April 4, 2017

Were the Luddites right? – Automation and its Consequences

Had a discussion with an economist the other day, who held to the conventional wisdom, justified by history, that the ‘creative destruction’ of whole sectors of jobs due to industrialization and technology (agriculture is a favourite example) will result in the creation of many more jobs in new sectors never previously imagined or possible.  It just takes a little time, and pain, to adjust.

There is much anticipation that the next wave of automation will encroach on white-collar sectors previously thought to be unaffected, but now a target thanks to artificial intelligence. (Will that include economists?)  And whether new service sectors will emerge to provide new jobs that are sufficiently well paying to maintain a healthy economy and a stable society.  

Or rather, will automation accelerate the concentration of wealth even as it increases productivity but lowers wages?  Does it matter that people would have less income if goods and services provided by automation were commensurately cheaper?  Do we finally achieve a leisurely nirvana or will the loss of purpose and social status provided by work create a dysfunctional, unstable polity?

Will leader (or rulers) then create employment (and purpose) by recruiting vast numbers of otherwise lower-skilled men (in particular) into military and security forces whose primary job is to ensure control over otherwise disruptive and displaced workers?

Or is the economist right?  Similar worries of the past proved unfounded as the limitless demands of human beings and technology created new opportunities.  On the other hand, Bank of England’s Chief Economist Andy Haldane has argued that the Luddites (the English textile workers who smashed industrial machinery early in the 19th century) “had a point after all.”  The transition can be ugly. (More here.) 

Anyway … here’s another piece in the New York Times that looks at recent data to explore whether this next phase of automation in manufacturing is qualitatively different, the consequences of which may mean more disruption in our disruptive times.

Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots.

The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.

The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels. Just as cranes replaced dockworkers but created related jobs for engineers and financiers, the theory goes, new technology has created new jobs for software developers and data analysts.

But that paper was a conceptual exercise. The new one uses real-world data — and suggests a more pessimistic future. The researchers said they were surprised to see very little employment increase in other occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing. That increase could still happen, they said, but for now there are large numbers of people out of work, with no clear path forward — especially blue-collar men without college degreed.

The conclusion is that even if overall employment and wages recover, there will be losers in the process, and it’s going to take a very long time for these communities to recover,” Mr. Acemoglu said. …

The paper also helps explain a mystery that has been puzzling economists: why, if machines are replacing human workers, productivity hasn’t been increasing. In manufacturing, productivity has been increasing more than elsewhere — and now we see evidence of it in the employment data, too.

The study analyzed the effect of industrial robots in local labor markets in the United States. Robots are to blame for up to 670,000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, it concluded, and that number will rise because industrial robots are expected to quadruple.

The paper adds to the evidence that automation, more than other factors like trade and offshoring that President Trump campaigned on, has been the bigger long-term threat to blue-collar jobs. The researchers said the findings — “large and robust negative effects of robots on employment and wages” — remained strong even after controlling for imports, offshoring, software that displaces jobs, worker demographics and the type of industry. …

The next question is whether the coming wave of technologies — like machine learning, drones and driverless cars — will have similar effects, but on many more people.

.

The segment of employment I think more worth watching is … driving.  Truckers in some US states constitute the most common employment category.  

In Canada, I’ve heard it estimated that 130,000 (largely) men could be displaced by automated trucking alone.  (In The Netherlands, for instance, autonomous trucking is already here in Rotterdam ports and will likely extend to intercity controlled-access freeways more easily automated than complex urban environments.)

Then there are transit drivers, taxi and Uber drivers, delivery drivers … 

Imagine the social and political consequences of de-employing tens of thousands of low-skilled labourers in a short time, without the ability to reabsorb them in jobs of similar pay and status.  The temptation to issue them guns and allow them discretionary power to maintain social order (or, let’s say, undocumented immigrants and closing borders) will be high unless the political system can respond in more productive ways.

