Why is the cost of living going up when technology should allow humans to increase productivity while decreasing human workload?
In: Economics
Technology HAS caused giant gains in productivity. With fewer resources, energy, and hours of labor, we produce more food, commodities, and goods than at any point in history. Computers are cheaper. Education is cheaper. Healthcare is improving at lower cost around the world – cheaper diagnostic tests, cheap water filtration, vaccinations that costs pennies.
Here’s the flipside of all those improvements. In 1990 the global percentage of people living at or near extreme poverty was 38%. Now it’s down to 10%. A billion people joined the global middle class. Now they all own cell phones, dine out for leisure, buy clothes, have discretionary income, etc.
We may be producing things in abundance, but demand has never been higher.
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