
Population Frustration
Demographics: They matter.
For all kinds of reasons, not least of which is that if your entitlement scheme entails taxing the working-age population to fund a "dignified" sunset for seniors, you need to sustain birthrates such that there's enough money coming in to keep the whole thing solvent otherwise... well, otherwise you have to engineer higher rates of return on invested contributions, print money, borrow it or, as a last resort, cut benefits for already-crotchety retirees.
That's one re
The same demographic arguments have been relentlessly made about Japan starting 40 years ago. As were less dire predictions about the USA. Less dire because we smughly pointed out that we welcomed immigration to top up our workforce whereas Japan has been very reluctant to do so. “How stupid are they!!!” Uh …
“So, by 2050 will robots be our savior?” Perhaps for the production of goods and the delivery of some services here in the USA. But just as AI is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary development, robotics & automation have already been upending the post-war path from agraian to industrial/urbanbized economies which lifted Japan, South Korea and China. Using abundant cheap labor to produce goods at low cost as the first step up the economic ladder. HK also climbed that ladder, starting from sweat shop textile manufacturing to becoming a vibrant financial hub. You rarely see a “made in HK” label, except, perhaps, on some items that our Dear Leader favors.
I’ve long mused that robotics and automation is going to pull that ladder away. Bangladesh, Maruitius and some Central American nations have stepped in the replace higher cost Chinese production of goods where only cheap labor and low levels of technology are required. But what is their next rung up on the ladder now? Thanks to robotics, even US specialty textile producers have been becoming cost competitive.
In services, AI will hasten the exodus of call center work from India and the Philippines back to the US. And coding work oursourced to Bangalore. (I find it baffling that the legion of bulls on India are overlooking the obvious threat AI poses to their only top tier economic sectors. What other industries will provide decent jobs and careers to their burgeoning population?).
So robots may “save” us here in the US, but will increasingly slam the door to upward development in the rest of the world. That should help keep global political stability in check, right?
Yes, the manufacturing export-led economic Yellow Brick Road followed by Japan, China, Taiwan, etc is probably being closed off to the next cohort of developing nations, by automation and by China still sitting on and thoroughly blocking that road.
A few countries lucky enough to be right next to US and EU can still make some headway (Mexico, eastern Europe).
Maybe when/if China’s population ages out of production and into consumption, the road might get unblocked, but that’s a generation away.
LatAm will remain a resource export economy, it is increasingly trying to protect domestic mfg from China but that is not the same as building a mfg export economy.
I guess the idea with India is if China gets shoved off the road by Western trade barriers, India can get into the road. It needs better (literal) roads and everything else, but when the base is so low, presumably there’s lots of low-hanging fruit.
No idea how countries like Bangladesh, etc are supposed to develop. Perhaps they never will.
H-Man, robots may not be a savior but definitely in the high priest/shaman category
You mean a savior to the world’s richest individuals? Globalization is dead. I predicted this 20 years ago when asked to launch a marketing strategy to highlight the advantages of investing overseas. We know how that has played out so far…