We Need Robots That Can Build All The Stuff That’s Made In China

Right, that’s one thing that improves our competitiveness. Some modern factories can run all night with no people there. It’s like a big copy machine, you just set it up and let it go. Annoyingly, last time I had a conversation with someone who repairs robots, which was a couple years ago, the robots came from Europe. That seems like something we should make.

Essentially, it’s a solution to our high labor costs. We can’t pay low-skilled laborers a globally competitive wage because our standard of living is too high, or because unions have corporations by the balls. So you replace 320 workers with a set of robots, a setup guy, a programmer and a repair guy. The programmer and repair guys service numerous factories. It’s like one human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of humans. Or, it’s like a single $100/hr human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of $50/hr humans. China can’t beat that, nor can Africa. Although, robot technology does have a ways to go yet. And items usually have to be designed, at least somewhat, with robots in mind.

The trouble is, we can set these factories up anywhere. US regulations not only make factories expensive, they make them take longer to build. Every day that a factory isn’t running can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And with idiot bills like cap/n trade, and Presidents who have proclaimed that electricity bills will, “Necessarily sky-rocket,” it makes for a poor case to locate in the US. There’s also the high corporate tax along with the capital gains tax on all this stuff.

So basically, we don’t need to build robots, we need to adjust regulation. If it’s profitable to build things here, then people will build things here, and it will most likely include robots.

Maybe Obama should unwisely invest some of our tax dollars in an obsolete robot company instead of obsolete solar panel companies? LOL, just kidding. That’s poison. Robots don’t join unions. If the Democrats don’t have unions, they’re kind of screwed. Can you imagine the shit Obama would get thrown at him if he advocated automation out-loud? LOL He’d have to dress it up, “Robots only do the jobs that are too dangerous for people, or jobs no one wants to do.”  Maybe Pelosi will pass a law that requires some dumb-shit union asshole to babysit each robot. There’s a Washington solution for you.

Tagged as: build, china, cooperate, economy, factories, in, made, make, produce, recover, regulation, robots, sales, tax