There’s a new robot out there called Baxter. Created by Rethink Robotics, Baxter has a humanoid torso, two robotic arms, and a face-like display screen.
None of that is especially ground-breaking, but Baxter offers more. According to his website, Baxter is designed to work cheek-by-jowl with humans, cheerfully doing the endlessly repetitive jobs that used to drive former assembly-line workers nuts. Baxter’s “head” is equipped with 360-degree sonar and a camera to allow him to detect humans. Baxter also has “behavior-based intelligence” and gizmos in his arms that “feel” when he bumps into objects — or people. The website also says Baxter is easily programmed and integrated into the workforce.
Oh, and here’s the kicker: Baxter costs only $22,000. That’s less than the salaries of most industrial workers. And Baxter doesn’t require employers to worry about absenteeism or tardiness, he doesn’t take sick days or file workers compensation lawsuits, he doesn’t need to be insured or provided with a pension or vacation days, and he won’t steal from the supply room, grouse about the boss at the break table, or try to unionize the workplace. Is it any wonder that Baxter has been greeted by great sales to the manufacturing industry?
Baxter is marketed as “a compelling alternative to low-cost offshoring for manufacturers of all sizes.” That is, you can buy Baxter and keep your plant in Dayton, Joliet, or Scranton rather than moving production capacity to China, because when you factor in shipping costs, customs duties, and other offshore expenses — to say nothing of bad PR — Baxter is competitive with those low-cost alternatives. Of course, Baxter also will be taking away American assembly line jobs, but they were likely gone, anyway. At least the jobs of providing maintenance for a workforce of Baxters, and the white-collar jobs related to selling and shipping the goods Baxter manufactures, will stay in the U.S.A.
Baxter is just one example of the robotic incursion into the American workforce that is already here and that will become more apparent with each passing year. Robotics has long been part of the manufacturing world, and now it is primed to move into the service industry. One day soon you’ll walk into a fast-food restaurant and be surprised when a Baxter-like bot takes your order, prepares your cheeseburger and fries, and hands it to you with a touch-screen smile.
I don’t buy the arguments. By definition, the minimum wage is reserved for low-skill, entry-level jobs — the kind high school kids get as their first work experience. Workers then move up the scale as they gain experience and skills. I’m skeptical there are many families of four whose income is wholly dependent upon one minimum-wage worker, or that such people are paid the minimum wage “year after year.” Even if those families exist, we shouldn’t build federal economic policy around such outliers. The fact that the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2007 also means nothing. Since 2007, America has been mired in a brutally long recession, and unemployment still remains far too high. There’s nothing in our economic performance since 2007 that supports raising the minimum wage. To the contrary, with employers already skittish about the economy and nervous about hiring — particularly given the still-uncertain impact of the Affordable Care Act — the likely effect of raising the minimum wage will be to discourage hiring. In short, far from putting money in people’s pockets, raising the minimum wage is likely to make it even harder for kids to find that first job and to leave more people unemployed.
It’s hard to believe that the presence of a guy twirling a sign and wearing a Liberty costume would cause a passing motorist to make the snap decision to turn in and visit the business. There must be a lot of impulsive drivers out there, though, because you see the sign-twirling guys everywhere, flipping their signs, tossing them in the air, and using them to make intricate dance moves with varying degrees of proficiency. Do they have to go through some kind of training before they head out to the roadway? In any case, it wouldn’t be a very attractive job — being outside next to a road in all kinds of weather, breathing the exhaust fumes, wearing an embarrassing costume, and enduring the rude comments of some passersby.
Although the just-released information is, inexplicably, almost a year old, it tells a powerful story about what the discovery and extraction of natural resources can do. In the first quarter of 2012, jobs produced in the oil and gas industry increased 17 percent over jobs created in the same period in 2011. There were more than 5,800 jobs in core industries like pipeline construction and oil drilling and ancillary businesses like freight trucking and environmental consulting. Moreover, the jobs paid well: the core industry jobs averaged annual salaries of almost $74,000 and the ancillary industry jobs paid, on average, almost $59,000 a year. Equally important, these are jobs that won’t be moved overseas, and they will last as long as there is shale oil and gas to extract, which is expected to be decades.
In an odd way, the opportunity to talk about guns must be a kind of welcome relief for our politicians, because the gun control debate lets each party retreat to safe, time-honored positions that appeal to their bases. Democrats understand that most of their voters will support attempts to license gun owners, register all weapons, and restrict or even ban ownership of “assault weapons” or other firearms. Republicans, on the other hand, know that their supporters will cheer vigorous defenses of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and stalwart opposition to overly zealous attempts to regulate gun ownership.
Unfortunately, the economy only created 114,000 new jobs last month, which is just about that number of new workers who enter the job market every month. Although the reported jobs creation number was small, the unemployment rate dropped sharply — from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent — because the number of people who said they were employed rose by 873,000.
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Whether you agree with that sentiment or not — and I don’t agree with it — I think that viewpoint, by itself, represents a kind of sea change for Americans. We always want things to be bigger, faster, cheaper, better. We don’t settle. We expect our sports teams to win and call for the coach’s head if they don’t. We celebrate victors and shun losers. If Americans are buying Bill Clinton’s argument, that says something about our country, and I think it says something sad.
President Obama had better hope voters don’t ask themselves that question this year, because new economic data analyzed by former Census Department statisticians at the Sentier Research firm reveals that
We remember our parents encouraging us to find work for the summer. We remember applying for positions and getting hired. We remember our bosses and co-workers, and getting our first paychecks, and how good it felt to have some extra money in our pockets.
The standard economic measurements of recovery from a recession tell a uniformly ugly story. Economic growth after a recession has never been weaker. Unemployment, which currently stands at 8.3 percent, has never before been so high three years after a recession’s end. Consumer spending has never been so paltry. And only once has job growth been slower than it is now.
When these conversations occur, I always ask: well, what have you done about it? Have you actually shopped around for a new bank, or cell phone provider, or insurer? There are lots of them around, and they are supposed to be competing for your business. When a customer service rep treats you like a bothersome fly, have you taken your purchasing power elsewhere and let the company that employed the jerk know why? If you haven’t done any of these things — and most people sheepishly admit they haven’t — you really don’t have much of a basis for complaint.
