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Bain consultants' macro trends department have released a report examining trends in demographics, automation and inequality to produce a set of predictions.
This kind of report seems to be all over the place these days, but this one seems more detailed and perhaps a little less optimistic than most.
In the US, a new wave of investment in automation could stimulate as much as $8 trillion in incremental investments and abruptly lift interest rates. By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting middle- to low-income workers the hardest. As investments peak and then decline—probably around the end of the 2020s to the start of the 2030s—anemic demand growth is likely to constrain economic expansion, and global interest rates may again test zero percent. Faced with market imbalances and growth-stifling levels of inequality, many societies may reset the government's role in the marketplace.
They predict that governments will assume a larger role in markets to combat inequality and boost demand, but will our corporate overlords decide that's in their interests, or continue to squeeze the lower and middle classes forever?
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:20AM (7 children)
Right now the middle class is being systematically drained through a combination of real inflation in double digits, near zero returns on savings, and engineered investment markets.
The question is what happens when the middle class run out of funds to drain.
Right now the powers that be are happy to print money (because inflation helps their cause) and inject it in to the lower tiers, as it bubbles up quickly enough to the top and gets stored by the people making the decisions that they are in effect inflation proof. How long that can continue will be interesting.
The problem comes when the system starts to positively feedback, and normal work cannot sustain peoples position in society (and by people, I mean the 90% that fill its wide-band middle section, the silent masses).
There is little doubt that some of the people at the top are trying like hell to work out a plan for stability, but does that entail a positive society, or a military junta.. only time will tell.
What is obvious right now is there is a LOT of work being done to turn the masses to blame themselves (by creating rather stupid but widely accepted 'issues' to separate the middle classes into tribes) rather than looking at those pulling the strings.
IMHO the single most important steps right now are to actively push back against political corruption, and tribalism. Ignoring the false separation of 'left' versus 'right', and instead focusing on pushing back against the steady push by governments towards totalitarian control. People who try and whip up support for 'causes' are the puppets of totalitarian control.
However, most of that is impossible, panem et circenses - the bane of 'democracy'.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:23PM (6 children)
Dont forget demographic replacement via invasion and energy in your list.
If you move the residents of Cancun to Mexico City, then they remain the same, which doesn't change much. The propaganda insists if you move the same people from Cancun to Texas, the magic dirt somehow transforms them into tanned white people in terms of low crime rate, high education, high productivity. Oddly enough a near infinite number of experiments seem to prove otherwise. Did the magic dirt of Australia turn the English into native aborigines, LOL? I live in former indian country in the USA, did magic dirt turn invading Scots and Germans into native Americans a century ago? No? Huh, how bout that...
The real world of course is not like that, and Scandinavia and various parts of euro-land already have more than 50% of their child population from invaders. Germany in 2040, for example, isn't going to be Germany from 2000 with a tan, its going to be North Syria in aspects of life including economic activity, or lack thereof. Eastern Europe at present course will remain successful and prosperous but "former NATO" in general is going to be an islamic "north north africa" in all factors of demographics. Which affects them a lot, but their total collapse also affects the rest of the world. For similar reasons the USA is unlikely to remain united under current boundaries for much longer.
Another discussion is middle class requires low cost cheap energy much more than either extreme. Which has been / is going away, so the middle class will likewise disappear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:26PM
SN is being invaded by nazis!! We gotta kill em' all or deport them back to the moon asap!
(Score: 3, Touché) by julian on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:55PM (1 child)
We now take you back to the 19th century, where an entitled and somewhat dim-witted Protestant nativist, himself a son of immigrants from England and in a land only recently stolen from its original (non-white) inhabitants, is nailing a poorly argued and printed screed to a pub bulletin board,
"New England in 1865, for example, isn't going to be New England from 1845 with more potatoes, its going to be Ireland in aspects of life including Papism, economic activity, or lack thereof."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:27PM
Are you saying we have a real vampire on SN? Or maybe its another immortal cave man like from that one movie? VLM care to explain your longevity? Are you still protestant?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:32PM (2 children)
It usually takes a couple of generations for assimilation to complete, yes. What's your point? Are you still asspained over Cheddar Man being a nice shade of cherry wood rather than "so white he gets capsaicin headaches from afternoon sunlight" or what?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:32PM (1 child)
Seriously? Does anyone non-ironically believe my great grandchildren are going to magically turn into members of the Cheyenne Native American culture? Invasions don't work like that.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:47PM
Ah, so you're worried about being genocided then. Karma's a bitch isn't it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...