If automation was the problem, then US would be price competitive on goods with China. Somehow US automation is only good enough to eliminate jobs in the US, but not good enough to compete with cheap labor in China.
Whether by outsourcing or automation, the cause is the same: Loss of low-skilled jobs in return for cheaper products & services. The challenge is to find the best method to leverage those cheaper products and services to improve quality of life for everyone, especially those who's skills become obsolete.
Redfin has a tiny fraction of real estate sales, and hasn’t broken into it anywhere locally, or is showing any real signs that it will. Turns out it’s a little harder to self serve a home purchase vs a cab or vacation rental.
100% agree with regulation. That’s why US trade policy is the main cause of the decline. It should reflect regulatory arbitrage. It’s utterly pointless to save the environment in the US and poison it in China.
There's no reason to think the US has an advantage in automation. In fact, it's much easier as an automation engineer to design automation processes for the factory that's around the corner than to do so for a factory in another time zone that 90% of your team has never seen in person.
This (and the article's similar approach) is only half of the equation.
'If automation was the problem and cheaper than offshored labor, then US would be price competitive on goods with China'
There are two independent variables: the cost of offshore labor (China recently, SE Asia and Africa now) & the cost of automation.
Businesses are going to pursue whatever is most cost effective.
But people are incorrectly ignoring automation because it isn't a problem now.
Put more restrictions on offshoring labor (thereby raising its cost) and automation is going to start looking very important.