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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 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.