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Why there are less blue collar jobs

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Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by DDHv   » Fri Oct 21, 2016 9:53 am

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From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... -on-the-go

Zume is tackling the supply-demand mismatch. When you call a mom and pop store and are told "we're backed up — it'll take an hour," you hang up and it loses your business. Because Zume is run mostly by robots, it doesn't have that problem. Off-peak or during crazy, crazy peak times, those bots are there.

"No other pizza operator can actually dynamically adjust their delivery fleet to accommodate that level of demand," Collins says.

There are some jobs that are hard to automate, but fewer all the time. When laid off in '03, the first thing we did was enlarge our back yard garden.

If we get a year with heavy grasshopper population, I'll try getting the city council to allow at least a few hen chickens inside town and use the trick of building the chicken run around the outside of the garden
:idea:
Douglas Hvistendahl
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Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by WeirdlyWired   » Sun Oct 23, 2016 4:48 am

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DDHv wrote:From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... -on-the-go

Zume is tackling the supply-demand mismatch. When you call a mom and pop store and are told "we're backed up — it'll take an hour," you hang up and it loses your business. Because Zume is run mostly by robots, it doesn't have that problem. Off-peak or during crazy, crazy peak times, those bots are there.

"No other pizza operator can actually dynamically adjust their delivery fleet to accommodate that level of demand," Collins says.


way back in the late 50s automation was supposed to give us much more "leisure time." I suppose the homeless population down the river in Portland are, what, overly leisure endowed?
There are some jobs that are hard to automate, but fewer all the time. When laid off in '03, the first thing we did was enlarge our back yard garden.

If we get a year with heavy grasshopper population, I'll try getting the city council to allow at least a few hen chickens inside town and use the trick of building the chicken run around the outside of the garden
:idea:
Helas,chou, Je m'en fache.
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by Lord Skimper   » Sun Nov 13, 2016 5:45 pm

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DDHv wrote:From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... -on-the-go

Zume is tackling the supply-demand mismatch. When you call a mom and pop store and are told "we're backed up — it'll take an hour," you hang up and it loses your business. Because Zume is run mostly by robots, it doesn't have that problem. Off-peak or during crazy, crazy peak times, those bots are there.

"No other pizza operator can actually dynamically adjust their delivery fleet to accommodate that level of demand," Collins says.

There are some jobs that are hard to automate, but fewer all the time. When laid off in '03, the first thing we did was enlarge our back yard garden.

If we get a year with heavy grasshopper population, I'll try getting the city council to allow at least a few hen chickens inside town and use the trick of building the chicken run around the outside of the garden
:idea:


Green house. Keeps the grasshoppers out. Or net the Grasshoppers and sell them. They make a great protein supplement.
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by DDHv   » Sat Dec 03, 2016 11:13 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:
DDHv wrote:From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 ... -on-the-go

"Zume is tackling the supply-demand mismatch. When you call a mom and pop store and are told "we're backed up — it'll take an hour," you hang up and it loses your business. Because Zume is run mostly by robots, it doesn't have that problem. Off-peak or during crazy, crazy peak times, those bots are there.

"No other pizza operator can actually dynamically adjust their delivery fleet to accommodate that level of demand," Collins says."
There are some jobs that are hard to automate, but fewer all the time. When laid off in '03, the first thing we did was enlarge our back yard garden.

If we get a year with heavy grasshopper population, I'll try getting the city council to allow at least a few hen chickens inside town and use the trick of building the chicken run around the outside of the garden
:idea:


Green house. Keeps the grasshoppers out. Or net the Grasshoppers and sell them. They make a great protein supplement.

Net & sell sounds interesting, wonder how well it would work? Could sell for fishing bait also.
We built a large greenhouse on the south of our house to provide heat and a longer season. One large enough to supply the food we grow would be very expensive. This one we could afford because we got used windows and DIY, which avoided the expensive parts.
;)
Douglas Hvistendahl
Retired technical nerd

Dumb mistakes are very irritating.
Smart mistakes go on forever
Unless you test your assumptions!
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by WeirdlyWired   » Mon Dec 05, 2016 4:30 am

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Some time in the 90s the bean-counters decided employees were liabilities on the P&L, expenses on the ledger sheet. Education and experience had no value. Hire employees for as cheap as you can.
Helas,chou, Je m'en fache.
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by dscott8   » Mon Dec 05, 2016 2:09 pm

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American jobs are not lost because of foreign workers "stealing" them. They are lost because the CEOs export production to countries with low wages and few environmental or safety regulations. CEOs make those decisions, and should be held accountable.

