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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, @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.