Sunday, September 29, 2013

BloggeRhythms 9/29/2013

Yesterday I mentioned the UN’s report on “Climate Change” that seemed to me to be out of synch with the facts, suggesting a definitive effort to support erroneous theories instead of acknowledging fifteen years of contrary, proven data.
 
Something, however, must have occurred overnight because the following appeared on Drudge just now:
 
“UN PANEL WALKS BACK CLIMATE CLAIMS - A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released this morning claims it is “extremely likely” humans are responsible for climate change. Forbes points out the “admission that global warming has occurred much slower than IPCC previously forecast” and that “IPCC is unable to explain the ongoing plateau in global temperatures.”
 
Perhaps the cause for the change in tone was the Associated Press who “last week revealed leaked emails that showed the U.S. and other governments pressuring scientists to downplay or omit data undercutting environmentalists’ claims.”
 
So, once again, we have additional evidence that the warming issue is far more political than factual, predominately driven by pandering to supporters rather than the truths of the matter, which never seem to be taken into account.
 
Then there was another item illustrating the harm arising from governmental shortsightedness in efforts to “buy” voter support.
 
Recently, there’s been increasing pressure to raise the minimum wage. As a result, predominately left-leaning states like California are beginning to readily acquiesce. However, what these myopic politicians are failing to see, or choosing to ignore for short-term gain, is the long-range damage they’re instigating.
 
An article this morning, also on Drudge, by Miles Brundage in Slate is titled, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?”
 
A study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University estimates “that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years.”
 
The authors then point out that, “This does not mean that they necessarily will be automated, but rather, it is plausible over the next two decades that existing and foreseeable AI technologies could be used to cost-effectively automate those jobs out of existence.”
 
Furthermore, “While the trend in recent decades has been towards a hollowing out of “middle-skill” jobs and an increase in low-paying service sector jobs and high-paying, highly educated jobs, Frey and Osborne expect that automation in the future will mainly substitute for “low-skill and low-wage” jobs.”
 
And then they conclude: “So who, specifically, should be worried? Our model predicts that most workers in transportation and logistics occupations, together with the bulk of office and administrative support workers, and labour in production occupations, are at risk. These findings are consistent with recent technological developments documented in the literature. More surprisingly, we find that a substantial share of employment in service occupations, where most US job growth has occurred over the past decades (Autor and Dorn, 2013), are highly susceptible to computerization.”
 
So, what the study shows is that while low wage jobs are the most susceptible to automation replacement, that doesn’t mean the transfer will undoubtedly take place although it easily can. And what that means is, employers choices will likely boil down to cost as the most important criteria.
 
Consequently, logic says that the more workers have to be paid to perform automatable tasks, the higher the likelihood of automation becomes. And, I guess, that’s the problem with the whole issue of how to best keep vulnerable workers employed. Because if the answer requires that logic be applied, politicians as group are absolutely and unequivocally unqualified to respond.
 
That’s it for today folks.
 
Adios

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