Robots are changing the global economy.

"Human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache," says Foxconn CEO Terry Gou (they make the iPhone for Apple). New plants are planned, with one million robots, to supplement the Chinese work force.
The Chinese are researching robotics and could lead the industry in a few years.

Neither presidential candidate is talking about the disapearance of the blue collar worker, 15 years down the road, but industries are planning on robot replacements.

Philips Electronics (Netherlands) has hundreds of workers in China doing assembly of shavers. At a sister factory in Holland, 128 robots do the same work with a few dozen workers to program and finish off.

Tesla Motors in California has completed their robotic assembly line- robots are programmed to weld, rivet, bond and install. Their new luxury automobile will soon be on sale.

Flextronics has built a large solar panel factory in California, and advertise "Bringing Jobs & Manufacturing Back to California," but on an assembly line that runs 24 hours a day seven days a week, there are few humans, robots do the work.

Executives argue that though blue collar jobs will be lost, there wil be more skilled jobs in design, operating and servicing. This demands a better educated workforce, with skilled training- a necessity that is being addressed in fragmented, poorly designed programs. Not a topic being addressed by the candidates.

C&S, the largest grocery wholesaler, has developed a new warehouse system which requires only a few technician watchdogs over robots doing all the work. The robots move fast (rover robots at 25mph) and are computer accurate.
Hundreds of floormen, lift and pallet operators, etc., are being displaced.

Do our candidates of any stripe have suggestions and plans on training the "new" workforce?

The article, "Skilled Work Without the Worker," John Markoff, is the lead in the New York Sunday Times, National Section, August 19, 2012.

The article is full page in length, and is impossible to reproduce here, but it should be required reading for all of us.