Human labor is worth less than ever at the notorious Foxconn factory.
The company, known for producing Apple products and other American consumer electronics, was already notorious for driving workers to suicide at its Shenzhen, China location and prompting suicide nets outside the buildings.
Now, the rise of robots and automation is displacing a staggering 60,000 of its 110,000 strong workforce at a Foxconn factory in Taiwan, delivering a fatal blow to largely migrant wage earners.
Thirty-five Taiwanese companies, including Apple’s supplier Foxconn, spent a total of 4 billion yuan (HK$4.74 billion) on artificial intelligence last year, according to the Kunshan government’s publicity department
“The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labor costs,” said the department’s head Xu Yulian.“More companies are likely to follow suit.”
As many as 600 major companies in Kunshan have similar plans, according to a government survey.
The job cuts do not augur well for Kunshan, which had a population of more than 2.5 million at the end of 2014, two-thirds of whom were migrant workers.
This trend of dying jobs is today displacing Chinese workers, but is on course to catch up to everyone and poses a realistic and frightening threat to American jobs as well. Today it is manufacturing, but tomorrow it will impact truckers, waitresses, secretaries and soon, nearly every sector.
If workers are displaced from one industry, they are driven to compete for jobs in other areas, creating additional pressure on applicants, and raising the question of where people will go if/when no more jobs are available.
If the future is automated, what happens to humans? How will they earn a living?
The answer is a conundrum, as robots do promise to do much of the labor that has been menial and, well, depressing to do – as Foxconn’s suicide factories demonstrate.
But with experts predicting that 40% of all existing human jobs will be wiped out by robots and automation, it may yet be a dark future.
Melissa Dykes is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!
This just goes to show that the mantra to not raise salaries (most vocal in the US) has no bearing on companies seeking to employ fewer and fewer people, given that even low-wage Asian workers are “too expensive.”
It’s inevitable that the world will move towards even greater high-tech solutions in the productive sectors. Nothing wrong with that. However, we need to address this phenomenon at the societal level – governments need to act now. A universal income for all is a good starting point.
Thank you for your optimism. I realize all this talk of automation can be frightening, but it is always possible for us to face our problems and come up with solutions as a society. Yes, a universal basic income would prevent the turn to automation from becoming fatal for society.
“”but it is always possible for us to face our problems and come up with solutions as a society. “”
Then why haven’t we yet? Clearly there are more hurdles and obstacles to doing what you say than the other way which is to keep to current course. People, like electricity, take the easiest and fastest path to ground.
And what is this universal basic income? Why do you deserve that? Maybe you just a worthless derelict pervert that deserves nothing. Maybe I am that way, too! So how to tell the difference between the two types of people? Traditionally, people’s worth was based on who they know, are related to, what they knew and what they could do. If people are not being tested to see what they know, what they can do, and even who they know doesn’t matter anymore because a robot took that job, then how do we discover these things about people?
Why even have an economy if everything is just given away like free candy on Halloween? Things free are viewed as less valuable. Who ultimately will pay for all this? Our future generations will pay the full cost of what we do today.
The robots will take over the food industry and that is good as it will cut down on all the sickness that is spread by the Mexican pickers who spread disease during harvest time. Robots will take over low level jobs and put the poor under the street never mind the bridge. But, for the rest of the us it will be the next tech boom and possibly bigger. How is this a bad thing?
Mexican pickers do not spread diseases on what they harvest. Prove that statement!!! No, what causes the diseases is the MASSIVE FOOD PACKING OPERATIONS and their sanitation practices. Find the right perpetrators and don’t just willy-nilly blame any-ole-thang. (have you ever heard of a food recall from produce truck to market? no, you hear about from processing plant to grocer)
How is automation a bad thing?! Maybe take a few hours of careful thinking on this topic and see if anything bad jumps out at you…you know, things like unintended consequences and forward thinking.
So this is the reason for the present Immigration Crises in Europe. As unemployable’s swarm over the people after being seduced for the easy life in believing the commercials as their right of living. Soon everyone will get 100 Euros per week without any Benefits Paid from Governments. Reason why I Do Lotto…
We don’t see Wall St brokers being replaced with algorithm robots which proves it’s an economic choice of very greedy people. We should put this technology away, and to those who say we can’t uninvent technology they uninvented biplanes, stream trains, vinyl records etc as soon as it suited them.
No one has adopted you, ask for more handouts and 15 dollar an hour burger flippers, some more scrub
I’m sure I could find a more coherent robot to replace you and leave me with some more resources.
I would be surprised, if you were sure of your name, cretin.
Run along over to MSNBC, for your shift of whining and begging for handouts and trying to raise taxes on someone else to pay for them.
