Robots and Computers are the immigrants who have most changed the economic landscape of our communities.
This is UPDATED 12/25/18 to highlight seven “excerpts” from this 12/16/18 NY Times Opinion “Abandoned In America” …The update also proposes an original economic equalizer concept which I have named Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA). which recognizes there are social and human costs paid in exchange for the economic benefit of a robot.
When a shopper buys something made in an oppressive, exploitative environment, the shopper endorses that practice. When a person or investment group chooses to increase profits by eliminating people, those displaced workers effectively become the profit residue. We have become accustomed over the years to the elimination of many jobs including Bank Tellers (replaced by ATMs and complicit users), and more recently toll collectors, meter readers and cashiers (replaced by self service checkouts and complicit users). Artificial Intelligence Robots are different because they replace the whole person, and the interpretative decision making required to do the task. What happens to these displaced people? Just look around and ask any homeless person or beggar if they want a full time job. That job could be created or subsidized with the Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA)
(1) Why exactly does the author state “One thing seems clear to me: nobody — not experts or policymakers or people in these communities — seems to know quite how to pick rural America up.” When it is crystal clear that automation has replaced people. People need an economically valued role in their communities to maintain their communities.
(2) “After World War II, small town prosperity relied on its contribution to the industrial economy”, before people ordered online ( they used the USA Based Sears Catalong) ate frozen food, and ate fresh food flown in from other continents. Back in the day, small towns were micro economies that supported each other because people knew each other, almost like the 1946 Christmas Movie “Its a Wonderful Life”. Today rural development consists of exploiting low tax rates with a “something is better than nothing” value proposition.
(3) “During the”pre-internet” economic recovery of 1992 to 1996, 135,000 new businesses were started in small counties, a third of the nation’s total. These days, economic growth that supports common welfare bypasses rural economies.”
(4) “Overall, manufacturing employs about one in eight workers in the country’s 704 entirely rural counties. That’s more than agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining combined” but all manufacturing is done with people monitoring robots, so we see empty parking lots where truck pull up and leave, but people are pretty absent”.
Robot Fork Lift can find, stack and recover pallets 24 x 7 x 365
(5) “ Robots and workers in China put together most of the manufactured goods that Americans buy, and the high-tech industries powering the economy today don’t have much need for the cheap labor that rural communities contributed to America’s industrial past.” Because, *IMO* Big Tech is keeping the profits from selling fabricating need and filling it with cheap imports shipped directly, so no more stores, What is the value of all this “tech?” Are we, as a nation, really living better by spending less and becoming obsessed with small screen distractions while our neighbors suffer. It’s to go have more farms and more people making things people want to buy in a cottage industry economy. People have been priced out and kicked to the curb for profit. How does this break down?
(6) “ There are, to be sure, some rural communities with productivity as high as some big cities. But they rely on heavily mechanized and automated industries that support few jobs: oil extraction or large-scale agriculture, in which tractors talk to satellites and no drivers are involved. The livestock business on the vast pastures of Sioux County, Neb., for example, supports an economy worth $306,000 per worker, according to data from Mr. Muro and Jacob Whiton of Brookings. But only 1,200 people live there.” If we propose the 1000 people all the work these people are keeping the income of over 6500 people of about $50,000 each in just one small scenario. Look at all the corporate agribusiness and mining that uses automation to maximize profits while elimination human employees in every state.
The Income Per Employee is the ratio of earnings before (EBITDA) (interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) divided by the number of employees, which get higher and higher as less people are needed to produce products or services ( in an automated system) or more people are paid less, like in a foreign country. What we will see, in the absence of a Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA) is new, highly automated, low employee manufacturing moving to rural communities that are closer to heavy transportation assets. The promise of rural economic development could remain an empty promise unless a commitment is made to employ people before robots. While rural communities may welcome economic development with tax incentives they will be wise to evaluate the number and quality of jobs created, or they will find low value big box construction housing robots, a minimal number of support staff and a teleconference room to connect the off site investors to their next cash cow.
Automated Pallet Mover Replaces a Person
(7) “The distress of 50 million Americans should concern everyone. Not every small town can be a tech hub, nor should it be. But that can’t be the only answer.” The answer is more farms and more people running them. More responsible, honest people on the assembly lines and less robots, which is a tough call for business owner since robots work 23 hours everyday, never goof off, call in sick, create inventory shrink, make mistakes, or slip and fall. But at what cost do we create wastelands of human suffering where shuttered towns host addiction, depression and a small economy of convenience and liquor stores. What is the real cost of paying less? And who is ultimately paying.
