Whose Job Is — and Isn’t — at Risk From Robots?

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Automation, including robots, boosts productivity of companies and is:

Bad for displaced workers and with no impact beyond them.

Bad for displaced workers and good for everyone else at a given workplace.

Bad for displaced workers and also bad for many other workers both at the affected workplace and at workplaces not adopting automation.

Read on: Automation removes rungs on the ladder to career success and also pushes workers out into the job market, increasing competition for work and putting downward pressure on wages.

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When shopping for a certificate of deposit you’ll see “penalties for early withdrawal apply.” You should:

Avoid the CD unless you’re certain to keep your money in the account for the full term.

In some cases, ignore the warning, as the extra interest paid on longer-term deposits more than compensates for the penalty.

Keep your money under a mattress.

Read on: Less sophisticated depositors, scared off by a penalty, often choose a shorter maturity CD, losing interest income; that’s profitable for the bank. CD withdrawal calculators can help you decide on the best maturity for your funds.

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Getting in touch with our future (older) selves helps us prioritize behaviors like retirement savings. Among the mind tricks that help, it’s more effective to:

Imagine you’re older, and then travel back in time to your present age.

Start with your present age, and then imagine your older self.

Read on: Researchers suspect this is related to the “going home effect,” the odd yet familiar sensation that it takes us less time to travel back to a known base (home) than it did for us to travel the same distance to our original destination, when that destination is new/unknown.

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Alcohol-related traffic deaths in the U.S. exceed 10,000 a year. Ignition interlock devices, also known as breathalyzers, often required for those convicted of a DUI, in terms of deterrent effect:

Hold no promise for reducing drunken driving.

Hold substantial promise. A one-year IID penalty provides a similar deterrent to a $2,200 increase in fines, a 10-day increase in jail time or 20fold increase in the likelihood of being pulled over.

Hold huge promise. A one-year IID penalty provides a similar deterrent to a $10,000 increase in fines, a 100-day increase in jail time or 100fold increase in the likelihood of being pulled over.

Read on: Adding an ignition interlock device to a state’s DUI penalty regime could have a substantial general psychological deterrent effect even before any such devices are installed, especially if publicized, researchers conclude.

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Avoiding management layers, especially at smaller companies, keeps costs and bureaucracy to a minimum. To achieve minimum-managers, it helps if:

Everyone stays in their own lane, not overlapping tasks, and, oddly, that workers are unfamiliar with each other.

Everyone stays in their own lane but are well acquainted with one another.

Tasks overlap and workers are unfamiliar with each other.

Tasks overlap and workers know each other well.

Read on: When there is a greater similarity in tasks across occupations, the likelihood of adding a manager is significantly reduced. That’s also the case when more employees share prior work experience.