"The wealth generated by this astounding leap of productivity went entirely to the shareholders of the John Deere corporation."
No, it did not.
Mechanization makes food much cheaper, which benefits everybody.
No, it did not.
Mechanization makes food much cheaper, which benefits everybody.
Yet US agriculture is more mechanized and agro-business more consolidated and the country significantly more efficient. So empirically the most significant factor is now something else.
That "something else" would be the 40%(!) of the EU budget that is spent on agricultural subsidies.
That is not actually the case.
And there is plenty of "food accessible to the people". Too much of it is far more common than too little nowadays.
Your choice of words however would mislead people into believing that 40% of European national budgets are devoted to farm subsidies and that EU subsidies exceed US subsidies by a similar proportion. This is grossly untrue.
The difference is the US consumer realizes far less benefit. e.g. corn receives far more subsidies in the US than in the EU yet somehow is still more expensive to the US consumer.
What the US does have is an aversion to enforcing anti trust laws, tariffs designed to disadvantage consumers (eg on rice), a taboo on regulations and effectively no consumer advocates in government.
No, it does not.
Before automated agriculture something like 90% of the population was directly engaged in agricultural labor.
We don't have 90% unemployment or anything like it, and we also have social supports for those who are unemployed (also largely nonexistent in those days).
" And incomes have dropped more than inflation in most cases for the poor which means it is not cheaper for those less able to afford it."
This is pure nonsense. Sorry, it just is.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-amer...
In 1900, 43% of income was spent on food.
In 2003, only 13% of income was spent on food.
Something that the very wealthy are trying to roll back.
I think the premise that automation will just shift work to other industries will be severely tested in the age of the self driving car and other forms of advanced automation.
Look: we've gone from 90% agricultural workers to about 1% agricultural workers. Hand-weavers and spinners: gone (other than specialized or artsy-craftsy stuff). Neighborhood bakeries: gone (likewise). The list could go on forever.
People have been predicting massive unemployment since the days of the Luddites. It's never happened. What's special about driving that makes it an exception to the historical trend?
Perhaps we can all become artists - but then again, machines will be able to compose songs, write stories and create abstract art.
This is going to be very different than previous waves of automation that largely augmented human muscle.
Bringing it back to the original thread, I think the concern is that rising income inequality will accelerate as the wealthy will increasingly own the means of automation.
Some mechanism for wealth redistribution will be needed if we are going to avoid a meltdown in society. That doesn't mean that all should be equal, but we ought to think about how we can provide everyone with enough to live with dignity.
"I think the concern is that rising income inequality will accelerate as the wealthy will increasingly own the means of automation."
Machines can make hamburgers, but they can't buy them. "Income inequality" is not the problem you think it is, or pretend to think it is.
Since when did "income inequality" become the worst possible thing in the entire world? Given the track record of previous regimes that sought to produce "income equality" (> 100 million killed in the 20th century), I think calls for "income equality" need to be looked at with a very harsh and critical eye.
Also, can you tell me what would happen to the work force when most of the jobs in the services sectors will be automated?
Because as I see it, jobs in the agriculture and manufacturing - to greater extent - sectors are almost extinct and their counterparts in the services sector are on the way, the so-called quaternary sector can't absorb all the surplus and masses of labor that will sit idle because the the nature of that sector of the economy is that it's more of capital intensive and labor averse and can't create enough job opportunities to an ever growing human population and work force.
What would be the solution to this problem then?