Smith 1

Christian Smith
Davey Mills
English IV H
9/29/2016
Workplace automation affect the economy and the people
Technology is a rapidly advancing, this is not surprised. Almost everyone has a bit of
technology on them from their phones to pacemakers. Technology is doing task that would take a
long time, or is impossible for humans to do. Such as calculating complex math problems,
scanning whole libraries or even your job accelerating technology will disrupt, radically and
fundamentally, global employment and the nature of work (Martian). There's already evidence
of technology taking over the work place such as automated answering services in most
businesses, scheduling events, and many more. However, is it economical for jobs to be
automated, and good for the human race as a whole.
The current situation on job automation is very light at the moment but the effects are
noticeable (Martian). The automation of jobs right now is mostly geared towards saving time.
Instead of having to take time and manually write down people schedule and post it and
everyone have to come see it (Martian). Instead companies can generate a working schedule
automatically and all the workers and view their work hours on their phone without having to use
time traveling to the job site (Martian).This in turn allow the workers to focus on doing other
things, like completing another task instead of the task of finding out their work hours (Martian).
Because of that the company need less people the get a job done (Martian). Examples for this can
be seen even in the past, when we got machines the create thread the work force changed to more

Smith 2

people creating the clothes with the created threads (Martian). accelerating technology will
disrupt, radically and fundamentally, global employment and the nature of work(Martian).
Technology can fill many jobs in the foreseeable future however (Martian), these jobs do
not consist of the making of the automation and jobs that work with people like teachers
(Martian). But jobs with a simple input and output can be It is not simply routine jobs that are
most threatened by technology; more accurately it is predictable jobs(Martian). A machine can
not properly deal with what is outside of it predicted uses, such as a calculator cant heat your
afternoon meal(Martian). You simply cant prepare machines to prepare for jobs with to many
variable (Martian).
Taking a deeper look into the jobs that machines can automate we start to see just how
huge the range is. McDonald's have found a way to fully automate the making of a big mac, from
cooking the meat to serving it to the customer, amazon also has a machine that can ship packages
by scanning them and measuring their size (Martian), From this we can gather in a controlled
environment it is possible to automate many manual things. On the other side of things you can
automate complex mathematics such as calculating interest or other jobs that executives can fill
rendering the range of automation even bigger Knowledge workwhich well define loosely as
work that is more mental than manual, involves consequential decision making, and has
traditionally required a college educationaccounts for a large proportion of jobs in todays
mature economies(Davenport).
However if we do develop AI that will be able to start doing most jobs it is a different
story. This level of automation is not all good however, The question is what will happen to all
the workers with predictable jobs(Martian)? This is a huge problem, because employers do not
have to pay machines so their going to lay off people for these cheaper machines (Martian).

Smith 3

What will most likely come out of this are two things, more impoverished people and more
people moving to unpredictable jobs like the fine arts or social jobs (Martian). However this
change will not until the price of technology falls to a economically advantageous venture
(Martian). This is because as it stands it is cheaper to pay workers than to install and upkeep
these machines that can do a lot of the jobs like making a big mac or shipping items (Martian).
This is more prevalent in 3rd world country where their is a around 20% unemployment rate
which enables companies to get extremely cheap labour (Martian).
With less employment the value of jobs will rise because of the increases competition
This will increase the need for a college education(Martian). This conclusion can be drawn
because a lot of the hard to replace jobs are once that require a higher level skill such as being a
manager or a teacher(Martian). A Lot of jobs like these require post secondary education.
However coupled with the unemployment people might be less likely to try for a post secondary
education, and scholarships and grants can not cover the increasing demand and decreasing
ability to pay for college(Martian).
From these observations a conclusion can be drawn that automation will benefit the rich
more than the middle and lower classes because you need to have money to start a business with
automation . Then automation replaces the jobs that the lower and middle classes can fill and all
the money the company makes goes into the owner's pockets . To further back this the cost for a
machine to make items are expansive from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. This will surely
widen the gap between the classes and cause poverty if not managed right.
The effect that this unemployment will be largely negative on the health of the lower
class, and the health of the economy (Deborah). Firstly the effect on the health of the lower class
will cause many different problems (Deborah). This comes from the financial stress and

