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Keynes was wrong. Gen Z will have it worse (technologyreview.com)
24 points by unbroken on Dec 19, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments


The headline doesn't match the article.

The article ends with "And so economists dusted off Keynes. Countries that enthusiastically followed his advice and used public funds to stimulate demand came out of the recession much better off than those that hesitated. China’s decision in 2008 to inject stimulus spending worth more than 12% of GDP looks smart in retrospect."

The title should really say -- "Keynes was right. Gen Z is screwed because we didn't follow his advice".

But the poor fortunes of Gen Z (in the US) are mostly due to a shift in power to big corporations caused by a systematic dismantling of labor unions and the outsourcing of manufacturing to China. Technology is an enabler but not the central culprit.


Maybe the title should have been "Marx was right". The article mentions this theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immiseration_thesis

This sounds very familiar: "Marx argued that, in accordance with the labour theory of value, capitalist competition would necessitate the gradual replacement of workers with machines, allowing an increase in productivity, but with less overall value for each product produced, as more products can be made in a given amount of time, meaning that economic output would increase, but real wages would stay stable, because the input of human labour stays the same".


Only tangentially related to the article but this made me laugh:

> Harvard Business School professor John Deighton, when asked about the future of the industry in 2001, said, “Home-delivered groceries? Never.”

I wonder what the equivalent will be in another ~20 years.


“Home-delivered groceries? Well, they were a great idea back when everyone had money.”


on the other hand, the big cost factor that would restrict home delivery to people who have money is… human labor costs. Once robot-based delivery is the standard, home delivery may be quite affordable. Maybe even less costly on the whole than operating supermarkets.




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