As the industrial process becomes more automated, how will society adjust to a decrease of needed labor?
Yet an increase in consumer good production.
Obviously some work force will always be needed, but as much of the bottom tier of production becomes automated, how will a growing population adjust to a decrease in labor needed, even whilst an abundance of goods exists?
Society will have to become more and more socialistic, unions will have to give what few workers there are a much stronger voice, so-called "right to work" for peanuts states will slowly disappear, the rich will be taxed @ 90% again, and foreign manufacturers will be given greater tax breaks just so they hire American workers who pay taxes. Think of it; if Bill Gates paid 90% income tax, he would be forced to muddle thru on a measly 5,500,000,000. The Walton Family on 7.7 billion. bummer
December 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
A lot of available jobs will move away from manufacturing and into the service industry (this trend has already been occuring for decades). When industry is done mostly by machines and robots, people move to jobs where they provide a service for other people. Less and less people work in factories, while more and more people work in sales, marketing, restaurants, finance, real estate, accounting, law, medicine, computers, and so on.
Also, as technology takes over industry, you need a lot more people responsible for inventing and maintaining the technology. That means more people need to be trained for higher-education jobs like engineers, computer programmers, and machine techs. And as goods gets cheaper and easier to produce, more work needs to be done for research, marketing, and design for the goods to stay profitable.
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