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  1. This change will be painful. For years I have heard that there will be new and different jobs. I cannot fathom that there will be anywhere near enough jobs selling and maintaining robots and operator – less machinery to cover the losses.
    Automation and technology are making existing workers much more productive ( and more than a little stressed). The gains from that productivity are not showing up in the pay checks or workweeks of the masses like they used to.
    That odious tv personality Kevin O’Leary was on the campaign trail recently, he was asked about what the truck drivers automated out of a job would do for a living. He said there would be work scheduling the automated trucks. There will – how many trucks can one person schedule with state of the art software – 10, 20, 50?
    No truck drivers. No machine operators. No pilots. Shipping crew cut 90%. No train operators. No Bus drivers. Retail employment cut 90%. Not tomorrow, not next week but the day is coming. How good are people at dealing with this kind of change? What’s the history? Will it be smooth, with adequate support for those who lose their jobs – somehow I doubt it.

    1. “I cannot fathom that there will be anywhere near enough jobs selling and maintaining robots and operator – less machinery to cover the losses.”
      That shouldn’t be the only source of new jobs. If manufacturing becomes more efficient (i.e., cheaper), then it will reduce the cost of complementary goods. This is why the TV manufacturers created free programming back in the day: reducing the cost of programming increased demand for TVs. Similarly, as the cost of TVs declined, the demand for programming increased. As the cost of manufacturing declines, we should see more things being manufactured, and more things created to be manufactured. Just look at aliexpress.
      So the rosy view is that in the log run all will be well. But as Keynes said, in the long run, we are all dead. Early industrial England was not a good place to be. Factory owners paid their workers just enough to buy food and survive, no more. So there’s that.
      Technology is often seen as an extension of our limbs and senses. The lever is the prototype: technology lets one person achieve more. This leads to a concentration of power and control: monopolies, elites, concentrated wealth. None of them terribly good for democracy.
      Magnifying human effort means magnifying the effects of human difference. For creative and intellectual work, the effect is even greater. On the assembly line, the guy who is less efficient may slow things down a bit, but he still contributes, and he’s still worth paying. In creative work, he’s irrelevant. When the marginal cost of duplication is zero, second best is worthless: you only need the best design, and you need it done once. The best guy may be only 10% better than the second best, but he’s worth 100% more. (The same applies to companies like Microsoft, Intel and Google, each of which dominates a market segment.)
      Anyone who has worked in software has seen this. Good programmers are at least ten times as efficient as average programmers. I think the real difference is closer to a hundred times. In this context, mediocre developers actually have negative productivity. (And see the Mythical Man Month, which explains why adding manpower to a project makes it later.)
      This is all assuming that a large proportion of workers are well-suited to being retrained into intellectual and creative work. There is scant evidence of that. In software, there is a belief that good programmers are born, not made. Maybe that’s not true: but we haven’t worked out a way to teach it effectively. (Heck, we haven’t even managed to integrate women adequately, despite the fact that they nearly dominated the field in its early days.) Companies themselves tell us this: they need to bring in immigrants because there aren’t enough workers at home. Obviously they are trying to drive down wages, but taken at face value they are saying very clearly that not everyone – not even most people – can do this work.
      Then there are other problems, like the global division of labour. The plan of the Clinton administration in the U.S. was to outsource manufacturing while keeping control of copyrights and patents, letting China do low-margin commodity work and keeping the big margins at home. It didn’t work out that way. New research[1] finds that outsourcing manufacturing *decreased* American innovation. Oops.
      It’s all a nice theory, but so far it hasn’t worked terribly well on a time scale of less than, say, oh my goodness climate change is going to drown our cities. I don’t see any reason that’s about to change.
      [1] http://voxeu.org/article/competition-china-reduced-innovation-us

      1. One result of ‘keeping the margins at home’ was that in many instances they weren’t.
        Apple transferred something north of $200 billion in profits to low tax havens as part of its rather quiet corporate policy that equally applies to discussing the labour standards in the Chinese factories contracted to make iPhones.
        U2 moved its business to Holland for the same reason. Much as I appreciate their original rock music and Edge’s guitar finesse, I think about this whenever Bono, an incredibly rich individual, gets in the news pleading for more aid for Africa primarily by berating and schmoozing national governments and prime ministers gathered in Davos once a year.

        1. I believe the United States was created following some sort of tax issue over tea in Boston.
          Taxes are best dealt with delicately.

        2. And of course blasé references to taxes, like they are all the same, disregards their specific value and service for the commons.

  2. One thing for sure. There will be a lot more people out of work or economically disadvantaged than there will be execs at the top raking it in. So as long as we live in some semblance of a democracy we can vote for governments that will ensure a healthy distribution of wealth.
    That is, if the disadvantaged don’t just fall for the propaganda of the rich.
    They often do… or don’t vote at all.

