On 9/16/2013 6:39 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus8750 wrote:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view...mputerization/

Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to
Computerization

The thing that is missed in many of those articles is that many of the
automatable jobs cease to exist when the jobs are not available to human
workers who can then earn an income and be consumers for the products of
the jobs. It doesn't matter how many widgets your automated factory can
produce when there are no buyers for them.

That's the Lump of Labor fallacy again. Labor displaced from one use,
due to automation, finds some other use. It might take some time, but
it happens.

The Lump of Labor fallacy is that there is only so much work or labor -
a defined "lump" of it - to be done, and that if labor is displaced from
one use, it finds no other use. That's false. That's why it's a fallacy.

Automation makes everything cheaper. It's why even very poor people
have automobiles and big-screen TVs. Don't give us that **** about "no
buyers" for the stuff. There will always be buyers.

Poor people in the US today live many *many* times better than did the
rich of a century ago. That's why all this bull**** about income
inequality goes nowhere. In absolute terms, people even in the bottom
10% are better off than the 1% were a century ago.