Smith 4

frustration from not having enough cash, However unemployment benefits helps this, but not
much because unemployment benefits only supply around 50% of less of the unemployed
previous spending (Deborah). And because of this event in the unemployed lives their are more
likely to save the money than spend it, this leads to economic problems (Deborah). The economy
rely off of spending on products, this is how money circulates and the government gets money
from the taxes they collect off of said spending, on top of all that the unemployed are not making
any product and the government spends money on them (Deborah)). Unemployment itself
compounds on itself also, because the longer the unemployed remains unemployed the less likely
they are to become reemployed and the more their skills deteriorate, so in employers eyes they
become old and tarnished (Deborah)). The government is also borrows to pay the unemployment
benefits the unemployed receives, so the actual cost of unemployment gets more expansive and
put off to the future (Broman),
The effect that unemployment has on the community is a rippling effect (Deborah). From
a value of living their standpoint the more people that lose their homes to being unemployed the
more the price of land drops around there. Community work also declines The volunteerism
decline does not have an obvious explanation, but could perhaps be tied to the negative
psychological impacts of being jobless or perhaps even resentment at those who do not have a
job(Deborah).
This is because when people leave their homes their no one to tend to them, grass grows out of
control, paint starts chipping, also the community starts to feel more dangerous with the fear of
losing your job if you work their (Deborah). On top of all that the utilities in that area will
degrade, because why would a company sell to a community will not many people would buy
when they could sell to the poor. Evidence of things like this happening can be seen in the

Smith 5

current world (Deborah). Poor communities have less prestigious schools, less community
activity, higher crime, and less access to stuff that well off communities have
(Deborah).Community work also declines The volunteerism decline does not have an obvious
explanation, but could perhaps be tied to the negative psychological impacts of being jobless or
perhaps even resentment at those who do not have a job(Deborah).
Unemployment also affects the relationships the unemployed have (Broman). For
example a study has shown that unemployment causes fighting in families to increases
dramatically the more impoverished you are, and poverty can come from unemployment. The
michigan family review conducted research about this topic about the amount of times a
unemployed family fight( including spouses, parents, and children ) and it has brought statistical
proof that unemployment causes a rise in fights (Broman).the absence of income created by
unemployment can force families to deny educational opportunities to their children and deprive
the economy of those future skills This makes unemployment a hard to break cycle(Deborah).
To further elaborate on the negative effects of unemployment it also affects the mental
and physical health of the individual unemployed Unemployed workers were twice as likely as
their employed counterparts to experience psychological problems(Deborah). The fast change in
a person's standard of living from becoming unemployed can quickly make a person feel
hopeless(Broman), they worry about a lot of different things from their family to how the public
view them (Deborah). All this stress caused by unemployment will heighten suicide rates and
crime rate (Deborah). Stress will also cause people to become more unhealthy, because when
someone is stressed their are less likely to go out or exercise, Also the infamous stress eating will
happen among people (Deborah). Another current problem that will be compounded is access to
nutritious food is usually out of reach from many people in impoverished conditions (Deborah).

Smith 6

So not only will the wealth gap between rich and poor grow, the health gap will grow
also(Deborah).
Eventually the world will go one of 2 direction that will go one of two ways, the rich will
obtain a overwhelming amount of control similar to John Davison Rockefeller and other like
him, or it will turn into a world where wealth become distributed among people similar to the
Pixar world of Wall-E(Stanton). The path where people have wealth distributed and automation
is prevalent will have a acceleration of culture. This conclusion can be drawn because in the past
the free time we have as a race the more cultural development. As seen in the american
industrial revolution there was not much cultural evolution because most of people time were
spent in factories working and their was not much free time. However in the roaring twenties
when working conditions became more bearable many cultural movements happened such as the
jazz movement, dance types, and everything prohibition did such as the great gatsby. Because of
this culture will most likely evolve once again.
But if we look at this from a perspective that can often be overlooked even tho this
solution is extremely beneficial to both companies and the workers with in,
augmentation(Davenport). Augmentation is not a foreign concept, it is where you take both
human and machine and pair them together(Davenport). This is a big deal because it will cause
less job loss because humans will still be involved and not phased out of work(Davenport). It
also benefits the company because they get the best of both worlds because we will not have the
need for super intelligent ai that can work solo because their will be humans to aim the machine,
so it would be a money lost to do otherwise(Davenport). And the augmentation for many labor
has been around since the stone age, where humans used stone tools to make life easier. Today
we see these tools as bulldozers, cranes, conveyor belts, even lasers(Davenport). It is hard to

