Earlier this year, commentator Paul Wallbank wrote an interesting article questioning whether technological change is killing the the middle-class in developed countries:
Modern technology has taken the global economy through three waves of structural change over the past thirty years, the first wave was manufacturing moving from the first world to emerging economies as global logistic chains became more efficient.
The second wave, which we’re midway through at the moment, is moving service industry jobs and middleman roles onto the net which destroys the basis of many local businesses.
Many local service businesses thrived because they were the only print shop, secretarial service or lawyer in their town or suburb. The net has destroyed that model of scarcity…
The third wave of change lead by robotics and automation will hurt many of those fields that were assumed to be immune to technological forces.
One good example are Australia’s legendary $200,000 mining truck drivers. Almost all their jobs will be automated by the end of the decade. The days of of relatively unskilled workers making huge sums in the mines has almost certainly come to an end.
So where will the jobs come from to replace those occupations we are losing?
A similar theme has been picked-up in the New York Times, which examines computerisation’s affect on various types of jobs, and argues that the middle-class has been hardest hit:
The multi-trillionfold decline in the cost of computing since the 1970s has created enormous incentives for employers to substitute increasingly cheap and capable computers for expensive labor. These rapid advances — which confront us daily as we check in at airports, order books online, pay bills on our banks’ Web sites or consult our smartphones for driving directions — have reawakened fears that workers will be displaced by machinery. Will this time be different?..
Logically, computerization has reduced the demand for these jobs, but it has boosted demand for workers who perform “nonroutine” tasks that complement the automated activities. Those tasks happen to lie on opposite ends of the occupational skill distribution…
Computerization has therefore fostered a polarization of employment, with job growth concentrated in both the highest- and lowest-paid occupations, while jobs in the middle have declined. Surprisingly, overall employment rates have largely been unaffected in states and cities undergoing this rapid polarization. Rather, as employment in routine jobs has ebbed, employment has risen both in high-wage managerial, professional and technical occupations and in low-wage, in-person service occupations.
So computerization is not reducing the quantity of jobs, but rather degrading the quality of jobs for a significant subset of workers. Demand for highly educated workers who excel in abstract tasks is robust, but the middle of the labor market, where the routine task-intensive jobs lie, is sagging.
Finally, US political commentator, Francis Fukuyama, takes a less sanguine view in today’s AFR, arguing that both lower and higher-end jobs are being replaced through technological advancement:
[Fukuyama] said jobs were either being sent overseas to low-cost countries or are ceasing to exist as technology expands.
“It’s not just the low-value jobs; it’s jobs higher up the chain which are simply evaporating”…
Debate over whether technological advancement is killing jobs is as old as the hills. When the automobile was introduced, stagecoach drivers protested at the loss of jobs. Ditto the 19th century mill worker and the 20th century bank teller. In all cases, new jobs were created in areas unthought of at the time. The same will happen again. New jobs will come from somewhere, although for some workers whose skills are made obsolete, they will be forced to take on less financially rewarding work.
Overall, however, creative destruction – the replacement of some prior economic order via innovation – is key to expanding living standards. The important thing is to provide displaced workers with financial assistance and retraining so that they can gain employment in the new industries, whatever they may be.
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Ummm…
The printing press, the steam engine and mass production….
Technology created the middle class.
The example of $200k truck drivers is symptomatic of irrational, bubble behaviour. The labour here is priced way out of whack if the skill of truck driving is considered a ‘normal product’.
The middle class is disappearing because those that are rich have been engaging a class war for 30+ years.
Did you miss the “creative destruction” part? Creation and destruction going hand in hand?
No I didn’t miss the ‘creative destruction’ part.
That said, my comment was more rhetoric to Paul Wallbank than a reply to UC.
But my examples also incurred simultaneous creation and destruction.
Most technological advances have the benefits of the creation side of the ledger outweighing the malign parts of the destructive side.
The parts to dissemble are who captures the net benefits, and the last 30+ years have shown the capture has been made by a very narrow class.
It needn’t be, but that’s a political question. The same politics that would have it that we wouldn’t even need to ask “where has the middle class gone”
Yep, I agree, I would like to see nothing more than the rich and their families wiped from the face of the earth. This is total class warfare. Their kids and future are at the expense of me and my family.
The way things are going its the mega-rich who are winning, while all levels of middle class are losing.
