GPTs General Purpose Technologies

Begin quote from: "Race Against the Machine" Chapter 2 (I have it on Kindle and since I enlarged it I don't have page numbers to quote. However, it is in the section in Chapter 2 regarding General purpose technologies).

-----general purpose technologies (GPTs), a term economists assign to a small group of technological innovations so powerful that they interrupt and accelerate the normal march of economic progress. Steam power, electricity, and the internal combustion engine are examples of previous GPTs. It is difficult to overstate their importance. As the economists Timothy Bresnahan and Manuel Trajtenberg note:

"Whole era of technical progress and economic growth appear to be driven by ..... GPTs, (which are) characterized by pervasiveness (they are used as inputs by many downstream sectors), inherent potential for technical improvements, and 'innovational complementarities'. meaning that the productivity of R&D in downstream sectors increases as a consequence of innovation in the GPT. Thus, as the GPTs improve they spread throughout the economy, bringing about generalized productivity gains." end quote from Chapter 2 of the book 'Race against the Machine'.

It is my present belief that 20,000 dollar plus robots that can do repeatitive tasks for 3 years straight at costs just above 3 dollars an hour 24 hours a day are a GPT that is revolutionizing manufacturing whenever repetitive tasks are done.

The reason they are a GPT is that they don't need to be reprogrammed for another repetitive task. So, the simplicity of almost anyone training them by hand for a new task is there beauty along with the fact that they only cost slightly more than $3 an hour to operate 24 hours a day for 3 years. Also, they will not join a union, or demand higher wages. They only need to be maintained as long as they work (about  3 years on average.

However, as a direct consequence of their inherent efficiency and cost effectiveness, millions of jobs are being lost to them by unskilled workers all over the world. Because no human can work 24 hours a day without stop for 3 years straight and no worker will be as fast or as efficient every single time as they will be. So, even though techs to maintain the robots will be necessary and other skilled jobs will be created millions and possibly in the future billions of menial jobs will be lost worldwide directly because of this one invention.

Business owners will say worldwide this which is true: "If I don't use these 20,000 plus dollar robots to build everything I cannot compete with my competition who do use them."

As a direct result there will be eventually billions of unemployed people who without a college education or their own business will Not be able to survive economically and feed themselves or their families.

I would compare the 20,000 dollar robots to the Model T Ford and all the mass production resulting from this one innovation worldwide.

Note: IN looking more carefully at the actual definition of a GPT I realized that this might not qualify for a full GPT. However, I think it qualifies alongside the Ford's Model T Ford in how much it is going to change the way things are manufactured worldwide. And in general this innovation is more helpful to the U.S. and Europe in regard to their manufacturing companies than it is to China where they already have too many people an not enough jobs for everyone.  So, in China this might only spark a revolution whereas in Europe and the U.S. because of Social Welfare programs it likely won't be as bad.

So, likely in China Social Welfare programs will have to get stronger in order for them to stem a full blown rebellion of their people from this one innovation in regard to declining menial jobs.