What happens if robots take the jobs?

[Mangus Colorado]

Paper | October 26, 2015

What happens if robots take the jobs? The impact of emerging technologies on employment and public policy

By: Darrell M. West

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Automation is appearing everywhere. Ready or not, innovations like robotics, computerized algorithms, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, medical sensors and machine-to-machine communications, 3-D printing, and autonomous vehicles will increasingly transform the global economy, even displacing many in the human workforce.

Today only 16 percent of students graduating high school are proficient in and interested in a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). This fact underlines the potential consequences this new frontier presents for the workforce and the provision of health benefits, pensions, and social insurance. As automation and robots displace or replace workers, how can society adjust so as not to disrupt the delivery of social benefits like health care and pensions?

In a new paper, "What happens if robots take the jobs? The impact of emerging technologies on employment and public policy," Darrell West tackles this question by offering creative solutions to dispensing social benefits while automation continues to rise. West proposes striking economic changes in order to restructure how our society delivers on the social contract, such as:

• Separating the dispersion of health care, disability, and pension benefits outside of employment, offering workers with limited skills social benefits on a universal basis.
• Mandating a basic income guarantee for a reasonable standard of living to combat persistent unemployment or underemployment posed by the automation economy.
• Revamping the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to allow the benefit to support households in the grips of high unemployment.
• Providing activity accounts for lifetime learning and job retraining to motivate the workforce to keep pace with innovation.
• Offering incentives for volunteerism—beneficial for many people who in the future may not be able to provide for their families through regular employment but may still wish enrich their communities.
• Encouraging corporate profit sharing to spread the benefits of improved productivity to the broader workforce.
• Reforming the education curriculum to reflect the high premium STEM skills will offer employees in the future.
• Expanding arts and culture for leisure time, ensuring that reduction in work will not eliminate chances for cultural pursuits.

"There needs to be ways for people to live fulfilling lives even if society needs relatively few workers," West writes. Taking steps now in anticipation of the exciting new future that awaits will help people adapt to new economic realities.

[kevin kiernan]

Well said. I have a nice garden ,chicken coop, goat and rabbits. Looking to move to try and up size to 4or 5 acres

[Virginia Foulk]

Brings back the "Victory gardens" of years ago. And, yes we are trying to do the same here. I actually have 3 gardens here, on 6 acres, I also work with the Kids Ranch in Rock Springs planting vegetables that the kids get to harvest during the summer (we also work with kids needing individual attention, reading, and just reaching out.) There is also a ex-Marine now bringing in horses for the summer, working with the kids. The children really love to work with these horses, and they understand that these horses also need them. They are rescue horses that V.E.T.S. (Veterans, Equine, Training, Services)  rescue and disabled veterans are  hired to work with the horses.

What I'd like to do here is start a community garden in the area. We live across from a mobile home park, mostly older residents, but some with kids. There are several homes along the road leading to our driveway.  Our driveway is over 900 feet long, and we have a 100 foot frontage on the road. I could see this one side turned into a community garden. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to convince my husband of this. The residents could do their own planting, we'd just help them.  There is one problem, a couple down the road were thinking about renting out parcels for gardens, they were told they had to provide electricity and water.  Well, I would think if we loan them the land - no charge - that would not be a problem.   

One of our neighbors bordering our property has chickens. We benefit from the chickens, they sneak over on our property and eat the bugs, and they till the ground. LOL. The families of our daughter and granddaughter are raising chickens for eggs, and have gardens. They are in another town. They also hunt and fish.

I have tried to make wine (don't like wine, though) and the first batch turned out great. 8 bottles, and granddaughter came back for the rest - Elderberry wine. Now I'm trying to make wild river grape wine. We also have mulberry trees and that will be my next task. I did make jellies from the mulberries, the grapes and the elderberries. Turned out A-ok.  (2nd batch of wine didn't work as well. Hubby said it tasted like vinegar.) He tried it too early, later, it had a better taste.

Just thought of this, one of the instructors at Kids Ranch mentioned: If you raise pigs, chickens, cows, even goats. Enclose them in one garden spot - 1st year, keep the chickens there, then the next year, the pigs, then the cows/goats. But the fourth year, you will have a very nice fertilized soil. If you have several different garden areas, you could be planting every year, while building up the soil in the others. 

 

[kevin kiernan]

Working with kids , and teaching them how to do basic things of life is very important. I am hoping that at some point , doing these things will be part of our society again. Just got to keep the government out of our lives. Washington needs a down sizing.That is the most important goal to achieve in this election. All the other issues can be dealt with under a sound Constitution. But in the mean time, unplugging is a way to go.Be more self sufficient. When the big government fails on all their promises things could get hairy. Most of us here realize that the liberal governing that we have been force fed, will implode.So these skills you give others is so important.