And on a global scale you personally would be considered rich. I am sure that those Bangladeshi factory workers feel the same way.
mbeya: Top comment. We live like Gods compared to much of the global population. They would love to have our problems.
The super rich have got us fighting amongst ourselves. For instance you’ve got the 1.7 million negative gearers wanting to destroy other would be middle classers.
Some of the rich earn it, and want to go back to a fairer society.
I wonder if the Bangladeshis ever thought they might be overpopulated and that might be a source of their impoverishment?
There is simply too much reverence given to human life, the world’s people don’t do themselves any favours by breeding like locusts and with a shrieking vocal minority taking offence at any attempt to address this madness. If I was the super rich I’d want to be protecting myself from that too.
RP, I bet that the engineers who designed the truck and all those who designed the many moving parts on the truck and the people who built the truck were on a lot less that the smug Aussie in the orange vest driving it.
More smug in the years 2004-2013 yes.
Less smug in most times though.
Thus you’d call the smugness (temporarily) exceptional, much like the contemporary rates of pay.
@RP Dunno about that. While we have greater equality and wage equality in Australia, it means getting a degree does not mean significantly better pay like it does in many countries overseas.
I think this has been the case in Oz for a while.
Sorry I missed the comments Leith, been hard at work………for my ten cents worth, I do think the West is in a terminal economic decline. This will be demonstrated with going back to single income households and permanently higher unemployment rates. Please read Robert J Gordon’s; IS U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH OVER? FALTERING INNOVATION CONFRONTS
THE SIX HEADWINDS. Those headwinds include demographics, massive debts, declining education standards and huge social & financial inequalities. I, for one, do think this time it is different and the “jobs we do not even know exist” meme is kaput.
http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/is%20us%20economic%20growth%20over.pdf
The jobs will obviously made up and people will just re-skill and doing home service jobs, after all how many people here have rang for 3 quotes and no on bothers to call you back and if they do you wait for 4 weeks just to get the jobs done at some ridiculous price. There is a big market for home handymen, plumbing, electrical, fencing, brickies etc etc.
IMHO technology always enables more than it destroys, the problem is it just doesn’t always feel that way.
How many IT workers does Australia have today vs say 10 years ago. The industry might be under price pressure but in absolute numbers it is a much bigger industry today.
The next wave of automation will crush many jobs that have existed largely unchanged for decades (think tradies). The change wont be gentle and it wont be forgiving especially for those that try to stand in its way, however for those that can harness the value that modern technology creates it will be an invaluable friend.
Being an island Australia can and probably will enact stupid laws that give the local industries “time to adjust”. Unfortunately this is always the biggest mistake anyone can make because it gives others time to master the technology. They become the owners of value in this chain and Aussies simply become users that gladly pay a fortune for that which they could have developed themselves. AND sold on to the rest of the world.
Those IT workers China-bob are been replaced by cheap foreign immigrants and foreign students. I have worked in the IT industry for 20 years and some agencies have told me that some companies are just hiring foreign students and migrants only because they are much cheaper. This means that the local citizens are losing out and that is part of the reason the middle class is going. This is only one industry, how many other industries is this happening to.
@bskerr2, Yes Aussie IT is under siege, but is it a bigger or a smaller industry than it was 10 years ago? Today the IT manager finds an Indian firm to do the work while he manages, 10 years ago he probably just did the job(got it right first time an moved on), net product is about the same but, more people and more money are involved in today’s solution.
I think I could make a reasonable argument to say that Microsoft Word was a better more user friendly package 10 years ago than it is today, however the complexity of this simple function (word processing) now requires lots of skills varying from embedded video to spreadsheet macros. This requires more support and more workers and support for the support workers. The fact that I actually just want to write/read a memo/presentation/proposal is irrelevant I must upgrade so that I can open that silly file the youngest engineer on the team just created.
The next invasion of technology will be no different, it will always promise more than it actually delivers and always promise to rectify the bugs in the last release but instead It’ll focus on new features that create more problems than they solve. Someone will labor to keep the whole system from imploding and that group will get ever larger, until we reach an inflection point where the technology circus moves on. At this point in time consumers get DVD players that just play DVD’s and word processing packages that actually work straight out of the box (unfortunately in this final stage the support industry basically dies…..that’s the technology game in a nut shell…
You have a choice love it or leave it!
