Why America Is On The Edge Of Massive Unemployment
Every few years we see protests all around the country, every time larger and getting bigger media coverage, pressuring the government to raise the minimum wage! I may not be from the future, but I’m about to tell you what happens next!
That main argument in favor of boosting the minimum wage is that $7.25 an hour is not enough enough to live a decent life and because of that the government should regulate itself and fix the problem.
The city of Los Angeles already approved the jump, incrementally increasing it until it hits $15 an hour by 2020. But wait, don’t HURRAY yet!
What I’m about to say will probably upset a big portion of the public, especially those that are in favor of an increase in the minimum wage: Nobody is entitled to a comfortable life! Also, you’re about to be out of job sooner than you think if your protests are successful!
Even more so if what you’re bringing to the table is unqualified work!
Every for-profit company out there has one main focus: to make money. In order to do just that your income should be greater than your expenses. One might say there’s a third factor in the mix, the government, which imposes regulation in order to keep everyone in line.
Although the government has plenty of power it can not force companies to hire inefficient staff, so if your value to the company is not greater than $15 and hour + tax + benefits, the company will look for an alternative. Even if you do, a 33% of a business’s costs have to do with people and the incentive to drive that cost down is as high as it gets.
The future is already here and it doesn’t care about your feelings!
The second the minimum wage is increased the countdown to complete automation begins.
Firstly with the low paying jobs, because those are the easiest ones to teach robots how to do and if we look at the numbers those account for about 20% of the job market, followed by another 20% immediately after that is directly connected to the first. 40% of the entire job market is about to be automated in the following years.
Robots are cheaper to build than ever because we already have build robots that now build others. If this sounds like SF to you and think that’s never going to happen you’re wrong!
Here’s a list of the jobs that are about to completely transformed in the next 10 years:
If you’re looking at the top of the list it should by now make sense to you why Google is pouring massive amounts of resources into their driverless cars.
But automation doesn’t stop with low paying jobs! The market penetration of automation is suffering an exponensial growth in the recent year due to the fast development of the computing power.
Don’t believe us? Let’s dive deeper into what is happening right now:
The robots are going to take over either way, but raising the minimum wage right now will only speed up the process!
So let us enjoy our terrible jobs for as long as we still have them!
