Industrial Revolution Comparisons Aren't Comforting

I recently had a two week break between jobs and happened to pick up Picketty's "Capital in the 21st Century".

It's a bit of a slog of a book, partly because of the reiteration of numbers and historical contexts, but I think there's nothing in there that shouldn't be above the capabilities of the hacker news crowd if they have the time/tenacity.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that it's better name would probably be "Capital across 3 centuries with a weird period of two world wars and a depression".

You don't have to agree with the last chapter or two, but it really does provide a great historical introduction and overview and discussion around what's actually happened in economies over the last few hundred years, if not being a bit number/graphy.

Not only will it give you some context for what the industrial revolution and historical economies/societies were like, but you'll also understand why the 20th century was different, rather than typical, and why certain generations have some of the beliefs they do about how tech/capital/economics/society works.

To bring it back into direct relation to the article title: the industrial revolutions weren't exactly the greatest time for the common man, and what we might think of as gains to such was actually the optimism and atypical effects of rebuilding after the period of 1910-1940s...

> an estimated 38 percent of the EU budget will be going to farm subsidies. Farms as a share of total employment are quite small (about 2 percent)

That really is astonishing. However, I suspect the comfort drawn from industrial revolution comparisons is the idea that the automation revolution will be merely as disruptive as the industrial revolution rather than rendering half the population incapable of competing in all likely future versions of the job marketplace.

I remember that about 12 years ago I was reading a lot of articles worry about what would happen to the economy when the Baby Boomers retired and we suddenly had to deal with:

1) The loss of their productive capacity.

2) Their increased needs for medical care.

3) The increased taxes as the Social Security Administration (possibly alongside China) is no longer a net-buyer of US treasury bonds.

Perhaps the two effects will cancel each other out and the Productivity gains will allow for nurses and more informal carers to have lower enough costs of living.

Perhaps automated cars/busses and grocery delivery will allow more elderly people to maintain their independence.

If not and prices of goods rise due to trade barriers, I feel really sorry for the Baby Boomers living on fixed incomes.

He mentioned that wages went down 10%. But is it the whole story ? what about longer hours at terrible factories, child labor, leaving your country home to live in some awfull dense city residence, possible lack of stability due to not owning land, etc ?

Just this morning I was thinking about how automated cars would eventually evolve to automated buses. Then, over time, all public transport becomes automated. We end up being minuscule parts of a large transportation machine, a bit like electrons flowing through the internet...

I can't wait for automation to take away the jobs of people who write "automation will take away our jobs" articles.

We're not far off, right?

http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php

Then again, maybe these are generated articles. Hmmm....