So, it’s the rich and their kids, the employment agencies and the foreign students that all need wiping out so you and your family can prosper? Any more?
Indeed. A good friend of mine is an IT testing manager. He couldn’t find work for ages because all the system testing jobs have gone OS as too has the management roles. He went for loads of different jobs but was told he was a tester.
He eventually got a job in an Indian company used by one of the big banks. They needed a manager on the ground here is Aus. He has had to put on several people here in Australia but has, on every occasion, been told he can only bring in one of the companies Indian workers on a 457 visa. Absolutely not allowed to consider locals. And every single one of these workers has remained here. It’s fn sickening!!
Maybe only a revolution will sort all this out!
great post China Bob. All technology reaches a point where upgrade improvements are increasingly diminished, IT vendors get around this by refusing to support old versions. As for outsourcing being cheaoper and improving the product? having witnessed it first hand thats completely laughable.
Nonsense. Only in the lowest wrung can those people be replaced by foriegn/student workers.
Ask yourself this question: Is the NSA outsourcing its information espionage to foriegn/student workers?
“Can and probably will enact stupid laws…” Bingo!!
It’s not technology killing the middle class its the middle class’ abrogation of their role as arbiters of political ambition and influence that is killing the middle class. The idiots voted for very very very short term self interest and against long term self interest.
Sucks to be them
i refer to your article last week about the rise of the bullshit job. More people will work in compliance, advertising, clean & green policy officers etc etc. Work places have on site masseuses now to ease stress. It is in our nature to lose the bigger picture and to overemphasise small problems when the bigger ones no longer exist. People used to worry about whether they can feed their family and what invader might be at the gates. Now we worry about whether the local school offers stimulating enough experiences at its “gap” term retreat and whether the performing arts centre is up to scratch, or do they have a Shanghai campus.
Time to stop “progressing” and smell the flowers.
We don’t need to profilgate bullshit jobs, and China-Bob is on the the voices pointing this most clearly.
With cheap electricity, cheap land and autmative manufacturing+3D printing, we could have a massive increase in the variety and choice of manufactured wares.
We have poor policy settings in so many areas, with the rent-seeker capturing so much wealth that it inhibits true enterprise.
+100. Actually we with the right set of policies this could really drive Oz.
We have one of the worlds largest reserves of titanium which until recently was not too useful given the difficultly with working with titanium. Enter 3D printing with titanium…
It’s an interesting discussion. 3d’s link to this:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/07/10/you-are-not-an-artisan/ provides a great alternative view.
But i’d say oceans of debt is doing a hell of a lot more to wipe out the middle class than technology is.
In countries like the UK and Australia, the middle class is being decimated because they are unable to escape the tax burden necessary to support bloated and inefficient governments.
The welfare class is a net recipient and the owners of capital / technology have the means and skills to avoid the legalised extortion of rent seekers like the government and banks
I hear UK is loosing skilled natives at a pretty rapid rate and has been for a while, replacing them with new migrants.
As AJ suggests, it’s the debt that’s killing our middle class. Without the entrenched debt that we have, wages and jobs can become more flexible and adapt to innovation. Sometimes it takes a step back before going several steps forward. But no one can afford to take that step back, because the debts have to be paid.. week in, week out….
Technology has a habit of changing what the middle class do, but if anything increases their number.
Before computers, bank transactions were all entered in ledgers by hordes of workers. Tax returns were all assessed by rooms full of desk workers using a calculator at best, all overseen by the boss from behind a desk on a raised platform, so that he (it always was a he) could see if anyone was slacking. Thankfully, those days are gone. Middle class jobs now may be “bullshit jobs” to some extent, but they are a lot better than that.
“In all cases, new jobs were created in areas unthought of at the time. The same will happen again. New jobs will come from somewhere, although for some workers whose skills are made obsolete, they will be forced to take on less financially rewarding work.”
