Economic policies must be changed
Madam Editor; A lot of people apparently believe we have weathered the economic storm of 2008 and that we are now well on the way back to prosperity for all and pay increases across the board. How misguided those people are; not alone have we not weathered the storm, we have never understood what really happened nor taken any action to cope with and adapt to the entirely new economic situation which first showed itself in the early 21st century. 2008 was no recession; it was a manifestation of unprecedented overproduction couple with serious reduction of dependence on human labour. The effects ( stagnation of growth, increasing business failure and rising unemployment) seemed like recession so we treated them as such pumping vast amounts of makie- up money into economies in hope of everything returning to normality as we knew it. But they did not return and never will.
Modern technology has made economic growth unnecessary and impossible. The world can and is producing more than it needs or can consume so the last thing it needs is to increase production further. Production increase is made possible by automation and robotics which vigorously eliminate dependence on human labour. These two steadfast pillars of historic economic dogma are in inevitable decline and the implications are horrendous. Failure to revise these two great cornerstones of present economic will lead to enormous economic failure. Collapse of the present situation is only held at bay by generating enormous zero interest debt through Quantitative Easing and Bond- Markets in an effort to stimulate saturated consumption in grossly over supplied markets.
If we are to survive technological economics there must be realization that instead of growth the World needs to formulate planed agreed restraint of our unprecedented ability to produce coupled with global movement towards generation of more jobs from less work. Otherwise as wealth concentrates further and whole sections of population excluded from economic activity, aggressive trade barriers will emerge posing enormous problems to global harmony and peace. Brexit and extreme/ confused politics are the first signs of growing dissatisfaction with economics and politics.
Ideas such as these are absolutely con- trary to present official economic thinking but offer possibly the only solution to the transformation technology has wrought on the economic situation. The world faces a future of increasing abundance and less labour and needs new and entirely changed economic ideology of restrained production and increasing employment from less work. Otherwise those who think payback time has arrived in terms of remuneration and conditions will find the collapse of 2008 was like misplacement of loose change compared to the disaster ahead if we persist with current economic policies. Padraic Neary, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo.