09 April 2018

R.U.R. - part the second

The first installment in what is now another series of data analysis made this point:
The standard whipping boy of the lunatic right, who are clearly conflicted, is the unionized auto worker. On the one hand, they've spent decades demonizing such folks, just the Rust Belt angry white folks who're now out of work. But, now of course, Kim Jong-Don claims that he's their savior. Baloney, of course. Here's a detailed analysis of the way the world really was, at the time of the auto rescue.
A final note on all this: Labor costs only account for about 10 percent of the cost of producing a vehicle.

Today we get the news that Der Trumper Bankster, aka John Cryan CEO du Deutsche Bank, is out the door. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But, he's not the only one likely to get FIREd in the coming times. Last fall, we heard this:
AI has, however, piled pressure on costs by automating mundane and repetitive tasks. The implication is that employees like the accountants singled out by Cryan as "doing work like robots" are living on borrowed time.

Which raises that nasty existential question yet again: if high-value, high-wage, high-education FIRE jobs are on the bonfire, how is it that education is the key to prosperity? Will we really need millions of new EEs in the coming years? And if so, can your average MBA actually earn the lowly BSEE? My wild ass guess? Not in a million years. It's that Pareto gut punch, yet again.

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