America Has Hit "Peak Jobs" - A World Where the Working Class Is On a Permanent Global Decline

Is technology destroying jobs faster than it creates? It is quite likely, to say the least. The World Bank says that there are 200 million people who are unemployed worldwide, more than in 2008 - and there are already, right now, an additional 621 million people who have given up looking for work. And these numbers are growing. And in 10 years the world will need another 600 million jobs just to keep up with the growth of the working class population. No entity in the world is saying that there is any solution coming for this.

This Tech Crunch article by Jon Evans explains what this is leading to: a disastrous point in our economic evolution that he has coined Peak Jobs: a point where the working class begins a slow and inexorable decline to irrelevance.

Since I can't quote an entire article, I'll refer to the most salient points that he made:

But it won’t be 19th century capitalism redux, there’ll be no place for neo-Marxism. That underclass won’t control the means of production. They’ll simply be irrelevant.

The reason why? Technology is destroying more jobs than it creates. If it isn't a clear and obvious contributor to global unemployment then it is most certainly a prime suspect.

That’s true, and the usual retort to this kind of Luddism. But what if, as I’ve been saying for more than a year, technology is now destroying jobs faster than it’s creating them? What if America has hit peak jobs?

And in fact, it has. And the consequences are going to be much like I've been saying for a long time... a world without jobs is a world with mass starvation or revolution, not post-scarcity for the masses.

If it’s not solved, then in the coming decades you can expect a self-perpetuating privileged elite to accrue more and more of the wealth generated by software and robots, telling themselves that they’re carrying the entire world on their backs, Ayn Rand heroes come to life, while all the lazy jobless “takers” live off the fruits of their labor. Meanwhile, as the unemployed masses grow ever more frustrated and resentful, the Occupy protests will be a mere candle flame next to the conflagrations to come. It’s hard to see how that turns into a post-scarcity society. Something big will need to change.

The "privileged elite" telling themselves that they’re carrying the entire world on their backs... sound familiar? That's happening right now.