  3. We already have autonomous mining operations:
    http://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/innovation/customer-solutions/autonomous-operations.html
    http://www.oemoffhighway.com/electronics/smart-systems/automated-systems/article/12243110/autonomous-mining-equipment
    A huge problem is that most wealth generated by increased automation ends up with the very rich. This is not sustainable and we must find a way to ensure that some of this wealth goes toward providing at a minimum a living income for everyone in society. Otherwise, the future looks very bleak indeed.

    1. Fake news. Canada has a very large very wealthy middle class. http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-forget-the-liberal-mythology-canadas-middle-class-is-not-struggling
      This is not the USA (nor socialist Europe, thank God).
      We are very blessed indeed, although far too many vote seeking politicians try to emulate socialist Europe with more bureaucracy, far higher consumption taxes (20%+ in most EU states), far higher income taxes, more debt and more spending crowding out private investments.
      The “$15/h minimum wage is better” myth is also falling part as it creates more unemployed on the bottom end of the scale as work does indeed get automated (say kiosks at McD) and the layoff of the least qualified. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/07/26/seattles-minimum-wage-rise-is-reducing-employment-in-seattle-i-was-right-in-predicting-this
      50%+ income taxes are absurd. Legalized theft if you ask me.

        1. re McD: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/11/29/thanks-to-fight-for-15-minimum-wage-mcdonalds-unveils-job-replacing-self-service-kiosks-nationwide
          If a chain like WalMart or McD or BestBuy cuts hours from say 6-midnight to 7 to 11 pm or closes the 24 h open year round situation to 6 am to midnight, due to higher minimum wages and increased pressure on margins, who do you think they lay off ? The strongest of the bottom 500 pile, or the weakest ? This minimum wage increase law hurts the weakest part of society first: the recovering druggie, the slightly mental ill folks, the disabled senior trying to make an extra $300/week, the teenagers looking for an entry level job ! It is not only bad economic BUT ALSO BAD SOCIAL POLICY !

        2. An economy that requires poverty is not an economy worth having.
          Henry Ford new he had to pay his employees enough to afford the cars they were making. That hasn’t changed.
          What has changed dramatically is right-wing propaganda.

      1. I don’t visit McDonalds often, so I don’t know how long they have been there, but I used an order kiosk the last time I was there, in Kelowna. And there was no higher minimum wage in effect, so the link between raising the minimum wage and deploying order kiosks is imaginary, or propaganda.

      2. Thomas, maybe a fair system for all does not fit into world view, however shouldn’t happiness levels play a role in our society? Of not is Bhutan, which measures and tries to maximize happiness for their citizens. They focus on GHI insteasd of GDP. In a recent report which measures the happiness index or countries,Norway came out on top in terms of happiness.
        https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/world/worlds-happiest-countries.html
        “Even in Norway and several other Nordic countries that dominated the top of the list, economics alone did not explain the high rates of happiness.
        “It takes good social foundations and trust,” said John Helliwell, one of the report’s editors and a professor emeritus in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia.”
        Canada came in at a respectable 6th while USA came in at 14th. Shouldn’t we be striving toward the Norwegian model instead of the American one?

        1. Norway is lucky the environmentalists don’t have the country on their radar.
          Fossil Fuels is what makes them so happy. Unless, of course, you don’t think money is important and there’s really no difference between rich and poor.
          Fossil fuels.
          In 2011, Norway was the eighth largest crude oil exporter in the world (at 78Mt), and the 9th largest exporter of refined oil (at 86Mt). It was also the world’s third largest natural gas exporter (at 99bcm), having significant gas reserves in the North Sea. Norway also possesses some of the world’s largest potentially exploitable coal reserves (located under the Norwegian continental shelf) on earth.
          Norway’s abundant energy resources represent a significant source of national revenue. Crude oil and natural gas accounted for 40% of the country’s total export value in 2015. As a share of GDP, the export of oil and natural gas is approximately 17%.
          If they had an NDP government and a Leap Manifesto they’d be just like Venezuela is today.

