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In recent decades productivity improvements made possible by personal computers and productivity software have eliminated millions of clerical, lower and middle management in each and every field. Computers and computerized robots now do much of the assembly and painting of automobiles and other complex products. These “jobs” weren’t “outsourced” or “offshored”. They are just GONE, forever, like manual looms and buggy whips.

Computers don’t join unions, get work breaks, overtime, vacations, sick leave, family leave, or pensions. From now on, every time the “minimum wage” or “health benefits” increase in cost to employers, the rate of work place automation will accelerate as automation becomes more and more cost effective. America (and the world) will need fewer and fewer “productive people” to keep our society running.

The problem is that computers and robots do not purchase goods and services. So the challenge will be to figure out to build and sustain a “consumer marketplace” in an essentially automated society. This nation and the world is going to have to figure out how to improve living standards with rapidly decreasing birth rates and NEGATIVE economic “growth”.

Can that be done? It HAS to be done, or our “big blue marble” will rapidly become a “big brown marble”.