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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
If the middle class is destroyed, all chance of revolution goes with them. The lower classes don't have the time, education, or resources to stop what they're doing and revolt. A middle class person has something to lose, they have free time to think, they have the education to to see solutions. Without the middle class, there is no revolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:16PM
this is the main reason why it has been targeted. too much like the ruling class for comfort.