Why isn't perpetual high unemployment inevitable?

[scottie]

richardhutnik said:

scottie said:
For every person that is no longer needed in agriculture, or manufacturing, more are needed in other fields. Sustainability is the biggest boom at the moment, before that it was online serivices. before that it tourism, fuelled by affordable air travel. Before that was the entertainment industry.

Sustainability (green) is alternate energy sources and also more efficient building materials to conserve on energy sources.  How is this anything quantifiably new, and not just the reshuffling of old skills?

Hmm? I'm not sure what you mean. From what I can gather, the point of your first post was that the increased efficiency with which modern societies farm and manufacture means that we can, as a society, get as much done with high unemployment as our ancestors could with low/no unemployment?

 

To which my response was, that instead of being content accomplishing as much, and thus letting unemployment build as efficiency builds up, in the long term, our society chooses to get more done and thus keeping unemployment under control.

 

As examples of the new things our society has chosen to do, I gave sustainability projects, entertainment, tourism.