Robots Could Take Your Job

[BeerParticipant 11832]

Casper wrote:

People buying iPhones and expensive plans when they could just as easily get a $9 cell phone at Walmart

Retirement really isn’t unreachable for most people…you just have to work for it. If you stash away 10k a year over a 40 year career(25-65) and average 7% a year which is probably a little below the average annual long term return of the market, you’d end up with over 2 million dollars saved. Even 5k a year over a life time would make you a millionaire in the end. Yeah a million isn’t going to be the same in 40 years due to inflation, but you should be saving a little more each year as well.

How hard is it to really save 5k a year? Most people these days get an employee match, so let’s just say you make 50k a year and get a 3% match…that’s 1500 a year from your employer, plus 1500 from you. You’d already be up to 3k. Plus its pre-tax money…so that 1500 you put in would really only be like 1000 out of your net pay for the year, or roughly 20 bucks a pay check.

In other words…could you spare about 35 dollars a week pre-tax to stuff in a 401k if it means after a 40 year working career you’ll probably get to retire a millionaire? Most people could if they wanted to, yet many will say no while they walk around with a 400 dollar iPhone in their pocket and a 100 dollar monthly package. I don’t feel bad for people in their 60s who are facing retirement with no savings at all…for many of them it just came down to no planning at all and a life of materialistic spending habits.

Casper wrote:

That mixed with the reality that defined benefit pensions have become impossible to get outside of government work

Pensions really aren’t all they are cracked up to be. I have about 13 years in a non-government union job, so I have a decent amount of time vested in a pension fund and have seen first hand how such funds work. The current multi-employer fund I am in is handled poorly and is about 60% funded. Me working to pay into that fund pretty much amounts to me working to pay for current retirees to keep receiving unsustainable benefits, and when I get my turn to retire the fund is going to be hurting so bad I will never get the payout I am being told I have earned.(sounds a lot like social security as well, doesn’t it?) Of course the government pensions are a different story, since if they are mismanaged or under funded tax payers will just make up the short fall, but private sector pensions don’t have that luxury.

The way my pension job worked was for each hour you worked they would put x dollars into the pension fund for you, and then your payout was based on how many credits you had, which was based on hours worked. I think my last year there it was around 3 bucks an hour…or roughly 6250 a year. Now ask yourself…if you had 6,250 to invest, would you rather throw it in your own 401k or IRA, or would you rather throw it into a fund that you know is grossly underfunded, because that is the reality of a lot of multi employer pension funds(aka non government union pension funds) these days. In my current job I’m currently given a 401k match instead of a pension, and I couldn’t be happier. Yeah the market could tank and I could lose some money…but what do you think happens to pension funds when the market tanks?

Bottom line for me is when I look at how my union handled my retirement money its not a good investment for me. When I look at how the government handles my SS money, its probably going to turn out to be an even worse investment. When I’m managing my own investments, at least I get to make my own choices…maybe I’ll do bad, maybe I’ll do good…but at least I have a chance to do well, and its already obvious that the other people handling my retirement are 0-2. If I had the option to put x dollars a year into a pension fund or a 401k, you bet your ass I’d take the 401k option any day.

[FrankOneParticipant 1417]

Beer: Yes, I agree completely. I would add I have little respect for ‘aristocrats’ or those who inherited a fortune but never earned or achieved anything on their own — I really dislike fraternities, for instance. Not all frat boys are rich, spoiled, conceited SOB’s but many are. As you state, those with inherited wealth are the MINORITY of the wealthy. At the same time, I disapprove of all inheritance taxes as they break up small businesses on death of owner, and they represent double taxation. Usually inherited wealth is p~~~ed away in one or two generations if the kids are lazy.

On a philosophical level, I dislike being painted as a bad person because I accumulated wealth in my 20’s and 30’s. At the same time, I acknowledge I had some advantages — luck of being born with reasonable intelligence, and most importantly, luck of being born to parents who set a good example and taught me work ethic and frugality. At the same time, a lot of my colleagues bought new cars every 2 years, went on extravagant vacations, etc. That’s fine, but don’t complain about your credit card balance and retirement at 60 if you never saved anything your whole life. I am at a point where I could retire, but choose to still work.

I agree about retirement, without population growth, the ponzi scheme of social security seems doomed. I always maxed out my 401k simply due to employer matching, but I recommend diverse investments for retirement. Contributing up to your company’s matching maximum always seems best to me

Unsecured credit is given out too easily. Citizens need education in personal finance AND economics even more than they need history and geography. A lot of people do not realize taxes were 1/4 of what they are now even a century ago. They may be ‘college educated’, but most young people I encounter are not very well educated.

And yes, people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want Bernie Sanders” programs, but do not want to pay for them and so we have a huge deficit, debt, and permanent inflation. Politicians pander instead of explaining reality to the child voters. We’re mortgaging the future of the next generation. I do not have kids but I still think that’s wrong, and it is never phrased that way in our dumbed-down public discourse.

Maybe to vote citizens should have to pass not a literacy test but a test of basic economics?

Soaking the ‘rich’ isn’t the answer. The family business I worked for when I got out of school couldn’t survive higher taxes, and these small operators are the engine of many new jobs.

[BeerParticipant 11832]

FrankOne wrote:

Soaking the ‘rich’ isn’t the answer. The family business I worked for when I got out of school couldn’t survive higher taxes, and these small operators are the engine of many new jobs.