One of my business heroes is David MacNeil of Weathertech, who makes a 25% profit margin by making great products with well-treated US workers in US factories. It can be done, but most CEOs take the easy offshore option because all they care about is their own bonuses.

http://www.businessbigwigs.com/profiles/david-macneil/
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by WeirdlyWired   » Mon Dec 05, 2016 5:19 pm

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dscott8 wrote:American jobs are not lost because of foreign workers "stealing" them. They are lost because the CEOs export production to countries with low wages and few environmental or safety regulations. CEOs make those decisions, and should be held accountable.

One of my business heroes is David MacNeil of Weathertech, who makes a 25% profit margin by making great products with well-treated US workers in US factories. It can be done, but most CEOs take the easy offshore option because all they care about is their own bonuses.

http://www.businessbigwigs.com/profiles/david-macneil/


Workers think they do not need to constantly upgrade their skills and add new ones. Education is seen as something that stopped at high school graduation. One job or career for life is dead and we older workers are unable/unwilling to accept that fact.

And yes "management" is sorely lacking in corporate management. Anyone can make a profit by using slave/prisoner labor or by exploiting the bottom of the labor market. Staying inthe US using US labor and still making a profit has managed to evade many CEOs, IMO.
Helas,chou, Je m'en fache.
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by munroburton   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 12:38 pm

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We're basically in the middle of a second industrial revolution. Just like the first one, a tiny caste accrues enormous wealth regardless of the enormous changes to society.

This one is different, though. The first one at least created new jobs and required people to learn new skills, perhaps best explained by Henry Ford's realisation that his workers had to be able to buy the cars they made. It was a simple force-multiplier that at least got spread around. Horses replaced by internal combustion engines, electricity generated for most, etc.

So, our second revolution isn't the same. Increasingly complex repetive tasks can be automated. We then end up with too much productivity for our needs, so they cut back on labour - which is usually the largest cost - to maintain a supply just ahead of the demands and maximise profit.

It begins a vicious feedback circle. As soon as unemployment gets to 5-10%, wages start to plateau.

I think globalisation has unfairly taken a hit for this. It's actually responsible for slowing down the process, because companies can outsource to even cheaper humans instead of high-capital-cost machines.

The demands for protectionism and repatriation of exported jobs won't result in those outsourced jobs returning. It will only force the corporations to embrace the new revolution faster.

Amazon's delivery drones and self-driving cars will wipe out delivery and taxi drivers. That's about two million jobs in the USA at risk from automation, yet safe from globalisation.
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by C. O. Thompson   » Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:08 pm

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Odd that the "bean counters" are cost center labor in that you don't need one to get your widgets out the door but... they conveniently overlook that while telling you to cut the QA Dept or the Line Maintenance Crew...
I had a boss who said he would rather have a healthy bottom line than a flashy quarterly report.
Education and experience are undervalued for long range plans and when the seniority of the experienced worker also equates to higher pay... the modern trend is to down size and hire someone straight out of school.

We have lost nearly 5,000,000 factory jobs in the US since 2000


WeirdlyWired wrote:Some time in the 90s the bean-counters decided employees were liabilities on the P&L, expenses on the ledger sheet. Education and experience had no value. Hire employees for as cheap as you can.
Just my 2 ₡ worth
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Re: Why there are less blue collar jobs
Post by munroburton   » Fri Dec 16, 2016 7:27 am

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munroburton wrote:Amazon's delivery drones and self-driving cars will wipe out delivery and taxi drivers. That's about two million jobs in the USA at risk from automation, yet safe from globalisation.


Turns out my estimate may have been a tad low.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... re-jobs-go
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