I heard on the radio today that a new gizmo in the growing automation marketplace is a coffee-making robot.

Below, the auto-brew coffee kiosk is a little plain compared to hip cafe baristas we now see in Starbucks and elsewhere.





Actually I wouldn’t mind an auto-brewer like the personable Bender, the beer-swilling robot on Futurama.

But what will the recent liberal arts graduates do for jobs if coffee shops go the way of the factory floor? A recent survey found that a third were working at jobs that don’t require a college degree, and that doesn’t count young grads living in their old bedroom at Mom’s house.

Automation has been quietly creeping up on society and is now on the verge of going gangbusters. One example: Google founder Sergey Brin is focused on self-driving cars, which he says will be available in four years. It follows that robotic trucks will soon follow some years after that, with a job loss of potentially millions.

The topic of automation-fueled unemployment is curiously missing from the current debate on amnesty and doubling legal immigration, favored by Republican budget wonk Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan Defends Immigration Bill: “We’re Going To Have Labor Shortages” REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WIS.): Not now, but in the future we’re going to have labor shortages. We have 10,000 people retiring each and everyday in America when the Baby Boomers retire. We are not like Europe, we’re not like Japan in that our birthrates are really low, but they’re not high enough. Immigration, in a decade or so, can help us. That means we need to get an immigration system that works. We need an immigration system that works to bring people to this country who want to contribute. (The Laura Ingraham Show, June 19, 2013)

Could someone please tell these oblivious Republicans that America’s need for more workers in coming decades will be substantially reduced by automation and robotics? We don’t need tens of millions of additional workers imported from abroad.

Anyway, today’s automation topic is coffee.