# Does government and society in general need to be concerned about the loss of jobs to automation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2015, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402 "2015-04-11T03:35:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/61 "2015-04-13T23:48:51Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Irrelevant anecdotes don’t answer the question. The contention was that one of the reasons people can’t live on a single income is that they buy big houses, unlike in the 1950s. The reality is that houses built in the 1950s cost a lot of money today, in some places at least. People don’t feel shut out of the housing market because they can’t afford McMansions. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/62 "2015-04-14T00:09:44Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The contention was that one of the reasons people can’t live on a single income is that they buy big houses, unlike in the 1950s. The reality is that houses built in the 1950s cost a lot of money today, in some places at least. People don’t feel shut out of the housing market because they can’t afford McMansions. House prices in your city, which you don’t even identify, tell us nothing useful. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/63 "2015-04-14T00:33:06Z")
Actual [data](https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-doubled-over-last-40-years/)on home prices … in real prices the cost per square foot is stable and the size has increased. > [@](#): > > … the average amount of living space per person in a new home has almost doubled in just the last forty years … On a per square foot basis using median home prices and median square footage, the inflation-adjusted price of new homes has been relatively stable since 1973 in a range between about $105 and $125 per square foot … Houses cost more because they are bigger. And median real income has decreased, especially for the lower 40%. Adds up to many being priced out. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/64 "2015-04-14T00:57:53Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > A > And median real income has decreased, especially for the lower 40%. Now that deserves to be made fun of! Please read it as: And real income has decreased, both the median and especially for the lower 40%. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/65 "2015-04-14T01:43:40Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There are going to be more jobs where people skills are needed. Those are not going to be replaced any time soon. Why not? For me, it’s not just automation, it’s automation combined with consolidation that tends to worry me more. OK, more and more people want high speed internet. That should be more customer service reps, more people rolling trucks for installs and repairs, etc. But when there’s only one company to do that, what do they care if the average hold times for tech support calls increase? If Mom and Dad get frustrated and end up calling whichever kid is designated as family tech support, so much the better for them. And while you can’t really prove or disprove the “Jobs will always be there” argument, to me, that sounds a little too much like the “Drill, baby, drill” people. Oil has always been there, whenever we’ve run out in one area we’ve just gone to another area and found more, so we’ll just keep doing that–keep up the consumption! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/66 "2015-04-14T02:30:39Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > You can’t compare horses and humans. Well, threads like these show that you can lead both to water, but you can’t make either one drink! ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/67 "2015-04-14T06:59:04Z")
I’m going to bow out of this discussion, **Hellestal** has made some very convincing points. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/68 "2015-04-14T13:51:11Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > My neighborhood is a development built in the 1950s, only a few years after the house I grew up in. Three bedroom houses, not all that big - actually less space than mine, since we had a basement. > They go for about $600K. So much for inexpensive 1950s houses. That wasn’t the point. The point was that the “typical” 1950s family had a relatively smaller, new-built house on a smaller lot. Something like 900-1700 sq feet on a 5500 sq foot lot wouldn’t be unusual. Today’s houses are on similar sized or even smaller lots, but are rarely smaller than say… 2200 sq ft, and are often closer to 3000 sq ft. If suburban new house buyers wanted 1500 sq ft houses, they’d pay less than for a house twice the size. That was the point. Your point translated into the 1950s would be people buying houses from the 1890s during the 50s, and that definitely wouldn’t have been cheaper than buying new. And if you combined that with one car, one TV, one land-line phone, no cell phones, no internet, very little eating out and much more scratch-type cooking, a family could get by for much less than they do today. Hell, that described my family in the late 1970s, and we did get by on just Dad’s salary. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/69 "2015-04-14T14:49:20Z")
I still suspect that it was easier then. Houses have gotten bigger, although not as fast as they’ve gotten expensive. It’s just hard to tease out real cost of living numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/70 "2015-04-14T15:43:14Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That wasn’t the point. The point was that the “typical” 1950s family had a relatively smaller, new-built house on a smaller lot. Something like 900-1700 sq feet on a 5500 sq foot lot wouldn’t be unusual. > > Today’s houses are on similar sized or even smaller lots, but are rarely smaller than say… 2200 sq ft, and are often closer to 3000 sq ft. > > If suburban new house buyers wanted 1500 sq ft houses, they’d pay less than for a house twice the size. That was the point. Your point translated into the 1950s would be people buying houses from the 1890s during the 50s, and that definitely wouldn’t have been cheaper than buying new. What you say is correct - if you want to buy a new house. Builders do build big to increase their profits. In the 50s, thanks to the baby boom, there was a lot of new construction to handle those who could finally afford a house and had a family to put it in. But if you want to buy from existing stock, there are plenty of houses just like you describe available - in fact you describe the houses in my neighborhood quite well. I thought we were considering whether a single income family could make it - in such a situation, they could go with a smaller house. Not that this would be cheap. > [@](#): > > And if you combined that with one car, one TV, one land-line phone, no cell phones, no internet, very little eating out and much more scratch-type cooking, a family could get by for much less than they do today. Hell, that described my family in the late 1970s, and we did get by on just Dad’s salary. We got by in the '50s on just my Dad’s salary, and he never got to go to college. If one spouse stays home, not going out to eat becomes much easier to swing. In the '50s, before fast food, going out was a lot more of a time sink than it is today. It is possible for only one to work today, but you have to make a reasonable amount of money to make it possible. With wage stagnation it is getting harder and harder to pull off. And probably impossible for those without a good education. