08-18-2015, 09:28 AM
(08-18-2015, 09:17 AM)chutten Wrote: Is it an understood maxim that economic growth (measured by GDP, I presume?) is tied to population growth? It would seem to me that rising wages, or rising efficiency (increased automation), or lower cost of debt (spurring an increase in expenditures) would also move that number up.
Automation is a risky source of growth. In Canada, it's enabled us to hold onto jobs for the time being, ones which would otherwise be done exclusively in developing nations, manually, for far cheaper than Canadians could ever compete with. But where does the excess capacity go?
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.