By 2020, people will lose roughly 5 million jobs

[sutty27]

We never did, and it would be a bad thing anyway. How could you hire someone for a new business if there were no pool of available people to hire.

 

By offering better pay and conditions to attract workers from their current jobs.

 

---------- Post added 17-05-2016 at 07:09 ----------

 

One reason I've seen given for the abolition of slavery is that, despite seeming an advantageous economic model for producers due to very low labour costs, it was uneconomic because it stifled consumption. The same may apply to automation.

 

This will have to be done again when society decides that robots can't be used as slaves, we will have to pay them, give them paid leave, and oil breaks.

[Cyclone]

By offering better pay and conditions to attract workers from their current jobs

 

True, and that leaves another business now looking for staff and under productive. It's not a good thing.

[sutty27]

True, and that leaves another business now looking for staff and under productive. It's not a good thing.

 

They can then offer overtime to their other staff.

[I1L2T3]

A true AI is a long way off.

 

And we always assume that once there is a true AI it would be our enemy. Why?

 

Even if it was an enemy, humans think and do things in abstract and unpredictable ways. We would outsmart it.

[Cyclone]

They can then offer overtime to their other staff.

 

So now you're talking about >100% employment. Overtime costs the company more money, they become less competitive. Or the staff are happily employed at full capacity.

What is more likely to happen is inflation as companies increase pay to attract staff from competitors. And then prices are put up to compensate for the higher pay.

And suddenly the country is less competitive against foreign competition and we can't sell to overseas markets any more, then job losses occur and wages fall, but domestic prices, not so much.

Nobody really benefits from full employment, it's some sort of communist dream.

 

---------- Post added 17-05-2016 at 08:10 ----------

 

A true AI is a long way off.

 

And we always assume that once there is a true AI it would be our enemy. Why?

 

Even if it was an enemy, humans think and do things in abstract and unpredictable ways. We would outsmart it.

 

That entirely depends on how I it is doesn't it.

[sutty27]

So now you're talking about >100% employment. Overtime costs the company more money, they become less competitive.

 

Not always, 8 million people work part time, some of them are on zero hours contracts, many want more hours, if you need an employee you attract one of the part time workers by offering them more money, the business they leave just offers more work to the employees they have left, no additional money is required, they still get the same hourly rate but do some extra hours to make up for the employee that left.

[Cyclone]

Now you're talking about something else entirely.

 

If people are not working full time, then we don't have full employment do we. I said that full employment was not desirable, and so you start talking about people working part time!

[sutty27]

Now you're talking about something else entirely.

 

If people are not working full time, then we don't have full employment do we. I said that full employment was not desirable, and so you start talking about people working part time!

 

full employment

the condition in which virtually all who are able and willing to work are employed.

 

Part time workers are still in employment, if everyone that can work is employed then yes we have full employment even though there is still scope to increase the hours they work.

 

The desirable situation is that everyone earns the money they need.

Edited May 17, 2016 by sutty27

[davyboy]

I think eventually it's quite likely. It's all very well saying to people "learn to do something that computers can't do" but that range of work will get smaller as machines get more intelligent, and some people are only up to low-skilled jobs, they lack the mental raw material for more complex jobs. I think it's quite an alarming prospect: large numbers of people permanently out of work, unaffordable welfare bill, therefore high crime as people are forced to survive without welfare, and dwindling markets for goods and services due to insufficient numbers of people earning.

 

Sounds like a good plot for a film.

[Cyclone]

full employment

the condition in which virtually all who are able and willing to work are employed.

 

Part time workers are still in employment, if everyone that can work is employed then yes we have full employment even though there is still scope to increase the hours they work.

 

The desirable situation is that everyone earns the money they need.

 

A more complete definition

 

A situation in which all available labor resources are being used in the most economically efficient way. Full employment embodies the highest amount of skilled and unskilled labor that could be employed within an economy at any given time.

 

Part time work is not full employment, quite clearly.