The chart of job growth in manufacture shows a series of dips and rises ending with a small dip in 2015 [1]. Call me skeptical but I can't see this supporting the claim that automation is reducing manufacturing employment in Switzerland - especially if the world financial climate is bad, this small dip could even represent postponed hiring.
And the big thing is automation is not something that appeared in 2015 - in a factory setting, people have been trying to apply it forever. The simpler description would be "due to extremely high currency, some swiss factories close - and automation continues as usual".
Maybe automation is ultimately going to eat all jobs. The claim that automated jobs inherently generate more jobs is another unsupported "received idea" imo.
That said, a steady-state scenario would be where each year, a factory is automated more, maintains the same workforce and produces more and better stuff, and the world consumes that larger amount until the whole world has all the stuff they need.
That doesn't look like where things are headed but it isn't obviously impossible even if the policies of Trump don't seem like well-thought-out approaches for bringing them about.
Maybe automation is ultimately going to eat all jobs. The claim that automated jobs inherently generate more jobs is another unsupported "received idea" imo.
That said, a steady-state scenario would be where each year, a factory is automated more, maintains the same workforce and produces more and better stuff, and the world consumes that larger amount until the whole world has all the stuff they need.
That doesn't look like where things are headed but it isn't obviously impossible even if the policies of Trump don't seem like well-thought-out approaches for bringing them about.
[1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idKGEW3NsEy... - same article