[AnthonyMouse]

> For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon.

It wasn't so much the jobs that shifted there as the customers, and the reason for that is that Amazon had better prices. Then people complained about the jobs they did offer because they're mechanistic and exhausting, so they automate them and then people complain about that. But that too should result in lower prices -- Amazon's retail operation doesn't make any money, it's all going to competition with Walmart, who is doing the same things to lower costs.

But lowering prices creates jobs. People pay less for a dress or a phone case and then spend the money on something else. New jobs are created doing the something else.

Where this becomes a problem is for the things where the prices don't come down, like real estate. You have extra money and now you want to buy a house, but zoning laws inhibit new housing from being built, so instead if people have any money the monthly payment you need goes up or the landlord increases your rent. Or you have to buy something from some monopolist who can raise prices to eat your disposable income. Then the money goes into some corporate holding company that just keeps growing their hoard and never spends it on products and services.

The problem isn't robots, it's certificate of need laws and high tuition.

[easyThrowaway]

> But lowering prices creates jobs. People pay less for a dress or a phone case and then spend the money on something else. New jobs are created doing the something else.

Isn't this the principle supposedly behind trickle down economics just by another name?

[AnthonyMouse]

There are a lot of economic theories that are correct under a particular set of constraints and completely invalid under a different set of constraints.

So for example, if you lower property taxes, theory says that rents should go down. At the existing rents it's now more profitable to own property because the ownership costs have gone down, so more buildings will be constructed as people take advantage of the opportunity, until the increase in supply brings rents down to account for the reduction in operating costs. This theory is invalid if you prohibit new construction because then supply can't increase so rents never go down and the existing landlords just pocket the money.

The problem isn't that theory doesn't work, it's that you have to satisfy its constraints. You have to get rid of monopolies and artificial scarcity or they capture the gains that were supposed to go to ordinary people.

[alvah]

I wish I could upvote this comment more than once.

[wordpad25]

I gotcha!