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/71 "2015-04-14T15:49:44Z")
> [@dzeiger](#): > > Why not? For me, it’s not just automation, it’s automation combined with consolidation that tends to worry me more. OK, more and more people want high speed internet. That should be more customer service reps, more people rolling trucks for installs and repairs, etc. > > But when there’s only one company to do that, what do they care if the average hold times for tech support calls increase? If Mom and Dad get frustrated and end up calling whichever kid is designated as family tech support, so much the better for them. That’s a different problem, but as a former Bell System employee I understand you. Maybe we’ll need to Ernestine out of retirement and have her work for Comcast. But I still contend that companies will eventually figure out that people skills are important. Ever deal with a real saleswoman at a department store? When I buy my once in a decade suit at Macy’s I can get an average salesperson, who sells me a suit, or a really good salesperson, who sells me a suit, some shirts and a tie. And made me happy. Maybe a better class of public-facing employee will become available, and companies can figure out that good ones can increase profitability. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/72 "2015-04-14T16:06:13Z")
Good lord, people, why didn’t you call me in to help out? Of COURSE there is a serious danger of robotics and automation making human beings, for the most part, unable to obtain jobs. And yes, things are different now. Computers are not like other machines, such as the ones the ushered in the industrial revolution. They are programmable … they can be trained to do new jobs. Also, robot hands are getting to be more and more flexible and comparable to human hands. Frex, there’s a robot chef coming online that can prepare more than 2000 meals. The creators are planning to make an app that lets you add new recipes to that database. We are all fucking doomed, because under our present system of capitalism, all the wealth created by the productivity of these robots and various kinds of software will go to the One Percenters that own the robots and the software. The rest of us are being left out in the cold … it’s not just taxes that are fuelling the wealth transfer to the One Percent. There are all sorts of stats and so forth to back these things up, but I don’t have much time to go into it today, so I’ll just refer you to [this earlier thread on the topic](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=637834). It’s not nearly as one-sided as the Dopers who have posted here think it is. Oh, and we all will have a job to do post the robotic job holocaust. It will be “Consumer.” SOMEBODY’S gotta consume all those smartphones, etc., the robots will be building so their corporate masters can stay rich. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/73 "2015-04-14T16:08:13Z")
[![](https://www.creditloan.com/media/ve-ve-100-years-r6.jpg) ](https://www.creditloan.com/media/ve-ve-100-years-r6.jpg) This is not greatest article, but the spending breakdown shows that the percentage of our spending we spend on housing and transportation has increased, but this is more than offset by modest decreasing in clothing costs and massive decreases in food costs. It doesn’t present the data as percent of individual or household income. And it would be better to see these data broken out by quintile. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/74 "2015-04-14T17:12:06Z")
Several have commented on how the Industrial Revolution came along and yet people were able to find new jobs and everything worked out well. In the long term, true. In the short term,[a very nasty mess indeed.](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/32jycp/at_laguardia_airport_they_replaced_all_their/) Transitions are hard, people. We want to AVOID a second Industrial Revolution sort of transition. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/75 "2015-04-14T17:35:14Z")
We certainly wouldn’t want society advancing and people getting wealthier, living longer, and seeing less disease and war, would we? ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/76 "2015-04-14T17:36:47Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The mantra against the op has been that there are more jobs, not less, and that is true … but drill [into](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-on-rise-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/) [the](http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/10-25-HouseholdIncome_0.pdf) data some and what you find is that more and more they are skewed towards lower paying jobs, other than income at the very top levels, which has exploded. > > In short, there are jobs and there are jobs. > > \ > > Real income for households has been on the [decline](http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-Income-Distribution.php) since the year 2000, especially for the lower 40% of our population, down 15.8 and 11.1% for the bottom and second lowest quintiles respectively from their respective peaks in 1999-2000. > > How much of this decline in the quality of available jobs is due to outsourcing the lower middle pay range jobs to other countries and how of it is due to technologic disruption making the jobs obsolete, I don’t know, but the jobs that have replaced the ones that have disappeared pay less in real income terms and that trend seems likely to accelerate as higher paying jobs become subject to the same disruptions. > > Yes we have more nurse’s aides now changing more dementia patients diapers than ever before. Not sure how sustainable that is for the long haul. > > I have no answer to suggest but imagining that the loss of _decent_ jobs, with pay significantly above the poverty line, is only imaginary is not a useful response. Thank you for this post. These types of concerns have troubled me for some time. Like you, I have more questions than answers. I would love to have my fears proven unfounded. Could anyone point me towards intelligent discussions of the issues **DSeid** raises? What do our politicians, business leaders, interest groups, and commentators envision in terms of the types of jobs expected to be available to various sectors or our population? What types of lifestyles will the average (or below average) person be able to aspire to? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/77 "2015-04-14T18:36:31Z")
