All hype aside, in the next decade where will more US jobs be lost, to foreign labor, or to machines?

For starters there are jobs. This is a good job market right now. The thing is they are shit jobs.

And there will without a doubt be more lost to foreign workers. We haven’t even started to tap Africa yet. They will make 100 pairs of pants for a bag of rice. We would already be doing it if there was a (safe) infrastructure to be doing it. Once they can provide reliable energy to power the sewing machines and a safe way to get goods in and out your pants from Walmart will be made in the Congo. And then your TV will be made in the same place your t-shirts are made now.

Sabotage…..

“The word “sabotage” appears in the beginning of the 19th century from the French word “sabotage”. It is sometimes said that some workers (from Netherlands for some, canuts from Lyon for others, luddites in England, etc.) used to throw their “sabots” (clogs) in the machines to break them, but this is not supported by the etymology”

So thinking the machines will replace you is a very old idea and history has proven it as a stupid one. But this goes back to education. You need to teach the populace how to make, program, and repair the machines.

In the end people would be better off if their jobs were replaced by machines. That assumes that there was some sort of national income and people had access to the needed training to build, program, and repair machines.

You might replace a bunch of truckers. Brakes and tires still need to be repaired and replaced.

I have no idea the actual answer given the two choices, but it’s not just robots and jobs going overseas. It’s also selling through the internet vs. brick and mortar. Staffing a warehouse is usually cheaper than staffing a retail store, both in what you pay a worker and also you need fewer workers for that type of business. I guess maybe we add some programmers and website managers to create websites and that sort of thing. That job can be done from other countries though.

Now, with Trump at the helm, there is a little bit of a wild card with whether he can increase manufacturing here.

So much is already done by robot and machines, is there industries not using that technology already? I’ve heard people mention fast food going towards getting more automated. The restaurant Chilis has screens at he table that in theory should make the waiters job easier and be able to handle more tables at once. From what I’ve heard, it doesn’t really help that much. Too many people need help using them.

In the long run, machines pose the greater threat to jobs. The non-college educated whites who form the core of Trump’s support are particularly affected. They could well be a dying breed.

Since the start of the industrial revolution, there has been a race between machines and people. So far people have been able to stay a step ahead. I don’t know if that can continue. Some of the things that can be done now are pretty scary, like winning at Jeopardy and chess and driving cars. I envision a brave new world scenario, not for a while perhaps, but eventually.

In the next 10 years, foreign labor.

Foreign workers in the US will work for less. And it has nothing to do with the 1%. It has to do with how much the 99% is going to have to pay for food.

And it is cheaper to make factory stuff overseas. Labor is less expensive, taxes are lower, and regulations do not cut into efficiency.

All hype aside.

No matter where the product is made, a person needs to fix it when it breaks, or basic maintenance, so those types of jobs might grow. As our population grows so do our needs for plumbers, electrical, carpenter, some professions continue to grow. I know we are looking for a mechanic for our golf cart repair business. People keep buying carts here where I live. The amount of house construction here is mind boggling.

Over the next decade I would assume more would be lost overseas.

The robotics and automation market is constantly expanding and putting folks out of work but it is not yet at the point where it can replace cheap Asian labor.

The 2 go hand in hand. The process may indeed be inevitable, but our ongoing 40 year Federally subsidized elimination of our industrial sector has now reaped us Trump as the appropriate reward.

Capitalism, or at least this latest version of it, is a failing system not providing for the majority of the population.

A new paradigm is in order.

It’s probably a losing game – and why bother playing it, if so? – to guess “where will most [American] jobs be lost in the next X years?” I would suggest instead asking “Where will be the biggest [American] job growth in those X years?”

That can probably be more accurately predicted in any case using demographics and general awareness of the society we live in, whereas the former prediction requires knowledge and analysis of the state of manufacturing and automation in general and computing power (and cost) in specific, currency fluctuations among trading partners and accurate prediction of political risk elsewhere in the world. Which is not to say that good guesses can’t be made, but so what? At the end of a successful prediction you’d have a list of which are the most likely jobs to be dead-ended in the near future… and many of those jobs are already recognizable dead ends. Where’s the value there?

@josie Foreign workers in the US will work for less. And it has nothing to do with the 1%. It has to do with how much the 99% is going to have to pay for food.
That is the rub, we all know foreign workers will work less an hour than Yankees will, and that John Q wants to get quality things at the lowest price. The only way to really have it both ways is mechanical means, it might remove jobs, but it might create some but then people will complain of a ”technical divide”, where those who are computer literate, or electronic engineers will be getting work over the guy who barely made it out of high school. John Q hates to spend money on regular things while overspending on stuff just because of a designer label.

@rojo The robotics and automation market is constantly expanding and putting folks out of work but it is not yet at the point where it can replace cheap Asian labor.
At the point it becomes cost efficient, and also mechanically viable to have machines doing things that humans normally do now, and do them quicker, with less error, and quicker, would it then replace 3rd world labor and if so, what then, both US jobs and 3rd world jobs will be lost to machines?