mrstickball said:
As Happy Squirrel has stated, productivity gains always have had net benefits to everyone in the end. Look through history, and you find that people will gain and lose jobs over new technology. Overall, it increases the standard of living, because the gains allow for more product to be made at a lower cost, which will inherantly reduce the cost of the product, making it more available to everyone. An example would be air conditioners. In the 1970's, cooling units inside of poverty-striken American's houses was just 5% of the total base of people in poverty (5% had air conditioning). Today, its 75%. This isn't because government did it, but because AC units dropped in price, relative to earnings by those in poverty. For a current example, look at indians in the Amazon - they have no infrastructure, few tools, ect, but 100% employment rate. Do they live better day to day than we do? Personally, I think not. Another case and point: Would you be against the invention of a free energy device? Something that would give clean, free, unlimited energy to everyone? According to your statements, you would be against such a device, because of the millions of jobs lost in energy companies. |
Since 2001, job creation rate has remained anemic. You hardly had any month creating more than 150000 new jobs a month in the United States. It hasn't been there. People who had been working had put in more hours, thus the productivity gains that were more (as seen in GDP). Temp work increased also. There is NOTHING that says that productivity efficiencies shiouldd result in a better life for anyone outside of the owner of the business that has productivity increased. What the businesses did, with the increases in producitivity wasn't to redeploy people, but let them go. To maximize profits, the trendy thing to do was to let people go.
Again, there is nothing to indicate productivity gains should benefit everyone. Why should it, unless you are going on faith alone, to say it doess.