If you are late, they will dock you 3 days food stamps.
People will be used for Soylent Green.
Robots do not need to eat so what would be the point of the Soylent green?
to feed people, people are going to starve because they don’t have jobs to pay for food.
Now you know why the Unabomber was against Technology
This sounds like a Zen riddle
Over breeding masses of humanity have to eat something, S. green will be for the welfare classes incl Chinese. Sea weed could also be used for food, corn, soybeans. We are over breeding ourselves and will pay the price in the future with mass famine and lack of water like Lake Mead.
Who is going to make up for the loss in tax revenues from wages as these corporations will move their profits to off-shore havens as well as lowering employment? Lottos will go broke as no one will have the currency to keep the winning moving forward, and how about increased crime, less food will be consumed by the non-existent work force, food prices would tumble helping to bring an end to family farming. Politicians would be obsolete as the central robot brain could just make all the decisions for free. More military personnel could go hit those suicide nets as robot soldiers could have a field day at laser tag to decide who is going to win the next big war prize just like the big prize of deficient spending the US won after WWII. Stupid is as stupid does.
If this is signaling the end of the industrial complex then so be it.
The death of taxes is good news.
No taxes?… Hmmm… then how would you pay teachers, police, firemen etc etc not to mention maintaining/building roads, bridges etcetc?
Same as ever print more cash. Taxes only ever go towards paying off the endless supply of debt furnished by the corrupt banking industry.
They’re replacing people that make 2 dollars a day? I wonder what their plan is for all of us they don’t need
Lay off enough people and business’s will not have enough customers to buy their product, taxes will dwindle so govt. will go further in the red. This could be the start of the death spiral. Just look at the way the recent recession picked up speed spreading to most everything in its path.
Very Good theicecube….I see similarities between Roman Empire of yesterday & the United States we have today. Just a thought
I find it ironic that so many millennials are members of the Apple cult. There are plenty of trades and services that robots can’t perform, and we have job shortages in those areas. What we don’t have is a shortage of historians, philosophers, psychologists, and other liberal arts degrees, but that’s what the majority of the $1.3 Trillion of student loan debt paid for.
Amen.
I hope they don’t come in Boat Loads to the USA to seek welfare
They are going to end up somewhere…
Cemetery will do
What do you do for a living Luis? I really hope for your sake that you don’t ever need anyone’s help in the future, because they may be as mean spirited as yourself.
Im going to study robotics
This is how businesses support America by putting Americans out of work,this is what happens in a Liberal Country.I guess they don’t want Americans business then either.
Somebody has to conceive, design, build, sell and service and maintain the robots. Just a thought. That’s just one aspect.
This has gone on since trade began. Shifts, change, recognized benefits, reorientation of labor needs, and the cycle has perpetuated.
But no country has ever succeeded when they lost their core resource base of suppling domestic produce to the market. None. Zero. Zip.
Either they adapt as needed and meet that rule or they die on the economic vine.
Domestic resources are exploited for the benefit of the nation or the nation’s end is written.
I’m not afraid of robots. I’m afraid of losing a manufacturing base. That has undeniable consequences. This has nothing to do with forced trade, forced domestic markets, or government control in the market place. Those do not work and sink societies faster than you can say “communism”.
History is so much fun to dig into. Logic becomes fact and can’t be ignored.
When the industrial revolution occurred, it resulted in massive poverty, population displacement, artisan skills made obsolete and do not forget the environment took a gargantuan hit. When the industrial revolution occurred there were barely a billion people on this planet now there are 8 plus billion people living on the planet.
People consume food for energy in an organic cycle, robots consume electricity that has to be generated by burning fossil fuels, even renewable sources have to be manufactured using large amounts of non renewable energy. So robots will be an additional burden to the energy supply.
The 1% amass their wealth from the human endeavour of the remaining 99%, the work that robots produce will be worthless without a market.
At the end of the day wealth is abstract, people need to start pleasing themselves, forming co-operatives, ditching governments and stop chasing the devils tender.
Clothing for the multitude went from burlap – scratchy uncomfortable on a daily basis – to unimaginably for the wearers, comfortable and less expensive, even less expensive so than family made. They had to address the new needs of supporting that development. And they did. Otherwise, you’d be wearing burlap.
Let’s just stop and think for one minute. With the influx of washington sponsored illegal aliens and the now the influx of robotics, why are young adults racking up huge student loans? If and when they graduate, the prospects of a good paying job are nill! Let’s take a closer look at the employment opportunities for our young grads. Government, physician, pharmaceuticals, insurance, wall street, banking. Very small pool to choose from when you just graduated college with nothing more that a basket weaving degree and 250,000 student loan debt!
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.