Being a nerd, my first thought was “ok, but what about when we reach a technological singularity?” Wikipedia says someone’s already though of that:
“Martin Ford postulates a “technology paradox” in that before the singularity could occur most routine jobs in the economy would be automated, since this would require a level of technology inferior to that of the singularity. This would cause massive unemployment and plummeting consumer demand, which in turn would destroy the incentive to invest in the technologies that would be required to bring about the Singularity. Job displacement is increasingly no longer limited to work traditionally considered to be “routine.”“
Massive unemployment doesn’t necessarily lead to plummeting consumer demand. When it becomes blindingly obvious that jobs only exist for 50% of the population due to automation, you can expect the other 50% to be given a pension. The simplest way to do this would be to gradually REDUCE the qualifying age for the old age pension as structural unemployment rises. We are talking about a situation of dramatically rising productivity so eventually you need very few human workers to support the pensioners – the tax base will be mainly corporations and shareholders.
And remember that the money that is no longer paid in wages to employees will go to shareholders as profits.
The old argument is that if workers can’t afford to buy the product, who will companies sell to? Shareholders, and an employed elite. Basically you’ll have a luxury market that makes up 90% of the economy by value and 10% of the economy by numbers. Then you’ll have a mass market that makes up 10% of the economy by value and 90% by numbers( all the people on a pension).
So 90% of people are pensioners living a basic lifestyle (probably better than todays) while the top 10% have high-skilled jobs and own the companies that produce everything with robotic labour, and own 90% of the wealth, and represent 90% of the consumer market.
Consumer demand will overwhelmingly be about selling stuff to the wealthy 10%. Since demand for stuff like mansions and robot butlers and life-extension treatments is basically infinite, there will still be a market for innovation.
Anyone seen Elysium?
This wont happen as the demographic trends over the next 100 years will result in a shrinking population. The price of labour in the next 50+ years will rise
“The same will happen again.”
Only up to a point.
We are on track to engineer machines by the mid-to-late 2020s that can solve problems and understand speech as well as a human can. From that point on-wards, there is, by definition, no new job that could arise for a human that a machine could not also do better, faster, cheaper.
Up until that point the retraining / reskilling argument is invalid. How many of those mine drivers are going to go get advanced degrees in IT / Robotics?
Another point to consider is the sheer pace of technological change, either (i) destroying old jobs faster than it creates new ones, or (ii) destroying old jobs faster than people can adapt (the lag between losing one’s job and reskilling to get another).
The transition we are beginning to go through is not like those that came before because it is based on engineering greater intelligence – our species’ one core competitive advantage. In any case it is good to see this getting more coverage in the press.
Yet even as we continue constructing this intelligent-machine powered technological edifice that threatens to destroy all jobs, much higher and more equitable standards of living will still be very much possible.
+1
I can hardly wait for those machines to start rent seeking. Should be a hoot.
Or they decide that human society represents a sub-optimal configuration of resources, and literally kill off the middle class (along with the other classes).
Skynet and Judgement Day anyone ?
I hope they will have to hire local human lobbyists for that.
‘I hope they will have to hire local human lobbyists for that.’
Actually I am hoping they will do this for themselves.
I am hopeful that if they are superior to us then they will be able to spin me bullshit I actually believe
“I am hopeful that if they are superior to us then they will be able to spin me bullshit I actually believe”
So you want to live out a life portrayed in the Matrix movie… it’d be a natural extension of property fantasy the govt is forcing upon us.
Westworld.
They already have them, running the stock markets.
In Australia as elsewhere in the West, globalisation is hollowing out the middle class. Whether it is I.T. or manufacturing, retail or services, globalisation is eroding the middle class in many Western countries. If the policy, regulatory and taxation settings are not adjusted to counter the effects of globalisation, natural attrition will ensure the rot continues.
When it comes to career choices, anyone who has/does not factor in the effects of globalisation is neglecting the most powerful of influences on thir future.
@GSM, Are you actually suggesting Aussie Politicians try to find a way to counter the forces of globalization?
Would you, of all people, entrust this function to OUR politicians, say KRudd and company, or the other guy with the Budgie Smugglers and the stupid grin?
Personally I pray they stay out of the way and let technologist deliver value, (or at least deliver value to themselves).
Countering the effects of globalisation = endorsing protectionism? Protectionism will not improve our living standard. That is not a solution.
We need to work with globalisation and find something we can actually contribute to the rest of the world (that is long-term and sustainable and not just a pile of rocks for a decade).
The free market ideology does not work with globalisation since we’re not playing against others who are afraid to get their hands dirty (like us) – and this gives them a competitive advantage over us. What we need to do is foster and develop an export industry (not one on life support, but one that is actually profitable) to bring us closer to a long-term sustainable trade balance. Then we’ll continue to have structural change but we’ll have places for the displaced to go and a means to afford a growing living standard for all of us.