[Mangus Colorado]

Give the title to the government apartment/condo to the welfare occupant - they must pay taxes and pay maintenance charges for the property [condo fee] - after 5 years they get a free and clear title if they met all the rules.

The the government is out of housing business.

[charles royer]

who can weld, fabricate, build, and dream any more ?
Actually America is full of enclaves where people can do these things. They have been labeled though by liberals as "preppers" ,"Red necks" and the likes!
JMO.

[Mangus Colorado]

Charles,

You got it buddy. The left will degrade anyone that can provide for them and their family without government aid. Call them stupid, uneducated, crude, rough and any number of other insults.

Like all liberals - attack what they can not do or what ever is beyond their limited liberal arts education abilities. 

[BLADES]

the question should be ...what happens WHEN the robots take the jobs????

lets face it in a few short yrs there will not be enough useful jobs for humanity not just Americans and a smart person should start thinking about that NOW instead of later. I have done just that by putting priorities in line like food and housing. first a family has to understand that not everyone is going to have an outside job and needs to think about how to be of use inside the house...what were they called ...VICTORY GARDENS...  even a small house has enough yard space to grow some food and as for housing first would be to not have a mortgage to suck up money with interest and this goes for all debt...get rid of it and then you can be free...

but yes the robots are coming for your jobs...but not mine 

[Mangus Colorado]

The end to FREE stuff forever is coming soon to all of America. Panic is setting in for the Liberal Progressives - - they have lost the argument over who pays.

http://thinkprogress.org/…/400000-people-could-lose-their…/…

400,000 People Could Lose Their Health Care Because No One Turned O...

400,000 people could lose health care in Kentucky, and it is because the state's…

THINKPROGRESS.ORG|BY IAN MILLHISER

[kevin kiernan]

In a perfect world , single payer would probably be the best type of health coverage. The Liberals problem is that they are blind to the fact that due to the ying and yang of life.( good and evil) a perfect world does not and will not ever exist.They keep wearing those rose colored glasses.Devil will always be part of our lives. And those who realize this know how to deal with that little bastard.

[Mangus Colorado]

KK,

Afraid I must disagree I have friends and relatives that have lived in New Zealand, Britain, and Canada. All of them have single payer and they have serious delays for services. These end up costing lives, many die waiting. 

People should be able to buy insurance form any company and any State. There should be no state insurance commission setting minimum coverage . . let people decide what they need and shop the entire market.

Competition brings the best possible options and lowers costs. I wrote the following as an example of the Issues of regulations.

Read this article with a eye for who gets paid what and why . . Some Hospitals get paid more because they serve the POOR [illegal immigrants] - check the population of illegals in the States that get more - So, DC Politicians have been using the Medicare system to fund the CHARITY CASES with our tax dollars and then saying Medicare is going broke - yes because they raided it for UNCONSTITUTIONAL  [charity payments] - As James Madison said: "I have read the entire Constitution and I find no authorization to spend Treasury money on CHARITY."

One hospital charges $8,000 — another, $38,000

Posted by Sarah Kliff and Dan Keating on May 8, 2013 at 12:01 am

Consumers on Wednesday will finally get some answers about one of modern life’s most persistent mysteries: how much medical care actually costs.

For the first time, the federal government will release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures. Until now, these charges have been closely held by facilities that see a competitive advantage in shielding their fees from competitors. What the numbers reveal is a health-care system with tremendous, seemingly random variation in the costs of services.

Having trouble viewing this on your phone? See the full graphic here.

In the District, George Washington University’s average bill for a patient on a ventilator was $115,000, while Providence Hospital’s average charge for the same service was just under $53,000. For a lower joint replacement, George Washington University charged almost $69,000 compared with Sibley Memorial Hospital’s average of just under $30,000.

Virginia’s highest average rate for a lower limb replacement was at CJW Medical Center in Richmond, more than $117,000, compared with Winchester Medical Center charging $25,600 per procedure. CJW charged more than $38,000 for esophagi and gastrointestinal conditions, while Carilion Tazewell Community Hospital averaged $8,100 in those cases.

Maryland has a unique system for hospital rate charges, so differences were smaller, and its average rate was lower than that of any other state in the most common procedures reviewed by The Washington Post. The highest average charge for a lower joint replacement was $36,000 by University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, much lower than the highest rates in other states.

Elsewhere, Las Colinas Medical Center just outside Dallas billed Medicare, on average, $160,832 for lower joint replacements.

Five miles away and on the same street, Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Tex., billed the government an average fee of $42,632.

In downtown New York City, two hospitals 63 blocks apart varied by 321 percent in the prices they charged to treat complicated cases of asthma or bronchitis. One charged an average of $34,310; the other billed, on average, $8,159.

Experts attribute the disparities to a health system that can set prices with impunity because consumers rarely see them — and rarely shop for discounts. Although the government has collected this information for years, it was housed in a bulky database that researchers had to pay to access.

