Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/06/driverless-truck-to-hit-albertas.html#sTWYpF5ihhk57RvP.99

by justonepost • 11 years ago

56 50 11 years ago

globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

slavik813• 11 years ago

Fewer workers means less spent on wages, which means less contributed in income taxes. These changes reduce government's profits while increasing the oil company's profits.

The new NDP government promised as a part of their campaign to review royalty rates. This seems like an argument that they'll need to increase even just to keep revenue constant.

adventured5• 11 years ago

Canadian corporations pay taxes on their profits. They also distribute income to shareholders, who then pay taxes. If they pay their execs rich salaries, those execs pay rich taxes. All corporate profit eventually ends up in the hands of an individual over time, and Canada has relatively high personal income taxes.

It also varies by the country of course. Oil companies in the US pay among the highest tax rates.

Exxon and Chevron for example typically pay 30%+ rates.

Last three years for Exxon:

Income before tax: $188 billion; Income tax expense: $73 billion; Net income: $110 billion

Some of it is also double taxed, so the real tax rate is even higher than just counting the corporate income tax.

justonepost6• 11 years ago

If it were up to me, all of our money would be only be taxed when we withdrew it from our bank accounts to pay for stuff, with tax credits for the poor so it's not regressive.

slavik813• 11 years ago

I'm not really familiar with corporate taxation, but a lot of those taxes sound like they might go to different places. As an Albertan, it matters to me whether money goes to my provincial government or whether it goes to some other province or country's government.

The people of Alberta own the unextracted oil in this province. They, via the government, sell it to companies who extract and profit from it. Just saying, if the people of Alberta can raise their prices, they will. They've certainly been talking about it.

anigbrowl5• 11 years ago

Not all shareholders live and pay taxes in the same place that the displaced workers do. Also, rates of taxation on dividends and capital gains often differ from those on wages, though I haven't looked up the specific rates in Canada.

jqm2• 11 years ago

I'd venture that less of the money from shareholder distributed income is spent on goods and services than that of employee wages. Particularly, as another poster pointed out, locally.

melling2• 11 years ago

Hasn't the luddite argument already been addressed by economists in general? Do we need to have it every time? Remember when a high percentage of humans worked in agricultural jobs?

justonepost6• 11 years ago

The argument is not luddite or the oppression of technology. The argument is that we need to revamp our economic system to allow for the displacement of workers. The reality is that more and more jobs are 'bullshit' jobs and more people are becoming rapidly economically irrelevant.

slavik813• 11 years ago

My argument is that the government, as the owner of the resources being extracted, might have both motive and opportunity to raise their prices if extraction costs drop.

Automation means we can do less work but still enjoy the fruits of our labour as if we did more work. I certainly wouldn't oppose that.

The Luddites wanted to prevent automation but I don't, so you'll need to clarify if that's not what you meant.

ticksoft2• 11 years ago

I often wonder if mental illness is a side effect of this shift from outdoor and natural forms of work, to indoor and stress driven types of work.

People have to teach themselves all sorts of coping mechanisms to stop their minds going out of control with modern work (burnout being a vague example around here).

anko• 11 years ago

I think the argument is different today. It's not just one or two industries being replaced, and it's not just super skilled labour either. When computers replace our drivers, in australia, that's ~ 5% of people out of a job. That's just transport jobs, not including rental etc.

The Australian government predicts a 10% growth in that industry in the next 5 years. http://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/EmploymentProjections

Australia's unemployment rate is 6% - so that's basically a doubling of workers looking for jobs, from computerisation of one industry.

Obviously 5 years is too short term for automation of transport, but projecting further than that is a fool's game.

The fear is that automation will affect more and more industries at the same time, leading to structural unemployment. That's where a person's worth is less than minimum wage relative to the price of automation - people simply can't be trained fast enough because the industries are changing too fast and computer power is cheap.

ticksoft2• 11 years ago

In addition to those government issues, there's less cash flowing from the non-existent workers to [local] businesses, which means that infrastructure from those businesses is no longer sustainable. The internet does that too.

Futurologists of the past speculated that salaries earned by machines would be shared out to civilisation (to allow us to stop working), but it's gone in another direction.

justonepost6• 11 years ago

Yes, rather than decreased work all we have is increased consumption (which is slowly destroying the planet).

adventured5• 11 years ago

Robotic labor will be taxed and regulated in the near future, in most countries, to force such outcomes. Restrictions will be put on robot output or on how many human-hours equivalent they can operate per day.

Within a decade or so we'll see marches in the streets by lower-income laborers arguing for these changes. Robots don't vote, so it's obvious what will occur eventually.

analog31• 11 years ago

Going one step further, with less cash flowing from workers to businesses, there will be less need for trucks to move materials and goods around.

This would allow the truck driving robots to stop working as well.

CyberDildonics• 11 years ago

Oh look, incredible automation technology dominated by people who are terrified of world economic collapse due to people not getting payed to drive a vehicle.

ourmandave• 11 years ago

Dammit, I love giant dump trucks.

Once they become driverless I can never look at them again without thinking of Maximum Overdrive. =(

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

“At an average (salary) of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.”

Wow, I guess I should've been a truck driver!

justonepost6• 11 years ago

Or not, right?

fizx• 11 years ago

It's probably fully-loaded cost, so salary is 50-75% of that, but yes, doing a temporary and undesirable job for a large company in some remote barren location generally pays well.

enraged_camel• 11 years ago

Yep. It's the exact same in Australian mining towns. High school graduates can reliably get a job in the mines that pays north of $150k. The downside obviously is that it's dangerous, not to mention bad for health. But some people jump at the opportunity still.

Rebelgecko• 11 years ago

The parens around salary make me think that whoever was quoted originally said "cost" or a more specific term than that. I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the US I believe it's typical for less than half of what a company spends on an employee to be their actual salary (the rest being payroll taxes, benefits, and stuff like that)

ojbyrne• 11 years ago

This is a really shitty part of the world to live in.

bitmapbrother• 11 years ago

If you're getting paid $200,000 to do drive a set route in a truck then you deserve to be replaced by a robot. The justification for getting paid this much for such a monotonous job is ridiculous. Their union better be sweating.

anigbrowl5• 11 years ago

Maybe, but look at those trucks, they're the size of a building. If you screw up you could do a hell of a lot of damage. I presume the $200k salary is a reflection of the supply & demand for that particular driving skill.

frozenport2• 11 years ago

None of the risk is bore by the truck driver. If they screw up or destroy the equipment they might be sued for negligence, at worse. Risk of lives is somewhat less compared to slamming a school bus into a busy intersection. It is not clear if the risk is bore by the company because the equipment is insured, maybe they will get higher insurance rates.

$200k salary comes from living the middle of nowhere, and indeed the work of the unions.

The pay for this kind of a gig has gone up dramatically in the last 3 decades. On the other hand, despite the 200k salary the the industry remains profitable, as they simply stick their hands in the ground and pull out money.

barney54• 11 years ago

One interesting factoid--women are easier on these trucks better than man. At least that's what the tour guide told me when I toured some of the oil sands a couple years ago.

But even thought women are better than men by being easier on the trucks, robots can be as gentle as possible. That is something that isn't discussed as much--robotic control can be as fuel efficient as possible and as easy on equipment as possible. Driverless trucks will not only save labor costs but they will be better on the equipment.

Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands

Related Stories