Remember the days Greenspan would trumpet productivity improvements brought on by the internet as a key factor in maintaining benign inflation during economic expansion?
It was a great time.
But these days, productivity gains brought on by the net as well as other technological advances only serve to exacerbate our nation’s inability to improve employment.
It turns out that accelerating productivity has a downside that has served as a headwind to one of the primary objectives of quantitative easing.
I spent the weekend rereading Player Piano. This was Vonnegut’s first novel published 60 years ago and its prophetic. The story is set in a future US in which many jobs have been lost to automation (hence the player piano as the primary metaphor).
Vonnegut depicts the ‘reeks and wrecks’ as a mass of the formerly employed who have lost self respect.
It attacks the complexity of a dilemma we are only beginning to recognize we are in but will only grow worse fast unless the economy improves considerably.
It is as important a read as you will find to try to make sense of what is happening right now socioeconomically.
Here’s an online copy to check out.