend "consequence" to the image of labor unions, and they don't pay dues. That, and dues-paying union members oft-time lose jobs. If the people who's jobs were on the line had been more intent on serving their employer and keeping production in line with the market place, robots with their expensive costs and maintenance, wouldn't be a threat, to anyone.
I would like to see, by supervised, secret ballot of union members, every individual location where union workers are employed, have to annually certify that that group wishes to remain under labor contract, with nay-sayers individually free to revert to a customary employer-employee relationship.
The unions have spent the last 100 years or so patting themselves on the back for getting us the 40-hour week. Now it appears they've gotten us the 27-hour week. You'd think they'd be dancing in the streets.
"The unions have...gotten us the 27-hour week."
Again, how do you explain the replacement of workers by robots in effin' China?
a) Chinese corporate executives are sociopaths, just like American corporate executives, which is good for capitalism!
b) those Chinese unions ruined it for the workers
c) it's 0bama's fault
d) read Atlas Shrugged
e) shut up, troll
f) other
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