        2. Eric, meet Thomas. Thomas meet Eric.
          Do you two want to decide if Europe is socialist (that’s like the NDP, Eric) or not? Thomas claims they are and shudders at the thought. Eric, you think one of the more socialist countries is not like the NDP.
          Norway has put aside almost $1trillion from their sale of oil for the benefit of their own people.
          What has Alberta managed? Canada?
          If you’re going to sell oil, would you rather have the $1trillion to finance a shift to the alternates we all know are coming? Or for other purposes of social good?
          If Norway could put that money aside in a competitive global market, then that amount of money must have flowed into somebody’s pockets elsewhere.
          It wasn’t mine.
          It wasn’t yours.
          Thomas are you okay that this ridiculous sum of money is in the pockets of a very very very very rich few?
          Eric?

        3. Norway also (unlike similarly populated Alberta) has
          a) ample hydro power
          b) no immigration
          c) oil reserves that are running dry, thus a
          d) massive $1T savings fund
          e) very high income taxes
          f) very high consumption taxes
          Many in AB or Canada aspire to be like Norway, but forget these 6 big differences.

        4. Thomas, there are many reasons why Alberta’s wealth was squandered, and transfer payments are not one of them. Fiscal management by conservatives have an old, established pattern in Canada, and good management is usually not one of them. You need to read about Peter Lougheed because he was the rare exception. Had his original middle road principles on the Heritage Trust Fund and royalty pricing been maintained by successive conservatives, they’d too have a trillion bucks in the bank — and a sales tax.

        5. Federal GST, federal corporate tax and federal income tax were and continually are siphoning 10’s of BILLIONS annually out of Alberta, much of it to Quebec and some other have-not province like now Ontario. As a standalone country with no immigration – like Norway – it would be as wealthy or wealthier most likelier due to the now far higher oil volume shipped by now.
          Yes the so called “progressive conservatives” did hire – like the federal Liberals and almost all parties anywhere – far too many and overpaid civil servants, as AB’s spending per capita is indeed far too high for its revenues amid plunging oil & gas royalties. As a result, for a few years Wildrose rose in prominence and would have run the province today had its then leader Danielle Smith not switched parties late 2014. She’d be Premier of Alberta today. Vote splitting ensued and the AB NDP slipped into government ith 40% of the vote, running the province in the ground like there is no tomorrow. But, that will all be corrected in 2019 wiht a likely merger of PC and WR parties re-establishing the Alberta Advantage, albeit hobbled due to massive debt and massive bureaucracies which will take a decade to reduce.
          And yes, a 5% PST (or 10% HST) would be the right move, plus property transfer taxes, alongside deep public sector wage & employee headcount cuts in the 20-25% range. Plus income tax cuts.
          We shall see.

        6. Conservative wreck the economy then “lose” for a term or two while progressives clean up the mess as the conservatives jeer at them for being in such a mess.
          Progressives make the hard choices to fix the mess while the conservatives campaign with simplistic messages of how they manage the economy better.

  4. Agree with Arno.
    If it weren’t for such things as ATMs and online banking and algorithmic investments, I’d guess bank clerks and stockbrokers and banks would be much more numerous than now. But it’s just the reverse. Same with animation. Same with elevator operators (!). Same with travel agencies and many leisure and FIRE-type service industries. Real estate could be next, I’m guessing. Maybe even academia – oh, the horror!
    So, yes, job/career killing automation is fully with us in the service industries and manufacturing sectors. After all, Ken Jennings couldn’t beat whatever that computer’s name is in Jeopardy!

  5. I’m not sure if the luddites were right, but i’m tending to lean towards them when I see the potential and direction of where technology is headed. It leaves me both in awe and afraid. I am often asked to speak about tech and the future of transport and at the end I see it in the eyes of the audience. I feel emotionally spent after each talk.
    Technology is a double-edged sword, very useful, but also dangerous. When we have a control of it, it can benefit us. But I am sensing we will soon lose control. Many “futurists” predict that we eventually will lose control and it is hoped that the “Parent AI” will be benevolent. So a full-blown luddite attack may not help in that regard (as everything done soon will be recorded via IoTs). I’ve thought maybe we should slow down innovation. But that’s like trying to stop a tsunami. Is this Tower of Babel 2.0? Maybe we should start to improve our ‘data-diplomacy’ and ‘robotic-relations’ so our Quantum Overlords will treat us well. This stuff’s about to get philosophical…