The protectionist mantra is suicidal at its best or embracing the rot through inaction at its milder form.
Consider a small island with no humans on it. A ship wrecks and a few humans swim to the island. They share the land, the natural fruits and they share the work that “must” be done. They will be happier if there is more land, more fruit and less work. Don’t forget that – LESS work.
Now imagine that more and more ships wreck and more and more humans swim to the island. This will make land and fruit scarcer and labour more abundant. Perhaps I don’t understand markets, but to me, if these things are sold under a market regime, then I would expect to see rent rise and wages fall.
This would be great for any person who collects rent, but bad for a person who works a job and must pay rent.
For fairness, a new person swimming to the island really needs to be given a fair share of land upon his arrival. He should also be expected to do his fair share of work. But land-owning elites might spread the dogma that they “own” the land and need not share it. The elite might spread the dogma that the new person actually needs a “job”. Once a person is denied land, but unable to pay rent from a job and still survive, this person must be given “welfare”. This undeserved payment is to be minimised and despised, unlike the rent collected by the elite – which is deserved.
Once the population is convinced of the need for jobs, then all kinds of moronic make-work schemes, such as government departments, and making regulations, enforcing regulations, and following regulations, become widely supported by the population.
Now a person striving to lead (eg politician) does not promise to create something useful, eg “I will create a new boat so we can catch and eat more fish”, he instead promises “to create 100 new jobs”. Of course, as every mother of young children knows, it is much easier to do something that creates work than it is to do something that makes ones life easier.
This is a great comment ! + 100
Good stuff!
Nice post. This then leads into the tedious madness of nonsense work that was highlighted in another MB article:
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/08/rise-of-the-bullshit-job/
Class war is a dead end. If money is labour etc …and if we choose to wipe out the rich then at least some of those people will be people who worked hard for what they have. Maybe a more valid war would be productive people vs those who reap what they do not sow. Maybe a problem with technology might be that as it destroys old jobs they not being replaced them with new ones…for some reason. We are paying off a growing segment of the population to do nothing.
We are paying off a growing segment of the population to do nothing.
One solution is just this. Most people should be paid to do nothing – nothing except give up their claim of a fair share of the best natural resources.
Don’t want to live near a beach? OK, here is your payment, now leave the beach to people who do want to live near it and are prepared to pay you to do without it.
Don’t want to consume petrol? OK, here is your payment for not consuming that scarce natural resource…
Happy to live on a small plot of land far from the city? Here is your payment…
Claw “One solution is just this. Most people should be paid to do nothing”
Its called welfare.
Class war is a dead end
Correct, and that’s why the class war our elite are engaged in is seeing the west decline. Our civilisations are approaching their dead end.
To save me writing, Google “The Pareto principle”, also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity.
The Pareto principle has also been used to attribute the widening economic inequality in the United States to ‘skill-biased technical change’—i.e. income growth accrues to those with the education and skills required to take advantage of new technology.
Cited is a table showing the richest 20% of the global population to have 82% of the income.
That is how it is. The poor will always be with us.
WW
“The important thing is to provide displaced workers with financial assistance and retraining so that they can gain employment”…
Is Australia a welfare state?
Employees have to look after their own, always have and always will.
This topic often gets emotive and confusing.
Yes, companies are seeking cost reductions and “efficiencies” via IT. Many will involve offshoring. Australia is way behind the curve in this, so expect more. This will definitely reduce white collar jobs. In time, then Aus companies will learn the same lesson others have – it aint all its cracked up to be, and will start onshoring again. But generally, the IT market in Aus is very friendly to workers, in most sectors there are genuine shortages of people. But if you’re in an area that can be automated / offshored, such as coding, testing, support, then expect opportunities to reduce. This is a global trend and will only increase.
But there is a separate trend that’s more profound, which is the role of the Internet and technology is making certain tasks insanely cheaper, more efficient and easier to get into. Its reducing barriers to entry across industries at phenomenal pace. But the net effect of this is far less job creation, as what might once have needed a company of 30 people might now need 2 people supplemented by flexible resourcing and technology from all over the world, literally. Similarly, innovative energy and capital in many countries, esp US, is now yielding far far less jobs for the economy. Its not inappropriate to compare Google, say, with Ford, or Apple with P&G. The old-world companies drove millions of jobs over decades, the new world companies employ a few tens of thousands of high-end knowledge workers, and will have to get more efficient to compete with the next gen of challengers. What this means for the world who knows.
