Semi-skilled are obsolete

[scourge]

At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.

 At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human.

 One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see. The arms work so fast that they must be enclosed in glass cages to prevent the people supervising them from being injured. And they do it all without a coffee break — three shifts a day, 365 days a year.

 All told, the factory here has several dozen workers per shift, about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/08/robots-to-rule-world-taking-all-jobs.html

[crow]

"Semi-skilled"? What a bizarre concept.
Sounds like someone who is not very good at what he does.
Hmmm. Maybe not as bizarre as you might at first think.
It sums up nearly everybody.

[Invisible Sandwich]

People working in manufacturing jobs have steadily been losing ground for years to ever more sophisticated machinery, and they either develop new skills or slide into poverty. The service sector will also go this way as people develop a greater tolerance for robots handling their burgers and fries. Having that many relatively unskilled people will push society in 'interesting' directions, to say the least.

[Humanicide]

But I thought technology was gonna save us, man!

[scourge]

Something that stands out in this consumptiontration camps report is semi-skilled prison labor in the US:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCl5OAJK8Q&feature=player_embedded

The free labor is of course better sustainable than wage paid labor. Small US businesses are complaining about this sytem.

[aquarius]

A human gets the job done too without costing a mint in engineering and maintenance. This is how the Chinese can build an empire amidst an age of technological dependence for the west; near inexhaustible human-labour.