  6. @ Eric
    You are right to point out the political Achilles Heel about oil and related other related dependencies, like automobiles supported by massive public infrastructure. The problem is, you referred to the wrong side of the political spectrum.
    If Norway had a Canadian-style conservative government for 44 years they’d probably be like Alberta: completely shackled to the price of oil with nothing to show for it after a century of exploitation.
    The only difference between Norway and Alberta is that the Norse practiced excellent financial management. The man who became the central proponent of their sovereign wealth fund decades ago used premier Peter Lougheed’s Heritage Trust Fund as a model. Norway not only charged a higher price for its expensive deep North Sea fossil fuels and told the multinationals who objected to shove it (like it was supposedly their resource), but the government bought an equity share through Statoil. Then it put the revenue in the bank and perhaps uses a small portion of the interest in their budgets. Norway remains a high-tax environment, but the people are happy and the nation can roll through periods of low commodity prices with ease.
    By comparison, the HTF and the Alberta annual budgets have been grossly mismanaged ever since the wise elder Lougheed took a bow. The royalties were never matched to the actual value of the public resource, but to the status of the political donations and biased oil sector backgrounds of successive waves of conservative government ministers. Alberta with an equity stake in its own resources? God forbid! (The feds also sold Petro Canada to Suncor way back when.) Bank the revenue? Only to a token level at best. Diversify the economy? Leave that up to the socialists who seem to have fallen into the same oil abyss while mouthing soothing words about clean energy alternatives while making some headway on phasing out coal.
    This is the quintessential Canadian Way when it comes to resource management. Very little of the revenue was banked for the inevitable rainy day. The principle from revenue from a non-renewable resource was used to subsidize annual budgets. There is no better way to blow an inheritance. Alberta has been criticized time and again for this foolishness, but the buffoons in power continued squandering on oil-dependent tax cuts, cash giveaways to citizens to buy votes, mega projects (e.g. Calgary’s $7 billion ring road system and other road projects), and in a phenomenally mean-spirited sweep by Chief Buffoon Ralph Klein to add gasoline to the fire, killed thousands of jobs during the depths of the 80s recession and plummeting oil prices. Knock ‘em down when they’re low – that’s not sound fiscal management. It’s ideology.
    Here’s the score today:
    Alberta: $10+ billion in deficit this year alone due to low oil prices.
    Norway: $US1.1 trillion in the bank.
    Here’s the clincher: The North Sea has been in decline for 16 years and, even with a recent small uptick, faces serious challenges with adequate returns from the world price (that could change) and higher costs of replacing ageing equipment and infrastructure (that will not change).
    http://www.crystolenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Norway-and-UK-Crude-Oil-Production.jpg
    The bottom line is that Norway has the wealth to ride out dips without being a hacker or a slasher of its own people and develop a plan to decrease its dependence on one finite resource. Alberta is in a far more tenuous situation as it continues on the well-travelled freeway of high costs of production while remaining susceptible to uncontrollable, volatile world prices to utterly foolish levels no matter, it seems, what party is in control.
    Lastly, the buyers of fossil fuel products are getting wise to the increasingly affordable costs of renewables.

    1. Alberta still has around $20 billion in its Heritage Fund.
      Alberta has also shipped off around $200 billion to Ottawa in the past 15 years, to spread around those places that do not have as much money.
      “If you’re still wondering why oil-rich Alberta doesn’t have a massive sovereign wealth fund like Norway, consider this.
      Alberta is a province, not a country. Ergo, we don’t get to keep all the wealth we generate in this province. Not even close.”
      Gary Lamphier, Edmonton Journal
      Even with the decline of some oil in the North Sea there is an area with oil that is not being exploited due to a conflict and claim to ownership. They also have loads of gas. Here in BC, for some bizarre reason, the same gas is being demonized by the CoV. They also seem to have loads of unexploited coal.
      There is always more to the story.

      1. Management principles are management principles are management principles.
        By taxing its citizens for the services they consume, by charging a decent price for their finite resource, and by establishing an equity stake for the state (all are themes Lougheed floated and Norway appropriated), Norway went on accumulating a sovereign wealth fund 55 times the size of Alberta’s for a population just 20% higher and with almost the exact economic profile for expensive unconventional petroleum.
        Any decent financial advisor will tell you not to subsidize your annual budget with a one-time inheritance, but invest it
        You also ignore the vast devolution of power to the provinces. Alberta is a siovereign state within a confederation. $200 billion (I’m gonna check that …) sent beyond the borders over 48 years averages to $4 billion a year, not unlike other productive provinces. That also works out to only 22 months of Metro Vancouver’s GDP.