Now is the time to mandate cottage economic development so Authentic Citizens of the United States can have the opportunity and desire to buy Made in the USA at a competitive price, while reinvesting in our citizens. This goal can be accomplished with the support of a Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA), a fee paid by business owners who employ robots to replace people, developed and copyright by Dave Carr Carr on 12/21/18. The Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA) will be directly distributed to business that hire people do do tasks, thus creating an incentive to hire a person over buying a robot. Since a robot can replace four and a half full time employees ( 40 compared to 168 hours per week) there needs to be a surcharge to make hiring people a good business decisions, not just an moral one. The Robotic Activity Dividend Assessment (RADA) will be determined by calculating the value of labor replaced by robots so the people who have been marginalized can find employment in another industry, or be hired with the money saved by eliminating robot.
NOTE: This following part was written before the preceding, on 11/13/18
In these days of divisive blame, fear and anger about forces that will affect our future let us not forget to keep the robot and computers clearly on top of the list of immigrants who have changed the economic landscape of our communities and the lives of Authentic Citizens of the United States.
It often seems to me every machine that does a job is truly the enemy and the immigrant that has stolen Economic Opportunity from individuals who want to earn a living yet are not in the position to run companies and buy robots. Naive blame for un-employment and job security loss is consistently laid on the shoulders of immigrants as the problem when in fact, workers are being sold out for the profits of the robot owners.
It seems to me that “Authentic Citizens of the United States” are becoming overwhelmed and desensitized to the violence and suffering of our neighbors who live in our country. Wind-whipped fire is threatening California while people seeking opportunity are walking towards our militarized border. Meanwhile families grieve from the senseless slaughter of innocent loved ones. Authentic Citizens of the United States would be wise to remember that history repeats itself when we do not learn from the mistakes of the past, as Winston Churchill once said.
2018 is the 100th anniversary of ending World War 1. Almost everybody who lived in that time has died. Living memories and nightmares are the reality for those who survive, while history often becomes a distant story with little meaning, relevance and emotion for those unaffected. It’s interesting and important to consider what exactly affected people from 1914–1918, and how many of those forces and divisional attitudes are very much the same today, now streaming into your palm instead of being printed on paper.
100 years ago, opposition leaders often mocked the mainstream media as “lugenpresse” or lying press, a term that was used by the Nazis in the 1920’s, much like claims of fake news ring through our twitter and social media today. Democracy, peace, opportunity, and freedom can never be taken for granted although today there is a certain militaristic culture that permeates our daily lives in the form of entertainment media and first person shooting games played by people who have no memory or experience of the industrialized killing machines that dominated wars of the 20th century.
“The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in the presence of the US president and Russian Leader on Nov 11, 2018. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” he continued. “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: Its moral values.”
Immigration will continue to be a reality around the world as people seek to leave threatening political, environmental and criminal environments in search of basic human rights of shelter, safety, food and employment. Opportunity used to be found in the United States through industry, however automation has taken many of the jobs that people used to do. Robots are paying their owners by working 150 hours a week with no complaints while leaving working human families angry at forces they cannot identify.
Every time you walk into a bank you see many empty teller windows. Where are these people? We are told in advertising about how easy it is to shop for car insurance or a hotel room using our phone by easily entering some information, yet it was not long ago we called someone on the phone like an agent who did this task. Where are those people now? Even today you can go to factories and see parking lots with many empty spaces in the middle of a work day, parking spaces that used to be full of cars that brought employees home to their families with money and benefits so that our communities could grow….
When we accept that premise that nationalism betrays patriotism, then apply this principle to the economic environments of supply and demand, it’s obvious to see that robots, automation and technology have created a supply of labor that has reduced the demand for people. This is most obvious in farming communities where huge farms are run by computers that mange the soils, robots that move irrigation and massive combines that do the harvesting work of hundreds of “farm hands”. Animals are corralled, sometimes exercised, fed and slaughtered by robots while many chickens live their entire lives in a world that is so crowded it may be a vision of the future for the world’s poor. When we move away from the farms to the factories, more people are left unemployed, frustrated, angry and alienated as robots replace people who used to pack boxes, stock shelves and build the goods that made the United Sates a global ideal of free market capitalism protected by democracy.
You can see how robots have replaced people in every single theater of employment in the world, in every movie theater in the world, as projectionists have been eliminated and how the middleman technology is closing national stores, driving down producer prices, eliminating producer jobs, leaving money on the table only for the owners or investors of the robots and applied technology. No wonder there are so many hopeless, angry, alienated and underemployed people when employee profit sharing and lifetime job security have been eliminated, allowing CEOs to put dividends and profits before the very communities that provide their extreme wealth. No wonder the biggest growth of business establishments from 2010 to 2017 occurred in Missouri, Montana and Idaho, the same states that delivered the lowest average pay in 2017. When half a loaf is better than none families go hungry instead of homeless.
In these days of divisive blame, fear and anger about forces that will affect our future let us not forget to keep the robot and computers clearly on the list of immigrants who have changed the economic landscape of our communities and the lives of Authentic Citizens of the United States. By David Carr. 11/13/18
