You can read more in this report from Axios here.
Is this any surprise? You give limited opportunities to certain classes and then automate them out of a job. Wealth is not being built by adding value, or innovating, but by removing labor and cheapening the product that we get.
Let’s talk examples. If you watched Last Week Tonight about Railroads you will have learned that instead of having two employees running a railroad engine/train they want to cut back to one person. This is just crazy for all kinds of reasons. You can’t remove labor like this and expect things to stay the same. A second person adds far more than just doing their job. They also add the redundancy of if the first person has a heart attack or dies. This is the reason there are two pilots. Not because the second pilot is always needed, but because if there is an emergency that is much cheaper than the alternative.
In the pursuit of profit, we have completely disregarded the fundamental responsibility to our fellow beings. Even the railroad guy said he had blood on his hands for the decisions that he made that led to loss of life and suffering. We can not automate our way into not being responsible for society. Sure have AI but also have retraining programs for peoples whose job is being replaced. What is more expensive? Training and upgrading someone’s skills, or someone not being able to contribute and needing public assistance? It is such a short-sighted view of business.
We like to call things toxic in our society. We have toxic capitalism. When capitalism destroys the ability of the workforce to work, that is toxic. Labor can not always afford to educate themselves. Not everyone can quickly learn information on their own. We created the GI Bill for soldiers to get an education and look at what happened. We had record-setting gains from that. Why can’t we invest now in public education and prepare people for the future rather than leaving them behind? Why is the short-term the only way that people can think?
It’s sick. Short-term thinking leads to all of our problems. We have to address the root causes of problems, or our society is over. We punt problems like they don’t matter, but they do. They directly lead to suffering, loss of life, and destruction of the planet. Are we too stupid to see that we are destroying ourselves?