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by harryh 3560 days ago
Companies will want to automate because if they don't they will go out of business because their competitors will.
2 comments

For the prime example of this - look at the global shipping market right now. It's going at a loss right now due to the largest shippers building massive ships to bring down the cost/kg/km down bringing overcapacity to an unsustainable level.
Regardless, that's not going to help an economy whose primary problem is a consumer base who can no longer afford to purchase goods in sufficient numbers.
I'm skeptical that you've identified the primary problem in the US economy. I would definitely rank two things higher:

1) Challenges that come about due to an aging population

2) An overall slow down in innovation (Cowen's "Great Stagnation" hypothesis)

An unbalanced young-old demographic ratio is indicative of worsening economic conditions for average people. Looking at Japan, they have a population crisis because there's no time to start a family when you have lots of mandatory unpaid overtime. Thankfully we're not quite that far gone yet, but we're headed in that direction and are starting to face similar demographic problems.

Innovation is slowing down because companies are preoccupied with irrationally slashing labor expenses, and R&D tends to be quite expensive so it gets cut significantly. The result is less income for consumers, who in turn buy fewer goods, which ultimately leads to even more cuts for labor.