General Consultant Discussion

I was watching a crew rollout a new sign on a billboard today thinking in a few years they will all be unemployed with these new digital billboards Mark my words, someday we will look back and realize that we hit a tipping point, probably around 2000, where technology is actually killing our economy. Think about it: Offshoring knowledge workers, ATM's, EZPass, Airport Ticketing employees, many brick and morter stores, most forms of print publishing, POTS telephone industry, and unfortunately, ERP software, are all going to fade away to a model that needs less people. There won't be enough jobs in new areas to offset this, or those jobs will move to low wage countries and not do us or our children much good. I thought the last bastion of 'sure thing' money was lawyers, but look at this article in the WSJ today: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577402140768087330.html?mod=Androidphone

Thinking of some more, The Post Office, the part of Fedex that used to deliver overnight envelopes Check and forms printing companies Store checkout clerks (especially when RFID is figured out) Yellow Pages Physical media companies that duplicate or retail music, video games, etc. I bet the next gen Xbox or PS3 doesn't even have a DVD/blu-ray drive in it. Origin Online is EA software's way of selling video games directly without middlement Tax preparers for all but the most complex returns Traditional Stock Brokers GPS and traditional digital camera manufacturers (Sony is up Blackberry creak if you ask me) Next up-getting more pragmatic: Cable & Satellite providers Airlines thanks to gotomeeting & the like

I was just having a discussion with my husband yesterday about what will happen to all the empty big box retailer buildings

Maybe this is more like ""the end of the brain dead job that any moron could do"" ?

Maybe the end of the brain dead job that any moron could do means that we will all be supporting them!!

I had this very discussion with Ed Kless over dinner a year or two ago. My premise was that the ratio of workers needed to take care of the population is shrinking at an alarming pace and that we have crossed the demarcation line. Long ago, each person spent their entire waking life feeding and caring for themselvels, think of it as a 1-1 ratio, 1 person needed to keep 1 person alive. But with specialization in skills and and general advancements in all areas of life, the 1-1 ration starting changing so that 1 person could take care of more than themselves. My question to Ed was that with the advent of advanced technology and globablization, has the ratio increased so dramatically, do we have to accept that a large portion of people do not need to work and just need to be taken care of? I suggested that the growing government (federal, state and local) was simply a byproduct of this problem and that it was actually masking the severity of the issue and that if the tea party and others were successful in decreasing the size of government, we might simply be faced with massive unemployment (we just don't need these people to work?). His response was that I was totally off base, that this doomsday scenario was suggested back at the time of the industrial revolution, but that new ideas and new wants and desires created new demand and all was good. Not sure he convinced me, but Ed is passionate so I let the subject drop. Plus the bottle of wine was starting to cloud my judgement a bit.

hehe. The problem with the government philosophy is that only works if there is enough revenue from the few 'haves' to feed the 'have nots'. History shows us (The Roman Empire), that you eventually tip so far that the nation falls in under itself. Greece is just about there, and within 10-20 years, so will we because no politician will ever have the courage to make that brutally politically and true decisions of killing the vast majority of entitlements. Taxes can only solve about 20% of our problem if we ratchet up rates to those levels that will eventually drive many out of the country leaving even fewer horses to pull the cart. To add insult to injury, thanks to the miracle of science, people are living longer causing the population to swell, unfortunately to older people who are less productive and who cost tons in healthcare. Nobody wants to die younger, but living longer is having a societal impact that is staggering. The only way out is to allow the USA to collapse, deal with a bloody civil war, all currency and debt is wiped out, and start over again. Not a pretty future at all. Might be good again in about 50 to 75 years, but between 2025 and 2075, not a pretty sight if you ask me.

Not sure I am as pessimistic as Mark (and definitely a bit more towards the center), but if you haven't read 2030 - The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks, you might enjoy it, though it is a little scary.

Damn Mark. On that note, I'm having a liquor drink!

As the ""friction"" gets driven out of the economy, value can be generated faster and for less cost. Despite the economic roller coaster of the past decade, GDP/capita continues to rise. So, the wealth is there, in our USA ""bucket"" to support each person. The real challenge, as Mark and others point out, is deciding how to allocate that wealth. Right now, wealth is primarily allocated through salaries (essentially hour-based comp). There some, and an increasing %, that get paid through some sort of ""value based"" transfer, whether sales commission, job-delivery, or stock transaction. I suspect that we will have to rethink how we do this and still keep a stable society in the face of the implicit rejiggering of the ""value' of the work people are now capable of doing. More wailing and gnashing of teeth ...

I think the works you are looking for are redistribution and socialism no matter how you try to candy coat it!

I wanted to avoid triggering a political ideology on this as people will get defensive. I just see this ad a societal problem that I don't yet forsee how it gets fixed without radical change

Amen, enough said.

I'm with Mark. I wasn't trying to say anything political. The point is that the wealth is there. What we do with it will probably change. I don't know how, but it will be a Big Deal unfolding over a couple decades at least.

BTW, ""socialism"" refers to the government actually owning firms. ""Redistribution"" is a completely separate deal. There have been some corrupt governments that ran an essentially socialist economy, and yet only the cronies at the top got any $$. So, ""redistribution,"" maybe. Socialism, probably not.