| > Lower wages doesn't necessarily mean cheaper products, especially once you take inflation into account. Wages have not been increasing to keep up with the pace. The wages are lower even adjusted even with inflation. > The cost of living has been increasing drastically, despite any efficiency gains. No, it has not. See https://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1611.pdf (PDF Page 70, Table 24). It's increased about 20% in the past 10 years. In the same period GNI per capita (i.e. average income) has increased about 20%. (See http://data.worldbank.org/country/united-states) > Seniors who are now retired are now effectively effed and are forced to go back to work to make ends meet. But, why do you think this is due to capitalism? > Companies are more willing to hire outside labor -- effectively slave labor, because they are able to pay foreign workers much less than domestic citizens. How is it "slave labor"? Slavery is forced work. That's different from low wages, which are precisely why it's so wonderful. The poorest people of the world are getting jobs. It's bad but without a job they'll be in an even worse situation. > Companies are also more willing to replace human employees with robots, because it's cheaper than paying a human to do the same job. [...] Walmart is replacing it's stockers and cashiers with robots. Pizza shops are even going for full autonomy with self-driving pizza trucks that automatically make pizza while delivering it. That's great; we're moving one step towards robot utopia. > Companies will not help employees transition into new job positions. That's not in their contract so it's not their responsibility. Shareholders (most of us indirectly hold stock) want more money just like all of us. > How then, will the young get their foot in the door and become independent when they have no jobs? They will do other jobs that aren't replaced by robots. Those jobs' real wages will increase due to robots increasing purchasing power. Also, see lump of labor fallacy. In fact, although this is probably due to the recovery from the 2008 recession, unemployment rate has been decreasing since the sudden increase in 2008. (https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000) New technologies replacing jobs is hardly a new phenomenon. Robots aren't new either; they've been used for decades. > The truck driving industry is about to replace all of it's drivers with robots. Cheaper truck transport is great. > That race to the bottom has merely displaced millions upon millions of people and abolished the middle class, in addition to destabilizing the world economy. Capitalism is entirely incapable of keeping up with the modern world. The only way forward is a basic income. Who has been displaced? How has the middle-class been abolished? Globally, the middle-class is growing (7% -> 13 %) (http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/08/a-global-middle-class-is...) and inequality slightly decreased from 1981 to 2005 (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/ak968e/ak968e00.pdf, PDF page 2, Table 1). > in addition to destabilizing the world economy. What destabilization? If you mean recessions, socialist countries have had recessions too. And how are recessions due to capitalism? EDIT: made corrections to part about global inequality |