Last week Paul Krugman acknowledged the existence of a global marketplace for work (in which not only employees in different countries compete for wages, but also robots are now increasingly displacing workers).
Over the weekend, he posted this:
the Fed’s duty is to try to correct the distortions this situation creates, above all the distortion of mass unemployment.
As I have argued for several years now (pretty much since the beginning of whatever “crisis” we seem to be in now): Mass unemployment is a feature, not a bug. In other words, we no longer need to employ slaves paid hourly rates, because the hourly rate of a robot is nil. Investment no longer creates jobs — and jobs are also no longer a meaningful metric for how well an economy is doing.
Let me offer some alternative — and better / more meaningful — metrics:
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[reduction in] Global Warming
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[reduction in] Crime (especially violent crime)
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[reduction in] Extinction of species
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[increase in] Literacy
