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by JoeAltmaier 2706 days ago
Maybe. In a world of increasing automation (explosive in the last 15 years) there's not much value in training for anything less than medicine or engineering. And US has 30 million flipping burgers. When that's automated too, there's not many that could retrain to be engineers. And we don't need 30M more engineers anyway.

That's why UBI is a hot topic. Its a way out of a collapse.
3 comments
jecxjo 2706 days ago
> In a world of increasing automation (explosive in the last 15 years) there's not much value in training for anything less than medicine or engineering.

Yes and no. I think a lot of of this automation will mean we will be going back to the world of trade schools where repair becomes a lot more important. Same goes with installation of these automated systems. The US loves to push "shovel ready" construction jobs but we should be focusing more on training for installation and repair of automation.

I've found it kind of odd that we've lost a lot of the trade skills being taught in high school. I'm in my mid 30's and I'm the only person my age I know who took classes in Small Gas Engines, Carpentry, Electrical, Plumbing, etc. From that point a lot of kids went right on to get Journeymen certs and many now own their own businesses. If they would bring those classes back and also teach these types of skills to those underemployed I think you could easily transition into any type of related field.

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astazangasta 2706 days ago
Automation has not been explosive in the last 15 years, I'm not sure why you think this. Productivity growth (the measure of increasing automation) has been the lowest its been in decades, see here: https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user330...

As for whether we need 30 million engineers, thats entirely up to what we want to be as a society. If you don't think we can come up with engineering work for 30 million people I beg to differ.

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JoeAltmaier 2705 days ago
Not a good measure, because so many are reduced to service industries. Factory automation has been a headlong rush to automation for decades.

We're down 5M factory jobs since 2000, to something like 13M. And the rest are slated to go as automation becomes cheaper. When factories 'come back' from overseas, its only because now automation is even cheaper than foreign labor.

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est31 2705 days ago
This video about how an electric motor is made has almost solely machines doing the work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zttC2x9nMEw
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mrkstu 2706 days ago
A magnitude lower- its 3 actually:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/196630/number-of-employe...

Less than I would of thought- considering it used to be a rite of passage for many teenagers.

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JoeAltmaier 2705 days ago
That's just fast-food. How about stocker, register operator, shoe store salespeople etc.
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