The International Longshoremen go on strike idling 45,000 workers and potentially the U.S. economy.

But are we obligated to freeze technology in order to preserve jobs?

I'm Scott Ott with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green.

This episode of Right Angle is brought to you by the members at Bill Whittle.com.

Gentlemen, the thing you're hearing about mostly in the strike is the fact that the Longshoreman's union was demanding as a condition of sitting down

to talk a 77% pay increase over the next six or seven years and that the companies had offered

50% and nobody was sitting down. Since then, I've heard, and this is fluid and by the companies had offered 50% and nobody was sitting down.

Since then I've heard, and this is fluid,

and by the time you see this, it'll probably be outmoded,

but it crawled up to like 61%,

and maybe they were gonna sit down.

But what struck me about this story, Stephen Green,

I watched a video of the president of the Longshoremen's union who sounds exactly like you would think

a cartoon union boss would sound from like the 1940s or something. And or a mobster. He was

bragging about how his guys could shut down the country, basically.

And he was talking about salaries, but the thing that really seemed to have him cheesed off

was automation and artificial intelligence and the potential of those two

in conjunction with each other to eliminate their sweet jobs with an average wage once you get a couple of years under your belt of about $39 an hour with overtime and stuff like that.

Many longshoremen are making six-figure incomes.

The amount is irrelevant.

Stephen Green, are businesses obligated to freeze the advance of technology that would make things more efficient and that would lower their costs in order to keep a commitment to employees of perpetual jobs because they should value people more than their greedy desire to reduce expenses.

You know what the danger is in declaring how essential you are?

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