| VGPolyglot said: I see a lot of people say how there'll be businesses that go bust if they have to pay their workers a higher wage, but the question is, is that really a bad thing? I'm sure there were businesses that relied on slavery that went bust too once it was abolished, should we have kept slavery legal to ensure that didn't happen? |
With automation workers in many fields cannot work cheap enough to keep up. Even $1/hour in foriegn countries won't match a machine that can run 24/7 at 10x efficiency of a human. We've had to adjust before, from agriculture to industrial to service based economies. Some projections have humans as workers will become outdated by the end of the century. Even mid to higher skilled job will be replaced as artificial intelligence advances in coming decades.
In this event the drive for wages will simply be good economics as you need consumers to drive progress. Even if it means people make so much more than they produce in the system, it will be required to avoid massive unemployment and depression conditions. I think developed nations today are already seeing the beggining of this new transition as without taxes and programs to redistribute wealth concentrates in ~10% of the population slowing an economy.