Smith 7

imagine right now a crane and some other construction sites being able to assemble a skyscrapers
without perfect conditions and tons of sensors and an overwhelming amount of time, you could
not imagine humans doing this also, this is because humans do not posses the strength to like
steel I beams or bend rebar or many other things to assemble it, even doing the math behind it
would be beyond challenging(Davenport).
Augmentation also makes customers like your company more than complete automation.
This is because instead of them feeling like they're buying from a bunch of robots they still feel
like they're buying from human beings(Davenport). Also the products them self become more
desirable because of the human factor. If you look at the prices of home made items compare to
once made in factories the price is usually higher, this is not because it takes longer to make it
this way (which it does for a lot of items) its because of the home made feel, we pay for
that(Davenport). That in itself is surprising because machines make less errors than us on stuff
such as clothes yet humans still buy the less perfect, higher costing one.
Mone on the consumer aspect of it, if a computer where to try and explain things to
customers or deal with them in general how would it respond? It can not provide what humans
can do for other humans, it cant make the small talk many humans love to make(Davenport).
Ais cant give the human opinion on stuff we desire, it is show we desire it because a example
from a large amount of human lives is humans asking on other opinion for what to wear for the
day. Computers see numbers and logical answers, but humans see the more human aspect of it. If
decision making was left to only computers the computers will most likely make the more
logical decision than the human one, such as if a computer was in charge of a company it would
be the company that would be the one to work part timers as much as possible without working
them to much to not have to give them benefits.

Smith 8

This will also increase Job Value because as seen in the past with the aid of technology a
single person will be able to get more done by the aid of technology(Davenport). This way the
increased product flow will not be only beneficial for the higher ups but will benefit the
workers(Davenport). There will also be a job shift as people combined with technology will be
able to do more, but humans are able to follow the money the average person born in the

latter years of the baby boom (19571964) held 11.7 jobs from age 18 to age 48,
and nearly half of these jobs were held from ages 18 to 24. (McKendrick).
In conclusion With the inevitable increase of computers in the workplace the way we
move forward with this can influence a lot. Weather humanity decides to go with full automation
of augmentation there are going to be growing pains dew to the job shift. And because of the job
shift away from predictable jobs the competition for post secondary education will increase. Less
time working on the stuff machines can do will increase productivity of workers and because of
that job value. And from past evidence we can do a final conclusion that this is not a concept for
the future, it is happening in today's world.
Works Cited
Davenport, Thomas H. "Beyond Automation." Harvard Business Review. N.p., 03 Nov. 2016.
Web. 18 Nov. 2016. <https://hbr.org/2015/06/beyond-automation>.
Stanton, Andrew, Jim Morris, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon, Thomas Newman, Ralph
Eggleston, Stephen Schaffer, Alan Barillaro, Steven C. Hunter, Jeremy Lasky, Danielle Feinberg,
Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, and
Sigourney Weaver. Wall-e. Burbank, Calif: Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2008.
McKendrick, Joe. "Does Workplace Automation Destroy Jobs Or Create Unexpected
Opportunities? An Optimists' View." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2016/08/30/does-workplace-automation-destroyjobs-or-create-unexpected-opportunities-an-optimists-view/#783a95b473ad>.

Smith 9

Clifford, Broman L. "The Impact of Unemployment on Families." Broman, Clifford L.Michigan

Publishing, University of Michigan Library, Nov.-Dec. 1996. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0002.207/--impact-of-unemployment-on-families?
rgn=main;view=fulltext
Belle, Deborah. "SPSSI | Impact of Unemployment." SPSSI | Impact of Unemployment. SPSSI,
n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2016.
H, Autor David. "Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace
Automation." Latest TOC RSS. American Economic Association, 2015. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
<http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/jep/2015/00000029/00000003/art00001>.
Ford, Martin. "The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment."
International Journal of HRD Practice Policy and Research Volume, 1 Number 1, 2016. Dr Rick
Holden, 2015. Web. 12 Oct. 2016. <http://www.ijhrdppr.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/IJHRDPPR-Vol-1-No-1.pdf#page=111>.