Must-Read: Izabella Kaminska: The Robot Revolution May Be Exaggerated

Must-Read: Izabella Kaminska: The Robot Revolution May Be Exaggerated: “UBS is back… 34-page[s]… re-shoring and automation trend much touted by tech utopians as the silver lining to the [globalization] reversal may be exaggerated…

…You will have heard the narrative…. Automation, algorithms and robotics… means developed countries will soon be able to reshore all production, leading to a productivity boom which leads to only major downside: the associated loss of millions of middle class jobs as algos and robots displace not just blue collar workers but the middle management and intellectual jobs as well. Except… there’s no quantifiable evidence anything like that is happening yet…. As for our friends the robots:

We also don’t find clues of items being made by robots at such a scale that it is shutting down factories and killing exports in EM. For instance, DM imports of low value added items such as textiles, apparel, shoes and toys have slowed down, but only in line with the slowdown in overall imports. To the extent that there is demand for them, these items still seemed to be shipped from the emerging world rather than produced by or printed by machines at home….

The analysts don’t want to be deemed unimaginative ‘tech utopia’ killjoys…. It’s just that. Well. None of it is likely to make an significant impact on the macro level in the next five years…