The Corporate mantra that robots aren't going to take jobs but are here to help
There is a mantra being espoused by the corporate world, particularly the Fortune 1000 companies, that robots are not here to replace workers but to assist them.
That is the rhetoric coming out of the United States.
So the question is does anyone believe them?
Here is an article about Wal-Mart testing robotic grocery pickers in one of the stores.
True to form, the person sent out to deliver the company line passed along the mantra: the robots aren't going to take anyone's job.
Considering that Elon Musk sent shock waves the financial markets with his tweet about taking Tesla public, this assertion seems hard to believe. One of the reasons Musk feels that Tesla would be better off as a private company is because Wall Street is so focused upon the quarterly numbers, even to the detriment of long term goals.
Do we believe that Wal-Mart or these other companies are not concerned about the same thing?
The reason why robots are not taking Wal-Mart jobs, at this point, is the technology is not there yet. Give the company another 5 years of research and you can bet that there will be layoffs as a result of technological advancements.
Photo: Yahoo Finance / Julia La Roche
This story is being played out among many different industries. It is pure madness to believe that the corporations are concerned about workers. The retail industry was devastated the last decade with the workers being tossed out in favor of last ditch liquidations. We also saw what happened in the oil industry in West Texas after the prices collapsed. When technology went in, half the jobs were never recovered.
Most households are already struggling. Another leg down, either due to recession or technology, is going to have a major impact. It is hard to forecast what the future will look like.
One thing we can conclude, that after so many years of doing all they can to increase quarterly profits, that companies are not going to tech out as many employees as they can.
Technological unemployment is in their best interest.
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