[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Why would corporations and banks do that there's no benefit for them to?

To prevent the system from collapsing altogether. Look at the desperate measures already being taken to try to encourage spending:

1) Historically low interest rates.
2) Historically high household debt.
3) Historically high government debt.

All the levers to increase spending and revive the economy are already maxed out. And most of the world still hasn't recovered from 2008 (a point that Albertans tend to be unaware of because the oil boom continued for six years after that).

We're seeing two historical forces that together are leading us into uncharted territory.

After the gains made by labour in the 20th century (mostly owing to the loss of capital suffered in the two Great Wars), we're seeing capital regain its supremacy. Expect to see concentrations of wealth the likes of which we haven't seen in over a century.

The process of automation that is just picking up steam is different from other eras of technological change because we're destroying jobs far faster than we're creating new ones. The new industries and companies only employ a fraction of people as the companies they're replacing did. Kodak once employed 145,000 people. The company leading the 'disruption' when Kodak went bankrupt was Instagram. It employed 13 people.

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Sure, but then society has to change and I believe that the emphasis has to be on targeted education and job training and encouraging people to learn to work where the gaps are.

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I get that innovation hurts jobs, but it's also creating jobs. The issue isn't lack of jobs, it's lack of an adaptable workforce. You can't turn back time so you have to be nimble to survive

Automated cars will put half a million Canadians out of work. How many software developers and other new jobs will be needed to replace them? 1,000? If that? 42 per cent of Canadians jobs are at high risk of automation.

Here's a sobering number: 0.5 per cent of Americans are employed in industries that have emerged since 2000. http://www.economist.com/news/specia...on-and-anxiety

I'm not against progress. But we need to prepare for a labour market - and a society - where half the workforce will be deemed unnecessary. You can't train everyone to be software developers. And in fact, software development itself is becoming less and less labour intensive. Some people simply don't have the intelligence or flexibility to thrive in a high tech economy. And we only need so many waiters and bartenders - especially in a society where wealth will be so concentrated that most people won't be able to eat out regularly.

In an economy built on mass consumption and mass spending, it will be in the interests of not only government, but banks and corporations themselves to find some way to get all that money that will be concentrated in very few hands into the hands of hundreds of millions of unemployed or underemployed so it can circulate in the economy. The market isn't going to do it naturally. It will require intervention on a scale we've never seen.