Incompetent and Oblivious

When Trump was running for president he promised he would hire the best people, the best.

Then he picked Michael Flynn as his national security advisor, who lasted only days on the job.

The guy he picked for Labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrew his nomination after he was exposed as a wife-beater.

They're not the only dolts. Steve Mnuchin was in the news recently for plugging the Lego Batman movie, which is an ethical no-no because he was a producer on it. But that isn't the worst. In an article about humans losing their jobs to robots and AI was this tidbit:

Steve Mnuchin [...] said at an Axios event last week that artificial intelligence’s displacement of human jobs was “not even on our radar screen,” and “50 to 100 more years” away.

This guy is Secretary of the Treasury. On the same day that article appeared, so did an article about how Blackrock, the biggest exchange-traded-fund business, is firing their human stock-pickers and using artificial intelligence and big data instead.

Now, instead of just auto workers their jobs to robots, big-shot money managers are being fired:

As part of the restructuring, seven of BlackRock’s 53 stock pickers are expected to step down from their funds. Several of the money managers will stay on as advisers. At least 36 employees connected to the funds are leaving the firm.

Steve Mnuchin is totally disconnected from the real world. Robots have been destroying manufacturing jobs for decades. Clearly he hasn't been shopping where real people in decades: Target, Home Depot and even the local grocery store have automatic checkout.

Mnuchin also has not been reading the news: stories about how AI will displace doctors are rampant. Uber's ultimate strategy is self-driving cars, one of which was just in an accident. Domino's is delivering pizza with robots in Europe. Amazon warehouses are almost totally automated, and the company has been talking about using drones to deliver packages for years now.

Like everyone in the Trump administration, Mnuchin has no idea what's happening to real people in the real world. Or he doesn't care.

And the suckers who voted for Trump are going to be hurt the most by his policies as they lose their jobs to robots, have their health care stripped away, and are poisoned by pesticides and air pollution as Trump dismantles the EPA.