08-18-2015, 01:22 PM
(08-18-2015, 09:28 AM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: When 95% of the population was needed for the labour of creating food to sustain itself, it had most people employed, as they were needed, and we had no choice but to obtain what they generated (our food). Then farming became less labour intensive, and much of that population shifted into assembly lines, with us absorbing the products we made, the remaining farmers getting enough to still get by and take part in commerce. Now, with automation, and on a national level with outsourcing, we haven't found a way to employ the freed up labour that used to be needed for the tasks we have automated or outsourced. Those employed in automated labour, or the outsourced workers, haven't had the money, or the desire to spend it, in such a way that a new job is available for the freed up labour to fill. Nor have the things which we have automated the production of become so cheap as to free up enough disposable income of the buyers of those products to let them buy (and create demand and jobs for) new industries and things.
If you examine the original industrial revolution and migration to the cities in the 1800s; the rise of the assembly lines in the early 1900s; and computerization and the onset of automation in the late 1900s, you will find each time there have been convulsions, and some people have suffered while others have prospered. And yet, here we are in 2015, with an unemployment rate of well below 10%, and a far higher labour force participation rate than 100 years ago.
Things are changing, manufacturing jobs are disappearing etc. And yet there is no evidence that we are on the precipice of mass unemployment. Each time in the past, the society has adjusted (with some pains, to be sure) and found new ways of employing people. Without evidence, I'm not convinced that this time will be any different.