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Originally Posted by GGG
Here is our fundamental disagreement. Automation is not a wealth transfer mechanism. It is a driver of efficiency.
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How do you not see it as a wealth transfer mechanism? It drives labour cost efficiency, I'll give you that much. But it does not always provide any efficiency from a productivity perspective.
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Automation creates surplus capacity. This surplus capacity can be taken as profit, a reduction in price, increased wages for remaining workers or tax. Creating surplus is always good in an economy.
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If that companies' surplus is kept only as profit or invested in another economic region it does not help the local economy. Unless the employees who lose their jobs are able to find new ones that pay the same amount of money they also now put a strain on the existing economy, less spending of their earnings at other businesses will decrease those businesses' sales. So I'm not sure how you classify that as "always" a good thing. Increasing the wages of the remaining employees would help soften the burden, but I think you'll agree that this is unlikely to be the employers goal by automating as it is counter productive to their decision to automate in the first place. Price reduction is possible as well, however it also seems like an unlikely outcome given the fact it also works against the cost cutting motivation behind automating.