[unclebucknasty]

Good points. Of course, I'm going to quibble a little, else I wouldn't be replying!

>...our economy is so screwed up right now is because employees are getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie, not because technology is displacing jobs"

But, the two are related right? When tech displaces jobs, which it of course has, then there is lower demand for labor and the price of labor (wages) goes down. There are other forces as well, but all primarily stem from a drive to keep costs (and hence prices) down, while keeping profits up.

>If more people are out of work because of technology, great! That means we have more people who can go work on things like curing cancer and colonizing space :-)*

I know that was half tongue-in-cheek, but would that it worked that way! Alas, what we value economically versus what would benefit us as humans are too infrequently aligned. There will come a day though, when only a tiny fraction of the population will be "neccessary" to create what the world produces. It will be interesting to see how society realigns itself and evolves when so few people need to do traditional (economic) work.

[kamaal]

>>There will come a day though, when only a tiny fraction of the population will be "neccessary" to create what the world produces. It will be interesting to see how society realigns itself and evolves when so few people need to do traditional (economic) work.

We are already there, and we seem to be doing just fine. I guess only ~3% of US population today works in farms compared to >70% a century back. The only thing is work keeps changing. People have better things to work on. That has always been the trend since mankind even existed.

If the effort required to produce something goes down, prices too go down significantly.

[unclebucknasty]

>We are already there, and we seem to be doing just fine

We're not there yet.

>The only thing is work keeps changing. People have better things to work on.

By definition, as long as we have better things to work on (which are valued by our economy), then we haven't arrived at the point about which I'm speaking.

Technology is moving at an accelerated pace. What automation and tech can do is moving up the skill ladder and replacing more jobs than before. In addition, a globalized workforce/economy means we are reaching a scale that is giving us ever-increasing efficiency and per-worker productivity. This is why we are seeing the beginnings of a very stubborn structural unemployment and stagnant wages over the last couple of decades.

But, we are just starting. And at some point, a much smaller percentage of what we produce will require humans. When that happens, the "better things to work on" won't fit the current economy's definition of value that is worthy of compensation. That is, it won't go to the production of goods or services for which people are willing to pay.