Paul Craig Roberts says how the corporations drool over all the profits they will make from automation, but when there are no employees there will be no no wages so who will be able to buy anything?
Think about it, say you own a small company and you completely automate it looking forward to the huge profits to be made as you don't have to pay any workers, and then ask yourself, who would worry about the long term future? Not many. Just hope for the best, I guess?
At this point capitalism doesn't work anymore, but what answers do the libertarians, or the pro market conservatives, or the capitalists, have? Yep, just leave it to the market. So, when we all die off the market will correct itself and we all go back to the stone ages and start all over again.
In contrast, Robotics, instead of displacing labor, eliminates it. Unlike jobs offshoring which shifted jobs from the US to China, robotics will cause jobs losses in both countries. If consumer incomes fall, then demand for output also falls, and output will fall. Robotics, then, is a way to shrink gross domestic product.
The tech nerds and corporations who cannot wait for robotics to reduce labor cost in thKeir profits calculation are incapable of understanding that when masses of people are without jobs, there is no consumer income with which to purchase the products of robots. The robots themselves do not need housing, food, clothing, entertainment, transportation, and medical care. The mega-rich owners of the robots cannot possibly consume the robotic output. An economy without consumers is a profitless economy.
PCR - Does America Have an Economy or Any Sense of Reality?
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