The hospital charges being released Wednesday — all from 2011 — show the hospitals’ average list prices. Adding another layer of opacity, Medicare and private insurance companies typically negotiate lower charges with hospitals. But the data shed light on fees that the uninsured could pay.

READ: The government’s data on hospital charges

“It’s true that Medicare and a lot of private insurers never pay the full charge,” said Renee Hsia, an assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School whose research focuses on price variation. “But you have a lot of private insurance companies where the consumer pays a portion of the charge. For uninsured patients, they face the full bill. In that sense, the price matters.”

Hospitals contend that these prices, which come from a master list known as a “chargemaster,” are rarely relevant to consumers. Hospitals often provide assistance to uninsured patients in paying their bills.

“The chargemaster can be confusing because it’s highly variable and generally not what a consumer would pay,” said Carol Steinberg, vice president at the American Hospital Association. “Even an uninsured person isn’t always paying the chargemaster rate.”

The public release of the data is part of an effort by Medicare to increase transparency in the health system. The agency will announce Wednesday new funding for data centers that can analyze and publish research on health-care prices.

“Historically, the mission of our agency has been to pay claims,” said Deputy Medicare Administrator Jonathan Blum. “We’ll continue to pay claims, but our mission has also shifted to be a trusted source in the marketplace for information. We want to provide more clarity and transparency on charge data.”

Hospitals nationwide showed a large variation for many common procedures.

For joint replacements, which are the most common hospital procedure for Medicare patients, prices ranged from a low of $5,304 in Ada, Okla., to $223,373 in Monterey, Calif. The average charge across the 427,207 Medicare patients’ joint replacements was $52,063.

Similar variation showed up for hospitals that treated particularly complicated cases of heart failure. At the high end, a hospital in Newark charged Medicare $173,250. At the low end, a hospital in western Tennessee submitted a bill for $7,304.

Treating a simple case of pneumonia, with no complications, cost $124,051 in Philadelphia and $5,093 in Water Valley, Miss., with an average charge of $24,549.

“There’s tremendous variation between hospitals,” Blum said. “Geography doesn’t seem to explain it.”

A Washington Post analysis of the 10 most common medical procedures showed certain patterns by state. Hospitals in six states — California, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas — routinely had higher prices than the rest of the country.

Hospitals in more northern states, such as Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, tended to have the lowest prices.

Even within a small geographic area, though, prices can vary dramatically. Los Angeles tended to have the highest variation in costs. The average price there for treating a breathing problem that required a ventilator (for less than four days) ranged from $78,000 to $273,000.

For-profit hospitals tended to bill Medicare at a 29 percent higher rate, on average, than nonprofit or government-owned hospitals.

The bills that hospitals submit to Medicare have little relationship with the amount that the government paid the provider. In many cases, hospitals that submitted higher bills ultimately received lower payments than competitors.

Las Colinas, the Texas hospital that billed more than $160,000 for a joint replacement, was reimbursed, on average, $12,643. Nearby Baylor Medical Center submitted significantly lower charges but received a larger reimbursement: $14,202.

Medicare analysts said that teaching hospitals such as Baylor Medical Center receive a higher overhead in their payments to cover the costs of treating low-income patients and also to fund medical education.

Las Colinas spokesman Tyler Adams said that hospital’s charges do not reflect what patients pay, because the hospital negotiates discounts with insurers and subsidizes bills for uninsured patients.

How consumers might use the new data remains to be seen. Some advocates for greater transparency in health care worry about releasing costs without any information about quality.

“I think a lot of politicians are thinking more about transparency as a principle than actually creating a strategy that would help consumers purchase health care,” said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Patients might assume, as they do in shopping for cars or houses, that the more expensive hospital will provide superior care.

“It’s not that irrational to say, ‘I want to go to the expensive provider because their quality might be better,’ ” Ginsburg said. “What if you go to the low-quality provider and things don’t go well? How will you explain that to yourself?” 

[kevin kiernan]

I would need to see research on this before I could agree. Medicare runs like a swiss watch ,and pays the lowest prices. Every Dr. I have asked said they would love it if everyone was on it. The paper work to deal with and argue with each case is the biggest cost of doing business. They all say that paying the Medicare settlement  takes no paper work at all ( simple form ). They say it is worth settling for the medicare lower rates and have no expense in getting paid. Insurance Companies have used the legal process to put strain on a Doctors business. They end up settling ,many times for less than what medicare rates are. And nobody waits at all to see a Dr.

[Mangus Colorado]

I use Medicare and have many Doctor friends that will not serve Medicare or medicaid patients. The paperwork and fee structure is inadequate to cover office costs and make payroll for employees. 

One surgeon was getting something like $ 500 for chest cavity surgery surgery and he had to do hospital visits, and office follow up. My Cardiologist retired due to Obama care medicare fee structures. So, not all things as as we read.

There will be a serious shortage of doctors soon.