Originally posted by BigMackCam With respect, you're not considering the longer term impact.
Yes you are right, we have everything working now because there was works and infrastructure buffered from the past. Yet, bread, salad, cheese, water, electricity are not from one month ago, they are being produced right now, and those require only a minority of the population working. Most people in EU and US now work in offices, doing immaterial things. The material things are mostly done in China, mostly machine produced with only a few staff to monitor machines. For wood works, electronics, and all kind of other products, there is a machine that spit them out every second or minute. I've been in production factories in China, you have hundreds, if not a thousand of machines lined-up in an industrial facility, run by 50 people, the production fire power is nearly unlimited, put into container and shipped to Europe. In Europe we seat in office the whole week behind a computer, what do we produce behind computers?
---------- Post added 24-04-20 at 09:24 ----------
Originally posted by BigMackCam Only 20% of the work-force actually working simply isn't sustainable in the medium to long term.
I believe around 50% would be enough, with no impact on standard of living. You can look at it in a different perspective: since WWII, we've largely developed computers and applied them production automation, productivity increased dramatically, 100% and more. Yet, unemployment hasn't increased to 50%, so how did society benefit from the increased productivity? Well, if you increase productivity and still have the same number of people working the same number of hours per week, it looks like either they are wasting their time or they are doing things to produce things that didn't exist before. The things that didn't exist before are things that we don't need for living, things that we want but we don't need..
---------- Post added 24-04-20 at 09:26 ----------
Originally posted by biz-engineer The things that didn't exist before are things that we don't need for living, things that we want but we don't need..
Do I need a new camera? No. Do I want one? My level of desire will depends how much promise of good things will come with the new model that I don't need