PR for People Monthly June 2017 | Page 7

If Paul Revere were riding now with the purpose of warning America against a clear and present danger, he might well proclaim, “The robots are coming!” For indeed they are, and quickly. Until now, though technology has reduced jobs at an ever-increasing rate, we’ve been able to create new ones just as fast, though many of these have been low-wage service positions and others, low-security “gig economy” activity.

But the era of easy replacement and five percent unemployment may be quickly coming to an end. Automated check-outs reduce the need for clerks and tellers and new software may even soon eliminate such skilled positions as legal assistants and nurses. Driving, currently among the best options for working-class males, is not long for the market, with self-steering cars and trucks already logging millions of miles. The list of threatened jobs is long and growing longer.

Even as normally optimistic an economist as Larry Summers worries that there won’t be enough employment in the future, while others in his profession predict that as many as 40 percent of U.S. jobs will be history by 2030. So what can we do?

Most economists still seek the answer in economic growth, either through “supply-side” or “demand-driven” policies. On the Right, the supply-siders want to cut taxes to encourage investment and employment, but as wealth

is funneled to the top, where will we find the consumer power that can purchase the new output? On the Left, proponents of demand advocate greater equality and Keynesian stimulus, a solution fairer and probably more efficacious than “trickle-down.” Yet, is such growth even possible or desirable on a finite planet?

OVERSHOOT

Since World War II, a mere 1/100th of a second if we reduce Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history to a single week, we’ve managed to use more resources than did all previous human beings combined. We’ve reduced our fossil fuels, fisheries, forests and soil by half, driven countless species to extinction and dramatically altered

The

Robots

Are

Coming…

the robots are coming!

by John de Graaf