Immigrants Or Robots

I've long been interested in the Japanese reaction to the "shortage" of low-skill workers. Unlike the United States, they've chosen not to import such immigrants. Instead, they decided to build robots:

Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.

Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.

The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from microsized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.

Which path is most beneficial for the pre-existing population of the country? Importing low-skill immigrants? Or building robots? And is the difference in the economic benefits between the two alternative policies big enough that one should pay more careful attention to this choice?

Comments

[Blissex]

"Which path is most beneficial for the pre-existing population of the country? Importing low-skill immigrants? Or building robots?" Interesting question! But ill posed -- because talking of "pre-existing population" assumes it is a homogeneous whole. Which cannot be, because their endowments of capital are very sharply different, and the immigration vs. robots choice is all about altering the labor/capital ratio. More immigrants means more rent, more profits, as labor becomes more abundant and demand for capital goods, starting with houses, increases. Viceversa with robots. So you cannot get a good single answers -- it depends which side your croissant or your bread is buttered on.

[alex]

Blissex,

What you say is true in the short to medium term, but in the long term improved technology is by far the most important way to increase prosperity (real GDP per capita).

No matter how many spinners and weavers we added, it wouldn't have done for anyone's prosperity what the industrial revolution did. Of course there can be serious displacements (just ask the Luddites), but it seems like Japan is an ideal position to minimize those effects. With a shrinking and aging population, they're facing a decreased supply of labor, while they'll need more labor for elder care (the Japanese are the longest lived people in the world).

From what I've read elsewhere, if used properly the elderly like the increased automation. Obviously there is no substitute for visiting granny (and hopefully there never will be), but it's another story if she has trouble bathing by herself. One gizmo that helped with this was received favorably. It's understandable - an elderly person who has trouble bathing has more independence if they can get help from a machine than if they need a person's assistance.

[Dee]

Prof B,
Given the rate of Boomers in our Boomer Nation, perhaps the question should be, who is gentler changes Adult Diapers and providing Hospice Care? Robots or soft hands?

PS: I say this knowing my Blessed Mother passed away last December and it was kind, gentle hands of a Latina hospice nursing assistant that changed her diapers on her last days.

[c.o. jones]

For the Japanese, this may be the right approach. They are famously introverted and ill at ease with gaijin.

Let us not forget that we're not talking about robots only to peform household tasks or caregiving sort of functions. The world of automation is much broader than any of us imagine, and is largely responsible for the comforts we enjoy, including for Dee the luxury of having a high enough standard of living that she could afford assisted care for her mom. (I for one would rather deal with an automated customer service system than some cubicle dweller in Delhi who doesn't know what to do if you ask a question that's not on his/her script.)

Regardless, the point is that the answer is more complicated than "we need more people." If more people were the answer every labor/technology challenge, they'd still be working on the Panama Canal, with a army of guys using nothing but round point shovels.

[Dee]

CO,
High enough standard of living? My mom was on medicare. If you are sick enough, at the end, there are coverages that help ALL of us. My mom was in her 90s. The last month was horrible. The only positive was that she was covered for hospice when she most needed it.

The problem with us in the US is we dont know or understand (or want to know) what happens at the end.

So many of us will be there at the same time. Someone should make us go to classes so we all understand what to expect.

We need gentle hands of health care workers. You want robots? I don´t.

Look at poor Sol.
Maybe you will begin to understand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7U4EQXFMBE