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

[Mike Panetta]

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,
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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