Mish is pimping for robots

Not that there's a job shortage, but Mish seems to be doing
everything to pump for robot manufacturers to replace
workers.
I wonder what kind of financial analyst would actively
attack a large part of his customer base, employees.

No thought given to why this is wrong, it just is.

thanks Mish

Read 'em and weep: Mish

Meet "Baxter" the Robot Out to Get Your Minimum-Wage, No Benefits, Part-Time Job, Because He's Still Much Cheaper; Fed Cannot Win a Fight Against Robots

The federal Minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour. Ten states have higher minimum wages with Rhode Island clocking in 50 cents higher at $7.75.

 Costs to the employer are higher of course, even if the employer ducks benefits by using part-time workers.

 For starters, employer contributions to Social Security are 6.2% of hourly wages which adds another 45 cents to employer costs. That brings employer costs up to $7.95 per hour minimum, not counting training costs, vacation (if any), sick-time disruptions, and other such costs.

 Of course, employers must also factor in the cost of Obamacare.

 Small businesses do not have to provide health-care, but under employer responsibility provisions of the affordable care act, businesses that employ more than 50 workers will pay a steep penalty in 2014 if they don't.

 Click on the preceding link to see a nice flow chart of the penalty process.

What IF?

 What if companies, small or large, did not have to worry about Obamacare? What if they did not have to worry, about training, sick-leave disruptions and weather-related disruptions? What if companies only had to pay $3.00 per hour, rivaling wages in China?

Meet Baxter

Baxter - The Automation Robot

…60 Minutes Discusses Baxter 

 Inquiring minds are listening to a 13 minute video on 60 Minutes that discusses "The Age of Robots", and Baxter.

Link if video does not play: 60 Minutes on Robots

 Please play the video. It's well worth your time.

60 Minutes Quotes and Idea

•Percentage of Americans with jobs is at a 20-year low

•Routine middle-skill jobs are being eliminated fastest

•Software robots and physical robots replace wanted jobs

•There are heavily automated warehouses where there are no human workers, right now

•"You'd think the robots would run into each other but it never happens"

•One robot saves 1.5 people

•New Categories of jobs are in the sights of automation

•eDiscovery replaces legal jobs

•US manufacturing is making a comeback, but without the jobs

•Investment in robots has increased 30% since the recession ended

•Baxter costs $22,000 and can be trained in a matter of minutes

•Baxter costs $22,000 and lasts 6,500 hours, about $3.40 per hour

•Buying a robot is like hiring a Chinese worker

•"Workers in China and India are more in the bulls-eye of the automation tidal-wave than the American worker"

•Even if manufacturing returns to the US most of the jobs will go to robots

•"Work as we currently think of it will be largely done by machines"

•What people will do is the $64,000 question

Here is an interesting Email exchange I had with a few friends, one of which sent me the MIT article.

 "Bob" writes "Buy American is a big theme with the robotics guys. My future son-in-law won't even buy his tux from a Hong Kong tailor. He refuses to buy anything from China. They view themselves as abolishing Chinese slave labor by making it uneconomic."

 "John" responded "What do those people then do to feed themselves?"

 "Bob" replied "The easy answer is that it isn't our duty or problem to keep a slave state prospering and fed. You are not going to wipe out China's slave labor overnight. If China's elite sees that its low wage slave labor will no longer reap profits, they will do what other slave masters have done: educate its people so that they can compete in an economy where there are no slave conditions."

In Praise of Cheap Labor

 "Mish" says, I fail to see where the above line of thinking goes.

 We have come to a point where the minimum wage is 200% too much. How does hiring Baxter at $3.40 per hour prevent slave labor in China? Is no job better than some job?

 Baxter is a hugely deflationary force. Increasing the minimum wage only exacerbates the problem.

 Oddly enough, Paul Krugman agrees, or at least he once did before he became the "Conscience of a Liberal".

 Want proof? Please consider In Praise of Cheap Labor; Are Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Better than No Jobs at All?

Taxing Robots Cannot Work

[RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. THE WORDS OF A FASCIST. LET ECONOMICS AND GOVERNMENTS TELL US HOW THIS PLANET WILL GO. DON’T EVEN VOTE- Costick67]

Resistance is futile.

 The Fed, central banks, and governments around the globe need to embrace technology and its deflationary forces. Otherwise, the result will be a sad combination of fewer jobs, rising population, higher prices, and a ultimately a major war.

 Mike "Mish" Shedlock