[mattduke]

An interesting story on how US bureaucrats have destroyed the economy of American Samoa by mandating the price of labor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LaPGIIAyk4

[Jotapay]

I saw that 60 Minutes bit last night. That's a great follow up.

[AlexdeLarge]

Madame Pelosi laughs at you puny peasants................

[gnm]

Alex, please, too soon after lunch for that pic!

Urg. How do crazed freaks like her get elected?


-G

[Sixstrings]

Guys.. it's not the minimum wage that destroyed the jobs, it was outsourcing to FREAKING ROBOTS, ok?

The new factory in Georgia is highly automated.. in the end, a robotic factory will always be cheaper and more productive than human workers, unless you're just paying slave labor wagers. But even with slave pay, robots are still better -- they don't get sick, they don't cause trouble, they can work 24/7.

Mark my words, robotic outsourcing will become a bigger and bigger problem in the coming years.




Sorry, Dave -- I took your tuna packing job.

[MarkJ]

It's a no brainer to replace over two thousand low paid workers with two hundred workers in a highly automated production facility.

Once the lines are up and running, future increases in production due to improvements in automation, computerization, robotics, communications and other technology will eliminate more jobs.

Worker performance can be increased as well, thus requiring fewer workers to perform the same amount of work.

[Sixstrings]

More service sector job-taking robots of the future...

MechaDroid Type C3 robot receptionist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsVNVtsSzds&feature=player_embedded

Asimo the Waiter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyr8iJFxIjU&feature=player_embedded

Home Assistant Robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRC9DAbxagA&feature=player_embedded

RI-MAN Elderly Care Robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmtHBEU8lrk&feature=player_embedded

So.. if India gets all the engineering, IT, call center, and back-office jobs, and China gets all the manufacturing (including green jobs), and robots do everything else -- what the heck are Americans gonna do? Keep changing careers as either foreigners or robots make you obsolete?

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'G')uys.. it's not the minimum wage that destroyed the jobs, it was outsourcing to FREAKING ROBOTS, ok?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')Six, I hear you, but technology will continue to move ahead. The question is, how do we deal with that? (I'm a moderate who voted for Obama, BTW).

[SeaGypsy]

Pago Pago is a dive, capital of a single industry 2 island cargo cult perched on the outer edge of the most isolated archipelago in the Pacific. The USA can look forward to paying social security for this backwater until the confetti money is worthless. The main export of Pago Pago is obese humans, this trade will pick up even more as the tuna factories shut.

[Tyler_JC]

Maybe Congress shouldn't have ruined that island's economy? If the minimum wage hadn't been ratcheted up, Samoa would still have its tuna canning factory and thousands of people would still have their jobs.

As for robots. People have been whining about technological progress since the textile mill took jobs away from tailors.

We need to invest in adult education (community colleges, for example) in order to help retrain the workforce to deal with the changing job market.

[SeaGypsy]

Only New Zealand and Noumea (both complex economies) have higher wages than what was being paid before the USG got involved. Most of the regions wages are about 1/5th of pre intervention cannery wages. The USG needs to get some perspective.

[MarkJ]

Rising current/future wages/benefits/mandates are often the trigger that forces an investment in increased productivity.

Unfortunately many people work unskilled jobs pushing buttons or babysitting equipment, so there's little they can do to increase human productivity, however relatively low tech mechanical upgrades can substantially increase productivity while eliminating numerous machines, processes, movement and workers.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')TARKIST SAMOA Automated Conveyor System--Starkist is based in Pago Pago, American Samoa, tinning tuna for the US market. They needed an engineering solution which could speed up production of sorting, dumping and filing cans from 500
cans per minute to 1,200 can per minute.

The deadline for this project was six months and Patton’s was able to complete this early. Patton Engineering exceeded the customer’s expectations for this project. They were aiming to increase production to 1,200 cans per minute and Patton’s new machine processes up to 1,600 cans per minute. Once piece of equipment replaced four existing processes, with mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic processes all in the one piece of machinery. pdf

[Ferretlover]

Good thing that business has planned ahead for when the supply of working humans is decimated, isn't it?

[Ferretlover]

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