[ale] OT: more info on where all the jobs are (going...)

matty91 at bellsouth.net matty91 at bellsouth.net
Mon Mar 17 10:13:06 EST 2003




On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Mike Panetta wrote:

> I was actually trying to be broad in the "companies must have employees"
> part.  But to be more to your point, what if all the fast food joints in
> the US suddenly decided to replace all the workers with robots that cost
> say $100k and could replace everyone thats required (except the manager)
> in a franchise to operate it, IE the cooks, the order takers/cashiers,

I always wanted to be a fry cook. ;)

> and the drive through person.  It could do all these jobs cheaper and
> faster (more efficiently) then the people it replaced, and it only cost
> around $20-$50K a year to maintain.  That would make people like me
> happy, because I am partial to robotics (I actually work for a small
> robotics company), and I could probably get a repair/programming job
> pretty easy.  But what about all the other people that got replaced?
> For the most part they are uneducated or not motivated in any way, so
> they could not get jobs fixing robots (or anything else technical I
> would imagine).  What do you think that could do to the economy?  Now
> (and I know this is harsh, but just for the sake of argument) think of
> forign labour as the robots.  They are cheaper then us, and can replace
> anything we do (barring repair jobs or whatever requires you actually be
> at the location).  Now where are we?  (forget the part that they may not
> be as efficient, or as fast as us as that seems to be irrelevant to
> companies anyway, as they only care about cost)
>
>
> Mike
>
> On Sat, 2003-03-15 at 23:17, ChangingLINKS.com wrote:
> > I think that you are missing most of the spectrum.
> >
> > Even if ALL of the IT jobs were to leave this country, I doubt "no one" would
> > be able to afford software. Foriegn cars (in my experience) are usually
> > better made - even to this day (ok limit this to Japan and Germany, and
> > exclude many VWs and Audis).
> >
> > I believe history showed that industry can leave places like PA and Detroit,
> > and we can still have an economic boom in the future (late 90s). America
> > seemed to go from agriculture - to industry - to IT (not a history major over
> > here) and I believe that we can go "to infinity and beyond."
> >
> > I don't believe that foreign policy (exporting labor, importing goods and HB1
> > issues) are the leading cause of our economic swings.
> >
> > Drew
> >
>
>
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