Maybe this isn't the best article, but this is definitely a conversation worth having.
I'm sure this would not come as a surprise to any of us here. Most of the technical people here do things that make these sorts of things possible. I agree with the Author that we have not seen anything yet.
There are lots of things behind closed doors that are only going to make this worse. I'm not sure though that this will just cause lower prices. It could potentially completely reshape our economy. I believe that a large swath of people could find their jobs disappear over the next 10-15 years, and this could have crushing implications to our economy. If people do not have money to spend at the bottom of the economy, a large portion of our GDP would disappear virtually overnight on nation timescales.
Here is a quick back of the envelope:
Given that 44% percent of the GDP went to wages and salaries and that nearly 1/4 of workers make less than $10 dollars an hour. There are roughly 36,685,750 people in low wage jobs. They make 5% of the share of GDP, or 12% of the wage pool. Many of these jobs will be eliminated. There are lots of higher wage jobs that might be automated away as well that I'm not even going to make an attempt to calculate the impact.
While this might mean record corporate profits in the short term, eventually 25% of the workforce could be without jobs. People in these low wage jobs tend to always spend their whole paycheck, so there is a lot of economic activity that is going to be eliminated, and we will have to spend record amounts on assistance when it happens.
We are really headed into another phase of our society like the industrial revolution, however this time the revolution is on performance enhancing drugs.
It will be interesting how it plays out.
While it is a bit dystopian, if you haven't read Manna by Marshall Brain I would suggest you google it. While it is fiction, it is definitely gives you some things to think about.
Comments
Maybe this isn't the best article, but this is definitely a conversation worth having.
I'm sure this would not come as a surprise to any of us here. Most of the technical people here do things that make these sorts of things possible. I agree with the Author that we have not seen anything yet.
There are lots of things behind closed doors that are only going to make this worse. I'm not sure though that this will just cause lower prices. It could potentially completely reshape our economy. I believe that a large swath of people could find their jobs disappear over the next 10-15 years, and this could have crushing implications to our economy. If people do not have money to spend at the bottom of the economy, a large portion of our GDP would disappear virtually overnight on nation timescales.
Here is a quick back of the envelope:
Given that 44% percent of the GDP went to wages and salaries and that nearly 1/4 of workers make less than $10 dollars an hour. There are roughly 36,685,750 people in low wage jobs. They make 5% of the share of GDP, or 12% of the wage pool. Many of these jobs will be eliminated. There are lots of higher wage jobs that might be automated away as well that I'm not even going to make an attempt to calculate the impact.
While this might mean record corporate profits in the short term, eventually 25% of the workforce could be without jobs. People in these low wage jobs tend to always spend their whole paycheck, so there is a lot of economic activity that is going to be eliminated, and we will have to spend record amounts on assistance when it happens.
We are really headed into another phase of our society like the industrial revolution, however this time the revolution is on performance enhancing drugs.
It will be interesting how it plays out.
While it is a bit dystopian, if you haven't read Manna by Marshall Brain I would suggest you google it. While it is fiction, it is definitely gives you some things to think about.