Exactly…I wish more people understood this. I think our current system is f~~~ed where us middle class guys with a decent job end up paying 30-40%, where as some rich guy making all his money off capital gains is paying 15-20%…but I don’t think making that guy pay 50% is the solution. How about we all pay 20-25% instead?

FrankOne wrote:

On a philosophical level, I dislike being painted as a bad person because I accumulated wealth in my 20’s and 30’s. At the same time, I acknowledge I had some advantages — luck of being born with reasonable intelligence, and most importantly, luck of being born to parents who set a good example and taught me work ethic and frugality. At the same time, a lot of my colleagues bought new cars every 2 years, went on extravagant vacations, etc. That’s fine, but don’t complain about your credit card balance and retirement at 60 if you never saved anything your whole life. I am at a point where I could retire, but choose to still work.

Its so nice to know some people get it, because when I talk to a lot of the people my age I want to backhand them. This is exactly how always have looked at it as well. Sure I had the advantage of being on the higher end of the intelligence curve, and having parent’s that raised me well…but at the same time nobody ever gave me any handouts, I paid for my own college, and I have busted my ass to get to where I am. I’ve also been living way below my means and staying debt free for my entire adult life knowing that its going to pay huge dividends down the road. Its like a bad joke every time I talk to some moron driving a brand new car who just got back from a 2 week vacation that wants to show me pictures on his 400 dollar smart phone that wants to complain about wealth distribution.

99.90% $30,644,280.00
99.50% $11,898,128.00
99.00% $7,869,549.00
95.00% $1,868,640.00
90.00% $943,656.00
80.00% $428,540.00
70.00% $247,026.00
60.00% $147,732.00
50.00% $81,456.00
40.00% $38,322.00
30.00% $14,840.00
20.00% $4,314.00
10.00% -$2,066.00

That right there is the net worth percentiles in the United States. The requirements to get into the top 20% in your lifetime is literally paying off a 30 year mortgage on a house and stashing 100-250k in a 401k…that’s not exactly an impossible feat. If 86% of millionaires are self made, that means 86% of those in the top 10% have earned their way there. I see no value in demonizing those guys when I’ll probably be top 10% by 40, and depending how investments do and what age I decide to retire at, I’ll end up in the top 5%. Its not because of inheritance or handouts, its simply a matter of living below my means, consistent saving, and compound interest.

It just amazes me how quickly financially illiterate people want to demonize the wealthy while they don’t even realize the vast majority of the wealthy are the millionaire next door types. Nobody envies a frugal life style, yet they want to make you out to be a bad guy when you climb your way up to a high net worth percentile, completely oblivious to the fact that had you spent all your money on fancy cars and vacations or had to go to an expensive private college, you’d be every bit as broke as their decisions have made them.

[Dez82Participant 107]

Burgundy wrote:

Dez wrote:

For the moment I think robots could replace manual jobs like waiters, truck drivers and so on in few years. People who do intellectual jobs (programmers, engineers, architects and so on) are relatively safe. I believe creativity and flexibility can’t be implemented in a machine for a long time. It has been the same with computer revolution: i.e tasks monitoring or document filing no longer require a lot of people but only few persons with computer skills.

Think again.
<iframe width=”500″ height=”281″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Pq-S557XQU?feature=oembed” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=””></iframe>

Interesting video. I didn’t know about lawyer-bots! I agree with 99% of the video, however I disagree with the final part: a machine won’t be really creative anytime soon: you can program a robot to follow the basic rules of painting, poetry or music but it can’t create anything extraordinary: creation is result of personality, life experiences, emotions, environment. The video says its music has been made by a bot.. What do we have then? Soulless music, paintings made on an assembly line.. Maybe they sound and look good but they’ll never have a “personal touch” or an innovative variation.
What I’m trying to say is that until someone won’t create a sentient robot capable to invent according to its own life experiences, all those “creative bots” for me will remain notable programming exercises, nothing more.
To believe in this “creativity” is like believing in mathematical rules for seduction: it simply doesn’t work that way. Not necessarily everything could (and should) be reduced to an I/O device.

[BurgundyParticipant 1525]

@Dez As much I want to believe that, since the path I’m taking is in that department, I can’t help but think that if they can make a bot playing chess more like a human, learning itself to play like a grand master, with a more constant adapting and changing style, in 3 days, the same can happen with art too.

Something to note, is that many great things created, in art, has been by mixing other works and studies of other artists, into a new style, in other words, they could simply add all the works and styles of several artists, and create works from completely different photos, many does something like that today. Taking something from a different medium, and redrawing/repainting it in your own medium, like taking a stock photo, and using it as a framework, they could easily do that with such bots, who have been infused with all the works combined and mixed of random 5 out of 100 ect. From their works, such a bot would probably be able to recreate any of past works in different angles, with another’s artists colour style, and so fourth.

This is something that’s kinda always back in one’s head, how a software could scan all your works, and predict how to draw/paint/create new characters in your own style.

Which is also why, I would try and steer towards a more independent line of work, even in such industry, hopefully I’ll be able to enjoy making original stuff, long before something would invade that, but you never know, so hey, lets just focus on making ourselves, the best we can be, in our respective fields, and simply keep an emergency door open, just in case.

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