        1. Not quite Alex.
          “The only difference between Norway and Alberta is that the Norse practiced excellent financial management.”
          Norway (unlike Alberta with a similar population) has
          a) no GST payable to another government (our federal government)
          b) no immigration
          c) oil reserves that are running dry, thus they better start saving (!!)
          d) no federal personal income taxes payable to another government (our federal government)
          e) no federal corporate income taxes payable to another government (our federal government)
          e) very high income taxes – well over 50% for higher end earners
          f) very high consumption taxes
          Taking just e) and f): Norway takes more from citizens and saves it. Albertans get far more money and THEY save it themselves. So, yes Norway is a socialist country and Alberta is not.
          Divide $1T over 4M people and I get $250,000/person. If I take people’s equity in their homes in Alberta and add all the money sent to Ottawa over the last few decades I bet it is far higher than $1T !
          What is better: government taking my money, or I keep it and decide what to do with it ?
          Of course, some the say the former, and I say the latter.

        2. Thomas posted: “Norway has…no immigration”
          The internet says you don’t know what you are talking about.
          https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/flytting
          With a population of 5m, net immigration has exceeded 40,000 per annum in recent years. We have 7 times that population here in Canada. That equates to 280,000 per annum. Our immigration ranged from 220,000 to 260,000 per annum in recent years, per wiki. You should be very embarrassed.
          Oh, and you left off (g) again – They are happier (per Ron’s post)

        3. Alex: It’s a single state monarchy, not a equalizing federation with multiple taxing powers. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas outside the Middle East.
          The country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists.
          They can obviously afford high taxes. I guess oil and gas is valuable.
          Yet, Norway is also the world’s 2nd-largest exporter of fish (in value, after China).
          All that off shore oil and gas and yet the fish are jumping.
          Could not happen in Canada.
          http://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/o1.jpg

        4. “What is better: government taking my money, or I keep it and decide what to do with it?”
          So much for ‘together everyone achieves more’
          One of the trade-offs of democracy — sometimes you don’t get to direct every penny of your taxes to your favourite areas.
          One of the signs of hubris. Presuming you have an answer to problems without any evidence to support such a position.

        5. If Alberta was truly interested in diversifying its economy then we’d be hearing about innovation labs and seeing intellectual property patents being registered by now in Edmonton. Norway will have a day of reckoning too on diversification, but it can afford to take its time and do it right with so much money invested that the earnings will keep the fund growing through sheer inertia when times are lean.
          If Alberta is the paradise you and Thomas make it out to be, then why are so any Albertans looking for work in BC and Ontario? Could it be they have only a one-horse wagon?

        6. “What is better: government taking my money, or I keep it and decide what to do with it ?”
          It depends on which is capable of delivering the things you want. What need have I for a bigger house (I am fortunate enough to have one), a newer car, a bigger TV, a fancier cell phone, more stylish clothes, or frequent getaways? I could spend a million dollars on these things; it would barely make a dent in the quality of my life. Some of my relatives are wealthy. It does not seem to be much of a boon.
          The things I want the most are things that I cannot buy: peace and order; beautiful parks; lively streets; transit; diverse, friendly, and educated neighbours and strangers. I can keep as much money as I like: it will not bring me these things.
          The only truly important things my spending can enhance are my son’s future and retirement. But a good public school gives so much more bang for the buck than private; mobility, community and public health care are the foundations of retirement.
          I know that I am very fortunate. I know that for many people with less, a few tax dollars saved could be a big deal. But I also know that they gain the most from effective public services, and are least able to afford private alternatives.
          You ask the question as though the answer were obvious. It is.

        7. Ditto. Geof, what you wrote resonates with my feeling that sustainability is about contentment vs. more, more, more. And yes, some purchases are a personal matter, where as others require a shared or collective approach via pooled tax dollars. Going back on topic, I believe we need to be values-based in our dealing with the increasing technological encroachment into every aspect of our lives. This requires what you elude to: inner contemplation of what matters and what it’s all about.

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