Orders for industrial robots have gone way up because of the labor shortage. Why there should be a labor shortage with all the people who are out of work, I don’t know, but whatever the reason is, manufacturers aren’t waiting for those people to decide they want a job again. They’re buying robots instead, to take the place of the missing workers.
Which made me think of something. As our world population really starts to shrink because of all the people being killed by The Vax, robots are going to be needed more than ever to keep up production in many areas and the more manufacturing and processing become automated, the lower the cost of producing goods will become. It will take some time, but these savings will eventually be reflected in lower prices simply because of competition between makers of similar products.
When this happens, inflation should, maybe, finally taper off to a bare minimum again. Nothing lasts forever and inflation can’t last either because there’s a breaking point where people can no longer make enough to feed themselves and either everyone starts rioting and stealing to survive or governments finally put a stop to the nonsense and level the market.
But the important thing here is, to me, the increased conversion to automation. There’s no reason that factories can’t be completely automated now, with the level of Artificial Intelligence that technology has achieved. Which means that employment may become harder and harder to get as automation expands to cover more areas.
Everything changes, and those who aren’t keeping up with those changes are in for some seriously bad times. Having a robot take your job is just one more possibility, so plan ahead.