People are still going to work more efficient when they work 32 instead of 40 hours in many jobs as fatigue sets in at some point.
Examples from my own employment experience:
- front desk clerk at a hotel
- fuel pump operator
Both of these are pretty dull work that doesn’t exhaust you at all at the 40 hour work week. Most of the time is spent idle and the time spent working doesn’t require much going on upstairs.
Front desk work could be done away with mostly by electronic systems (most of the time when I "check in" it's just picking up a ready made room card as I checked in online). You could even centralise the "talking to a human" part in a call center operating a number of hotels, who delegate to staff on the premises (house keeping, maintenance, room service, etc). Of course luxury hotels will still have humans.
Fuel pump operator hasn't been a job in most Western countries for decades, as you just pump fuel yourself (and often even pay at the pump). Is "EV charger operator" a job?
A neural network trained to classify spray-painting kids?
Obviously that's not an absolute statement, especially considering that armed robbery is a thing. But in general humans are better crime deterrents than security cameras or robots.
In a lot of cases, that's the sole reason for employing security guards, since the only thing they're actually allowed to do when they encounter crimes in progress is ring the police.
It seems to me that the question to be answered is: how can we afford to not have full employment?
Full employment means lots of good things: a population that's richer per-capita and spends more, less expenses on welfare, less poverty, less crime, less billionaires, etc.
Where are you from? I thought fuel stations in most Western countries were fully automated already. In Sweden there are loads with no people at all but even the ones with a store you just pay at the pump. You only go inside if you need to buy something else.
Very strange example to use and kind of invalidates your whole point.
[0] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/74549/why-cant-you-pump-...
No need to get out of your car and deal with a dirty pump. You can also get out to go in the store while they fill your tank, or some smaller places you can buy stuff right from the attendant. Gas doesn't cost any extra because of it either. We used to have some of the cheapest gas in the country before a recent tax hike. Basically a free service, no tipping either.
One downside is that if it is busy you might have to wait, but the guys are usually pretty quick.
The cost can come from the margin for the gas station, not the consumer
Nope. See Oregon and NJ, unless you don’t these American states to be part of these “Western countries”.
In general, don’t respond to examples of jobs that actually exist now with a hypothetical world where they don’t exist to state something about the current world.
> Nope. See Oregon and NJ, unless you don’t these American states to be part of these “Western countries”.
Two states out of fifty. Maybe, in general, don’t respond to examples of jobs that hardly exist any more with a tiny and dwindling part of the world where they’re still just barely hanging on and pretend that has any relevance to the world economy.
(As for the US as a “Western country”... Well, sure, at least geographically.)