When does the next QE start?

[M.W.]

You make up shit as you walk along. Nobody said that we need to go back to the 1950s. Stick to the point made in an exchange or I can choose to ignore your comments going forward. What you are doing is choosing a dumb argument that nobody brought forth and then critique it.

Money supply needs to drop, it is at insane levels even if the US population was twice or three times as large.

Watch what you are saying. You are the one that needs to borrow brain power as clearly you don’t seem to have enough.
We simply cannot reduce the money supply to 1950s levels when the population is not at 1950s level. What would you suggest next? Reduce the population?

 

[M.W.]

Dream on, are you remotely suggesting the average Joe to pick up coding? Seriously? Most can't even hold their life together without alcohol and other drugs, let alone hold a steady job that requires more than an IQ of 100.

Just like when excavators were invented, instead of using shovels, people had to work less.
Or when email was invented, paper use declined to zero levels
Ai will probably only make people more productive. Society can’t handle people working less and less hours

 

[M.W.]

more workers per se does not solve the problem. They have to be of higher productivity. Illegals flowing into the country clean up shit and pick berries, not much beyond. Other economies are much more efficient at increasing the productivity of its workforce.

How about a small country, 1/4 the size of the US that just pumped out the world's first Level 3 EV, you heard right, not Tesla. A system where every elementary school kid learns programming languages, free and mandatory education to 10th grade, free post secondary education, a top notch health care system, top notch infrastructure. All the while the US is debating sex changes, illegal immigrants, all sorts of natural disasters, and how to fight the next fight against the rising dragon in the East.

With robots and full-scale automation knocking on our doors the US is completely unprepared for this new age. This will result in large scale unemployment and you can't upgrade skills on such massive level in a single generation. Of course one can choose to become an agrarian country and specialize in hand picking fruits. I doubt that will be in demand enough to feed a nation of 330 million.

Labor markets, at least in the US, are still the tightest in half a century, and that's with millions of illegal migrants pouring across the southern border. And it's jobs at the low end (construction workers, baristas) which seem to be mostly going unfilled.

If there's a future of disappearing jobs and mass unemployment, it sure isn't visible from here. Seems more likely that rapidly aging populations in many countries will lead to a near-permanent shortage of labor, not a glut.

 

[Windlesham1]

Hopefully we get weened off that teet. It served its purpose after the GFC when Bernanke and Obama,or whoever dreamed it up but in the long run I think we can live without it.

Dubya and Helicopter Ben. Smoke and mirrors as the US invaded Iraq.

 

[Specterx]

With robots and full-scale automation knocking on our doors the US is completely unprepared for this new age. This will result in large scale unemployment and you can't upgrade skills on such massive level in a single generation. Of course one can choose to become an agrarian country and specialize in hand picking fruits. I doubt that will be in demand enough to feed a nation of 330 million.

Suffice it to say that productivity leaps and automation have been happening regularly since 1750, and mass unemployment has never been the result. Nor will it be this time around.

 

[ElCubano]

Suffice it to say that productivity leaps and automation have been happening regularly since 1750, and mass unemployment has never been the result. Nor will it be this time around.

I think there is a difference between automation requiring humans to make it work than AI which will work without human supervision. But you both make valid points.

 

[M.W.]

Because in the past we worked without automation, the horse carriage serviceman now works as car mechanic, the mail man on the horse now drives a truck. This time around it's not the tools we used for work being upgraded but ourselves are being made obsolete because only very few will be capable to acquire the skills and apply the necessary intellectual skills to perform the few tasks leftover when ai has taken over.

This is such serious challenge to our very existence that the world's most renouned computer scientists and philosophers are sitting together pondering over possible solutions...

The real scary part is that in the future talents and skills will have little to no value unless machines can't perform such skilled tasks themselves. This leaves only power allocated to those who own the machines that work for them. It's a world where the only currency is capital. Much more so than today.

Suffice it to say that productivity leaps and automation have been happening regularly since 1750, and mass unemployment has never been the result. Nor will it be this time around.

 

[Arnie]

Inflation is already coming down rapidly a good chunk of it was transitory. Even some of the most bearish of analysts are hedging their opinions these days because things aren't unfolding nearly as negative as they expected.

Tell me how you go from 7-8% inflation to under 3-4%, forget 2%, in 12-18 months with 4m excess job openings without a recession?
Powell has been clear that they are willing to accept a recession to get inflation under control and they will HAVE to kill the job market to do that.

 

[Specterx]

Because in the past we worked without automation, the horse carriage serviceman now works as car mechanic, the mail man on the horse now drives a truck. This time around it's not the tools we used for work being upgraded but ourselves are being made obsolete because only very few will be capable to acquire the skills and apply the necessary intellectual skills to perform the few tasks leftover when ai has taken over.

This is such serious challenge to our very existence that the world's most renouned computer scientists and philosophers are sitting together pondering over possible solutions...

The real scary part is that in the future talents and skills will have little to no value unless machines can't perform such skilled tasks themselves. This leaves only power allocated to those who own the machines that work for them. It's a world where the only currency is capital. Much more so than today.

This is nonsense. Really. Automation during the 20th century eliminated entire huge job categories and descriptions. Telephone operators, mechanical draftsmen, miners, assembly-line workers and shipbuilders have all been replaced by machines or software. Not to mention farming, where one guy today does the work of hundreds from a century ago. And this all happened during a time when women were entering formal work, boosting the labor participation rate (and thus labor supply) by 50% or more. Yet unemployment today is at historic lows.

The market is more adaptable than you think, the universe of human consumer demand is broader than you think, and 'jobs' are much more social and political constructions than you think. 150 years ago a 'job' was 80 hours per week on the factory floor, now it's down to 40 in your pajamas with Netflix on in the background. 9-to-5 can become 9-to-noon, or Monday-Friday can become Monday-Wednesday. The government can require that companies hire 20% of the population as diversity consultants or whatever. And then, given aging demographics in rich countries, there will definitely be huge numbers of jobs created in the coming decades to care for old and sick people.

 

[emulimu]

When someone like MW says “this time it’s different”, I know that trend is about to end.