People are already taking the expected financial recession pretty badly.
There are literally millions of people in the United States who’ve become
deeply entrenched in a struggle to find or hold a good job, while keeping
expenses covered on the income they do make.
But most people assume they will shielded from the worst of it, that at
some point things will pick up.
Sadly, the forecast is much darker, and the next financial collapse much
deeper than almost anyone has prepared for. The outlook from this global
strategist at the Macquarie Group is beyond doom and gloom – it is a literal
existential crisis.
via the Epoch Times:
Do you feel something is wrong with the United States and the
global economy? Despite a respectable recovery and low unemployment, many
people aren’t happy with their current economic situation or their outlook
for the future. From rising prices for basic necessities or schooling, to
harsh competition and low pay for lower income jobs to negative interest
rates—the poor and the middle class all have their problems to deal with.
Experts in the government or central banks are trying to manage a
suboptimal situation but cannot isolate the problem, let alone offer
solutions. Or maybe they know what’s wrong but don’t want to talk about it
because the truth is too shocking.
Enter Viktor Shvets, the global strategist of the investment bank
Macquarie Group…
“The private sector will never recover, it will never multiply
money again,” he told Epoch Times in an interview. His main
theme is the “declining return on humans,” which means that in
today’s digital world, normal humans don’t grow productivity fast
enough to justify more jobs and higher wages as the machines are taking over.
“There is no productivity on a global basis. Secular
stagnation, technological shifts, monetary policy, all are suppressing
productivity growth rates,” he says. But what about technology making humans
more productive? Shvets says this was true in the first and second
industrial revolution where displaced jobs such as horse-cart drivers
eventually morphed into higher tech and higher productivity ones like the
taxi driver.
However, in this, the third industrial revolution, machines are
not augmenting humans, they are replacing them. The self-driving car
will completely eliminate the driver.
[…]
“We are now on the sharp end of the technology S curve. It started in the
late 1970s, it’s picked up in the last 5-10 years, productivity growth rates
go down not up. It takes time to line up machines, and this time we
are replacing humans altogether,” he said.
We are all familiar with the rise of technology, and the grave threat that
it imposes.
The trade off for convenience and automatic work is the end of the need
for human labor.
It is built in, and the system will need “something” to do with everyone.
Busy work, bureaucrat bees and a widespread service economy will only go so
far. There has to be some value produced, and something that is needed.
Suffice to say, the powers-that-be will not be interested in maintaining a
large population for very long. The world isn’t over-populated in terms of
resources and landmass, but in terms of a viable economy.
This is the end of the line. Terminal.
Did you see it coming? The elites
have known for quite some time:
Proof! They Knew 60 Years
Ago That Human Workers Would Soon Become Obsolete
With The New Technological Revolution
Video by Informed Dissent.
The chart below, produced by the Macquerie Group, identifies several of
the leading jobs that will be completely replaced by robots, AI and/or
computer programs.
But just because you are not a telemarketer, accountant, retail clerk,
truck driver or secretary – and your kids don’t want to go into these
professions – in no way means that you are spared.
(Macquarie Group)
There are an estimated 3.5 million truck drivers operating in the United
States alone, and nearly all of them stand to be replaced by self-driving
vehicles. Where will all these people find work once they receive their pink
slips?
What happens when people get used to order food at restaurants from an
iPad, and like the fact that the computer doesn’t get their order wrong, or
forget to leave off the tomatoes?
There will be incredible pressure from over-qualified college graduates
applying 100-to-1 or even 1000-to-1 for good jobs, or even any job at all.
Government will naturally pick up the tab, providing something considered
a “living wage” to the masses that become unemployed, and must eat, pay rent
and keep the lights on. Poverty will be institutionalized.
But that system can’t hold.
Something has to go, and, sadly, it’s going to be us.
Everyone will be at the bitter bottom, or a token notch above. But, barring
a very magical solution, things will likely be very harsh.
If the opposite occurs, and human government maintains control (through
tight central control and socialist redistribution), or the robots keep us
well cared for, then there is an equally disturbing problem – we’ll become
pets.
People without a purpose.
And having no purpose, no problems is not a good thing. People who feel
like they no longer have a purpose tend to become very depressed, detached
and despondent.
Just take a look at the disastrous results from a lab experiment in the
1970s that simulated a rat “utopia,” where all needs were provided for, food
was abundant and even the housing was nice.
As io9 reported:
In 1972, animal behaviorist John Calhoun built a mouse paradise
with beautiful buildings and limitless food. He introduced eight mice to the
population. Two years later, the mice had created their own apocalypse. Here’s
why.
Universe 25 started out with eight mice, four males and four females. By
day 560, the mouse population reached 2,200, and then steadily declined back
down to unrecoverable extinction. At the peak population, most mice spent
every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered
in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other.
Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to
simply forget about their babies. They’d move half their litter away from
danger and forget the rest. Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while
they were carrying it.
The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called, “the beautiful
ones.” Generally guarded by one male, the females—- and few males — inside
the space didn’t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep.
When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from
violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors,
including having sex or caring for their young.
In 1972, with the baby boomers coming of age in a
ever-more-crowded world and reports of riots in the cities, Universe 25
looked like a Malthusian nightmare. It even acquired its own catchy name,
“The Behavioral Sink.” If starvation didn’t kill everyone, people would
destroy themselves.
Basically, the “elites” of the rat experiment hoarded all the best conditions
for themselves, and forced the masses live among themselves in a state of
violence and decline.
Yet, these “beautiful elites” declined sex and social interaction, instead
isolating themselves and doing nothing but eating and grooming… and literally
became very stupid.
Sounds familiar enough.
Macquerie’s Shvets argues for a pessimistic future:
He thinks the Biblical debt jubilee, where slaves would be freed
and debt would be forgiven every 50 years is a nice idea that would also work
today if it weren’t for entrenched special interests.
“The debt is not spread evenly, we still live in a tribal world, and it’s
easier to start a war than to forgive debt,” Shvets said.
Global central banks with their easy money policies of negative interest
rates and quantitative easing are working against a debt deflation scenario,
with limited success, according to Shvets. “That was the entire idea
of aggressive monetary policies: Stimulate investment and consumption. None
of that works, there is no evidence. It can impact asset prices, but they
don’t flow into the real economy,” he said.
[…]
Eventually, if the private sector doesn’t recover and the state assumes
more power, Shvets thinks countries will move toward fascism and communism
again, just like in the 1920s and 1930s whose economic framework is
comparable to today’s.
And it won’t recover. This is really happening.
Fascism and communism are just terms for the collective – everyone under
one umbrella, managed from above, by the insiders, the elites and the
government officials. Shvets points to Venezuela as the extreme example.
These trends are headed for total disaster, and there is no clear way to
halt or stop it. But somebody had better find a solution – hopefully a good
one – before it is too late.
Seriously, this is too important to miss or ignore. Please share this news
with everyone… even if it will go over as “depressing,” “negative” or
“bleak.”
This just something that everyone deserves to see coming… whatever the
future may actually hold.
Is anyone outside of the prepping and homesteading community even remotely
prepared for this?
Read more:
In the Robotic Near-Future, Most “Will Live Off
Government-Provided Income”
This is a Tipping Point: Robots “Cheaper Than Any Human
Worker” Means the End of Jobs
Hey Boss, The Robots Are Coming For Your Job Too: “Easier to
Automate First”
Billionaire: “We Are Destroying the Middle Class. That’s What
Keeps Me Awake at Night.”
The Age of Machines and Unemployment: “Robots Could Steal 80
Million US Jobs”
