Posted on Feb 12, 2018
What happens when a new technology that is better for the environment also eliminates jobs?
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There are 22 massive docks at the Port of Long Beach where ships pull up to load and unload cargo. At all but one of those docks, most of the work is still done by people. The Long Beach Container Terminal, which opened in April 2016, is an exception. Here, self-driving vehicles and automated cranes do most of the work. It requires two-thirds fewer workers than traditional terminals.
What happens when a new technology that is better for the environment also eliminates jobs?
Posted from marketplace.org
Jobs
Employment
Industrial Automation
Robots
Technology
Posted 7 y ago
Responses: 3
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Good article. It also applies to the coal industry, although that is the added benefit to coal companies of being more efficient/less money in the long run. And it's hard for people of that age to change their professions.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
Susan Foster One Industry that Can't Die Fast Enough in My Book with One Great Grandfather Dead from a Cave In and a Grandfather Dead from Black Lung. No One Should Ever go into that Line of Work.
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Susan Foster
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel - I so agree. I don't know why the states that have it aren't pushing harder for retraining. But perhaps they are and folks just continue to do what their family has always done.
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I watched a story similar to this on CBS Sunday Morning a while back. I agree with MIT economist David Autor, “History has suggested that the pessimists have been wrong time and time again,” he said. “The last 200 years, we’ve had an incredible amount of automation. We have tractors that do the work that horses and people used to do on farms. We don’t dig ditches by hand anymore. We don’t pound tools out of wrought iron. We don’t do bookkeeping with books! But this has not in net reduced the amount of employment.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-the-robots-take-over-will-there-be-jobs-left-for-us/
As it applies to coal miners, who's to say that they can't learn new skills? Perhaps West Virginians will some day be the bulk of a workforce building our portion of a global energy grid across N. America.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-the-robots-take-over-will-there-be-jobs-left-for-us/
As it applies to coal miners, who's to say that they can't learn new skills? Perhaps West Virginians will some day be the bulk of a workforce building our portion of a global energy grid across N. America.
When the robots take over, will there be jobs left for us?
As autonomous vehicles and machines become cheaper and computers smarter, David Pogue explores the ramifications for human employment in a post-robot economy
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