Heterodox
What happens as the few workers we see in these videos below are no longer needed? And, even more importantly, when middle class and professional jobs get hit by the same trend through AI and more sophisticated software?Capitalism has both a supply-side and demand-side. As more and more work is done by machines or software, the relationship between aggregate demand growth and private sector employment growth will start to break down – or at the very least become very weak. Eventually, a...
Read More »Would Capitalism necessarily be destroyed if Human Labour fell towards Zero?
In a word: no.Why? Because an economy with more and more automation based on private enterprise and private capitalist production could still sell its output and obtain money profits, if a government managed the demand-side of the economy by providing a guaranteed income (with, say, taxes on consumption, property, and ownership of financial and real assets and returns from those assets, with the shortfall covered by central bank money creation). As long as the balance of payments functioned...
Read More »Is a Shrinking Labour Force such a Problem?
It may not even be a problem at all.That is, in light of the massive revolutionary effects of automation and robotics that is happening as we speak, as we can see here, here and here.It is potentially so revolutionary it is rightly being dubbed the “fourth industrial revolution.”The warning signs have been here for years: e.g., a 2013 Oxford study suggests that about 47% of human jobs will be lost to AI by 2030. First, working class and then middle class jobs will be hit.When, for example,...
Read More »