Productivity gains are not a bad thing and should not be feared. Sure, some people will lose jobs because of them. But jobs are also created because of productivity gains. It all comes down to cost. If I used to be able to make 1 widget using 3 employees that costed $1.00 and can now make 1 widget using 1 employee that costs $0.80, it benefits society as a whole. One tangible example is in the farming industry. Some people think the cost of food is high right now. Think of how expensive food would be if we didn't have advances in technology that led to productivity gains in this area. Even though it means job loss, the productivity gains were better for the economy and society in the long run.
Mining and developing the natural resources of Afghanistan... $3 Trillion for us to plunder. Our Military will rule as our society will change from spreading democracy to having to resort to raping and pillaging others to maintain our dominance and way of life. The Government will take charge of redistributing other countries wealth to our citizens in the form of subsidies... Social Security, Health Care, Housing etc. ... Just like Alaska's oil checks for its citizens we will essentially receive a share of military profits. As long as we carry the big stick we wield the power to impose our will on others. US citizens with skills will likely work for the government or a military contractor.. all others are left to work at Walmart. The alternative is to get steam rolled by the Chinese and Indians in the realm of manufacturing and technology. These undeclared wars will continue and many more will be created out of economic necessity under the guise of national security.
Disagree. Technology is work and therefore, net deflationary. If left unmolested by fractional reserve banking and deficit spending, advanced economies would be deflationary. Yes, a twist. But so what? Wages are sticky, prices aren't. Living standards would rise over time, relative to prices. That's how economies are supposed to work. To suggest technology destroys jobs, we're a long way off. One machine does the work of 50 men, but the cost savings to the broader economy leaves more money in the consumers pocket to buy something else, in some other industry, spurring the creation of jobs there. That's how living standards improve. Leisure, recreation, travel, food and hospitality. Nothing wrong with it. Health sciences and space exploration hold vast potential - both for heavy industry and consumers. The notion that future jobs can't be innovated is really short-sighted, in my opinion. As long as somebody is willing to innovate a service or product that holds value to somebody else, wealth is created. The economy is no more complicated than two people willing to work for the others output. Even if that product is unskilled labor, there's plenty of demand. And there would be a ton more had open door immigration not been introduced. Outsourcing was another death blow. Think about how destructive that was to employment - not only do American companies open factories overseas destroying American export jobs, BUT, turn around, and SHIP BACK that same product to America. So we destroy American domestic jobs. And American export jobs. That's exactly what's going on in electronics, apparel, automotive and soon-to-be aerospace. There is no defect with capitalism, here. The labor problem rests squarely on the shoulders of corrupt bureaucrats who SOLD OUT America's middle class at the behest of multinational corporations intending to arbitrage the global labor market for earnings. Wealth is not zero-sum. The economy is not like futures. Economic transactions can be win-win for both parties. Africa can be brought up to near Western living standards given the right recipe for success. Then, we create another export market. The only argument is limitations on resources, which I think, there isn't much. Lets assume there was. Then we go to the moon, mine it, ship it back, and build space elevators to get it back to earth. High prices and scarcity makes all that economically feasible and presto, we just got 3 or 4 HUGE new growth industries. Spin-offs would be space tourism, colonization, terraforming etc
You're missing the key point that even though technology renders some occupations obsolete, it creates more opportunities than it obsoletes.
In the limit that can't continue. Eventually tech replaces nearly all work. Money is a bootstrap to the Singularity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity In fact, work (to exist for money) as we practice it today is probably the reason the human race as a whole hasn't evolved intellectually for millenia. Only a few of us are able to "intellectually gravitationally escape" and resist the pull of the idiocy of the rest of humanity and plow us into the future, e.g., Archimedes, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Dirac, Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, etc.
BTW, for those that fear that human beings will be replaced by machines, might like to read Penrose "The Emperors New Mind": http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277752393&sr=8-1 The gist of it is that human brains don't come to answer difficult problems in a computer like way, one step at a time. Instead, somewhere along the line, a huge intuitive leap, an Aha moment occurs. This is hypothesized to be non-algorithmic. I only post this for people that get depressed with some types of futurism where we are irrelevant.
That sounds like those people who say they can make 1% daily returns and compound. I do not see how it is sustainable, what new opportunities? The one manager job to manage 100 robots?
Of course you can't see the new opportunities. They haven't been discovered yet! That's the whole point. Can you see the future? If you could see the new opportunities that yet to be discovered technological advancements will allow, you would be a very, very rich man.