There are a couple of kind of extreme things we can do to decrease unemployment. We’ve already stuff lots of kids in colleges and grad schools. During the recession going to grad school was one way lots of people used to avoid the job market. But if instead of increasing the Social Security age we decrease it, we could encourage more early retirements. Yes I know this would be expensive. With the old pension system there was incentive to retire at 65, with the 401K/IRA system there is incentive for those who didn’t do a good job saving to hang on, blocking younger people from those jobs. Isn’t the retirement age in India much lower than in the US? It is going to be a long time before robots can take care of patients in nursing homes. If we somehow subsidized them, and required that the extra money go to nursing staff, they might be able to hire more nurses at higher salaries. I suspect that 90% of these facilities are understaffed. (Not legally, but rather in making the lives of the staff and the patients better.) (90% is POOMA - pulled out of my ass, so no cite requests, please.) Those of us old enough to remember people at gas stations checking the oil know that there are lots of places where in the old days people did things no longer done. Some of them have been automated out of existence, but lots of them have been cut to save money and lower prices, so that service does not happen any more. These are not all in crap jobs. Send a resume to a company, and hear nothing back? They cut HR to the level it is no longer possible to respond. When I interviewed the last time, 17 years ago, an HR person was on the agenda and she went over benefits. Now I think candidates get sent something and they can figure it out. So, our problem is as much optimizing things to cut out people as much as automating them. It is going to take a radical rethink to go back. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/78 "2015-04-14T18:41:38Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > People,have been saying this for 200 years and we have always found a new way to keep most people employed. Longer than that. An I’m not aware of any instances where an economy that artificially protected obsolete jobs was successful. Actually the exact opposite. Economies that engage in protectionism not only fail to protect their industries, they actively render them uncompetitive. Generally the problem is that people like the OP are not able to envision a future economy that is fundamentally different from the current one. That is to say, it’s like people in an agrarian society 200 years ago wondering what to do about all the farming jobs lost to automated farm equipment. The answer is they do something else besides farming. Maybe that “something else” in the future is a world where “work” is no longer defined by pushing paper in an office any more than it is working in a factory or on a farm for most of the modern labor force. The internet has made us all interconnected so the main resource that everyone seems to be scrambling for is to get each other’s attention. Blogs, message boards, YouTube and other social networking sites are turning people into millionaires for basically not doing shit. So maybe in 50 years, people will be looking at Kim Kardashian and The Situation from Jersey Shore the same way we look at Henry Ford or Bill Gates as revolutionary innovators? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/79 "2015-04-14T19:03:03Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Thank you for this post. These types of concerns have troubled me for some time. Like you, I have more questions than answers. I would love to have my fears proven unfounded. > > Could anyone point me towards intelligent discussions of the issues **DSeid** raises? What do our politicians, business leaders, interest groups, and commentators envision in terms of the types of jobs expected to be available to various sectors or our population? What types of lifestyles will the average (or below average) person be able to aspire to? First of all, it’s not true that “real income has been on the decline since 2000”. If you lok at the graph, there have been ups and downs. And right now we’re on an “up”. We’re just getting to the point where the Great Recession is behind us, and real incomes have been climbing for the last 2 years. Secondly, there is no reason to pick the year 2000 other than that it makes everything look worse than if you picked any other year. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402/80 "2015-04-14T19:09:44Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There are a couple of kind of extreme things we can do to decrease unemployment. We’ve already stuff lots of kids in colleges and grad schools. During the recession going to grad school was one way lots of people used to avoid the job market. But if instead of increasing the Social Security age we decrease it, we could encourage more early retirements. Yes I know this would be expensive. With the old pension system there was incentive to retire at 65, with the 401K/IRA system there is incentive for those who didn’t do a good job saving to hang on, blocking younger people from those jobs. Lol what? Assuming this isn’t a joke, we’ve long known it to be a bad idea. > **[Keep on trucking](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2012/02/11/keep-on-trucking)** > > Why the old should not make way for the young Early retirement, women should let the men work, the immigrants are stealing our jobs. We all know it’s bogus. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-government-and-society-in-general-need-to-be-concerned-about-the-loss-of-jobs-to-automation/717402.md?page=5)