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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: 1, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:42AM (14 children)
Let us note that the middle class in the US dwindled [reason.com] in the US from 61% in 1970 to 50% in 2015. Upper class grew in absolute numbers by more than the lower class did during that time period. So anything that would destroy the middle class in two years is going to give us a lot more to worry about (like survival during a harsh nuclear winter, for example) than that.
So what? I feel that there's a large portion of humanity ill-equipped to be anything other than servants.
And it turns out you agree.
The thing I find interesting, yet again, is how people are willing to make these very negative predictions about the future, but can't get basic facts about the present right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @09:56AM (5 children)
Now the climate change denial makes sense: Actually they know quite well that it gets hotter, but they hope it will counteract the nuclear winter, so they can't allow people to stop it!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:55PM (4 children)
You do realize that a large part of the imaginary "climate change denial" thing are lukewarmists - people who agree that there is anthropogenic global warming, but disagree that as a result we must act right now in costly and ineffective ways?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:29PM (3 children)
Not to hear the various bullshit you've spewed the last few years. On so many occasions I have pointed out that the warming trend may result in global cooling due to more clouds causing a higher albedo, but fools like you only clung tighter to the propaganda. Now that we've had a few years of dramatic evidence you want to try and come out with a more middle ground approach? Fuck off you disingenuous twat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:29PM (2 children)
Then you haven't been listening.
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Notice a pattern? Moving on...
Ok... so cloud cover increases, Earth cools a little, and then we reach a new equilibrium point warming than where we started with some increase in cloud cover.
Why don't you try digging up that dramatic evidence? I'll note that the Earth isn't actually cooling, so you'd be wrong already in that part of your assertions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
Oh good, glad I'm wrong about you. Must have been all your conspiracy level pushback that gave me the wrong impression.
As apparent here your basic grasp of scientific deduction is still shaky, should've taken more general-ed and science courses. If cloud cover increases enough to plummet temperatures then we could end up with massive snowfall. Snow is quite reflective, so enough snowfall and you no longer need cloud cover to keep the albedo up and you can get a runaway snowball earth. Perhaps we'd just reach an equilibrium and not go to either hot/cold extreme, perhaps not.
If you want to see the dramatic evidence just look up weather patterns around the globe, the average global temp increase, etc.
Oh, I wasn't gonna nitpick but oh well. All your posts are from the last year, with 2014 being the earliest but "Ok, where's the demonstration? Sure, I grant that global warming could be a really serious problem. But I'd expect actual evidence of this problem to be out there, not merely the usual assortment of talk and confirmation bias gimmicks." So you understood the potential for a problem but at that point you were still in the process of coming to grips with it. Did a few years really give you the data you needed? Or was that merely the time it took your brain to work past the conservative targeted propaganda?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:29AM
It wouldn't because as you claimed, cloud cover would decline, if temperatures dropped. You can't have it both ways.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by therainingmonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:19PM (7 children)
You make a good point regarding the exaggeration of the rate things are changing, but
has lead to some pretty nasty societies, historically. Those who advocate dividing people into "better" and "worse" categories always think they'll be in the "better" class for some reason...
John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance [wikipedia.org] seems to me like a good way to think about the changes we'd like to see in society.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:51PM (6 children)
Well, yes, human nature isn't perfect.
People who would most benefit from that approach, aren't interested. Lot of people want a strong leader to think for them. Lot of people will cower before some pretty mild threats, real or imagined. A lot of people think that being a good leader is like a zero-skill job that anyone can do. That's all servant thinking. I'm not saying they will always be that way (the "classes" of crafoo). But that's the way they are now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
You somehow think you'd come out on top in that kind of shakeup. It's obvious as the sun. Well have I got news for you, Bobbeh: the elite see you and the poorest blackest gayest disabled-est immigrant-est women *precisely the same.* You got that? To the elite whose shoes you seem to love the taste of so much, you and here are BOTH "n*ggers."
Remember that when you're dying slowly wondering why your gods in the temple of Mammon betrayed you. You are a consumable item to them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:06AM (2 children)
Human nature is not a "shakeup".
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:10AM (1 child)
Oh, but the application of bare, bestial human nature to this fragile illusionary castle in the air we refer to as civilization would be, Mr. Hallow :) And you would be just as dead as all the people you mock, if not deader, and all your classcucked ass-kissing would make not one whit of difference. You are somewhere between expendable and invisible to the elite whose boots you shine with your tongue.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:43AM
My point here is that there's only so much we can do even in a well-run democracy. People who choose to make themselves into uncritical followers will be a problem no matter how much theatrical angst we spit out. Going way back to the beginning of this thread, there was this complaint about two classes of people servants and masters. I pointed out that some people are going to be firmly part of the less desirable "servant" class by choice or nature. I get that abandoning democracy because humanity is imperfect is a dumb idea, but I also get that democracy is always under threat precisely because humanity is imperfect.
Good thing I never cared, isn't it? I'm not here to curry favor. I am however here to remind people that we will always have an elite and we'll always have people who need someone to tell them what to do. The present system of private businesses does a good job of matching "servants" to "masters" in a way that allows for a) fluid flow between the two categories, b) movement between businesses when one gets sick of working for a particular business, and c) fair compensation for playing the game.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)
You shouldn't use such absolutes all the time. People change and grow. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes the worse, and sometimes they don't change much at all.
Being a "leader" doesn't make someone better or worse either. Our society a large number of roles, and good leaders are often bad engineers etc. Classist thinking is antiquated and it saddens me to see it proposed as some kind of "natural order". Social darwinists (you khallow) are the WORST!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:20AM
I don't. I only use absolutes when appropriate. Other people, such as the ones using the "servant thinking" I mentioned earlier, have more trouble with this.
I agree.
Then don't do that. Note that crafoo was actually doing the classist thinking and he doesn't pull any crap for it.
Worst at what? I'll note here that social darwinism is very different from genuine darwinism. In the latter case, adaptation is survival. If you can't adapt, you're dead. But in social darwinism, one can refuse to adapt and only have to make sacrifices, some which can be quite minor. For example, I have refused to join Facebook and my sacrifice is that I have somewhat greater difficulty in keeping in touch with friends. My lack of adaptation has not resulted in my death.
An example of servant thinking is the idea that one deserves a certain standard of living or a certain number of ponies. That's an attempt to make society fit their personal whims rather than adapt to the realities of what their societies can attain and provide.