March 12, 2016
TIME FOR THOSE WITHOUT SOULS TO DO SOUL-KILLING WORK:
Donald Trump should shut up about China and start railing against robots (James Pethokoukis, March 10, 2016, The Week)
Not only is employing Chinese factory workers getting more expensive, but there are fewer of them available, which in turn feeds wage growth. China's working age population is in steep decline, falling by nearly five million last year. Overall, manufacturing employment seems to have peaked more than a decade ago.
In response, China is making a huge automation push. Beijing planners view advanced robotics as key to raising productivity and keeping economic growth strong as the country transitions to a more service-based economy. It's already happening, actually. The nation is on pace to soon have more industrial robots than any other advanced economy. Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company that employs over a million workers to assemble iPhones and other Apple products in mainland China, wants robots to take over 70 percent of its assembly work within three years.
So when Trump says he wants to force Apple to make its products in America, what he's really unintentionally saying is that he wants American robots to do the work of Chinese robots.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 12, 2016 10:15 AM