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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: 3, Insightful) by ewk on Thursday February 15 2018, @02:00PM (5 children)
10? 100? 1000? Your guess is as good as anybodies, but does it matter?
It's not as if the Europeans (Brits, Dutch, Belgians etc.) were known for the their compassion while extracting the goods/wealth (from India, Indonesia and Congo respectively) that helped them to move on in the developed world.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:05PM (4 children)
Zero is a pretty good number too. Presumably, you had a reason for writing those words about "rape" in the first place. Or are you merely a poo-flinging monkey?
So what? Nobody assumes modern man has a surfeit of compassion (which incidentally is a good thing, because you'll never be disappointed). And resources don't automagically turn themselves into a developed world society. It's quite inaccurate to say as you did that modern societies were built "mainly by raping" the resources of the poorer parts of the world. Those resources have existed for the entirety of human occupation of Earth, but it is only recently that we could use them. Sure, it is to some degree happenstance that Europe happened to take over the technological lead after 1500 and become the exploiters of the world, but it is also infrastructure of both the physical and social sorts that they built. It most certainly was not resources!
(Score: 2) by ewk on Friday February 16 2018, @12:47PM (3 children)
"And resources don't automagically turn themselves into a developed world society."
No, but getting them cheap and using them 'back home' instead of where they originated, does.
In fact because of the vastly increased (material) wealth, the way for the other stuff like infrastructure for paved well enough.
'Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.'
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 16 2018, @02:12PM (2 children)
You miss the point of your own writing. Those resources had enormous value "back home", but not where they originated. This has been enormously valuable for regions that otherwise would remain as they've been for thousands of years.
And if things were so wonderful in the developing world in the long ago past, then why did the populations surge upwards by a huge amount over the past two centuries? Looks like increased life span and reduced infant mortality to me.
Good saying. But perhaps we should do more here than just type words without understanding? The developed world figured out how to feed itself - infrastructure. Now it figures out morality via law (which I might add really has been sorted out a while ago) - infrastructure of a different sort.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Monday February 19 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
So maybe it would have been a good idea to 'pay' properly instead of getting them cheap.
Because, then the originating location could do something with that 'pay', like figuring out how to feed itself... oh wait, that's what we call development...
As for the not understanding: It's German... maybe that will help you.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 19 2018, @07:28PM
So many unexamined assumptions in this sentence. Let's start with the scare quotes around "pay". Are we talking about paying poor people for work or not? If we aren't, then use the right words. Just be aware that my "give a shit" goes down once we stop talking about concrete things like payment for work or resources and start talking about woo that can mean whatever I feel like at the time.
Then there's the weasel wording of "pay properly". What does that even mean? Then add on that it's supposed to be a "good idea". What makes you think that's not already the case? Let us also keep in mind that a lot of the work they do isn't worth a whole lot, like the previously mentioned resource extraction else they would be getting paid more for it.
Moving on, "cheap". Africa is the go to place for cheap resource extraction and other relatively low skill, low infrastructure industries, because it is desperate and poor. It will become even more desperate and poor a region, if we make those industries too expensive to operate in Africa.
The problem here is that tribal morality has no place in economics. What barely works for a tribe of 50-100 clueless people doesn't work for 6 billion people who aren't part of the developed world, but are building that world in their own countries. Feed them then develop a sensible morality.