Great article.



I clearly do NOT understand why more people (especially economists) do not feel like us!



In the cartoon world of George Jetson, people only worked 16 hours a week as automation took care of the rest. But, what is not explained, is how everyone managed to live off of 16 hours a week?



This may seem like a silly analogy, but we are in a similar situation. For years I worked in enterprise software, and in every case the "real" ROI that the automation achieved was not the soft benefits, but how many FTE could be eliminated. Entire job descriptions are now being automated out of existence. If 100 software programmers can eliminate 80% of bookkeepers, what shall they do for work?



Economists presume an infinite amount of new jobs to gainfully employ workers. But this assumes an infinite amount of consumption.



This is problematic as there are only so many real needs. Food, shelter, etc. have already been met. We now see a focus by the VC and investment community on such needs as Facebook and iPads which are hardly crucial to consumers.



This is compounded by efficiency gains from automation themselves. While these have driven our GDP and capital markets, for every worker displaced by gains, there must be something new to consume. And if it once took 10 people to build a car for one person to buy, what does it mean when it takes 1 person to make cars for 10 people to buy?



It simply can't go on forever unless there will be an infinite amount of intangible goods and services to consume. But how many massages can one get in between logging onto social networking sites? And who will pay for all of it?



The few areas that show real potential for growth such as health care or environmental efforts receive very little attention from an investment community that wants to make Facebook like gains. It is hard to see how a purely market driven approach to this problem can ever solve the coming structural employment...