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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: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:14AM (12 children)
Just today, there are two articles on Soylent about inequality/inequity. The past several years, it has been a steady drumbeat.
Stepping back, it's really a purely psychological problem. By any standards you care to apply, the world is making massive strides against poverty [ourworldindata.org]. The poorest in the West would be viewed as unbelievable rich by historical standards, or by comparison with non-first-world countries. we are actually doing really, really well.
But it doesn't matter, because everyone compares themselves to their neighbor. Somehow, it doesn't matter that your standard of living is massively higher than your grandparents. What matters is that you can't afford a McMansion, and the neighbor drives a nicer car. The poor have plenty to eat, a roof over their heads, and can afford smartphones, television and internet. But they feel oppressed, because they aren't living as well as the people in the suburbs.
Humans are really weird creatures.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:54AM
So, Bradley, if that is your real name, we need to have a talk about your earnings while overseas. Did, perhaps, you not pay your fair share to the rest of your citizens? It is not a matter of relative poverty, so much as it is a matter of comparative affluence. And perhaps you are uppity in this regard. No doubt you think you have earned it, and perhaps you have, but the fact that you think that means that you have not. I suggest you read a couple of Works by Thorstein Veblen:
http://www.conspicuousconsumption.org/Thorstein-Veblen.html [conspicuousconsumption.org]
And then we can talk, if you can make it back to the USSR!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
Not entirely disagreeing but don't forget permanent downward mobility in the west. Dad's uni tuition was $250/semester and the house i grew up in cost $85K for a pretty fancy house in a fancy neighborhood in the 70s and paying for medical insurance was never an issue nor was buying a new car every two years. Of course shitty Detroit products rusted out in three years so you needed a new car every two years, but the point is we could easily afford it... With a vastly better education and far higher career arc I should be living vastly better than my dad did at my age, but I'm only about the same. An average dude must be in hell when thinking about how much better off their ancestors had it. Of course it doesn't help that instead of a great quality of life we have endless world war and invaders ruining communities and massive corruption. I'd mortgage my kids future for something worth it, colonizing the solar system perhaps, but what we got for our destruction is just bullshit.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @09:11PM (1 child)
Perhaps we shouldn't have shut down our education funding, we should have kept taxing the rich instead of making it possible for multi-national corporations to pay zero tax.
Perhaps idiots like you should stop voting for morons who repeatedly show they only want to steal from the public and give to the wealthy. But oh noooo, you just blame immigrants or "invaders" as you like to call them. You are the world's most amazing sucker, seeing the problems yet being dumb enough to believe the cause is some fantastical bullshit. Or you're not dumb and just a bigot, thus your emotions override your logic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 16 2018, @02:14PM
If you're speaking of the US, that never happened. What did happen is that the funding was squandered, such as on buildings, shiny tech, and administration.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:35PM (7 children)
"your standard of living is massively higher than your grandparents"
Now try that again with your parents... Not so much eh?
Where my parents (high school education) managed to raise 3 kids from one (somewhat less than average) income from my dad, my wife and I (both university education) need both our incomes (somewhat above average).
Same thing I see with the other couples in our social and physical surroundings. At the moment one income just isn't enough anymore to do anything more than just "surviving".
This standard of living you mention surely does not equate to more freely expendable income (a.k.a. choices).
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:58PM (6 children)
Yeah, you notices that I said "grandparents" and not "parents. In the course of history, one generation is nothing. But it's definitely true: we don't really want to compare ourselves to our parents.
I have a lot more education, and in raw currency I earn a lot more than my Dad did. Yet he managed to support our family on a single income, and we had a comfortable middle-class life. Same for my wife's parents - heck, her dad even managed to put aside a good-sized college fund for every kid. Whereas both my wife and I work, to achieve the same qualitative standard of living. We seem to be more stressed and less happy as well, though it's hard to really know how our parents felt, since we saw them through the eyes of children.
But that's not important, in the big picture. Overall, human standards of living are increasing. If this generation, in a few countries, is slightly different - that's small change compared to the overall picture. Plus, we have access to things (the Internet, for example), that our parents couldn't even dream of.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:19PM (1 child)
In the (really) big picture nothing is important...
We (as a species) are not going to leave this rock anyway, so this is where we (as a species) will end.
That some of us might enjoy (or not) their individual moves on the board does not make it a zero-sum game any less.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:35AM
Unless, of course, we do.
Actually, it does. It is fulfilling a want that doesn't require someone else to lose something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:16PM
Amazing. This is so many of my neighbors. Stressed to the max. And two trying to make what one used to make.
And if the reports on higher credit card debt are true and it is deeper debt in the south then it will hit that region like a ton of bricks
On top of that the psychological battle of work gives makes you valuable. Work gives meaning. You are worthless if you don’t work. Unemployment is bad. Only the worst would be on welfare. This is a powder keg. High debt as the robots come and the wrong story to prop up you already stressed out life. Oh and kids moving out?
There will be blood. Who knows maybe Jim Morrison was right. There’s blood in the streets it’s up to my ankles.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
Well great! So long as we're slightly better off than the depths of the Great Depression I guess we're totally fine.
Here I was worrying about nothing!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:36AM
Is that a problem? I'm not even close to Great Depression levels myself.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:10PM
I have a lot more education, and in raw currency I earn a lot more than my Dad did.
Yep, countries that embrace the good parts of socialism can brag about that. From what I recall Bradley lives in one of those.
We're talking about the US though.