Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
And yet...the jobs are still being done by humans in other countries.
I've heard the doom and gloom argument for years about automation. Same argument the unions were screaming about since the 1950's with car manufacturers.
But again...PEOPLE are still making things. And the plants and factories where they are making them have moved from the U.S. to other countries.
Today Trump put out the plan of lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 down to 15 to 20%
Imagine if you are a giant corporation making a billion dollars a year in profit.
That tax cut saves you from $150 to $200 MILLION dollars a year!
And Trump is telling them that if they bring their plants and jobs BACK to the U.S., then they are gold.
If they don't? He is going to put a border tax on their ass that will negate the savings from the corporate tax.
He is making the U.S. THE place to build your factories and jobs.
What is wrong with that?
Is automation a factor?
Yeah...it has been for the last 60 to 70 years. So what? There are still MILLIONS of jobs in this world that American companies have outsourced to other countries.
If Trump's economic policies can bring those back...that my friend is a very, very good thing.
|
Sure, people are still making things and they will for a while longer, but automation now is far more advanced than it was 20 years ago. I just read a story the other day about a company in China that replaced 90% of its workers with robots. Mistakes went down by 95% and productivity went up by 200%. When the countries we outsource jobs to are starting to automate that is a bad sign. Another story I saw a few months ago talked about how 80% of the manufacturing jobs that were lost in the US in the last 10 years were due to automation and not outsourcing. The CEO of McDonalds recently said that the company would stop its lobbying efforts to halt a raise in the minimum wage to $15 per hour to instead focus on automation.
Properly done, a tariff and tax breaks could help keep jobs in the US and maybe even bring some back, but I still think it is ultimately not going to matter. I think it is a short term fix. We have the technology now and automation is expanding rapidly. I won't be shocked to see large numbers of jobs disappearing over the next 10 years to automation. Self driving cars along could wipe out an entire industry.