In Australia we have another factor at play. Government defining rich as $150k pa. Perhaps they can reduce it to $2k and we can all be rich.
This is wrong because?
This wave of automation and elimination of jobs is exactly what will drive the next wave of dramatic productivity gains. Due to the imminent global population decline over the next century this is a perfect example of supply meeting demand. As we know leveraging labour ( productivity gains ) creates a much higher standard of living for society. A few extinct dinosaurs along the way is part of the evolutionary process.
Education is an industry so far relatively unchanged by recent technological progress.
I can think if no other industry more vulnerable to the winds of creative destruction than “teaching”.
The question “Is technology killing the middle class?” perhaps should be re-framed as “is technology killing our economic system?”.
The middle class is not going anywhere (except via an extinction event). What they do and how they define themselves is changing. Over the last week we have seen several posts all referencing this very subject. Bullshit jobs, middle class welfare supporting the status quo, rise of the elites, parasite industries like superannuation and insurance. Technology is making a lot of middle class activity pointless – but they still need an income.
The future is revealing itself as a square peg for the centuries old round hole of political and economic thinking. Being reluctant to change, the system is attempting to patch itself up to keep everything business as usual. That is why viewed in those terms, every bad political decision actually makes perfect sense. Debt makes sense. Clipping 3 or 4 coloured compliance tags on every power cord in the land makes sense. Giving female lawyers $75K to have a baby makes sense. Every one needs a job to keep the economy ticking and there is nothing productive for them to do. It all makes sense.
The question is, can we transition to a new automated world where money, jobs, middle classes, consumerism and endless growth (the smart kind where things get bigger and smaller at the same time) – all work just like the 19th century.
The economists say yes.
“In all cases, new jobs were created in areas unthought of at the time. The same will happen again. New jobs will come from somewhere, although for some workers whose skills are made obsolete, they will be forced to take on less financially rewarding work.”
I am not so sure.
How do we know that we are not on the brink of paradigm shift? Here are a couple of scenarios.
i-man
Every person is given (by birth right) a 2KW Solar Panel and a humanoid robot “i-man”. i-man has a budget of about 10KWH per day and access to vast “maker recipes” from the web. He can grow veges, make clothes, build a house, cook. Like a personal servant. Could we adapt our economics to fit this?
Armies of Google
Virtual worlds explode and are managed by a few big corporations – google, apple,Microsoft, Amazon. They absorb the middle classes and use them for content creation. In return they feed and cloth them. Governments and financial systems fall to irrelevence as the richness and vast scope of the Virtual Worlds sweep all before them. The real world is just a substrate .. a mere detail where peopel live in an absent minded pastoral idyll. The undeveloped world retreats back to about the 19th century.
These and other scenarios could be 50 years away. Its not crazy to consider them.
Back when I used to have to write papers/exams on the topic of European/western history, the perennial joke was that you could ALWAYS write about “the emerging middle class”, regardless of the era or country, there was always (just about ) an emerging middle class. Either on the ashes of the previous middle class, or the coattails. There is always a middle class. It may not be composed of the same people (or children of the same people) as the last middle class, but there is usually one.
And you tamper with the middle class at your peril, because you get revolution otherwise. Threaten the business tax structures of the 13 colonies in the americas, or the comfort of the merchant class in Stuart britain- quiet, effective revolution.
Even France- for all the bread riots and the sans culottes, whet really did the aristocracy in was the middle classes (esp the upper middle classes) realising that they were being trodden down just as much. Hard to keep the government going when your tax collectors and bureaucrats are on the other side.
The middle class is being killed by cheap easy credit.
Show me a middle class that has not been backed up by or fore fronted by the warrior class in the West?
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfighrt?
I didn’t think of that
It was the returning vets from WWII that insisted on Keynesian economics.
It did shape a marvellous 25 years
We won’t need taxis, drivers, mothers and fathers in the future as well because the kids can take auto driving Google cars to school…
http://www.hngn.com/articles/10915/20130826/google-self-driving-cars-company-plans-develop-automobile-create-taxi.htm
The world will one day be like WALL-E.